This new verse translation and adaptation of Euripides' earliest surviving classic, Alcestis (438 B.C.E.), was British Poet Laureate Hughes's last translation before his death in 1998. Ironically, the character Death plays a prominent part in the drama. In order to let her husband, King Admetos, live, queen Alcestis gives up her young life in a bargain arranged by Apollo with Death. The tragic outcome is thwarted when Heracles visits the palace without knowing of Alcestis's death. After learning of Admetos's bereavement, Heracles, in gratitude, decides to rescue Alcestis from Death in a wrestling match. His success reunites the royal couple. Richard Aldington's earlier prose translation (1930), in four acts with short scenes, contains detailed stage directions; this new adaptation is easier to read. Hughes's poetic style is full of beauty and pathos. Highly recommended for both public and academic libraries.
-Ming-ming Shen Kuo, Ball State Univ. Lib., Muncie, IN
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
The drama developed out of religious ritual, and many early dramatic masterpieces feature gods and their doings, none more than Euripides' plays, among which Alcestis is a rarity, a tragedy reversed. It begins in tears. Good King Admetos loses Queen Alcestis because she agreed to die in his stead. Even Admetos' patron deity Apollo cannot thwart that force greater than gods, Death. But the demigod Heracles, whom Admetos hosts despite his grief, can and, once he learns who has died, does by wrestling Death until it surrenders Alcestis. With typical Euripidean irony, a superman triumphs where a god fails. The late British poet laureate Ted Hughes adapted the Greek original substantially, greatly expanding Heracles' drunken boasting about his labors, in particular, to point up humanity's heroic capacities and wrench the play's mood from mourning to celebration. He created a richly stageworthy new version that, as a work about a man whose wife dies by a man whose wife (U.S. poet Sylvia Plath) famously died, also provokes biocritical speculation. What is Hughes saying through Alcestis? Ray Olson
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