The resumption of “The Male Characters Of Euripides” by E.M.Blaiklock
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THE MALE CHARACTERS OF EURIPIDES (continuing on )
Take by the Gods this woman from my sight,
.....
For as I look on her, methinks I see
My wife: she stirs my heart with turmoil: fountains
Of tears burst from my eyes. O wretched I!
Now first I taste this grief's full bitterness.
"ApTi pavlávo, he said at 1. 940. Now is it apt yeúouar. Head and heart are one in the experience. At 1. 1067, emotion for the first time overwhelms the changed Admetus. He has fallen in love, as it was necessary he should, not with the strange woman, but with the departed wife, of whom her form and physical presence remind him. In the long passage of stichomythia beginning at 1. 1077, the poet, in his usual manner, makes a rapid sketch of the rehabilitated characters, and foundations for a future matrimonial happiness which otherwise must have seemed insecure'
Heracles is quite ruthless. He is something of a god, it must be remembered, and sometimes betrays knowledge beyond that of men. Line 1083 recalls a flat word of Pheres to Admetus with its attendant emotions: 'Thou hast lost a noble wife who will deny it?' No outburst against a selfish father follows.
Heracles proceeds, echoing yet more searchingly one of Alcestis' own last words: "Time will soothe your grief, now your woe is fresh' (1. 1085). Says Admetus in answer, 'You may well speak of time, if time be but to die' (1. 1086). Heracles tests him further. 'A wife will stay you, and desire for new marriage' (1. 1087). Admetus, the hospitable friend, almost forgets himself. 'Silence! What a word you said! I should not have thought. . ? (l. 1088). And so the strange probation proceeds, with Alcestis necessarily silent. The drama demands that she stand thus mute and unrecognised, and, after the woman's love and fellowship. The century, he seems to say, was sadly blind to truth. It despised real treasure, and prized the sorriest baubles. And it is sometimes the lot of such ignorance and blindness to be brought painfully to healing. The process meant a revolution in the soul of Admetus. Euripides, no doubt, would have liked to see such spiritual upheaval in the thinking of all Athens. That ambition, indeed, was the very sin Aristophanes alleged against him.
THE ATHENIAN HUSBAND
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recognition, if Alcestis were to say something appropriate to the occasion',
has it, or whether the '
"good simple fellow' of H. J. Rose, has
had enough of playing with his friend, there comes a moment when he gives Alcestis back, a happiness at last well-earned:
It was the crowning grace of that great heart To keep back joy, procrastinate the truth
Until the wife who had made proof and found The husband wanting might assay once more, and feel him minovasay ance more,
Able to do now all herself had done, Risen to the height of her.
Browning was apt to build characters out of his admirations and ideals. He may have touched his Heracles with something out of himself, and over-spiritualised that final scene, but his poet's perception has undoubtedly grasped the truth of Euri-pides®️
main theme. He took a man from life, mean, base, unworthy of a noble love. He might have broken him in the story of the play, as such a fault will break a man, and wreck both life and happiness. He preferred to take us deeper, and find in that same heart the possibilities of redemption, and to reveal an Admetus who faced the truth about himself, and was
'born again.'
If by this expression we are to mean that shifting of the centre of gravity of the inner life, a1 which, resulting from a deep emotional experience, transforms character, that is exactly what happened to Admetus. The centre of gravity of all Admetus' thinking was that esteem of self or family which made it possible for him to contemplate with satisfaction Apollo's gift of personal survival. His sense of values was wrong.
The bitter experience of reality which is the subject of the play reorientated his life. It was a chill joy, he found, at such a cost, to preserve what old Pheres was willing to sacrifice for the abbreviated joys of age. There was malice enough in Euripides' revelation of the worthlessness of cherished Athenian ideals, when such goods weighed against the worth of a noble
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THE MALE CHARACTERS OF EURIPIDES
woman's love and fellowship. The century, he seems to say, was sadly blind to truth. It despised real treasure, and prized the sorriest baubles. And it is sometimes the lot of such ignorance and blindness to be brought painfully to healing. The process meant a revolution in the soul of Admetus. Euripides, no doubt, would have liked to see such spiritual upheaval in the thinking of all Athens. That ambition, indeed, was the very sin Aristophanes alleged against him.
(Dr Sheppard remarks that they are the traditional symptoms of lyrical passion as immortalised by Sappho.)