The Male Characters of Euripides by Professor E.M. Blaiklock MA.
THE ATHENIAN HUSBAND
Hence the point of Heracles' re-entry, 'all one smile, according to Browning, a frank and glorious presence, life, as it were, knocking at the door. Whatever be the truth of it, Heracles learns the worst, and is gone with naked hands to right his wrong, while Admetus, somewhere out of sight on the road of tombs, is facing reality. There Alcestis is gone to her grave for his sake, 'murdered by him', in Pheres' still echoing words.
It is profitable to pause here and ask whether we are justified in adding to Admetus' list of faults the callous disregard of decency which Verrall alleges, and the fear of the people which led him to hasten Alcestis journey to her tomb.
"It is impossible', says Verrall, that Admetus should not shrink…..from walking behind the bier of Alcestis, first of a noble train, before the assembled townsfolk of Pherai, in the presence of the parents whom he so preposterously maligns, of the kin of his wife (Euripides does not forget them), and of all the curious who could manage to reach the place, knowing that all were saying, to themselves, if not audibly, "See there, alive ignobly, there he skulks!" His plan is, and all his actions up to the burial have no other object, to escape this horror in the only possible way, by interring his wife, with such ceremony or lack of ceremony as the case might admit, but anyhow, instantly, before anyone except his household and his chosen intimates could know that she was dead.'
If this theory had any truth in it, it would be extremely difficult to maintain the view of Admetus' character we are developing. Admetus was self-centred. He had, it might be supposed, led a pampered and protected life. He was insensitive to his own baseness. He was not, for all this, a calculating villain. Verrall was taken up immediately on this point by
J. R. Mozley, who rightly pointed out that through the whole play Admetus shows not the smallest sign of "shrinking" from the most public acknowledgement of the facts of the case.... The knowledge that Alcestis was to die in his stead is represented as the common property of everyone in Greece, and of course of the kinsfolk of Alcestis among others. (It is
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THE MALE CHARACTERS OF EURIPIDES
only the offended and angry Pheres who threatens Admetus with vengeance from these kinsfolk.) It is true that Admetus feels remorse after her death; but this remorse is by no means intended to be the token of deep-seated guilt.'
This is perfectly true. The deep irony of the situation is that Admetus cannot see the true nature of his action. That is why it is so easy for us to imagine him as stepping straight from life in Periclean Athens, the only son, we might imagine, in a family of Athenian sisters, and presented early with a handpicked specimen of the adoring and docile Athenian wife.
Like Jason the figure on the stage suggested sobering thoughts to the less case-hardened of the excellent husbands on the stone seats. And as Mozley shows, there is no need for any remote explanation for the time of Alcestis' funeral. It arose from the necessities of the situation. Euripides' prime interest is Admetus' character and a turning point in the development of that character was Pheres' frank and ruthless attack. It is psychologically appropriate that such a crisis should have time to work itself out. The funeral intervenes to provide that interval, the necessary opportunity, and the further stimulus for self-examination and reflection.?º Euripides is quite definitely at pains to show the fruit of such soul-searching, when the procession comes back from the suburb tomb. 'Never to see your dear wife face to face? again', cry the Chorus, distraught with grief, and, it is to be noted, with no word of reproach for Admetus. But he, made aware now,
How lovable the dead are how the heart
Yearns in us to go and hide where they repose, replies with the revealing words, 'You have touched that very thing that wounds my heart.' The home is to be a place of agony full of memory's torture. 'What new is this?' say the Chorus, cold as Sulpicius in comfort:
I had a kinsman he
Lost in his home a son—
True tears were his to shed,-
His child his only one.
He bore in misery
His lonely doom
White hair on his head
His long life nearly sped, Dropped to the tomb.
Your luck was good before
To you untouched by ill, This sorrow came but you
Are quick and breathing still.
Your wife is dead. No more
That love abides
What grief is here that's new?
From many others too
Death robs their brides.
(Alc. 903-910, 926-934. C. M. Bowra)
'Thou hast saved thy life.' And with that word, so true, so unconsciously trenchant, Admetus grasped the truth that made him free. Much of the evil in him had died by the grave. He is changed towards his mother. 'She who said she bare me'
(1.637) has become his true mother again (1.865). And now he shows how deep his experience has been. Those last words of the Chorus challenge him as the final utterance of the old philosophy. He speaks with that calm and measured voice which Alcestis had used herself at their last parting. It is in the very manner of her disillusionment. The speeches are worth reading side by side, for behind the words of both of them is all the littleness of the thing Admetus had been.
Alcestis saw him first, and it saddened her sacrifice, and now, in self-reproach, Admetus sees himself. He speaks still as a king.
There is no wild agony of self-revelation, but he has the truth, and the truth is that there is no evading death, and if by subterfuge the dead live on, life becomes itself a living death, the home a grave:
Литрои біди віото арт parbávw
• .
TiMot [ทิน อิทิรน หยอนอบอนอน
как клоть каі кака петрауть;
(Al ora 010 060. 061)
As Browning's version runs:
Whereas I, who ought not live,
But do live by evading destiny,
Sad life am I to lead I learn at last!
Ill-famed, ill-faring, what advantage friends,
Do you perceive I gain by life?
Suffering, as Aeschylus' doctrine has it, has taught Admetus, and to this point the play might well be a tragedy. The TEPIéTEla is as cruel as Jason's own. Admetus sought life and found death. Because of the apapia in his personality, the very means by which he sought his salvation wrought his ruin. The speech just quoted, the phrase apt pavláve indeed, is his avarpiots. He sees it all, and if proof is wanted for the sincerity of his repentance, Euripides gives it by making him use old Pheres' hated word, auxía! For foes will say, ibő6–
See there, alive ignobly, there he skulks.
That played the dastard when it came to die
In giving her he wedded in exchange.
Kept himself out of hades safe and sound, The coward—do you call that creature man?
(Alc. 955-957. Browning)
There is, as the Chorus say, keirov oÈv 'Aváyas. Trying to build a selfish haven from his destiny, Admetus built a tragedy. 'The hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies', wrote the most eloquent of Hebrew poets, 'and the waters shall overflow the hiding place. Your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it.' Such nakedness Admetus felt. Such was Apollo's gift.
But the ending, as Verrall remarks, flatly contradicts the Chorus' dictum. 'Necessity does not bind, but itself is breakable by superior, and shall we say, miraculous power.' If this is so he asks, preparing the way for his astonishing theory, 'what has become of the creed? Was it put forward only that the
[(Isaiah, Ch. 28, vv. 17, 18. (A.V.)]
contrasted sequel might the more conspicuously exhibit its falsity?' The explanation, far less subtle, is simply this, that Euripides, preoccupied with character, and moving consciously towards the framing of a happy ending, seeks another scene to show his changed Admetus. Changed he undoubtedly is, a Kaun kriots in the Pauline phrase. By a spiritual experience of the very sort envisaged in that word, tà apxata таруЛ0ev." And if the figure from New Testament theology may be maintained for a moment longer, the final scene is Admetus' opportunity to show 'fruits meet for repentance.' The dénouement, wcepa, according to the author of one of the ancient Arguments, brings Heracles back from, the tomb with a silent and veiled figure. as It is Alcestis, won back in combat from Death. And this same Alcestis left her husband in the hour of death with a disillusionment she was at few pains to hide. If the ending is to be happy, the pair cannot be left, as Roses suggests they are left, 'to read just themselves as best they may. Euripides takes some pains with the psychological probabilities of the situation. If life is to be a boon to Alcestis brought back from the dead, if happiness for the husband is to come back with the body of his wife, she must obviously be convinced that the man whose baseness shocked and disillusioned her, is a new man, washed of his fault. Hence the elaborate fiction of Heracles' story, the tale of a woman
slave won in a cross-roads game, and the request for her safe retention under Admetus' own care. Heracles' cruelty is the deepest of kindness. Sheppards surely misreads the scene when he suggests that Heracles 'with his blundering human nature' unconsciously works a miracle. Does he not rather deliberately set out to test the man, and convince the silent woman that her husband loves her, is broken in grief, and has seen himself at last?
[a8I1. Ep ad
Corinthians 5:17.
"Compare Dickens' characterisation of young Martin Chuzzlewit. Both Dickens and Euripides held a concept of tragedy quite un-Aristotelian.]