EMB
E. M. Blaiklock MA., Litt.D
The Male Characters of Euripides
7
THE ATHENIAN HUSBAND
We should turn now to the text of the play, and follow the course of the story with an eye to the character of the man upon the stage. The scene opens on the last sad hour. Apollo has haunted the palace door, but now is gone, ‘and mortals left to deal with misery.' Alcestis is dying, and the audience is left with the picture of a man faced with the price of a coveted privilege. He has been exempted from the human lot, and like Tithonus finds the gift a disillusionment. He is loud, indeed, in complaint. "What have the gods against us,” he cries,
"that Alcestis should die?' He bids the dying woman beg the gods for mercy (. 251), and, as if half unbelieving, beseeches her to rouse herself and live. It is quite clear that he is not asking her to revoke her decision and to let him face his fate. If he does approach such a request, in line 275, it is in very negative and not unselfish terms. Myrest makes the point that the decision of Alcestis may have been made in the carelessness of youth, when the 'expectation of life' was equal on the part of both her and Admetus. If that is so, the opening scene shows the woman determined to abide by the contract, and the man frantic with self-pity. And the tragedy is this, as Browning saw-Alcestis, open-eyed at last, by some such change as came to Iphigenia on the beach at Aulis, has marked her husband's selfishness, and seen her sacrifice with the clear vision of death's hour.
For you shall note she uttered no one word
Of love more of her husband though he wept Plenteously, waxed importunate in prayer— Folly's old fashion when its seed bears fruit.
I think she judged that she had bought the ware
Ơ' the seller at its value."
Admetus, compromised by all that has gone before, still bound by the lifelong habit of self-pity, and unawakened yet to any shame, has no fellowship with his wife's death-agonies.
'Muttering now this, now that ineptitude, he waits beside her, and listens at the end, in silence and scarce comprehending, to the bitterest words a man can hear—the speech of a good wife's disillusionment:
She fixed her gaze on the protesting man And let her lips unlock their sentence—so!
It is well put, except for the adjective, which is not consonant with what Browning yet has to say. In forty-five lines of cold measured language Alcestis gives her will and testament. Its every word of tenderness is for her children. Admetus she has seen and measured, but in all his wild reply there is no one word of true perception of his fault. It is a speech full of selfishness, and a sort of insensitive bewilderment.22 He will take no other wife, all sound of psalm and psaltery shall die, in death, in the same casket, he will lay beside her:
The pronoun, so emphatically first person, falls with due emphasis. The Athenian Code has him hopelessly in its grip.
Nothing imaginative, nothing heroic, nothing which might have warmed Alcestis' last minutes can come of him. And so, as the English poet puts it, he stands there sobbing,
'nowise insincere,
But somehow childlike, like his children, like Childishness the world over ....
Now that the sorrow he had called for came
He sorrowed to the height: none heard him say
However what would seem so pertinent
*To keep this pact I find surpass my power, Rescind it Moirai! Give me back her life,
And take the life I kept in base exchange.
And Alcestis seems to know that such a thought was still remote from him. 'He sorrowed, which sufficed!' She bends all her love to her children in the dialogue which follows. Line by line word-play is often used by Euripides to sharpen character on character, and the passage is a good example of the habit.
Stung to jealousy Admetus cries, 'And what shall I do bereft of thee?' There is no mercy in her answer, 'Time will soothe thy grief word of pity, the one who is dead is naught Still pleading for a he replies
"Take me with you, I beg, take me below.' It was a strange word under the circumstances, and Alcestis' response is cutting in its bitterness. 'We suffice who die in thy stead' (Alc. 380-383). And does Admetus then begin 'to taste the truth'? 'Aralóuny ap', Ei ME on lEú/EIs Júvae•
"Then I am lost, if thou, dear wife, wilt really leave me' (Alc. 383-386). It is impossible to catch in translation the full force of tense and particle. Fact has been staring him in the face, and only now he realises it, and now not quite. Does Euripides mean that Admetus all along has been led by his God-shadowed and protected life to hope that the ultimate price would not be exacted from him? He has always hidden from pain and sorrow. It could never come the way of one Apollo loved.
And so, incapable of sacrifice and courage, he allowed another to take his place. It was necessary for the dynasty, or simply his masculine right, and the manner of his life. A god had always stood between. But in the first theophany of the play Death had withstood Apollo, and the god had bowed to that which was mightier and withdrawn 'lest pollution touch him.' And so sorrow, as sorrows will, came round at last to Admetus' door, and the chill of what he had never faced was in his soul:
Now that in fact not fancy the blow fell— Needs must he busy him with the surprise
'Alcestis, not to see her nor be seen,
Hear nor be heard by her any more,
Today, tomorrow, to the end of time—
Did I mean this should buy my life?' thought he.
And so with the dawning of a consciousness, or in righteous adherence to 'the Code', he gave orders that Thessaly should mourn, and the Chorus hymn the Apñvos.
Whereat, according to Browning, a great voice: "My hosts!'