The Ironic Structure in "Alcestis"

Abstract

THERE are two distinguishable structures in Alcestis, the combination of which makes the drama. The primary structure is the melodramatic plot: Admetus is saved from misfortune because he entertains Heracles who in turn rescues Alcestis-the plot predicted by Apollo in the prologue (64-72). It is melodramatic because of the kind of events involved and because of the tone in which it is related. Death is the villain of the piece, and Heracles is the hero who rescues the noble husband's virtuous wife at the last possible moment. The other is an ironic structure, parallel to the first, composed of themes, imagery, and even a kind of plot-the testing of Admetus. The melodramatic plot offers an exposition and interpretation of the Alcestis myth. Concurrently the ironic plot offers an analysis and criticism of the attitudes and beliefs implied by the melodramatic plot and by the myth itself. This is not to say that the poet offers two plays in Alcestis, one for the ordinary spectator and another for the discerning, but rather that both treatments of the story, which imply different readings of the same facts, are necessarily available to all of the audience, and that fully to appreciate the play requires responding to both. Critics have recognized a compounding of styles in the play. It has been treated as a comedy which also offers a serious, perhaps tragic character study in Admetus, and the label tragi-comedy is frequently applied.' But as in many of Euripides' experiments in mixing tones and styles within a single play, the combination is unique, and therefore difficult to classify usefully. I shall use the terms melodramatic, tragic, and comic to describe particular effects used by Euripides, without defining a class to which the play belongs. This study of Alcestis attempts to demonstrate that the treatment of Admetus' character and the variety of effects employed are elements in a single design intended as a critical analysis of the myth's implications. In the prologue Euripides emphasizes melodramatic elements already