the doom of Alcestis is at hand. She is sick unto death; and Death himself, an impersonation similar to that of Madness in the "Mad Hercules," is at the palace gate awaiting his prey. The grisly fiend, suspecting that Apollo intends a second time to defraud him of his dues by interposing for Alcestis as he had done for Admetus, is in no gracious mood; but the god assures him that his interest with the Fates is exhausted. The following scenes are occupied with the parting of the victim from her husband, her children, and her household, and a faithful servant describes the profound grief of them all. In the midst of tears and wailings, and just after death has claimed his own, an unlooked-for guest arrives. Hercules, most stalwart of mortals, but not yet a demigod, enters. He is on his road to Thessaly, sent on one more perilous errand by his enemy Eurystheus. He is struck by the signs of general woe in the household. He proposes to pass on to another friend of his in Pheræ, but Admetus will not hear of what he regards a breach of hospitable duties, and gives orders to a servant to take Hercules to a distant chamber, and there set meat and drink before him. The guest, much perplexed by all he sees, but foiled in his inquiries, and led to suppose that some female relative of Admetus is dead, goes to his dinner, prepared to enjoy it, although, under the circumstances, it must be a solitary meal. Unaware of the real state of things, he greatly scandalises his attendant by his appetite, and still more by breaking out into snatches of convivial songs. "Of all the gormandising and unfeeling ruffians

I ever met with," says the slave in waiting, "this fellow is the worst. He eats like a half-famished wolf, drinks in proportion, calls for more than is set before him, and sings, or rather howls, his ribald songs out of all tune,—

"While we o' the household mourned our mistress mourned,

That is to say, in silence—never showed

The eyes, which we kept wetting, to the guest—

For there Admetus was imperative.

And so, here am I helping to make at home

A guest, some fellow ripe for wickedness,

Robber or pirate, while she goes

Out of her house.

her way

Never yet

Received I worse guest than this present one." "-(B.)

"Nor content with being voracious and dainty, he drinks till the wine fires his brain."

Hercules marks the rueful visage of his attendant, and thinking that Admetus has bidden him be as cheerful as usual, the family affliction being only a slight one, rates him roundly for his woe-begone looks:

"Hercules. Why look'st so solemn and so thought-absorbed ?

To guests, a servant should not sour-faced be,
But do the honours with a mind urbane.
Whilst thou, contrariwise, beholding here
Arrive thy master's comrade, hast for him
A churlish visage, all one beetle-brow-
Having regard to grief that's out of door!
Come hither, and so get to grow more wise.

Things mortal-know'st the nature that they have?
No, I imagine! whence could knowledge spring?
Give ear to me then! For all flesh to die

Is nature's due; nor is there any one

Of mortals with assurance he shall last
The coming morrow."—(B.)

And so on the old but ever-appropriate text, "Thou knowest that to die is common ;" and the oft-renewed question, "Why seems it then particular to thee?" Hercules proceeds moralising—" philosophising even in his drink," as an old scholiast remarks. The pith, indeed, of Hercules's counsel is "Drink, man, and put a garland on thy head."

When, however, the attendant says

"Ah! thou know'st nought o' the woe within these walls:"

the guest's curiosity is aroused. Can Admetus have deceived me? is it, then, not a distant kinswoman whom they are burying? have I been turning a house of mourning into a house of feasting? Tell me, good fellow, what has really chanced. The servant replies:

"Thou cam'st not at a fit reception-time:

With sorrow here beforehand; and thou seest
Shorn hair, black robes.

Hercules.

But who is it that's dead?

Some child gone? or the agèd sire, perhaps?

Servant. Admetus' wife, then, she has perished, guest. Hercules. How say'st? and did ye house me all the same? Servant. Ay: for he had thee in that reverence,

He dared not turn thee from the door away.

Hercules. O hapless, and bereft of what a mate!

All of us now are dead, not she alone;

Where is he gone to bury her? where am I
To go and find her?

Servant.

By the road that leads

Straight to Larissa, thou wilt see the tomb

Out of the suburb, a carved sepulchre."—(B.)

But as soon as Hercules extracts from the servant the real cause of the family grief, all levity departs from him. He is almost wroth with his friend for such overstrained delicacy, and hurries out to render him such "yeoman's service" as no one except the strongest of mankind can perform. Alcestis has been laid in her grave; the mourners have all come back to the palace; and Death, easy in his mind as to Apollo, and secure, as he deems himself, from interruption, is making ready for a ghoulish feast on her corpse. But he has reckoned without the guest. He finds himself in the dilemma of foregoing his prey or being strangled, and he permits his irresistible antagonist to restore the self-devoted wife to the arms of her disconsolate and even more astonished husband.*

With the instinct of a great artist, Euripides centralises the interest of the action in Alcestis alone; and in order to show how perfect the sacrifice is, he endows the victim with every noble, tender, and loving

* Never has rationalising of old-world stories made a bolder stride than in the case of this play. Late Greek writers ascribe the decease of Alcestis to her having nursed her husband through a fever. She takes it herself, and is laid out for dead, when a physician, sharper-sighted than the rest of the faculty at the time, discovers that the vital spark is not extinct, and cheats death of his foe by remedies unluckily not mentioned for the benefit of posterity.

A. C. vol. xii.

F

quality of woman. She stands as far apart from and above the other characters in the play as Una does in the first book of the Faery Queen.' For the Greek stage she is what Portia and Cordelia are for the English. If less heroic than Antigone or Electra, she is more human; the strength which opposition to harsh laws or thirst for "great revenge" lent to them, to her is supplied by the might of wifely love. Possibly it was this sublime tenderness that kept the memory of Alcestis green through ages in which the manuscripts of Euripidean dramas were lying among the rolls of Byzantine libraries, or the dust and worms of the monasteries of the West. Chaucer, in his 'Court of Love,' calls her the "Quene's floure;" and in his 'Legende of Good Women' she is "under Venus lady and quene :”

"And from afer came walking in the Mede
The God of Love, and in his hand a quene,
And she was clad in real * habit grene :
A fret of golde she haddè next her heer,
And upon that a white corowne she bere
With flourès smale."

With equally happy art-indeed, after Shakespeare's manner with his female personages-we are not formally told of her goodness; but we know from those around her that the loving wife is also a loving mother, a kind and liberal mistress. Even the sorrow of the Chorus is significant: it is composed not of susceptible women, but of ancient men-past the age in which the affections are active, and when the lengthen

* Royal.