Alcestis

Why does Alcestis agree to die for Admetus? Is there evidence that she comes to regret her choice? Support your answer with evidence from the play.

Why is Alcestis considered a “problem play?” How has the play’s undetermined genre status affected scholarship on Greek tragedy?

Was Admetus right to show hospitality to Heracles while mourning for Alcestis, or should he have sent him away to find a different host? How does Heracles’s appearance in the play relate to the common trope of Fate in Greek drama?

Is Pheres, Admetus’s father, a sympathetic character? Why or why not? How does his presence in the play complicate the thematic exploration of mortality?

Compare and contrast Apollo’s role in Alcestis to his role in Aeschylus’s Oresteia. What function does he perform in these plays? What do these roles show about Apollo’s relationship to mortals?

How, if at all, should our interpretation of Euripides’s Alcestis by influenced by the fact that it was performed in the spot usually reserved for satyr plays in a tetralogy?

Compare and contrast Heracles’s role in Alcestis with his roles in Aristophanes’s comedies Birds and Frogs. What function does he serve in these plays? Do the authors portray him in the same way, or differently?

What is the significance of Alcestis’s silence at the end of the play? How does this silence influence our interpretation of the play?