Alcestis and Other Plays

Picked this up because bookclub had read [b:The Silent Patient 40097951 The Silent Patient Alex Michaelides https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1582759969l/40097951.SX50.jpg 59752778] and it referenced Alcestis, which was fantastic. I'm a sucker for a personification of death and Heracles literally wrestles with Death for Alcestis' return. I was a little confused by there being so much made by Alcestis' silence made in The Silent Patient, when at the end of the play it's said "She is still consecrated to the gods below. Til she is duly purified, and the third dawn has risen, it is not lawful for you to hear her voice."I also thought of [b:L'Esprit de L'Escalier 58772854 L'Esprit de L'Escalier Catherynne M. Valente https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1642588606l/58772854.SY75.jpg 92535817], a retelling of the Eurydice myth where Eurydice is recovered from the underworld and it leads to marital strife. We're not really told how Alcestis feels about her resurrection as the play ends before she can speak, but I imagine that she might feel similar to [a:Catherynne M. Valente 338705 Catherynne M. Valente https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1220999852p2/338705.jpg]'s Eurydice.I thought that the Introduction about Alcestis was excellent as well: “In the first scene the serving-maid reports Alcestis' words spoken with tears to her marriage bed: “I am dying because I cannot bear to fail in my duty to you and my husband.” The view of a wife's duty the chorus recognize as being an ideal which is generally accepted and thought honorable; which in principle every husband with regard as his do, without ever expecting to see it fulfilled. The ideal of marriage, in fact, carries to its conclusion the universal assumption that a woman's life is a rational price for a man's life, being of less value; that the women of a family are expendable, their lives at the disposal of men's lives. Admetus has never questioned this principal and is there for hardly aware of it. Alcestis did not set this ideal for herself, but finding it already part of the fabric of society she embraced it with a thoroughness which was her own rare and heroic achievement. We see, then, that even if it was theoretically possible for Adetus to decline, yet when his wife made the offer it would actually seem to be above all things right – right in a degree above the achievement of most men's wives. To refuse it would seem to flout an order of nature and to enroll adjuster of unique beauty.”I also enjoyed Hippolytus; the chaos that Aphrodite inflicts, the double meaning of chastity (pure, but also of sound mind, modesty and forbearance in social behavior), and the way consequences unfold.Iphigenia in Tauris felt oddly familiar...did I come across this - or some excerpt or summary of it- in my school days? Regardless, I love the Furies and a good trick that is then forgiven.