" The world has naïvely accepted this speech and the sacrifice of Alcestis as belonging to the region of sentiment; but in reality it is nothing more than one of those stories shrewdly invented by selfish men to teach women that the object of their existence is to sacrifice themselves for their husbands.

Many a prince from over the sea had come to woo Alcestis for his wife; and the noblest young men in Greece had tried to win her favor.

Above all there is the late Dr. Verrall's famous essay in Euripides the Rationalist, explaining it as a psychological criticism of a supposed Delphic miracle, and arguing that Alcestis in the play does not rise from the dead at all.

[He goes with ALCESTIS into the house.] CHORUS.

One of his nephews, at that time a schoolboy, remembers reading with him, when on a holiday visit to Berwick, through the Alcestis of Euripides.

If it be true that poetry is bred out of joy and sorrow, one feels as if more enjoyment and less suffering had gone to the making of the Alcestis than to that of the later plays.

[They lead ALCESTIS to the doorway.