Euripides seems to have taken positive pleasure in Admetus, much as Meredith did in his famous Egoist; but Euripides all through is kinder to his victim than Meredith is.  True, Admetus is put to obvious shame, publicly and helplessly.  The Chorus make discreet comments upon him.  The Handmaid is outspoken about him.  One feels that Alcestis herself, for all her tender kindness, has seen through him.  Finally, to make things quite clear, his old father fights him openly, tells him home-truth upon home-truth, tears away all his protective screens, and leaves him with his self-respect in tatters.  It is a fearful ordeal for Admetus, and, after his first fury, he takes it well.  He comes back from his wife’s burial a changed man.  He says not much, but enough.  “I have done wrong.  I have only now learnt my lesson.  I imagined I could save my happy life by forfeiting my honour; and the result is that I have lost both.”  I think that a careful reading of the play will show an almost continuous process of self-discovery and self-judgment in the mind of Admetus.  He was a man who blinded himself with words and beautiful sentiments; but he was not thick-skinned or thick-witted.  He was not a brute or a cynic.  And I think he did learn his lesson ... not completely and for ever, but as well as most of us learn such lessons.

The beauty of Alcestis is quite untouched by the dramatist’s keener analysis.  The strong light only increases its effect.  Yet she is not by any means a mere blameless ideal heroine; and the character which Euripides gives her makes an admirable foil to that of Admetus.  Where he is passionate and romantic, she is simple and homely.  While he is still refusing to admit the facts and beseeching her not to “desert” him, she in a gentle but businesslike way makes him promise to take care of the children and, above all things, not to marry again.  She could not possibly trust Admetus’s choice.  She is sure that the step-mother would be unkind to the children.  She might be a horror and beat them (l. 307).  And when Admetus has made a thrilling answer about eternal sorrow, and the silencing of lyre and lute, and the statue who shall be his only bride, Alcestis earnestly calls the attention of witnesses to the fact that he has sworn not to marry again.  She is not an artist like Admetus.  There is poetry in her, because poetry comes unconsciously out of deep feeling, but there is no artistic eloquence.  Her love, too, is quite different from his.  To him, his love for his wife and children is a beautiful thing, a subject to speak and sing about as well as an emotion to feel.  But her love is hardly conscious.  She does not talk about it at all.  She is merely wrapped up in the welfare of certain people, first her husband and then he children.  To a modern romantic reader her insistence that her husband shall not marry again seems hardly delicate.  But she does not think about romance or delicacy.  To her any neglect to ensure due protection for the children