Key facts
- Written by
- Euripides
- Chorus
- Old men
- Characters
- Apollo , Thanatos / Death , Maidservant , Alcestis , Admetus , Eumelus , Heracles , Servant, Pheres
- Date premiered
- 438 BC
- Place premiered
- Athens
- Original language
- Ancient Greek
- Genre
- Tragedy
- Setting
- Pherae in Thessaly
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- literary work
- Author
- Euripides
- Genre
- tragicomedy
- Narrative location
- Pherae
Show 9 more facts
- characters
- Thanatos
- form of creative work
- play
- title
- Alcestis
- date of first performance
- 0438-00-00
- language of work or name
- Ancient Greek
- location of first performance
- Theatre of Dionysus
- entry in abbreviations table
- Eur. Alc.
- Commons category
- Alcestis (Euripides)
- derivative work
- Alceste
via Wikidata · CC0
~12 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Alcestis (/ælˈsɛstɪs/; Ancient Greek: Ἄλκηστις, Alkēstis) is an Athenian tragedy by the ancient Greek playwright Euripides. It was first produced at the City Dionysia festival in 438 BC. Euripides presented it as the final part of a tetralogy of unconnected plays in the competition of tragedies, for which he won second prize; this arrangement was exceptional, as the fourth part was normally a satyr play. Its ambiguous, tragicomic tone—which may be "cheerfully romantic" or "bitterly ironic"—has earned it the label of a "problem play." Alcestis is, possibly excepting the Rhesus, the oldest surviving work by Euripides, although at the time of its first performance he had been producing plays for 17 years.
Events prior to the start of the play
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Alcestis” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.