Alcestis: A Play

In the years before his death at age sixty-eight, Ted Hughes translated several classical works with great energy and ingenuity: Tales from Ovid, Racine's Phedre, The Oresteia of Aeschylus, and Euripides' Alcestis. The play tells the story of a king's grief for his wife, Alcestis, who has given her young life so that he may live. As translated by Hughes, Alcestis is a profound meditation on human mortality, and a powerful and moving conclusion to the great final phase of Hughes's career.