The character-drawing is skilful, often subtle. Heracles, good-hearted but somewhat dense, sensual and coarse-fibred, is half-way between the demigod of the _Heracles Furens_ and the boisterous glutton of comedy. Capable of splendid impulses, he is yet a masterpiece of breezy tactlessness, as when with hideous slyness he suggests to Admetus (in the presence of the restored wife) that the king may console himself by a new marriage. Pheres and Admetus are an admirable pair. Both are selfish, Admetus with pathetic unconsciousness, his father with cynical candour. Pheres is quite willing to give elaborate honour to the dead woman so long as it costs little; Admetus—is it true of him that he is ready to utter splendid heroic speeches so long as the sacrifice is made to save him? Not so; he feels terribly. But the comparison between father and son reminds us how easily sentiment can become aged into etiquette. At present, however, he is a man of generous instincts—“spoiled”. He needs a salutary upheaval of his home: from afar he prophesies of Thorvald Helmer in _A Doll’s House_. Alcestis herself is a curious study. Innumerable readers have extolled her as one of the noblest figures in Euripides’ great gallery of heroines; this in spite of the fact that she is frigid and unimaginative, ungenerous and basely narrow, in her spiritual and social outlook. One great and noble deed stands to her credit—she is voluntarily dying to preserve Admetus’ life. Our profound respect Alcestis can certainly claim, but the love and pity of which so much is said are scarcely due to her. They are extorted, if at all, by the elaborate exertions of the other characters, who vie with one another in painting a picture of the tenderness which has illumined the Pheræan palace like quiet sunshine. But a dramatist cannot build up a great character by a series of testimonies from friends. He has undoubtedly portrayed an interesting personality, as he always does, but to put her beside creations like Medea and Phædra is merely absurd. From the beginning of her first intolerable speech[419] we know her for that frightful figure, the thoroughly good woman with no imagination, no humour, no insight. One hears much of the failures of Euripides; this is perhaps a real failure. For we are not to suppose that the rigidity and coldness of Alcestis are a dexterous stroke of art; it is not his intention to give a novel, true, and unflattering portrait of a traditional stage favourite, as he so often delighted to do. Everything indicates that he wished to make Alcestis sublime and lovable. But there is a fatal difference between her and the later women. Euripides has realized her from the outside. He has given us in the mouths of the other characters warm descriptions of her charm, but he has not succeeded in drawing a charming woman. She has not “come alive” in his hands.