The Alcestiad: Or, a Life in the Sun A Play in Three Acts, With a Satyr Play, the Drunken Sisters

Wilder, Thornton Niven; Wilder, Isabel

ISBN 10: 0060146389 / ISBN 13: 9780060146382

Published by Harper and Row, New York, (1977), 1977

About this Item

INSCRIBED by Isabel Wilder in a 34 word 1980 inscription to scholar/author David Levin. Isabel Wilder was Thornton's sister and also his agent and biographer. She wrote the 13 page foreword for this book (Thornton Wilder died before it was published). A Very Good, internally clean, solid hard cover copy in a price clipped dust jacket with a faded spine and some small pieces missing from the top of the spine. Seller Inventory # 13882

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Alcestiad: Or, a Life in the Sun A Play ...

Publisher: Harper and Row, New York, (1977)

Publication Date: 1977

Binding: Cloth

Condition: Very Good

Dust Jacket Condition: Good

Signed: Signed by the Editor

Edition: First Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

In The Alcestaid Thornton Wilder retells for us the ancient legend of Alcestis, Queen of Thessaly, who gave her life for her husband Admetus, beloved of the Sun Apollo, and was brought back from Hell by Hercules. Wilder's Alcestis is a seeker after understanding, to whom "there is only misery, and that is ignorance." Her life as wife, mother, Queen -- like Emily;s in Our Town -- is apparently tragic: idyllic happiness is destroyed by death. But neither death or happiness is what it seems to be, and the tragedy id Apollo's "song in motion...an unfolding -- a part of something larger than we can see." It is followed, according to Greek tradition, by a comic 'satyr' play: a one-act "diversion" in which Apollo, disguised as a kitchen-boy, confounds The Drunken Sisters -- the Fates -- to save the life of Admetus.