Alcestis: A Play

In the years before his death at age sixty-eight in 1998, Hughes translated several classical works with great energy and ingenuity. His Tales from Ovid was called "one of the great works of our century" (Michael Hofmann, The Times, London), his Oresteia of Aeschylus is considered the difinitive version, and his Phèdrewas acclaimed on stage in New York as well as London. Hughes's version of Euripides's Alcestis, the last of his translations, has the great br…