In Emanuele Tesauro's Alcesti the tragic themes of the sacrifice of an innocent, of the impossibility of understanding divine will and the relationship between love and power are intertwined with typically 18th-century motifs of dissimulation, court life, the reason of State. The protagonist is man's word in relation to the speaker's intent and the objektivity of the facts. Forms of dissimulation appear as the novum introduced by Tesauro into the Euripdean model and as the motor and key to understanding the tragedy.