Oedipus King of Thebes. Sophocles
to me a most life-like as well as a most dramatic figure.
As to the Chorus, it generally plays a smaller part in Sophocles than in Euripides and Aeschylus, and the Oedipus forms no exception to that rule. It seems to me that Sophocles was feeling his way towards a technique which would have approached that of the New Comedy or even the Elizabethan stage, and would perhaps have done without a Chorus altogether. In Aeschylus Greek tragedy had been a thing of traditional forms and clear-cut divisions; the religious ritual showed through, and the visible gods and the disguised dancers were allowed their full value. And Euripides in the matter of outward formalism went back to the Aeschylean type and even beyond it: prologue, chorus, messenger, visible god, all the traditional forms were left clear-cut and undisguised and all developed to full effectiveness on separate and specific lines. But Sophocles worked by blurring his structural outlines just as he blurs the ends of his verses. In him the traditional divisions are all made less distinct, all worked over in the direction of greater naturalness, at any rate in externals. This was a very great gain, but of course some price had to be paid for it. Part of the price was that Sophocles could never attempt the tremendous choric effects which Euripides achieves in such plays as the Bacchae and the Trojan Women. His lyrics, great as they sometimes are, move their wings less boldly. They seem somehow tied to their particular place in the tragedy, and they have not quite the strength to lift the whole drama bodily aloft with them. … At least that is my feeling. But I realise that this may be only the complaint of an unskilful translator, blaming his material for his own defects of vision.
In general, both in lyrics and in dialogue, I believe I have allowed myself rather less freedom than in translating Euripides. This is partly because the writing of Euripides, being less business-like and more penetrated by philosophic reflections and by subtleties of technique, actually needs more thorough re-casting to express it at all adequately; partly because there is in Sophocles, amid all his passion and all his naturalness, a certain severe and classic reticence, which, though impossible really to reproduce by any method, is less misrepresented by occasional insufficiency than by habitual redundance.
I have asked pardon for an ill deed done twelve years ago. I should like to end by speaking of a benefit older still, and express something of the gratitude I feel to my old master, Francis Storr, whose teaching is still vivid in my mind and who first opened my eyes to the grandeur of the Oedipus.
G. M.
CHARACTERS IN THE PLAY
Oedipus, supposed son of Polybus, King of Corinth; now elected King of Thebes.
Jocasta, Queen of Thebes; widow of Laïus, the late King, and now wife to Oedipus.
Creon, a Prince of Thebes, brother to Jocasta.
Tiresias, an old blind seer.
Priest of Zeus.
A Stranger from Corinth.
A Shepherd of King Laïus.
A Messenger from the Palace.
Chorus of the Elders of Thebes.
A Crowd of Suppliants, men, women, and children.
The following do not appear in the play but are frequently mentioned:—
Laïus (pronounced as three syllables, Lá-i-us), the last King of Thebes before Oedipus.
Cadmus, the founder of Thebes; son of Agênor, King of Sidon.
Polybus and Meropê, King and Queen of Corinth, supposed to be the father and mother of Oedipus.
Apollo, the God specially presiding over the oracle of Delphi and the island Delos: he is also called Phoebus, the pure; Loxias, supposed to mean "He of the Crooked Words"; and Lykeios, supposed to mean "Wolf-God." He is also the great Averter of Evil, and has names from the cries "I-ê" (pronounced "Ee-ay") and "Paian," cries for healing or for the frightening away of evil influences.
Kithairon, a mass of wild mountain south-west of Thebes.
ARGUMENT
While Thebes was under the rule of Laïus and Jocasta there appeared a strange and monstrous creature, "the riddling Sphinx," "the She-Wolf of the woven song," who in some unexplained way sang riddles of death and slew the people of Thebes. Laïus went to ask aid of the oracle of Delphi, but was slain mysteriously on the road. Soon afterwards there came to Thebes a young Prince of Corinth, Oedipus, who had left his home and was wandering. He faced the Sphinx and read her riddle, whereupon she flung herself from her rock and died. The throne being vacant was offered to Oedipus, and with it the hand of the Queen, Jocasta.
Some ten or twelve years afterwards a pestilence has fallen on Thebes. At this point the play begins.
The date of the first production of the play is not known, but was probably about the year 425 B.C.
OEDIPUS, KING OF THEBES
Scene.—Before the Palace of Oedipus at Thebes. A crowd of suppliants of all ages are waiting by the altar in front and on the steps of the Palace; among them the Priest of Zeus. As the Palace door opens and Oedipus comes out all the suppliants with a cry move towards him in attitudes of prayer, holding out their olive branches, and then become still again as he speaks.
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