A summary and analysis
of the play by Sophocles
There are none of the plays of Sophocles
which exhibit more strikingly than the two which bear the name
of Oedipus that solemn irony which the genius of a modern scholar
has detected in the frame-work of this poet's tragedies. This
irony consists in the contrast which the spectator, well acquainted
with the legendary basis of the tragedy, is enabled to draw between
the real state of the case and the conceptions supposed to be
entertained by the person represented on the stage. It is this
contrast, regarded from different points of view, which makes
the two plays whose subject is Oedipus the counterparts of one
another, and induces us to think that, whether they were or were
not written, as is said, nearly at the same time, they were intended
by the poet to form constituent parts of one picture.
The Oedipus Tyrannus represents the king of Thebes,
in the full confidence of his own glory at the beginning of the
play, but brought step by step to the consciousness of the horrible
guilt in which he had unawares involved himself. "The wrath
of heaven," says a well-known expositor, "has been
pointed against the afflicted city, only that it might fall with
concentrated force on the head of a single man; and he who is
its object stands alone calm and secure; unconscious of his own
misery he can afford pity for the unfortunate; to him all look
for succor; and, as in the plentitude of wisdom and power, he
undertakes to trace the evil, of which he is himself the sole
author, to its secret source." The greatest dramatic ingenuity
is shown in the manner in which Oedipus investigates the dreadful
reality, and the hearer, though acquainted with the plot, shudders
when Oedipus becomes at last conscious that he is about to hear
the whole extent of his calamity. The powerful and self-confident
king of the early part of the play becomes the blind and helpless
outcast of the concluding scene, but his sins were involuntary,
and his punishment and humiliation are his own act, so that the
sufferer leaves the stage an object of the spectator's compassion,
and a fit hero for the drama which renders poetic justice to
this poor victim of fate.
As with the Antigone,
Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus belong
to the legendary era of Thebes.
The story is one of the most ingenious of all the fables of
ancient mythology; yet others, as that of Niobe, which, without
any such interweaving of events, exhibit quite in a simple manner
and in colossal dimensions, both human overweening, and its impending
punishment from the gods, are conceived in a grander spirit.
What gives a less lofty character to that of Oedipus, is the
intrigue which lies in it. Intrigue in a dramatic sense is a
complication which arises from the mutual crossing of designs
and accidents, and this is evidently the case in the destinies
of Oedipus, inasmuch as all that his parents and he himself do
to escape from the prophesied horrors, carries them on toward
them. But the grand and terrific meaning of this fable lies in
a circumstance which perhaps is generally overlooked; that to
this very Oedipus, who solved the riddle of human life propounded
by the Sphinx, his own life remained an inexplicable riddle,
till it was cleared up all too late in the most dreadful manner,
when all was lost irrecoverably.
Thus, in the concluding scene, Oedipus, after piercing his
eyes with a gold-chased clasp from the robe of his wife, laments
his fate: "I must needs blind myself, that I may not see
my father when I pass to Hades, nor my suffering mother, nor
my children's faces, nor yet this city, nor the shrines of the
gods. How could I meet my citizens face to face, stained with
such dire pollution? Oh! could I but stop the stream of sound
and close my ears against it! How sweet a thing it were to be
bereft of thought, free from all ill."
Turning to the citizens of Thebes, the chorus exclaims:
- Behold this dipus
- Who knew the famous riddle,
and was noblest,
- Whose fortune who saw not with
envious gaze?
- And lo! in what a sea of direst
trouble
- He now is plunged. From hence
the lesson learn ye
- To reckon no man happy till
ye witness
- The closing day; until he pass
the border
- Which severs life from death,
unscathed by sorrow.
Purchase Oedipus the King
¹ This essay was originally published in The
Drama: Its History, Literature and Influence on Civilization,
vol. 1 ed. Alfred Bates. (New York: Historical Publishing
Company, 1906), pp. 123-126. |