Oedipus Rex
The action of Sophocles's play concerns Oedipus's search for the murderer of Laius in order to end a plague ravaging Thebes, unaware that the killer he is looking for is none other than himself.At the end of the play, after the truth finally comes to light, Jocasta hangs herself while Oedipus, horrified at his patricide and incest, proceeds to gouge out his own eyes in despair.[5][6] The misfortunes of Thebes are believed to be the result of a curse laid upon Laius for the time he had violated the sacred laws of hospitality (Greek: xenia).Desperate to avoid this terrible fate, Oedipus, who still believes that Polybus and Merope are his true parents, leaves Corinth for the city of Thebes.Arriving at Thebes, a city in turmoil, Oedipus encounters the Sphinx, a legendary beast with the head and breasts of a woman, the body of a lioness, and the wings of an eagle.The precise riddle asked by the Sphinx varied in early traditions, and is not explicitly stated in Oedipus Rex, as the event precedes the play.Oedipus, blessed with great intelligence, answers correctly: "man" (Greek: anthrôpos), who crawls on all fours as an infant; walks upright in maturity; and leans on a stick in old age.Eventually, the prophet leaves, muttering darkly that when the murderer is discovered, he shall be a native of Thebes, brother and father to his own children, and son and husband to his own mother.The messenger explains that years earlier, while tending his flock on Mount Cithaeron, a shepherd from the household of Laius brought him an infant that he was instructed to dispose of.The chorus laments how even a great man can be felled by fate, and following this, a servant exits the palace to speak of what has happened inside.Since he did not write connected trilogies as Aeschylus did, Oedipus Rex focuses on the titular character while hinting at the larger myth obliquely, which was already known to the audience in Athens at the time."[15] Cedric Whitman noted that "the Oedipus Rex passes almost universally for the greatest extant Greek play..."[16] Whitman himself regarded the play as "the fullest expression of this conception of tragedy," that is the conception of tragedy as a "revelation of the evil lot of man," where a man may have "all the equipment for glory and honor" but still have "the greatest effort to do good" end in "the evil of an unbearable self for which one is not responsible.[20] Through the play, according to Kitto, Sophocles declares "that it is wrong, in the face of the incomprehensible and unmoral, to deny the moral laws and accept chaos.[21][22] In 2015, when The Guardian's theatre critic Michael Billington, selected what he thinks are the 101 greatest plays ever written, Oedipus Rex was placed second, just after The Persians.Prompted by Jocasta's recollection, Oedipus reveals the prophecy which caused him to leave Corinth (lines 791–3): that I was fated to lie with my mother, and show to daylight an accursed breed which men would not endure, and I was doomed to be murderer of the father that begot me.One interpretation considers that the presentation of Laius's oracle in this play differs from that found in Aeschylus's Oedipus trilogy produced in 467 BC.In Greek, the oracle cautions: "hôs auton hexoi moira pros paidos thanein/ hostis genoit emou te kakeinou para."He visits Delphi to find out who his real parents are and assumes that the Oracle refuses to answer that question, offering instead an unrelated prophecy which forecasts patricide and incest.Oedipus' reaction to the Oracle is irrational: he states he did not get any answer and he flees in a direction away from Corinth, showing that he firmly believed at the time that Polybus and Merope are his real parents.We have said that this irrational behaviour—his hamartia, as Aristotle puts it—is due to the repression of a whole series of thoughts in his consciousness, in fact everything that referred to his earlier doubts about his parentage.He analyzes why this play, Oedipus Rex, written in Ancient Greece, is so effective even to a modern audience:[34]: 279–280 "His destiny moves us only because it might have been ours — because the oracle laid the same curse upon us before our birth as upon him.Toshio Matsumoto's film, Funeral Parade of Roses (1969), is a loose adaptation of the play and an important work of the Japanese New Wave.Park Chan-wook's South Korean film, Oldboy (2003), was inspired by the play while making several notable changes to allow it to work in a modern South-Korean setting.[citation needed] The composer Igor Stravinsky wrote the opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex, which premiered in 1927 at the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt, Paris.Dancer and choreographer Martha Graham adapted Oedipus Rex into a short ballet entitled Night Journey, premiering in 1947.[40][41] Composer Wolfgang Rihm used the play as a basis for his 1987 opera Oedipus, also writing the libretto in German which includes related texts by Friedrich Nietzsche and Heiner Müller.In 1987, Brazilian TV Globo broadcast the soap opera Mandala a loose adaptation set in Brazil modern times starring Vera Fischer as Jocasta.In 2017, BBC Radio 3 broadcast a production of Anthony Burgess' translation of the play with Christopher Eccleston as Oedipus and Fiona Shaw as Tiresias/Second Elder.[43] In episode ten of the second season of the Australian satirical comedy show CNNNN, a short animation in the style of a Disney movie trailer, complete with jaunty music provided by Andrew Hansen, parodies Oedipus Rex.[45] John Barth's novel Giles Goat-Boy contains a forty-page parody of the full text of Oedipus Rex called Taliped Decanus.
Oedipus Rex (disambiguation)Louis BouwmeesterSophoclesOedipusTiresiasJocastaAntigoneIsmeneTheatre of DionysusAthensClassical GreekTragedyThebesAncient GreekAthenianAristotlePoeticsOedipus at Colonustyrantprophecyhangs herselfpatricideincestPelopsChrysippuschariot racingApollooracleCorinthPolybusMeropeDelphic OracleJean-Auguste-Dominique IngresSphinxher riddledowager queenDelphichorusfork in the roadDaulisJoseph BlancMount Cithaeronexposedhanged herselfexiledepic poetryTrojan WarEpic CycleTheban CycleOdysseyOdysseusunderworldAeschylusCity DionysiaSeven Against ThebesP. Oxy.PhiloclesRichard Claverhouse JebbCedric WhitmanEdith HallH. D. F. KittoThalessophistsThe Guardiantheatre criticMichael BillingtonThe PersiansPerseusOedipus trilogyfatalismtruismE.R. DoddsBernard KnoxLast SupperFree willpredestinationself-fulfilling prophecyCharles Jalaberthamartiathe individualthe statesovereignprophetdramatic ironyinsightknowledgeSigmund FreudInterpretation of DreamsOedipus complexpsychoanalysisParsifalClaude Lévi-StraussOedipus Rex (1957)Tyrone GuthrieDouglas CampbellOedipus the King (1968)Philip SavilleChristopher PlummerLilli PalmerOrson WellesRichard JohnsonRoger LiveseyDonald SutherlandFriedrich Ledeburdistribution rightsPier Paolo PasoliniEdipo ReToshio MatsumotoFuneral Parade of RosesJapanese New WaveColombiaGabriel García MárquezEdipo AlcaldeSilverbird GalleriaPark Chan-wook'sSouth Korean filmOldboyIgor StravinskyoratorioOedipus RexThéâtre Sarah BernhardtlibrettoJean CocteauFrenchJean Daniélouneoclassical period