Cheap Sophocles: The Three Theban Plays : King Oedipus, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone (Book) (C. A. Trypanis) Price

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Customer Reviews of Sophocles: The Three Theban Plays : King Oedipus, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

Three Plays by Sophocles on the Curse of Oedipus
"The Three Theban Plays" of Sophocles collects three of the Greek tragic poets greatest tragedies, which are arranged her in narrative order rather than in the order they were originally written. Of course, "King Oedipus" is not only the most read of all the Greek tragedies, it is also the most misread of the Greek dramas. The play's reputation exists in part because it was presented as the paragon of the dramatic form by Aristotle in his "Poetics," and it may well be because of that fact that "King Oedipus" was one of the relatively few plays by Sophocles to be passed down from ancient times. When I have taught Greek tragedies in various classes students have reconsidered the play in terms of key concepts such as harmartia ("tragic error of judgment"), angonrisis ("recognition"), peripeteia ("reversal"), catharsis, etc., and they usually agree this play provides the proverbial textbook examples of these terms.

However, I was always bothered by the fact that Sophocles engages in some rather heavy-handed foreshadowing regarding the fact that the play's tragic hero is going to blind himself before the conclusion. The lines were closer to, dare I say, sophomoric humor than eloquently setting up the climax. But then I read something very, very interesting in Homer's "Iliad," where there appears a single reference to Oedipus which suggests that he died in battle. Remember now that Homer's epics were written several hundred years before Sophocles was born and that the Greek playwrights were allowed to take great liberties with the various myths (consider the three different versions of the death of Clytemnestra at the hands of Orestes we have from Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus). The Athenian audience would know its Homer, but "King Oedipus" was a new play.

This leads me to advance a very interesting possibility: the Greek audience did not know that Oedipus was going to blind himself. This was a new idea. Jocasta (Iocasta) appears in the "Odyssey" when Odysseus visits Hades, but the only mention of the sin involved is in her marriage to her son, nothing about his being blind. Obviously you will have to make your own judgment about my hypotheses, but I have to think it is at least worth consideration. Still, there is the fact that because even those who do not know the play know the story about the man who killed his father and married his mother, "King Oedipus" is usually misread by students. Because they know the curse they miss something very important: the curse that the oracle at Delphi tells Oedipus is not the same curse that was told to his parents.

In "Oedipus at Colonus" Sophocles tells of the final fate of the exiled figure. Colonus is a village outside Athens, where the blind, old man has become a benevolent source of defense to the land that has given him his final refuge. The tragedy was produced posthumously in 401 B.C.E., and the legend is that it was used by Sophocles as his defense against the charge of senility brought by his children. In terms of its lack of dramatic structure (the scenes are connected by the character of Oedipus rather than by the loosely constructed plot) and the melancholy of its lyric odes it is the most atypical of the extant plays of Sophocles. But it is the characterization of Oedipus as a noble figure that stands out. This is still the same proud and hot-tempered figure who vowed to solve the reason for the curse on Thebes in the earlier play. But this is also an Oedipus who has accepted his punishment, even though he insists that he is innocent.

The fact that this was the last play written by Sophocles offers a line of analysis for understanding "Oedipus at Colonus" as well. You can read in certain lyrics, such as the first "staismon" with its ode to Colonus and the characterization of King Theseus of Athens, the playwright's praise for the democratic institutions and proud history of Athens. On a more psychological level you can consider the play as articulating Sophocles' views on death. Still here is the compelling argument of the play that through his personal suffering Oedipus has been purified.

Although narratively it comes last in the Theban plays, "Antigone" was actually written first by Sophocles. Following the death of Oedipus, his sons, Eteocles and Polyneices engaged in a civil war for the throne of Thebes (covered in "Seven Against Thebes" by Aeschylus). The two brothers kill each other and Creon, brother of Jocasta, becomes king. He orders that Eteocles, who nobly defended his city, shall receive an honorable burial, but that Polyneices, for leading the Argive invaders, shall be left unburied. This leads Antigone, sister to both of the slain brothers, to have to choose between obeying the rule of the state, the dictates of familial binds, and the will of the gods. This, of course, is the matter at the heart of this classic tragedy.

It is too easy to see the issues of this play, first performed in the 5th century B.C., as being reflected in a host of more contemporary concerns, where the conscience of the individual conflicts with the dictates of the state. However, it seems to me that the conflict in "Antigone" is not so clear-cut as we would suppose. After all, Creon has the right to punish a traitor and to expect loyal citizens to obey. Ismene, Antigone's sister, chooses to obey, but Antigone takes a different path. The fact that the "burial" of her brother consists of the token gesture of throwing dirt upon his face, only serves to underscore the ambiguity of the situation Sophocles is developing. Even though the playwright strips Creon of his son, Haemon and wife, Eurydice by the end of the drama, it is not a fatal verdict rendered against the king's judgment, but rather the playing out of the tragedy that began with the birth of Oedipus to its grim conclusion.