Oedipus Rex

AN EPIC TRAGEDY, WIDELY CONSIDERED TO BE A MASTERPIECE

Oedipus Rex, Sophocles’ finest play is considered by many to be the greatest of the classic Greek tragedies. First produced sometime around 429 BC, it exhibits near-perfect harmony of character and action and is a work of extraordinary power which has circulated throughout world culture for thousands of years.

After Laius, King of Thebes, learns from an oracle that he is doomed to perish by the hand of his own son, he orders his wife Jocasta to kill his newly born son. Unable to do it, Jocasta entrusts a servant with the task instead, who takes the baby to a mountaintop and leaves him to die of exposure. A passing shepherd rescues the baby and names him Oedipus, taking him to Corinth where he is raised by the childless King Polybus as if it were his own. When Oedipus learns that he is not the biological son of Polybus, he seeks the counsel of the Oracle of Delphi who relates to him that he is doomed to kill his father and marry his mother.

The play is a unique combination of a murder mystery, a political thriller, and a psychological whodunit. This ironic story of patricide and incest tells how Oedipus, who has become King of Thebes, in order to stop a plague in his kingdom, is determined to find and punish the former king’s assassin, only to learn that the murderer is himself.

At the end of the play, after this truth comes to light, the queen, Jocasta hangs herself while Oedipus, horrified at his patricide and incest, gouges out his own eyes in despair.