OedipusANCIENT_SophoclesBBC

OedipusANCIENT_SophoclesBBC

Apollodorus Library 3.5.7-9
Homer Od. 11.271-80

Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus, ca. 427 B.C.

BBC's compelling version (1984, D. Taylor, dir.) fully available on Theatre in Video website (click, or navigate through lib.byu.edu; first 10 minutes on YouTube).

Taylor put Oedipus into a white tuxedo, a manifestation of heroic stature, as he emerges from the palace into plague-ridden Thebes and articulates his readiness to solve all problems. Compare Soph. OT 1-13 with this photo. Watch the clip. Oedipus' response to the debilitating plague is very instructive.

A man in a white suit and ruffled shirt looking surprised, with two blurred figures in hats behind him

Aristotle praises the play with especial conviction in Poetics.

The depth of Oedipus' fall is the more tragic because of the height of his earlier ascent. The chorus sings at the play's conclusion 1524-30 (a passage rejected as spurious by some editors) the a moralizing epilogue: even the most admired and successful of men can come crashing down in ruin. (See Fitzgerald's translation.) The Chorus said the same thing at line 1186ff.

I wonder: Is the play is popular today because of, or in spite of, Freud's peculiar interest.

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University.
The present resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300 - 1990's, edited by J. Davidson Reid (Oxford 1994), and it is used with express permission from Oxford University press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.