OedipusANCIENT_SophoclesTaylorBBC

Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus, ca. 427 B.C.; translated and directed for televised stage production by Don Taylor (1984). Distributed by BBC Drama Films & Documentaries and available for educational purposes through the Drama Online Library website (click. BYU users may navigate through lib.byu.edu. first 10 minutes on YouTube).

Pennington's 'Oedipus, like a prince, wears an imperial 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. "I shall do everything a man can do. With the god's help, we shall find out the truth and save our city. We must or be destroyed."

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.