Oedipus the King Read Free

righteousness, one convinced that a rational cosmos supports his fury. The actor playing Tiresias must register something grander than retaliatory pique. We must grasp the actual horror Tiresias feels at the pollution Oedipus' body holds, and feel that Tiresias' anger is not only a response to Oedipus' taunts, but to his crimes. To give such a cast to his speech, Tiresias should speak ex cathedra, from near the altar of Apollo. Tiresias' very blindness may be used to announce Apollo's uncanny help by having the blind prophet eerily aim his words directly at Oedipus. Much later in the play, when Oedipus himself enters blind and weak, he should evoke

     

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Tiresias' entrance, led by a boy servant, and repeat the prophet's seeking of a vantage at Apollo's altar, this time in understanding and acceptance of the truth. Apollo is in Tiresias; by physically becoming like Tiresias, Oedipus will reveal how utterly Apollo is now present in him as well.
(3) At line 716/842, the precise moment when Jocasta is ''proving" to Oedipus that he could not have murdered Laius, she gives the detail that will inform Oedipus of his almost certain guilt:
Yet, as we heard the story, foreign bandits
murdered Laius at a place where three roads meet.
The daimon
    * in those words strikes Oedipus a physical blow; Jocasta notices his distraught reaction and asks its cause in her next speech, at 728/857. Oedipus describes what happened inside him when she named the crossroads:
Just now, as I listened to you, Lady, my heart raced,
something in my memory woke up terrified. (72627/85556)
The daimon has invaded Oedipus' memory, and the actor should show us by physical gesture that it is there.
(4) A few lines later, Oedipus has composed himself enough to put into a logical narrative (771833/898977) what he now knows, that under the surface of his threatened but successful life another set of events has been happening, whose moral import he is just now perceiving. His words reveal an unexpected vulnerability. Oedipus is not now the manly commander totally in charge. His present anxiety unearths the anxiety of years past. The actor may be able to suggest that Oedipus' great stature has diminished; his body language should reflect, however subtly, the blow struck by the drunk's accusation, Oedipus' uneasy reassurance by his parents, the pounding of the accusation in his mind, his resentment at the treatment he received at Delphi, his flight, his awful realization that his flight was guided to the place where three roads meet. As he remembers and acts out the killing of Laius and his men, this time the full knowledge of Apollo's presence in his hands should cause the motions he makes to be slow, implacable, as uncontrollable as the daimon itself. He is now killing his predecessor in the knowledge of what he did. He is the autocheir , the one whose hands killed, or more freely, the red-handed one. Hands in this play are mentioned repeatedly, they are what the miasma , the pollution, stains. The actor's use of his hands should possess this knowledge.
(5) Of all the daimons* interventions, the one in response to Jocasta's prayer at lines (91123/106476) is the most vivid and unmistakable.

     

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Lords of my country, this thought
came to me: to visit the gods' shrines
with a branch and incense in my hands.
For Oedipus lets alarms of every kind
inflame his mind . . . .
Since he won't listen to me,
Apolloyou are the nearest god
I come praying for your good will . . .
Cleanse us, cure our sickness.
As Jocasta speaks the words, ''the nearest god" (lit. simply "nearest"), the Messenger from Corinth should arrive, the timing, and the visual élan of his entry marking him as Apollo's answer to her prayer. News the Messenger brings will indeed cleanse Thebes and cure its sickness, but the cleansing will cause also Jocasta's death and Oedipus' self-blinding. The mocking cruelty of the daimon
    * reverses all hopeful expectation, because the Messenger's