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Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannos: The Two Arrivals of the Herdsman1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 May 2015
Extract
The plays of Sophocles were written for performance, indeed primarily for one performance only. If their author intended them to produce any particular effect then that effect had to be conveyed in performance. This truism leads to another. In order to understand the function of any incident or utterance in the plays of Sophocles, one must examine it in context; one must consider the position it occupies within the play. The performance of a play is a linear experience. Events occur and information is transmitted in a strict temporal sequence. To understand a play one must respect that sequence.
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- Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 1980
References
2 On this point, see the useful remarks of Ewans, M.C. in his article ‘Agamemnon at Aulis: A Study in the Oresteia’, Ramus 4 (1975), 17–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The major flaw inherent in Vellacott’s ingenious theorizing in Sophocles and Oedipus (London 1977) is his absolute refusal to accept this point. Cf. the judicious remarks contained in the reviews of Whittle, E.W.CR 24 (1974), 196–8 and Bremer, J.M.Mnemosyne 28 (1975), 206–8Google Scholar
3 Cf. Bain, David ‘A Misunderstood Scene in Sophocles, Oedipus’, Oedipus G&R 26 (1979), 139–42.Google Scholar
4 Alister Cameron in his book The Identity of Oedipus the King (New York 1968), 3–25, presents some interesting speculations on the relationship between Sophocles’ Oedipus and earlier versions of the story.
5 Vellacott (141 f.) has difficulty with these words. He asks why Creon places so much emphasis on the plurality of the robbers. This is a non-problem. Creon is here merely reporting the words of the survivor. The reason he was so emphatic is apparently supplied at lines 842–7. See below p. 16.
6 It should be emphasized that, at this moment, the audience do not know that the survivor’s story is false. They may suspect it but that is all.
7 Scholarly discussion of these initial improbabilities has a long history. The most sensible approach to them is that of Waldock, Sophocles the Dramatist (Cambridge 1951), 92–4.
8 Predictably, Vellacott (43) swallows the fish whole.
9 Although it has been made clear that Oedipus is believed to be of non-Theban origin; cf. 35 ff. and 21 ff..
10 The same questions have exercised scholars greatly. The point is that Sophocles wanted these questions to be asked (unlike some others posed by scholars); he wanted his audience to wonder at the inability of an Oedipus to see the connexion they can see and to ponder the limitations placed on intelligence by circumstances and the lack of essential data.
11 Cf. above p. 11.
12 Cf. Vellacott 188; Gellie 90; Waldock 164.
13 Jebb, R.CSophocles: Oedipus Tyrannos (Cambridge 1893), 104 f..Google Scholar
14 Kamerbeek in his Commentary (Leiden 1959), 157 agrees with Jebb. For further argument cf. below n. 20. For the moment it may be asked whether any person hearing lines 758–60, who did not have Creon’s version of events fresh in his mind and was therefore anxious to reconcile both accounts, would ever take 758–60 in the way suggested by Jebb and Kamerbeek.
15 Cf. for example Gellie, op. cit.
16 This is the opinion Jebb leans toward.
17 I cannot agree with Kamerbeek (op. cit. 160) that πλαστός…πατρί (780) can have communicated to Oedipus any doubt about his relationship to his mother. As one of the many pieces of incomplete information Oedipus has to deal with, this taunt only implies doubt, to Oedipus at least, concerning his paternity.
18 Cf. Gellie, op. cit. Also Greene, W.C. ‘The Murderers of Laius’, TAPA 60 (1929), 75–86.Google Scholar
19 Cf. Kane, R.C. ‘Prophecy and Perception in the Oedipus Rex’. TAPA 105 (1975), 189–208.Google Scholar
20 Thus even if Jebb’s reading of 758–60 is accepted the internal consistency of the Oedipus is not restored. If the reading advocated in this paper is adopted, a vital piece of dramatic business (the undercutting of Oedipus at 842–7) is made possible, at the expense of a flaw which cannot be noticed in performance. If Jebb’s reading is adopted, an unanswered question is left in the audience’s mind (‘Why robbers?’). The question will be noticed because so much is made of the plural in the play. Further there is no compensating gain in dramatic effect elsewhere.
21 One of the most famous of these improbabilities is the most unlikely fact that the survivor of the murder of Laius is the same man as the person who exposed the infant Oedipus, not to mention the fact that the Corinthian stranger who brings the news of the death of Polybus to Thebes is the same man as the person who received Oedipus from the herdsman. Remove these improbabilities and you devastate the play.
22 An earlier version of this paper was read to AULLA XX at Newcastle in 1980.1 am grateful for the helpful comments received from scholars present on that occasion, especially those of Dr. J.L. O’Neil.