Oedipus Rex-Sophocles Essay, Research Paper
JOCASTA
My lords look amazed to see your queen with wreaths and gifts of incense in her hands. I had a mind to visit the high shrines, for Oedipus is nervous, alarmed with various terrors. He will not use his past experience, like a man of sense, to judge the present need, but lends his ear to any croaker that argues. Since then my counsels don?t have an advantage, I turn to thee, our help when we are in trouble, Apollo, Lord Lycean, and to you my prayers and pleas I bring. Ease us, lord, and cleanse us from this curse! For now we all are intimidated. Who see their helmsman confused in the storm.
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MESSENGER: My masters, tell me where the palace of Oedipus is; or better, where’s the king.
CHORUS
Here is the palace and he lives within it; this is his queen the mother of his children.
MESSENGER: All happiness attend her and the house. Her marriage-bed and husband are both blessed.
JOCASTA: My greetings to you, stranger; whose reasonable words deserve a like response. But tell me why have you come–what do you need or what news do you have?
MESSENGER: It is good for your husband and the royal house.
JOCASTA: What is it? Whose messenger are you?
MESSENGER: The Isthmian commons have resolved to make your husband king?at least that is what I heard.
JOCASTA: What! Isn?t aged Polybus still king?
MESSENGER: No, regretfully; he’s dead and in his grave.
JOCASTA: What! The sire of Oedipus is dead?
MESSENGER: If I don?t speak the truth I may die.
JOCASTA: Quick, maiden, Tell this news to my lord. The god-sent oracles, where are they now? This is the man whom Oedipus long turned away from, in dread to prove his murderer; and now he dies in nature’s course, not by Oedipus? doings.
OEDIPUS: My wife, my queen, Jocasta, why have you called me from my palace.
JOCASTA: Listen to this man, and explain what happened to the oracles.
OEDIPUS: Who is this man, and what is his news for me?
JOCASTA: He comes from Corinth and his message is this: your father Polybus has passed away.
OEDIPUS: What? Tell me in your own words.
MESSENGER: There is no other way of saying this, the king is dead.
OEDIPUS: By old age, or by sickness?
MESSENGER: One touch will send an old man to his rest.
OEDIPUS: It was sickness then?
MESSENGER: Yes, and his age.
OEDIPUS:Ah! why should one regard the Pythian hearth or birds that scream in the air? Did they not point at me saying I killed my father? but he’s dead and in his grave, and here I am who never touched a sword; unless the longing for his absent son killed him and so I slew him in a sense. But, as they stand, the oracles are dead–dust, ashes, nothing, dead as Polybus.
JOCASTA: Did I not predict this long ago?
OEDIPUS: You did: but I was misled by my fear.
JOCASTA: Don?t ever think of these things again.
OEDIPUS: Can I not fear my mother’s marriage bed.
JOCASTA: Why should a mortal man, with no assured foreknowledge, be afraid? It is best if one lives a careless life through. Don?t fear this marriage with your mother. How often does the chance that a man weds his mother! No reasonable man is troubled by this.
OEDIPUS: I should have had full confidence, is not my mother alive; since she lives I still have to worry.
JOCASTA: And yet thy sire’s death lights out darkness much.
OEDIPUS
Much, but my fear is touching her who lives.
MESSENGER
Who may this woman be whom thus you fear?
OEDIPUS
Merope, stranger, wife of Polybus.
MESSENGER
And what of her can cause you any fear?
OEDIPUS
A heaven-sent oracle of dread import.
MESSENGER
A mystery, or may a stranger hear it?
OEDIPUS
Aye, ’tis no secret. Loxias once foretold
That I should mate with mine own mother, and shed
With my own hands the blood of my own sire.
Hence Corinth was for many a year to me
A home distant; and I trove abroad,
But missed the sweetest sight, my parents’ face.
MESSENGER
Was this the fear that exiled thee from home?
OEDIPUS
Yea, and the dread of slaying my own sire.
MESSENGER
Why, since I came to give thee pleasure, King,
Have I not rid thee of this second fear?
OEDIPUS
Well, thou shalt have due guerdon for thy pains.
MESSENGER
Well, I confess what chiefly made me come
Was hope to profit by thy coming home.
OEDIPUS
Nay, I will ne’er go near my parents more.
MESSENGER
My son, ’tis plain, thou know’st not what thou doest.
OEDIPUS
How so, old man? For heaven’s sake tell me all.
MESSENGER
If this is why thou dreadest to return.
OEDIPUS
Yea, lest the god’s word be fulfilled in me.
MESSENGER
Lest through thy parents thou shouldst be accursed?
OEDIPUS
This and none other is my constant dread.
MESSENGER
Dost thou not know thy fears are baseless all?
OEDIPUS
How baseless, if I am their very son?
MESSENGER
Since Polybus was naught to thee in blood.
OEDIPUS
What say’st thou? was not Polybus my sire?
MESSENGER
As much thy sire as I am, and no more.
OEDIPUS
My sire no more to me than one who is naught?
MESSENGER
Since I begat thee not, no more did he.
OEDIPUS
What reason had he then to call me son?
MESSENGER
Know that he took thee from my hands, a gift.
OEDIPUS
Yet, if no child of his, he loved me well.
MESSENGER
A childless man till then, he warmed to thee.
OEDIPUS
A foundling or a purchased slave, this child?
MESSENGER
I found thee in Cithaeron’s wooded glens.
OEDIPUS
What led thee to explore those upland glades?
MESSENGER
My business was to tend the mountain flocks.
OEDIPUS
A vagrant shepherd journeying for hire?
MESSENGER
True, but thy savior in that hour, my son.
OEDIPUS
My savior? from what harm? what ailed me then?
MESSENGER
Those ankle joints are evidence enow.
OEDIPUS
Ah, why remind me of that ancient sore?
MESSENGER
I loosed the pin that riveted thy feet.
OEDIPUS
Yes, from my cradle that dread brand I bore.
MESSENGER
Whence thou deriv’st the name that still is thine.
OEDIPUS
Who did it? I adjure thee, tell me who
Say, was it father, mother?
MESSENGER
I know not.
The man from whom I had thee may know more.
OEDIPUS
What, did another find me, not thyself?
MESSENGER
Not I; another shepherd gave thee me.
OEDIPUS
Who was he? Would’st thou know again the man?
MESSENGER
He passed indeed for one of Laius’ house.
OEDIPUS
The king who ruled the country long ago?
MESSENGER
The same: he was a herdsman of the king.
OEDIPUS
And is he living still for me to see him?
MESSENGER
His fellow-countrymen should best know that.
OEDIPUS
Doth any bystander among you know
The herd he speaks of, or by seeing him
Afield or in the city? answer straight!
The hour hath come to clear this business up.
CHORUS
Methinks he means none other than the hind
Whom thou anon wert fain to see; but that
Our queen Jocasta best of all could tell.
OEDIPUS
Madam, dost know the man we sent to fetch?
Is the same of whom the stranger speaks?
JOCASTA
Who is the man? What matter? Let it be.
‘Twere waste of thought to weigh such idle words.
OEDIPUS
No, with such guiding clues I cannot fail
To bring to light the secret of my birth.
JOCASTA
Oh, as thou carest for thy life, give o’er
This quest. Enough the anguish _I_ endure.
OEDIPUS
Be of good cheer; though I be proved the son
Of a bondwoman, aye, through three descents
Triply a slave, thy honor is unsmirched.
JOCASTA
Yet humor me, I pray thee; do not this.
OEDIPUS
I cannot; I must probe this matter home.
JOCASTA
‘Tis for thy sake I advise thee for the best.
OEDIPUS
I grow impatient of this best advice.
JOCASTA
Ah mayst thou ne’er discover who thou art!
OEDIPUS
Go, fetch me here the herd, and leave yon woman
To glory in her pride of ancestry.
JOCASTA
O sadness is thee, poor wretch! With that last word
I leave thee, from now on silent evermore.
CHORUS
Why, Oedipus, why stung with passionate grief
Hath the queen thus departed? Much I fear
From this dead calm will burst a storm of woes.
OEDIPUS
Let the storm burst, my fixed resolve still holds,
To learn my lineage, be it ne’er so low.
It may be she with all a woman’s pride
Thinks scorn of my base parentage. But I
Who rank myself as Fortune’s favorite child,
The giver of good gifts, shall not be shamed.
She is my mother and the changing moons
My brethren, and with them I wax and wane.
Thus sprung why should I fear to trace my birth?
Nothing can make me other than I am.
331
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