Oedipus The King, 3

Oedipus recognizes the story of Laius's murder as that of the murder he committed.  He sees himself as the cause of the city's troubles after all, and is in agony over it.  [He doesn't know the half of it.  Strike that, he doesn't know the tenth of it yet.  Laius's murder is the least of his problems.]  There was one survivor from the murder, a servant who, upon seeing Oedipus take the throne, asked to return to shepherding, his previous career.  Oedipus asks that he be brought in, and the exact circumstances of Laius's murder matched against his own memory.

In the meantime, Oedipus tells his own story.  At home in Corinth, he was told in passing that he was adopted.  Unnerved, his parents Polybus and Merope tried to set his mind at ease.  But he went to an oracle, whose prophecy was far worse than just the adoption news.  He was told he would murder his father and marry his mother.  Horrified at the prospect, he fled.  And on the road, he had an altercation with a travelling band at the three crossroads.  He killed them.  And now he might be responsible for Laius's death.  Jocasta tries to calm him, saying at the very least the prophets don't know what they're talking about-- because Laius certainly wasn't killed by his son!

The Chorus try to wrap their heads around the situation.  They know that justice must be done against Oedipus if he really is the killer.  On the other hand, if prophecies go unfulfilled so easily, why must any respect be paid to them at all?

A messenger enters with news from Corinth.  Polybus is dead, and Oedipus will inherit that throne.  It's good news!  And even better, this tells against the prophecy that was giving Oedipus so much grief-- he didn't have to kill his father after all! [Nobody has noticed up to this point the similarity between Oedipus's prophecy and that of Jocasta.]  Oedipus is still fearful of returning home, fearful of the second half of the prophecy-- marrying his mother.  The messenger explains that the whole prophecy was never anything to worry about in the first place-- after all, Polybus wasn't even Oedipus's real father!  Oedipus was adopted, brought to the king by this messenger himself, after being found as an infant with his ankles bound on a hill near Thebes!



Jocasta is getting upset.

And actually, this messenger didn't find Oedipus per se.  He was found by another shepherd-- one of Laius's men.  The Chorus thinks perhaps this is the same guy who they already called about the other story.  They ask Jocasta if she remembers anything, but she's suddenly playing dumb and trying to change the subject.  Oedipus wants to know all about his origins, but Jocasta is begging him not to follow through to the end of the story.  But he's feeling upbeat now, and thinks she'll be embarrassed by his lowly station, if he's the abandoned son of slaves.  But perhaps he is the son of the gods themselves!  Tee-hee!

The Chorus gets carried away thinking of the possibilites.  Here among them, offspring of the divine!  That kind of thing never happens anymore!  Awesome!

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The language games are getting more and more clever-- but I can't tell if it's Sophocles or Roche making more of it than is actually there.  A sampling:

"This is his palace, sir, and he's within.
This lady [Jocasta] is his wife and mother... of his children."  [Come on.]

[Answer! From Alex Jech. 

The Greek lines are:

στέγαι μὲν αἵδε, καὐτὸς ἔνδον, ὦ ξένε:
γυνὴ δὲ μήτηρ ἥδε τῶν κείνου τέκνων.

Alex's raw translation was "But this woman is mother of his children."  After giving him the context, he acknowledged there was something goofy going on in the structure of the second line.  He then suggested "Wife and mother, this one, of his children," which is pretty close to the effect of Roche's version, though a little more subtle.  Success!]

"I do not blush to own I'm Forgune's pampered child.
She will not let me down.  She is my mother."

One other line of note, when Jocasta is trying to settle down Oedipus's fear of the prophecy of him marrying his mother:

"Forget this silly thought of mother-marrying.
Why, many men in dreams have married mothers,
And he lives happiest who makes the least of it."

A clinical description of the Oedipal Complex!  I always thought that Freud simply named it after the character because it was such a well-known story.  But it looks like the psychological phenomenon itself was mentioned right in the play.  We've gone totally meta.