Page:Oedipus, King of Thebes (Murray 1911).djvu/105

 a speaker and a crowd.—Every reader will notice how full it is of “tragic irony.” Almost every paragraph carries with it some sinister meaning of which the speaker is unconscious. Cf. such phrases as “if he tread my hearth,” “had but his issue been more fortunate,” “as I would for mine own father,” and of course the whole situation.

P. 25, l. 437, Who were they?]—This momentary doubt of Oedipus, who of course regarded himself as the son of Polybus, King of Corinth, is explained later (p. 46, l. 780).

Pp. 29 ff. The Creon scene.]—The only part of the play which could possibly be said to flag. Creon’s defence, p. 34, “from probabilities,” as the rhetoricians would have called it, seems less interesting to us than it probably did to the poet’s contemporaries. It is remarkably like Hippolytus’s defence (pp. 52 f. of my translation), and probably one was suggested by the other. We cannot be sure which was the earlier play.

The scene serves at least to quicken the pace of the drama, to bring out the impetuous and somewhat tyrannical nature of Oedipus, and to prepare the magnificent entrance of Jocasta.

P. 36, l. 630, Thebes is my country.]—It must be remembered that to the Chorus Creon is a real Theban, Oedipus a stranger from Corinth.

P. 41, Conversation of Oedipus and Jocasta.]—The technique of this wonderful scene, an intimate self-revealing conversation between husband and wife about the past, forming the pivot of the play, will remind a modern reader of Ibsen.

P. 42, l. 718.]—Observe that Jocasta does not