Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/145

 SOPHOCLES. 127 It tiu-ns entirely on the justifiable jealousy of Deianeira, who really loves her husband Hercules, and, fearing that he had given his affections to lole, sends him the poisoned shirt of Xessus, in the sincere belief that it will operate as a love-charm. It produces, as the treacherous Centam- intended, the most exquisite sufferings, and Hercules is laid on the funeral pile to consume his mortal frame, and so to escape his misery, and to receive immortal life. But Deianeira slays herself on learning the consequences of an error, which, as her son declares, she had committed with the best intentions ^ And Hercules, who had at first broken forth into the most violent imprecations against his wife, recognizes the decree of fate in the calamity in which she had been the unwilling agent. There are none of the plays of Sophocles which exhibit more strikingly than the two which bear the name of (Edipus, that solemn irony which the genius of a modern scholar has detected in the frame- work of this poet's Tragedies 2. This irony consists in the contrast, which the spectator, well acquainted with the legend- ary basis of the tragedy, is enabled to draw between the real state of the case and the conceptions supposed to be entertained by the person represented on the stage. It is this contrast, regarded from different points of view, which makes the two plays about Oedipus the counterparts of one another, and induces us to think that, whether they were or were not written nearly at the same time^, they were intended by the poet to form constituent parts of one picture. The (Edipus Tyrannus represents the king of Thebes, in the full confidence of his own glory ^ at the beginning of the play, but brought step by step to the consciousness of the horrible guilt in which he had unawares involved himself. '' The wrath of heaven," says the expositor to whom we have referred^, "has been pointed against the afflicted city, only that it might fall with concentrated force on the head of a single man ; and he who is its object stands alone calm and secure : unconscious of his own misery he can afford pity for the unfortunate : to him all look up for succour : and, ^ Track. 1 1 36: a-Kav to XPVf^' VP'-^P'''^> XPV<^to- /J-^V- 2 Thirlwall, On the Irony of Sophocles, Philol. Mus. 11. pp. 483 sqq. 3 The silence of Jocasta (1075) brings this play into a connexion of manner with the Antigone and Trachinice. ^ Tliirlwall, p. 496.
 * 8: 6 Tract KKeivbt OtStVoi's KoKovuevos.