Oedipus the King
Oedipus Rex – Key Quotes
OPENING SCENE – TONE, LOCATION AND EXPOSITION
The action takes place in Thebes in front of the royal palace
OEDIPUS: the city fills with incense, chants, and cries of pain?
PRIEST: For our city, as you yourself can see, is badly shaken—she cannot raise her head above the depths of so much surging death. Disease infects fruit blossoms in our land, disease infects our herds of grazing cattle, makes women in labour lose their children. And deadly pestilence, that fiery god, swoops down to blast the city, emptying the House of Cadmus, and fills black Hades with groans and howls…
OEDIPUS - CHARACTER
OEDIPUS: My poor children, I know why you have come— I am not ignorant of what you yearn for. For I well know that you are ill, and yet, [60] sick as you are, there is not one of you 70 whose illness equals mine.
OEDIPUS: I would be a hard-hearted man indeed, if I did not pity suppliants like these.
PRIEST: Not that we count thee as the peer of heaven…
… Thou art named, and known, our life’s establisher…
OEDIPUS: ‘my heart at once
Groans for the city, and for myself, and for you…’
OEDIPUS: ‘My heavy load of care
More for their sake than for my own I bear.’
OEDIPUS: ‘So shall you see me, as of right, with you,
Venging this country and the God together.’
OEDIPUS (to Senator): ‘Moreover all these things
I charge you to accomplish, in behalf
Of me, and of the God, and of this land…’
TIRESIAS
SENATOR: ‘…the godlike seer, the only man
Who has in him the tongue that cannot lie.’
(Opposition between Tiresias and Oedipus – both considered ‘Godlike’)
IMAGERY – LIGHT / DARK, SIGHT / BLINDNESS
TIRESIAS: ‘I am
Free! For I have in me the strength of truth.’
OEDIPUS (to Tiresias): ‘Blind as you are in eyes, and ears, and mind…
…You cannot hurt me,
Nor any other who beholds the
OPENING SCENE – TONE, LOCATION AND EXPOSITION
The action takes place in Thebes in front of the royal palace
OEDIPUS: the city fills with incense, chants, and cries of pain?
PRIEST: For our city, as you yourself can see, is badly shaken—she cannot raise her head above the depths of so much surging death. Disease infects fruit blossoms in our land, disease infects our herds of grazing cattle, makes women in labour lose their children. And deadly pestilence, that fiery god, swoops down to blast the city, emptying the House of Cadmus, and fills black Hades with groans and howls…
OEDIPUS - CHARACTER
OEDIPUS: My poor children, I know why you have come— I am not ignorant of what you yearn for. For I well know that you are ill, and yet, [60] sick as you are, there is not one of you 70 whose illness equals mine.
OEDIPUS: I would be a hard-hearted man indeed, if I did not pity suppliants like these.
PRIEST: Not that we count thee as the peer of heaven…
… Thou art named, and known, our life’s establisher…
OEDIPUS: ‘my heart at once
Groans for the city, and for myself, and for you…’
OEDIPUS: ‘My heavy load of care
More for their sake than for my own I bear.’
OEDIPUS: ‘So shall you see me, as of right, with you,
Venging this country and the God together.’
OEDIPUS (to Senator): ‘Moreover all these things
I charge you to accomplish, in behalf
Of me, and of the God, and of this land…’
TIRESIAS
SENATOR: ‘…the godlike seer, the only man
Who has in him the tongue that cannot lie.’
(Opposition between Tiresias and Oedipus – both considered ‘Godlike’)
IMAGERY – LIGHT / DARK, SIGHT / BLINDNESS
TIRESIAS: ‘I am
Free! For I have in me the strength of truth.’
OEDIPUS (to Tiresias): ‘Blind as you are in eyes, and ears, and mind…
…You cannot hurt me,
Nor any other who beholds the