OEDIPUS TYRANNUS

Josh Beer

Such is the iconic status of Oedipus Tyrannus (OT) as the most famous Greek tragedy that it has arguably been the most widely interpreted work of classical literature. Two thinkers especially have been responsible for its iconic status: Aristotle and Freud. In his inuential Poetics Aristotle clearly regarded OT as representing the best type of tragic plot, citing it more fre- quently than any other tragedy.1 Since Freud coined the term ‘Oedipus Com- plex’ to describe unconscious drives based on a creative (mis)reading of OT, the term has become commonplace. This idea, in turn, has produced a large psychoanalytic literature, much of it only loosely based on the Sophoclean play.2 However, psychoanalytic readings have not dominated the  eld, for scholars have drawn on almost every type of critical theory from the ritu- alistic to the deconstructionist. There have also been innumerable debates about Oedipus’ guilt or innocence and to what extent he has freewill or his actions are predetermined. In the light of all this one might be tempted to adopt the well-known aphorism of the comic playwright Terence: quot homines tot sententiae, ‘there are as many opinions as there are people’. It will be salutary to begin with Reinhardt’s crucial observation that OT is structured around illusion and truth or appearance and reality.3 Following from this we can observe that at the heart of the plot there are several paradoxes. Oedipus is the hunter and the hunted, the detective and the criminal, the saviour of his people and their destroyer. As the solver of the riddle of the Sphinx, Oedipus’ own identity is a riddle. Visually, the most important paradox is centred on blindness and sight. Having lived in the world with eyes under the illusion he is a great man, Oedipus blinds himself as the most polluted of human beings when he discovers the truth of the terrible deeds he has committed. However previous writers had treated the story of Oedipus, two things at least were common knowledge and could not be altered: Oedipus’ incest with his mother and his parricide. These allowed

1 Poet. 52a24–26; 52a33; 53a11; 53a20; 54b7–8; 55a18. 2 On Freudian interpretations, see Segal (1995) 161–179. 3 Reinhardt (1979) 98–104. 94 josh beer

Sophocles to exploit, and some would say over-exploit, what is commonly called dramatic or tragic irony. We can be sure however that Sophocles’ plot was a radical restructuring of the story. It is likely that he was the  rst to shape the myth of Oedipus in such a way as to turn the story of his birth into a mystery, based on Oedipus’ mistaken idea, hamartia (Poet. 53a10,a16), of who his parents were. The discovery, anagnorisis, of his true identity leads to the reversal, peripeteia, of his fortunes (Poet. 52a15–18). This dramatic technique is unlikely to have been central to Aeschylus’ earlier tragedy (now lost) which was centred on a family curse.4 As a corrective lens to much of what has been written before, I should like to structure my analysis around two things of prime importance. The  rst is that Sophocles was quintessentially a man of the theatre—not only a playwright but also his own stage director. Whatever he wants to say about Oedipus, therefore, is incorporated in his theatrical vision. Although our knowledge of the physical con guration of the Theatre of Dionysus at Athens in the 5th century bc is fragmentary, there were three main places of entrance and exit into the acting area(s): two eisodoi at the sides leading into the orchestra, one of which the audience is to suppose led into town and the other out; and a stage-building, skene, at the back of the orchestra with a central door which in OT represented the royal house of Thebes. The second point I wish to emphasize is that at the centre of OT is the mask of Oedipus as the great ruler, and its destruction. It is the mask primar- ily that physically presents the illusion of a stage character. The Greek word for mask, prosopon, means ‘face’, and the dramatis personae of a tragedy are in essence faces. More literally, prosopon, means ‘towards the eye’, but whether this means towards the eye of the observer or the observed is unclear.5 Be that as it may, I am not concerned here about how the mask may have afected acting techniques or its religious associations, but rather with how the mask afects the metaphysics of the drama as a piece of theatre. Greek tragedy was presentational not representational theatre and in this type of theatre what is central is how the masks are presented.6 Following Aristotle in this respect, I shall concentrate on the plot (praxis or muthos— he uses both terms) and avoid character analysis, preferring instead to use

4 See Reinhardt (1979) 94–95 on how the Aeschylean version probably difered. On what is known of the myth, see Markantonatos (2007) 43–70. 5 Wiles (2007) 1 with references. 6 On the diference between ‘presentational’ and ‘representational’ theatre, see Arnott (1981) 47–49.