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Skenè Studies I • 2 Oedipus at Colonus Skenè Studies I • 2 Oedipus at Colonus and King Lear : Classical and Early Modern Intersections Edited by Silvia Bigliazzi Σ S K E N È Theatre and Drama Studies Executive Editor Guido Avezzù. General Editors Guido Avezzù, Silvia Bigliazzi. Editorial Board Simona Brunetti, Francesco Lupi, Nicola Pasqualicchio, Susan Payne, Gherardo Ugolini. Managing Editors Bianca Del Villano, Savina Stevanato. Assistant Managing Valentina Adami, Emanuel Stelzer, Roberta Zanoni. Editors Editorial Staff Chiara Battisti, Giuseppe Capalbo, Francesco Dall’Olio, Marco Duranti, Sidia Fiorato, Antonietta Provenza. Advisory Board Anna Maria Belardinelli, Anton Bierl, Enoch Brater, Jean-Christophe Cavallin, Rosy Colombo, Claudia Corti, Marco De Marinis, Tobias Döring, Pavel Drábek, Paul Edmondson, Keir Douglas Elam, Ewan Fernie, Patrick Finglass, Enrico Giaccherini, Mark Griffith, Stephen Halliwell, Robert Henke, Pierre Judet de la Combe, Eric Nicholson, Guido Paduano, Franco Perrelli, Didier Plassard, Donna Shalev, Susanne Wofford. Supplement to SKENÈ. Journal of Theatre and Drama Studies Copyright © 2019 S K E N È All rights reserved. ISSN 2464-9295 ISBN 979-12-200-6185-8 No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission from the publisher. SKENÈ Theatre and Drama Studies https://textsandstudies.skeneproject.it/index.php/TS [email protected] Dir. Resp. (aut. Trib. di Verona): Guido Avezzù P.O. Box 149 c/o Mail Boxes Etc. (MBE150) – Viale Col. Galliano, 51, 37138 Contents Silvia Bigliazzi Introduction 9 Part 1 – Being Classical 1. Stephen Orgel How to Be Classical 33 2. Carlo Maria Bajetta Elizabeth I and Sir Walter Ralegh’s Classics: The Case of Sophocles 61 Part 2 – Oedipus 3. Laura Slatkin Revisiting Oedipus at Colonus 89 4. Gherardo Ugolini A Wise and Irascible Hero: Oedipus from Thebes to Colonus 101 5. Guido Avezzù Some Notes on Oedipus and Time 119 6. Francesco Lupi Liminality, (In)accessibility, and Negative Characterization in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus 147 7. Anton Bierl Oedipus at Colonus as a Reflection of theOresteia : The Abomination from Thebes as an Athenian Hero in the Making 165 Part 3 – Oedipus and Lear 8. Robert S. Miola Lost and Found in Translation: Early Modern Receptions of Oedipus at Colonus 203 9. Sheila Murnaghan “More sinned against than sinning": Acting and Suffering inOedipus at Colonus and King Lear 227 10. Seth L. Schein Fathers Cursing Children: Anger and Justice in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus and Shakespeare’s King Lear 247 11. Anna Beltrametti Oedipus’ εἴδωλον, “Lear’s shadow” (OC 110, King Lear 1.4.222) 265 12. Silvia Bigliazzi Time and Nothingness: King Lear 291 13. David Lucking ‘More than two tens to a score’: Disquantification inKing Lear 317 Part 4 – Revisiting Oedipus and Lear 14. Nicola Pasqualicchio Happy Endings for Old Kings: Jean-François Ducis’ Œdipe and Léar 341 15. Barry A. Spence Shades of King Lear in Beckett’s Theatre and Late Work 367 16. Tamas Dobozy Sam Shepard’s ‘Body’ of Tragedy: A Particle of Dread (Oedipus Variations) 403 17. Eric Nicholson and Avra Sidiropoulou Opening up Discoveries through Promised Endings: An Experimental Work in Progress on Oedipus at Colonus and King Lear 413 The Authors 433 Index 443 14 Happy Endings for Old Kings: Jean-François Ducis’ Œdipe and Léar Nicola Pasqualicchio Abstract The French dramatist Jean-François Ducis (1733-1816) is, to our knowledge, the only author who ever wrote both a tragedy in- spired by Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus and an adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear. His Œdipe chez Admète (1778) – a pecu- liar hybridization of the Sophoclean source with elements taken from Euripides’ Alcestis – originated from his liking for the trag- ic theme of Oedipus’ old age and death, confirmed by the reviv- al of Œdipe chez Admète in 1792 and the creation of Œdipe à Colone in 1797. While the treatment of this theme is Ducis’ only themat- ic descent into Greek tragedy, Le Roi Léar (1783), following Hamlet and Roméo et Juliette and preceding Macbeth, Jean sans Terre, and Othello, is one among the many passionate and unfaithful hom- ages the Versailles author paid to Shakespeare. We should look at Œdipe and Léar as contiguous works, especially if we take into ac- count that Ducis’ dramatic muse fell silent during the five-year in- terval between the composition of these plays. This circumstance stimulates a critical comparison of the two dramas with special re- gard to their common elements. In the first place, I will devote spe- cial attention to the similar enlargement, in both pieces, of the roles of the daughters (Antigone and Helmonde, the Cordelia-figure inLe Roi Léar) which, differently from the originals, results in a more pre- cise focalization on the relationship between the fathers and their favourite daughters. Secondly, I will focus on the two Providence- inspired happy endings both works progressively tend to and which, in a perspective of Christian theodicy, eventually redeem the tragic course of the two old kings. Keywords: Ducis; neoclassical tragedy; Sophocles; Shakespeare; Oedipus; King Lear 342 Nicola Pasqualicchio The French tragedian François Ducis (1733-1816), is, to our knowl- edge, the only dramatist to write works inspired both by the theme of Oedipus at Colonus and by the story of King Lear: Œdipe chez Admète (1778, afterwards extensively rewritten as Œdipe à Colone in 1797) and Le Roi Léar (1783). This circumstance becomes all the more significant when we notice that the two works, de- spite the fact that more than four years separated their composi- tion and the dates of their first performance, were actually writ- ten one after the other, with no other theatrical opus completed and staged between them. This has led us to hypothesize that Ducis became aware of a possible continuity between the two tragic tales and that it is not merely coincidental that after the on- ly time he ventured into the realm of Greek tragedy, he decided to return to his beloved (if oft-betrayed) Shakespeare with a rework- ing of King Lear. Some similarities between the two tragic themes do, of course, immediately leap to the eye, especially the superfi- cial ones such as the relationship of an aging monarch, exiled and abandoned, and his children, among whom the character of a lov- ing and best-beloved daughter stands out. The relationship be- tween the two tragedies was recognized and remarked by Ducis, who, however, adapted them to his own artistic aims and beliefs and in so doing twisted them in ways that distance them conspic- uously from their original sources. Our analysis will be elaborated in three stages: the first two concern the comparison between Ducis’ two tragedies and their source texts Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles and Alcestis by Euripides for Œdipe chez Admète; Shakespeare’s King Lear for Le Roi Léar; the third will analyse the way in which examples of Ducis’ reworking of the text have highlighted certain elements of a possible continuity between the original stories of the aged Oedipus and Lear. 1. Œdipe chez Admète Œdipe chez Admète, a tragedy in five acts in Alexandrine me- tre, performed for the first time at Versailles on 4 December, 1778, “WeJean-François were there Ducis’ too”: Œdipe Philosophers and Léar in the Theatre 343 has its origins in a bizarre combination of Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus and Euripides’ Alcestis. There does not seem to exist any precedent for such an amalgamation so it was very probably an original idea of Ducis’. In this way, the sole example of the adop- tion of Greek drama as source material on the part of the French playwright may be considered as both a re-visitation and an inter- section of two classical tragedies, which might seem to have lit- tle to do with one another, either from the point of view of spe- cific content or from that of mythological relationship. However, it is certainly the case that the two plays share a particular fea- ture which is clearly connected to the idea Ducis held of ‘the trag- ic’, as far away as was possible from any direct reference to bloody events or to the pitiless inevitability of a fate that concedes no justification or redemption of human suffering. Though both the source plays have death as a thematic fulcrum, it is presented in a way which is far more amenable to the Christian concept of rec- onciliation between mankind and death towards which Ducis’ the- atre tends: Oedipus’ death in Sophocles is an event accepted in a wise and dignified manner, and it benefits the city that has tak- en him in; Admetus’ grief for the death of Alcestis only lasts un- til the moment he realizes that she is alive when he sees her return from Hades, thanks to the intervention of Heracles. Hospitality, gratitude, love, all these attenuate or postpone death’s cruelty (al- though, as we shall see later, Ducis needs to soften the negative el- ements even further). The intersection between two distinct myth- ological narratives permits Ducis, in one fell swoop, to present Oedipus’ death as the ascent into heaven of a redeemed sinner and to avoid death’s entrance, if only temporarily, into the house of Admetus. Indeed, the underlying idea of this pastiche is that of al- lowing the aged Oedipus to cleanse himself of his terrible, if un- witting, offences through offering his life, by this stage at its end, in exchange for those of King Admetus and Alcestis, his wife, who, as is familiar, had decided to sacrifice her own to prolong that of her husband. Just as he does in Sophocles, Oedipus, with the help of his lov- ing daughter Antigone, reaches the vicinity of a sanctuary dedi- cated to the Eumenides.
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