Original subtitles

Children.

Sirens of the ancient Cadmian line.

What is the meaning of this thronging round my feet, this holding out of olive

boughs all wreathed in wool?

The city droops with elegiac sound and hymns with poles of incense.

Hang.

I come to see it.

With my eyes.

No messengers.

Yes, I whom men call Oedipus the Great.

Speak, elder.

You are senior here.

Say what this pleading means.

What frightens you?

What you beseech?

King Oedipus, the sovereign of my land.

You see here, young and old.

Clustered round the shrine, fledgling some saying flight, and some much

down as I by age the presbyter of Zeus, and stripling some ambassadors of youth.

Yes, see the storm that batters down this city's prow in waves of blood.

The crops diseased, disease among the herds, the ineffectual womb rotting with

its fruit.

A fever demon wastes the town and decimates with fire, stalking hated

the emptied house where Cadmus lived, while poverty's stricken knight grows

fat on groans and elegies in Hades' realms.

So, you most respected king, we plead with you to find for us a cure.

You must not let your reign go down.

as one when men were resurrected once and once relapsed.

Mend the city.

Make her safe.

You had good omens once.

You did your work.

Be equal to your stature now.

If king of men, as king you are, then be it of a kingdom manned and

not a desert.

Your news, poor earnest children, is not new to me.

I know it.

Well, you all are sick, yet sick, not one so sick as I.

Your pain is single, each to each. It does not breed.

Mine is treble anguish, crying out for the city, for myself,

for you.

It was no man asleep, you woke.

Ah, no, but one in bitter tears, and one perplexed in thought, found

wandering, who clutched the only remedy that came to send the son of Menoichus,

Creon, my own Neocastor's brother, to the place Apollo haunts at Pithia, to

learn what act or covenant of mine could still redeem the state.

I count the days.

His time is up.

He does not come.

He should be here.

But when he comes, the instant he arrives, whatsoever he shall tell me

god, that I must follow to the end, or I am damned.

Royal brother.

What news?

What mandate, son of Minoetius, from the mouth of the god?

I'd even say our wounds, Apollo's bidding done, will issue into blessings.

Which means?

You'll leave me half in hope, half buried in despair.

Will you hear it publicly?

I'm ready.

Here we go inside.

Speak out to all.

It's much more theirs than mine, nor my own than my own soul.

Very well, then.

Here is what the God has said.

The Prince Apollo openly enjoins on us to sever from the body politic a

monstrous growth that battens there.

Stop feeding that which festers.

By what treatment?

How applied?

By banishment.

Or death for death.

The city frets with...

Someone's blood.

Who?

The unhappy man not name.

Laius, sir.

The man who was king in days before you ruled.

A man I never saw.

A murdered man.

And now, clearly has required the just blood of his assassins.

But where on this... Where does one begin to

search the long -lost traces of forgotten crime?

Here, says the God.

Seek, and you shall find.

Only that escapes, which never was pursued.

his violent death.

He planned a pilgrimage, he said, and so left home, never to return again.

He went alone.

No companions, no witnesses who could furnish a report.

Dead.

All dead, but one who fled in panic.

And he tongue -tied, save on a single point.

What point?

Read clues and we must snatch at straws. This man insists that highwaymen

attacked the king. Not one, but many. And they cut him down.

Highwaymen? No highwayman would be so bold.

Unless... Someone here tempted him with bribes.

So we thought.

But with Laius gone, we were sunk in miseries.

And no one stirred.

His death went unavenged. What miseries could ever let you leave unsolved the

death and downfall of a king?

Sir, it was the siren's sphinx of riddles who

sang us from the shadowed past to what was sorely present.

Then I'll go back and drag that shadowed past to light again!

A search which you and I together will pursue.

My designs could not be suited more to avenge my God and country at one stroke.

Ah, not from any far -flung friend, but by myself and for myself,

I'll break this plague.

Who knows?

Tomorrow the selfsame murderer may turn his bloody hands on me.

The cause of Laius, therefore, is my own.

Rise up, children.

Hurry!

Go!

Summon all thieves!

I am Ursuline.

With Apollo's help, this shall not fail, but will all blessedly emerge.

What God -golden voice from the gold -studded shrine of the Pytho comes to

glorious Thebes?

My spirit is tremulous, wracked with its eagerness.

Help! Healer of Delos, Pyrrhon, I'm fainting with fear of what fate you will

fashion me now or turn in the turning of time.

Speak to me, Oricon.

Child everlastingly sprung from hope so goldenly.

Come!

All on you first.

God's daughter, immortal Athena.

Then on your sister, Earth's guardian, Artemis, ringed round with praises

and frode in our square.

And far -shooting Phoebus. You three that are champions, swift to deliver,

appear. For if ever the fire of disaster reared on the city.

You beat its affliction away.

Then come.

Make yourselves ready today.

Soul after soul, like fire.

Beats. Beats. Upwards. Soaring to the god of the setting sun.

Shriveled soil and shrinking wounds in childbirth shrieking.

A decimated city, dying, and deadly the dead,

all lying uncried for.

But crying matrons and mothers graying at every altar.

Till the chiming sorrow of dirges is splintered by shouts of the peon.

Oh, golden daughter of Zeus, with your smile.

Muffle the wildfire Mars, warring with copper -hot fever.

Twirl him back homeward and headlong.

Plunge him down from our shores.

For oh, what night has spared us.

He does at break of day.

Son, golden champion, Apollo.

Let us sing the song of your arrows, shot from the bow of the sun, while

Artemis, blazing with torches, courses the Lycian mountains.

And you, O Theban Bacchus, wine -blushed and thick -crowned,

you smiling god of succor.

Come, O Torchwood. Larry.

Come wheeling with your mean ass.

Fall on a God that is godless.

You're praying.

Then listen.

What you pray for, you can have.

If you'll hear my plan.

A plan to stop the plague.

I speak, of course, a stranger to the story and stranger to the crime.

Helpless, therefore, to track it down unless you give me clues.

But since I am your latest citizen, speaking among citizens,

I dare to challenge all you Thebans with the following.

Does any man among you know who killed Laius, son of Labdacus?

Son of Labracus!

Such a one I now command to tell me everything.

To tell me everything.

If self -incrimination keeps him silent, let him be assured he need fear nothing

worse than banishment.

Then is any man aware the murder was committed by someone from another land?

Let him not be shy to say it.

I shall heap rewards on him and Thebes her blessings.

What?

Silent still.

If anyone is out to shield a guilty friend, or is it guilty self, he would

best listen to the penalties I plan.

That man, whoever that man be, I, this country's reigning king,

cut off from every fellowship of speech and contact, sacrifice and sacrament,

even ritual touch of water in this realm.

thrust out from every home. He'll be the very picture of that pestilence God's

oracle Epithia has just revealed to me.

Yes, such an ally, nothing less, am I of both religion and the murdered man.

As to the killer... who has

slipped away... be he one or many men...

I now... Call down a life to fit a life dragged out in degradation.

And even if I myself should prove myself to harbor him at home, then on myself I

call down all the curses I have just involved.

And you will see to it that every item is fulfilled.

Were this land so fruitless now and so cast off by heaven, or even without the

gods' express command, how could you find it in you to neglect a monarch's

and not pursue this ending to the best of men, whose very self do I hold in my

hands as king?

His marriage bared my bed of seed.

Our children even shared with share of her, had he been blessed with progeny.

I shall not rest till I have traced the hand that slew the son of Labdacus, the

son of Polydorus, heir to Cadmus in the line of ancient Agenor.

And those who disobey, I'll ask the gods to curse with fields that never sprout

and wombs that bear no young.

Let them waste and burn away.

as in this present play.

The rest of you, my loyal men of Thebes, can think with me.

May justice and the whole of heaven help.

Sire, the oath you offer me I gladly take.

I swear I am not the killer, nor can I tell you who the killer is.

Apollo posed the problem.

Let Apollo point the culprit out.

Most certainly.

But who can force the hand of heaven?

The next best thing, if I may say.

Next best, third best, say it, anything.

There lives a man who with a king's eye sees the secrets of a king.

Tiresias of Apollo.

He is our source. Our chance of learning, sire.

No, do not think that I've been idle there. Twice I have sent for him at

bidding. I cannot understand what keeps him so.

We can dismiss those haunting rumours now.

Rumours? I must hear them all.

How he met his death through travelling vagabonds.

Yes, I've heard that too. We have no witnesses, however. And he'd be a brazen

man indeed who could rest unnerved by all your menaces. Near words will not

one whom murder never could.

And yet there is a man who could reveal the criminal.

Great mystic.

Tiresias.

Intuitive.

Didactic master of the finite and the infinite.

Soul temple of incarnate truth.

You cannot see it.

You must surely feel the overwhelming weight of all this city's walls.

You are our last refuge, prophet, and our help.

The god Apollo has sent an answer to us, saying, no deliverance from the plague

unless you seek and find the liest killers and punish such with death or

banishment. Now, sir, do not begrudge the smallest hint

your skill from birds or any other omen can elicit.

Save yourself, the city, and save me.

Save us from this whole corruption of the dead.

We're in your hands.

Anguish to be wise when wisdom is a loss.

Oh, send me home.

Take up your load.

I'll take mine.

That's no loyal answer.

Refuse to speak.

We ask you, all of us, do not deny us what you know.

All ignorant.

No, I refuse to link my wisdom with a downfall such as yours.

What you know and will not say.

You'd rather sacrifice us all and let the city rot?

I'd rather save us both from pain.

You miserable old man. You'd fire a stone to fury.

Still refuse?

Your flinty heart set in hopeless stubbornness? Your flinty heart.

You would not chide me so.

If you could see what lurks in yours.

Hear that?

What man alive, I ask, could stand such insults to our sovereignty and state?

It will all... Out in time.

Out in time?

Then why not say it now?

I've said enough.

Your hand, boy.

You!

You planned this thing!

And I suspect you of the very murder, even. Or the actual stroke.

And if you had your eyes, I'd say that you yourself had done the deed.

Would you so?

Then I shall charge you to abide.

With that same curse you hurl at me, you dare to think you're safe?

The truth has made me strong.

What truth?

You force it out of me.

That you and your most dearly loved are wrapped together in a hideous sin.

Blind to the horror of it.

You, Oedipus, you yourself, murdered the man whose murderer you seek.

You can't hurt me, you night -hatched thing.

Not me or any man who lives in light.

I'm not the one fake ass for your fall.

Apollo is enough.

Creon.

Was it you or he who thought of that?

Creon? I'm not Creon's mermaid.

I serve the god Apollo.

So this is what he wants.

Creon. The loyal.

Creon. So long, my friend.

Stealing up to overthrow and snatch.

Suborning sorcerers, this hawking conjurer. A genius born blind with eyes

gain. Yes, you!

Tell me when you ever played the prophet straight.

Or why when the she -dog Sphinx of Riddle sang, you never spoke a thing to

the spell.

But I, the Oedipus who stumbled here, could snuff her out with human wit, not

taking cues from birds.

And I'm the one you want to topple down to give yourself a place by Creon's

throne. Do not be surprised if exorcism turns and exercises you and him.

For were you not as doting as you seem, I'd lash you with the lessons of your

fraud.

Forgive us, Oedipus, but this is anger.

He spoke in anger, too.

And both beside the point.

What we want to know is how to carry out the gods' designs.

Blind.

They mocked at me for that.

What keeps you here?

Go. Go to your damnation.

Blind.

You see and still are blind.

Blind to your origins.

Blind to a union in your house.

You do not guess what hate is dormant there.

Or buried with your dear ones dead.

Or how a mother's and a father's curse shall scourge you with its double thongs

and whip you staggering from the land.

First ask from whence you came.

And then call down abuses at everything that I and Creon say.

No man alive shall see his life.

I never thought to listen to such ranted folly. The parents you were born from

thought me wise.

Parents?

Wait!

Who were my parents?

This single day shall furnish you a birthday and a death.

I tell you this.

The man you seek for for the murder of King Laius.

That man, I say, he is here.

A stranger, it was thought.

A stranger.

Soon you shall see him openly displayed, a Theban -born, and shattered by the

armor.

Blind instead of seeing.

A beggar, he who once was rich, banished to distant lands.

Tapping his way in exile with a stick.

Oh, yes.

Detected in his very heart of home.

His children's father and their brother.

Son and husband of his mother.

The man, the speaking stone from Delphi, damned.

Whose hands incarnate in achieve the master stroke of master murdering.

Faster than horses that beat on the wind, he must fly.

The son of Zeus, caparisoned in light, and fire is on his heels.

The pack of sure -footed fates will track him down. A voice that coruscates

high Parnassian snows leaps down like light, crying, Near or far, find the

undiscovered murderer.

Apollo to the hunt will run the man to earth through savage woods and stony

caverns. A lone wounded bull he limps. Lost and alone.

Dodging living echoes from the mantic earth. That sting.

And gad around him.

Terrible auguries tear me and trouble me.

The seers divining. I cannot attempt.

I cannot deny.

Deserted by words.

I hover on hopes.

All blind for today and blind for tomorrow.

A division between the house of Laius and Polybus Thun. Today or yesterday

I never knew, nor know of a quarrel or a reason or challenge to challenge the

fame of Oedipus, though I seek.

to avenge the curious death of the lab -decked king.

Zeus and Apollo are wise and discern the conditions of man.

But, oh, among men, where is there proof that a prophet can know more than me, a

man? And yet wisdom can surpass wisdom in a man.

But nevertheless, I'll not be quick to judge before the proof.

For once the winged and female Sphinx challenged him and found him sage and a

friend of the city.

So never, in my mind at least, shall he be guilty of crime.

Good citizens!

I hurry here, shocked into your presence, by a monstrous charge laid on

Oedipus the king.

If he thinks in all this turmoil of our times that any word or act of mine was

ever done in malice, done to harm, I'd rather end my life than live so wronged.

For this is not a trifling calumny, but full catastrophe to find myself called

traitor.

Traitor to my town, to you, and to my friends.

We are convinced the taunt was made in anger.

Not coolly uttered by a mind that calmed. It was uttered then.

Said that I have got the seer to tell a tale of lies.

It was, sir.

We cannot fathom why.

But said with steady eyes, steady mind, this onslaught made against my name.

I do not know.

What my master does, I do not see.

What? You again?

You dare come back?

I have the face to put your foot inside my door.

You, the murderer, self -proved, the self -condemned future of my throne.

In heaven's name, what cowardice or lunacy did you detect in me to give you

courage for it?

Did you think that I would never spot such treachery? Or that when I did, I'd

not be one to fight?

What madman's game is this to go out hunting thrones without a following or

friends?

When thrones are only won with much support or bought?

Let me speak too, and when you've heard me, judge.

You're too good at talking, and I'm too slow at hearing words so full of

poisonous intent.

That's precisely what I would dispute. Your innocence, I take it?

Precisely what I will not hear.

You're very much mistaken, sir, if you think this stubbornness is needful. And

you, sir, have made a grave mistake to think that hurting relatives can do no

harm. How have I hurt you? Did you or did you not urge me to send for that

reverend, benighted seer?

I did.

And still I think that I did right.

Tell me, how long is it since Laius... Laius what?

Disappeared.

Died.

Was mysteriously dispatched.

Old calendars, long past, would tell us that. And was this prophet in his

practice then? He was, and just as wise, just as honored. Did he at any time

then speak of me? No.

At least, never in my hearing. And you did nothing to investigate the death of

Lyos. A full inquiry and nothing learned.

Why did the all -seeing seer not tell his story then?

That I cannot answer for and shall not venture an opinion. I cannot answer

I do not know. You could answer very well, at least upon one point. What

is that if I know I shall declare it? Just this.

The prophet fixed on me the death of Lyos. precisely at your

prompting. What prompted him?

Only you can tell.

Now, I should like to ask some questions, too, and you can do the

Ask away. You will not find a murderer. Well, then.

Are you married to my sister?

I am. Why should I deny it? And reign equally with her over all the realm?

Yes. I do my best to carry out her wishes.

And of this unit, do I make an equal third?

Exactly. Which is why you make so false a friend.

No.

Try to reason it as I must reason it.

First, ask yourself, who would choose the troubles of a crown

with no repose and peace when he could have that self -same power without?

I would not covet kingship for itself when I can be a king by other means. Who

would? Who knows what wisdom is?

All my ambitions now are satisfied through you without anxiety, but once a

all hedged in by constraints.

I'm not so simple as to grasp the symbols of sovereignty and power when I

have the sweet reality without, to enjoy the fact untrammeled by the image.

Surely is pure game.

Now smiled upon by all, saluted now.

Now drawn aside by suitors to the king. My ear, their door to hope.

Why should I let this go, this ease, and reach for cares?

A mind at peace does not engender wars.

So, treason.

Never was my bent.

Nor I, a man who parties with an anarchist.

Test me.

Go to Delphi.

Ask if I have brought back lies for prophecies. And do not stop.

But if you find me plotting with a fortune teller, take me.

Kill me.

Full indicted on a double, not a single count. Not yours alone, but mine.

Oh, do not judge me on a mere report, unheard.

No justice brands the good and justifies the bad.

Drive friendship out, I say, and you drive out life itself.

One's sweetest friend.

Time will teach you well. The honest man needs time.

The sinner.

But a single day to bear his crime.

He speaks well, sir. The circumspect should care. Swift thinking never makes

sure thought. Swift thinking must step into parry where swift treachery steps

into plot.

Must I hold my peace until his perfect plans are more than match for mine?

Then what is it you want?

My banishment?

Banishment?

Yes, that.

Though I would rather see you dead.

So adamant.

So full of disbelief. Only a fool could put his trust in you. And you think you

are wise.

Wise for myself at least. Then why not for me as well? What, for a born

What if you are wrong? Wrong perhaps, but reigning still.

Yes, reigning fool.

Your caster, the queen.

My own poor thieves.

My city too. You must compose your own. Sars, Sars, you most misguided man.

Shame on your shouting at each other. How can you wrangle over private wrongs

with thieves our city in her agony?

Come back home, sir, you, and creon you into your house.

Stop turning petty grievances into public scandal.

Grievances, my sister?

Oedipus, your husband, means to do me devilish harm with choice of dooms.

Exile from my father's land or death. Yes, my wife, I caught him plotting

against my very person. May the gods curse me!

If I be guilty in the smallest part of what you charge.

In the God's name, listen, Oedipus, listen!

He's made an oath to heaven for me and for us all.

Believe a king.

Believe. Be willing to be wise. Believe.

What? You'd have me yield?

He never told you lies before.

This will be kind.

Do you know for what you plead?

We do.

Explain. Do not impeach a friend or lead him to disgrace.

His oath are nulled upon a word.

It's come to this. My banishment or death preferred to what you want for

No.

By Helios, no.

God of the primal sun, call gladless death upon me. Godless, friendless, if

be in my mind.

The dying land destroys me.

Discord heaped on sadness. Now to see you and him combine in madness.

or flown from here in exile.

Yours.

Not his, the cry that breaks me.

He, the thing that's hated.

Yes.

How you hate.

Even in your yielding.

But passion spent, remorse will foil.

Why delay to lead him out?

I stay to know.

Hot and hasty words.

Suspicion and dismay.

From both?

From both.

What words?

You own, I hope, you mealy -minded men of leniency to what a pass

appeasement's brought you.

Blunting me.

Sire, I've said it more than once, how insensate we'd be, what crass and total

fools to abdicate from you, who set this foundering ship, this suffering realm,

back on her course, and now again can take the helm.

In the God's name.

Oedipus, inform me too what in the world has worked you to this rage.

It's Creon.

He has played me false.

What's the charge? Tell me clearly.

What's the quarrel?

He makes me murderer of lives.

His own invention or on evidence?

Ah, the fox.

He sends along a mouthing seer and keeps his own lips safe and pure.

Oh, then.

All together put behind those cares and be persuaded and consoled. There is no

art of foreseeing known to men. I have my proof, yes.

Short and certain proof.

Once, long ago, there came to lie us from, let us not suppose Apollo

personally, but from his ministers.

An oracle which said that fate would make him meet his end through a son.

The son of his and mine.

Well, there was a murder, yes.

But done by marauding vagabonds, they say, where three highways meet.

And then the son, not three days old, is left by liars.

Through other hands, of course.

Upon a trackless hillside, his ankles pierced together.

So there, Apollo fails to make the son his father's murderer and fails to make

the father, liars, sick with dread, murdered by his son.

All foreseen by fate and seers, of course, and all to be forgotten.

If the God would have the future told, then let the God himself divine it.

My queen!

It's word.

my ears struck at peace.

Struck at my very soul.

What pale memory passes now?

Laius was killed.

I thought I caught the words where three highways meet.

So they said. That is how the story goes.

The accident?

Where did it happen?

At a land called Focus.

At a place where...

The road from Delphi meets the road from Dahlia. The time.

How many years ago?

A little before you came to power here, the news was made public in the town.

Oh, Zeus, what plaything will you make of me?

Why, Edith, what nightmare thought has trapped you? Do not ask!

No. Yes.

Laius.

Tell me, his age, his height, was he in the prime of life?

Tall.

The first soft bloom of silver in his hair.

In form, not far removed from yours.

Lost, yes, surely lost.

What, my king?

I'm afraid.

I'm afraid the eyeless seer has seen.

But wait, one thing more. Yes?

It frightens me, but ask.

I'll try to tell.

Did he set out in simple state or with a bodyguard as king?

Five men in all and one a herald.

A single chariot for the king.

It's all too clear.

But who brought back this report to you?

A servant.

The only man who got away.

Is he in this house? By chance.

For when he got back and saw you reigning in dead Laius's place, he

pressed my hand, to send him to the country far from sight of Thebes where

could lead a shepherd's life.

And so I sent him. Though a slave, I thought he'd more than earned this

Perhaps.

But could we have him here without delay?

Certainly. But what should make you ask?

There may be things.

My wife that I have said, left unsaid, which makes me

want him here.

He shall be here.

Tell me, Edith, may I not also know what frightens you?

Oh, you shall.

For I have passed into such territory, so fear such threatenings of fate.

I welcome you.

Truest.

And... My father was... Corinthian.

Polybus. My mother... Dorian, called...

Merope.

I was the city's foremost man.

Until... A certain incident befell.

Curious incident, though hardly worth the ferment that it put me in.

At dinner, once, a drunkard, in his cups,

cried out that I was not my father's son.

And all that day, I fretted, hardly able to contain my hurt.

But on the next, I went.

immediately to ask my mother and my father, who were shocked and angry at

slur on me.

I was relieved by their response.

And yet, this thing had hatched a scruple

in my mind so deep, it made me steal away from home

to Delphi, to the Oracle.

And there, Apollo, never hinting at what I came to hear, sent me home

again.

With ears ringing with some other things he uttered.

Prophecies of horrible, disgusting things.

How, mating with my mother, I must spawn a progeny to make

men shudder.

And then...

to be my very father's murderer.

Oh, I fled from there.

I measured out the stars to put all heaven between the land of Corinth and

a damned destiny.

And as I went, I stumbled on the very spot where this king, you say,

has met it.

As I reached this triple parting of the way, a herald and a man,

like you described, in a coat -drawn chariot, came.

The leading groom, the old man urging him, tried to force me off the

road. The groom jostled me, and I, enraged, blended him a blow.

Which, when the old man sees, waits till I'm abreast. Then, from his chariot,

cracks a double -pointed goat pulled down upon my head.

He more than paid for that.

For in a trice this hand of mine had felled him with a stick and rolled...

Killed them all.

Now if life is this unknown matter,

there's no one in the world so doomed as I.

No one born so ever cursed was God.

And who but I have done it all.

Myself. To fix damnation on myself. To clasp a dead man's wife with

filthy hands. These hands by which... I

can't go

home.

Or I will make my mother wife and father dead.

My lord.

Huh?

Wait until you hear the witness speak.

Have hope. Yes.

All my hope upon a herdsman now.

And I must wait until he comes.

But when he comes, what is it that you wish to hear?

Just this.

If his account is yours.

I'm clear.

But what was my account?

What did I say?

Why, several highwaymen cut down the king.

If he keeps to several, then I is only one. I'm not the killer, not the same.

But if he says it was a lone man, Jenny, then the verdict tilts too heavily on

me. You must believe me.

His account was that.

Exactly that.

He cannot cancel what he said.

The whole town heard, not I alone.

And even if he tried to change a word, he still can never make sure. The death

of Laius tallied with the oracle which said it had to happen through a son of

mine. Poor babe, who never killed a thing but was killed himself long

I like your argument.

And yet?

This herdsman.

Have him here.

He shall be here.

Do not forget.

But let us go indoors.

All my cares you.

All my pleasure yours.

Oh, purity of deed and sweet intent.

Enshrine me in your grace, a minister to radiant laws, heaven -born, which have

no father but Olympus, nor fading Genesis from man.

Great is God in them, and never old, whom no oblivion loves.

Pride.

Pride engenders power.

Pride.

Banqueting on vanities, mistaken and mith -timed.

Scaling pinnacles to dash afoot.

Against fate's stone.

But patriotic party may God protect. My God, my constant champion.

I shall not worship at the vent, where oracles from earth are breathed at

Delphi, nor at Abai's shrine.

And not Olympia, unless these oracles are justified.

Writ large.

For man.

Zeus, if king of kings you are, then let this trespass not go hidden from you

and your great eye undying.

Your liest prophecies are turned to lies.

They fade away.

All honor gone.

No reverence for Apollo.

I have a new design with these garlands and with incense in my hands to call at

all the shrines.

For rampant fancies in a legion raid the mind of Oedipus.

He's so far from sense he cannot gauge the present from the past and pins his

soul to every word of fear.

All my advice is worthless.

I address myself to you, Apollo.

That you may work some way to make us clean.

Can you tell me, please?

Good, sir.

Is this the palace of King Oedipus?

This is his palace, sir.

And he's within.

This lady is his wife and mother of his children.

Heaven bless her always, and bless hers.

The perfect wife, blessed perfectly with him.

And you, sir, too.

Be blessed for your remark.

But are you here to ask us news or give?

To give it, madam.

Happy news of your house and husband.

Happy news?

From where?

From Corinth.

Yes, a pleasing piece of news, or I'd think so.

Perhaps a little bittersweet.

What's bittersweet?

What's pleasure by the half?

King elect of Izmir's here.

Ready, so they hope, to mount the throne.

How so?

The old man Polybus still reigns. No more.

For death has sealed him in his grave.

What?

Is Oedipus' father dead?

Yes, dead.

It's true.

And my life is dead.

Quick, girl! Off and tell your master this!

Oedipus was terrified to kill, so fled.

And now, without the slightest touch from him, he's dead.

Just listen to this man and fill your ears how dwindled are the

grand predictions of Apollo.

Who is this? What has he come to say? A man from Corinth.

Come to see your father is no more. Old Polybus is dead.

Explain yourself, good sir.

To give you first things first, he's gone. Be quite assured, he's dead.

By treason or disease?

A little touch will tip the old to sleep. He died a natural death, then.

Poor old man.

Well, now I am done with delving into pithy and oracles which foretold that I

should kill my father.

He's dead whilst here I stand, my sword still in its scabbard.

Or did he pine for me and did I kill him so?

Well, he's dead.

And may he rest in peace with all those prophecies.

Worth nothing as I told you even then. You told me yes, but I was sick with

fear. Oh, now, and give it no more thought.

And yet there is that nightmare of my mother's bed.

How can a man fear prophecies when it's only chance that's king?

There's nothing certain.

Nothing preordained. It's best to live by chance, as best we may.

Forget the silly thought of mother marrying.

Why, many men in dreams have married their mothers, and he lives happiest who

makes the least of it. Everything you say could be so clear were it not my

mother still alive.

She is, so all your comfort cannot quieten me. I fear a woman. A woman,

Whoever could she be?

Merope, old man, who lived with Polybus.

What's in her that she could frighten you?

There's been a warning, a warning sent from heaven.

Can it be told, or must it not be heard?

No, you may be told.

Apollo once declared that I should come to couple with my mother, and with these

hands of mine, spill out the lifeblood of my father.

Is this the fear that drove you out of Corinth?

Yes, old man, not to be my father's murderer.

Why do I wait?

I can unlock the worries of a king.

Oh, if you could, I'd heap you with rewards.

Exactly what I had in mind, to bring you home and do myself some good.

No, not home.

I'll not go near a parent still.

My son, this plane you still don't see.

See?

Speak out, old man. Tell me. What?

Well... You fled from home because of this?

Yes. The fear of Apollo may be proven right.

And you'll be fouled by what your parents are?

Yes, old man.

It's that.

I'm always haunted by that dread.

Don't you understand?

You're terrified for nothing. Nothing? How, when I'm their son?

Because Polybus and you were worlds apart.

Worlds apart?

He was my father, was he not?

No more nor less than I will tell you this. No more nor less than you?

And nothing then?

He never gave you life.

No more than I. Then whatever made him call me son?

You were a gift.

He took you for my arms.

Could he love me so and I not his?

He had no children of his own to love.

But was it born or bought this gift you gave?

Discovered.

In a woody dell of Cithaeron.

On Theban hills?

What made you wander there?

On those hills I used to tend my flocks.

A wandering shepherd, then? Yes, and on that day, your saviour too, my son.

But did you find me in great misery or pain?

The ankles of your feet should tell you that.

An ancient hurt. Why remind me of it?

I loosed your feet, both riveted together.

My birthmark and my brand from infancy.

Which gave you also your unhappy name.

My mother's doing, or my father's.

For the God's sake, say.

I do not know.

The man who gave you me could tell you that.

What? Received at second hand, not found by you?

Not found by me, but handed over by another shepherd.

What shepherd?

Would you know him still?

He was known as one of Laius' men.

You mean the king who reigned here long ago?

Exactly so. He was a herdsman of that very king.

Well, could I see him? Is he still alive?

Your own people here could tell you best.

Does any man here present know this herdsman he is talking of? Either seen

in the fields or hereabouts?

I think he means that herdsman, sire, you asked to see before.

Jocasta here is surest judge of that.

Do you know this man we sent for once before?

Is he the one he means?

Who?

What matters who he means? Why, ask.

It's not worth knowing now.

Forget it all. Forget it all. I can't. I can't stop now.

For the God's sake, don't go on for your own knife's sake. And I've been

tortured long enough.

It won't be you that is disgraced.

Even if I'm proved a feist to send a slave.

Get me persuaded. Please do not proceed.

Persuaded from the truth, I must go on.

Though I am pleading for your happiness.

The secrets of my birth.

The clues all in my hands.

May the gods help you, Oedipus, and hide from you who you are.

Will someone go and fetch this herdsman here?

We leave the lady to her high descent.

Goodbye, my poor, deluded, lost and damned.

There's nothing else that I can call you now.

Oedipus, the queen has left in muted grief.

A silence comes before a storm, then.

Let it burst!

Though I am proven born of nothing, let me find that nothing out, and let the

queen, with all her woman's pride, bridle at my paltry origin.

Oh, I'm a child of chance, a child of luck!

If I may play the prophet too, I'd say, although I've never met the man,

that there's the herdsman we've been searching for.

Yes. We know him well.

Laius never had a better servant.

First question then to you, Corinthian.

Is he the man you mean?

The very man.

Come here, sir.

Look into my eyes.

Tell me straight.

Were you one of Laius' men?

Yes, sir.

Born and bred, sir, and never bought.

You were employed as?

Chiefly as a shepherd, sir.

A shepherd.

Where?

What was your terrain?

Just out on, or mainly places near.

Good.

Then you've run across this man before.

Did you never meet him?

Not to remember, sir. I couldn't rightly say. Let me jog his memory.

I'm sure you won't forget the slopes of Kithron, where for three half years we

were neighbours.

He and I, he with two herds, I with one, from spring until the autumn.

Six long months.

And when at last the winter came, we both drove off our flocks, I to my

sheepcots, he back to Lyosfold.

Am I right, or am I wrong?

Aye, you're right, but it was long ago.

Now tell me this.

Can you recall a baby boy you gave me once?

To ring up as my own?

What are you getting at? What are these questions for?

Take a look, my friend.

He's standing there, your baby boy.

Damn you, man. Can you not be still?

Watch your words, sir. It's you that ought to be rebuked, not he. Great

please. You refuse to answer this man's question about the boy.

But, sir, this man's inventing why he doesn't know a thing.

Sir!

Don't hurt a poor old man.

God help me, sir. What is it you must know?

The child that he's been speaking of. Did you give it him or not?

I did.

I did.

I wish I'd died that day.

You'll die today unless you speak the truth.

Much sooner, sir, if I speak the truth.

This man is clearly playing for time.

No, not me, sir. I said already I gave it him.

Where did you get it from?

Your home or someone else's? Oh, not mine, sir.

I got it from another.

From someone here in Thebes? Of what house?

For the love of the God, sir, please.

Don't ask me anymore.

If I have to ask again, you'll die.

Then from Laius's house.

That's where it's from.

Was it born a slave or someone of his line?

Must I bring myself to say it?

They say it was his own, but the queen herself could

probably explain.

She... She gave it to you.

Just that, my lord.

With what intention?

To do away with it.

Child's own mother.

There'd been a holy warning.

What kind of warning?

That he would kill his parents.

Heaven's name.

What made you pass him on to that old man?

Only pity, sir. I thought he'd take him home and far away.

Never this.

Oh, never kept for infamy.

For if you are the one he says you are, make no mistake, you

are a doom -born man.

is vanity and nothingness.

Is there one? One who more than tastes of, thinks of happiness,

which in the thinking vanishes.

Yours the text, yours the spell.

I see it in you, Oedipus, man's pattern of unblessedness. You

who aim so high.

Who hit life's topmost prize. Success.

A sovereign one.

Supremely blessed.

A king.

And now what tale, what turn of fate, and what such friend was ever found of

sorrow? The majesty, the fame of Oedipus. Cut down! And father, son,

sharing ample anchorage.

Oh, father's field, all double -tilled. How could you bear your fruit so

long and not break out in horror?

Yes,

he struck his eyes.

Not once, but many times.

And at each stroke, his eyeballs gushed in bloody dew.

No, not dew.

A spurt of black and sanguine rain like hail beat down.

A coupled punishment upon a coupled sin.

Husband and wife, one flesh in their disaster.

Their happiness of long ago.

True happiness.

Now turn to tear this day.

To ruin, death and shame.

No evil absent by whatever cursed name.

Unhappy man.

Is he still in pain?

He shouts for the barriers to be unbarred.

And he displayed to all of Thebes his father's murderer.

His mother's... No.

A word too foul to say.

As if he means to cart himself adrift.

Not rot at home, the curser and the cursed.

Look.

His strength is gone.

He needs a helping hand.

his wound and weakness more than he can bear.

Such a sight turns all loathing into tears.

old friend and by my side.

Your voice lights up my darkness. How could you hate your sight, sir?

What demon so possessed you?

It was Apollo, friend.

The spirit of Apollo.

He made this past.

Of evil.

Oh, yes, I pierced my eyes. My useless eyes.

Why not?

When all that's sweet had parted from my vision.

These things are so.

Are as you say.

Friends.

Who are my friends?

Hurry me from here.

Hurry off, the monster, that deepest damned and God -detested man.

A man despair most fitly crowns. We wish that we had never known you. Yes,

wrath, that man's unlocking my feet from biting fetters, preserving me from

murder to no profit.

I should be free, free from parasite, not pointed out as wedded to the

one who weaned me. No.

I'm God abandoned.

A son of sin and sorrows. All incest sealed with the wound that bore me.

How can we say that your design was good?

To live in blindness?

Better live no longer.

It was a good design.

Don't tell me otherwise.

My best design...

What kind of eyes should I have to gaze upon my father's face in Hades' realms

or my unhappy mother's?

Pity you, Citheron, that you gave me harbor, took me in and did not kill me

straight, that you did not hush my birth from man.

Pity you, Polybus and Corinth,

age -old home I called my father's.

And... You, cruel, dull, concealed, where three

ways meet.

I handed you my blood to drink, the chalice of my father's.

Oh, what memories can you have of my manners then, or what I did when after

I came here?

Yes, you batch of weddings!

breeding seedlings from their very seed.

By all the gods then.

Hide me somewhere far and

soon or kill me

drown me in the seas.

Away forever from your vision.

Come.

Don't shrink from touch.

My load is mine.

Don't fear.

Wait.

Here Creon comes to hear your woes and deal with your designs.

He takes your place as sole custodian of the state.

What words are left for me to him?

It is not to scoff or scorn for past behavior, Oedipus, that I have come.

You here.

Show some reverence for the dignity of man.

And blush at least before Apollo's royal son to so display this picture of

decay. Quickly take him home.

A family's eyes, a family's ears alone should know a family's miseries.

For the God's own love, you best of men who visit me the worst with clemency

beyond my dreams.

Grant me one request. I ask it for your sake, not mine.

What favor could you want of me?

Expel me!

Quickly!

Or purge me far from Thebes to where no human voice is heard.

First, I wish to know Apollo's will.

Apollo's will is open. All his oracle is clear.

Kill the impious one.

The parasite!

Kill me!

So were the words.

But in these straits, it's best to ask again what should be done.

What? Is there more to learn?

The God will say.

And you will now believe.

Then, Creon, one thing more.

Her poor remain.

Still in the house.

Bury them in what tomb you wish.

You will not fill your own with proper rights.

But as for me... My father's city must

never harbor me alive.

So let me...

Live among the hills.

Yes.

Kithairon.

Called my mountain, which my mother and my father gave me while they lived,

to be my tomb.

And there I'll stay obedient to the death they planned.

Now, for my children.

First of all, my sons.

These you need not care for, Creon.

They are men.

They will always find a way.

But my little girls.

A pair of orphans, both, whose place at table never missed being set.

with mine, who ate with me, shared everything I had, are these.

Look after for me.

Guard them.

If I

could only

touch them with my hands.

Good crayon.

One last time.

Just touch them.

Please.

And they would then be mine again as when I had mine.

Has crayon fitted me and set me all my heart's desire?

Could that be true?

you criminal.

Children.

Antigone, it's me, Newell.

Only weep and ponder on the bitter time to come.

Your father killed this father.

Tilled the womb again from which he sprang.

Who will want to marry you?

Oh, there's none.

Not one.

Creon.

Listen. Their natural parents are no more. They have no other father left but

you.

You must not see your blood go down so beggarly.

Or watch them roaming husbandless.

You must not leave them to a fate like mine.

Open your heart.

They're young.

Be left of everything unless you furnish it.

Come.

I promise.

Noble Prince?

Darling. Children.

If you could only understand.

I tell you oh so many things.

Let this suffice.

A simple prayer.

Abide in modesty.

So you may live a happy life.

Your father did not have.

Go inside.

You know my needs.

I'll know them when you tell me.

Then banish me.

You ask what only the gods can give.

The gods?

I am their enemy.

They'll answer all the swifter, then.

Ah. Do you mean it so?

What I do not mean, I do not say.

Then lead me.

Off.

Come.

Let your children go.

You are no longer master.

Now.