Oedipus the King (11 page)

Read Oedipus the King Online

Authors: Sophocles,Evangelinus Apostolides Sophocles

Tags: #Drama, #Ancient & Classical, #Literary Collections, #Poetry, #test

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Page 38
OEDIPUS Did this seer practice his craft here, then?
KREON With the same skill and respect he has now.
OEDIPUS Back then, did he ever mention my name?
680 KREON Not in my hearing.
OEDIPUS You did investigate the murder, though?
KREON Of course we did. We found out nothing.
OEDIPUS Why didn't your expert seer accuse me then?
KREON I don't know. When I've no facts, I don't speak.
OEDIPUS There's something you know well enough to explain.
KREON What's that. I'm holding nothing back.
OEDIPUS Just this. If that seer hadn't conspired with you,
he would never have called me Laius' killer.
KREON If he said that,
you heard him
, I didn't.
690 I think I've a right now to some answers from you.
OEDIPUS Question me.
I
have no blood on my hands.
KREON Did you marry my sister?
OEDIPUS Do you expect me to deny that?
KREON You both have equal power in this country?
OEDIPUS I give her all she asks.
KREON Do I share power with you both as an equal?
OEDIPUS You shared our power and betrayed us with it.
KREON You're wrong. Think it through rationally, as I have.
Who would prefer a king's anxious life
700 to one that let him sleep at night
if his share of power still equaled a king's?
Nothing in my nature lusts for sheer power.
It's enough for me to enjoy a king's rights,
enough for any man who values restraint.
All I want, you give meand it comes with no fear.
To be king would rob my life of its ease.
How could my share of power be more pleasant
than this painless pre-eminence, this ready
influence I have? I'm not yet so misguided
710 that I go looking for honors that are burdens.
But as things stand, I'm greeted and wished well

 

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Page 39
on all sides. Those who want something from you
come to me, their best hope of gaining it.
Should I quit this good life for a worse one?
Treason has no chance to corrupt
a healthy mind like my own:
I have no love for such exploits.
Nor would I join someone who did
.
Test me. Go to Delphi yourself. Find out
720 whether I brought back the oracle's exact words.
Then if you find I plotted with that omen-reader,
seize me and kill menot on your authority
alone, but on mine too, for I'd vote my own death.
But don't convict me because of a wild thought
you can't prove, which only you believe.
And there's no justice in your reckless confusion
of evil men with good ones, traitors with friends.
To reject a true friend is like suicide
it costs us a life loved as we love our own.
730 Time will instruct you in these truths, for time
alone is the sure test of a just man,
but you can know a bad man in one day.
LEADER That's sound advice, King,
for someone anxious not to fall.
Too quick a mind can stumble.
OEDIPUS When a conspirator moves
abruptly and in secret against me,
I must out-plot him and strike first.
If I pause and do nothing
740 he'll win his purpose
while I'm losing mine.
KREON What is your purpose? My banishment?
OEDIPUS No. It's your death I want.
KREON If you will begin by defining ''envy" . . .
OEDIPUS You talk as though you refuse to believe me.
KREON How can I if you won't use reason?
OEDIPUS I reason in my own interest.
KREON You ought to reason in mine as well.
OEDIPUS In a traitor's interest?
750 KREON What if you're wrong?

 

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Page 40
OEDIPUS I must still rule.
KREON Not if it's selfish rule.
OEDIPUS Did you hear him, Thebes!
KREON Thebes isn't just
your
city. It's mine as well!
LEADER My Lords, stop this. Here's Jocasta
leaving the palaceat the right time
to calm you both. She'll see that this feud ends.
(Enter Jocasta from the palace.)
JOCASTA Wretched men. Why are you out here
recklessly yelling at each other?
760 Aren't you ashamed? With Thebes sick and dying
you two fight out some personal grievance?
You go inside, Oedipus. Kreon, go home.
Don't make us all miserable over nothing.
KREON Sister, it's worse than that. Oedipus your husband
threatens either to drive me
from my own country, or have me killed.
OEDIPUS That's right. I've caught him plotting against my life.
And his technique is lying prophecy.
KREON I ask the gods to sicken and destroy me
770 if I did any of the things you charge me with.
JOCASTA Believe what he says, Oedipus.
Accept that oath he just made to the gods.
Do it for my sake too, and for these men.
LEADER Give in to him, Lord, we beg you.
Do what your mind and instinct tell you.
OEDIPUS What do you want me to do?
LEADER Believe him. This man was never a fool,
now he's given himself the force of a great oath.
OEDIPUS Do you realize what you're asking?
780 LEADER I do.
OEDIPUS Then say it to me outright.
LEADER Groundless rumor shouldn't be used by you
to dishonor a friend who swears his innocence.
OEDIPUS Is it clear to you all
that you ask my exile or my death?

 

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LEADER No! We ask neither. By the god
outshining all others, the Sun
may I die the worst of deaths, die it
godless and friendless, if I want those things.
790 This dying land grinds pain into my soul
grinds it the more if the bitterness
you two stir up adds to our misery.
OEDIPUS Then let him go, though it means my death,
or my exile from here in disgrace.
What moves my pity are your words,
not his. My hate goes with him.
KREON You are as bitter when you yield
as you are savage in your rage.
But natures like your own
800 punish themselves the most
which is the way it should be.
OEDIPUS Leave me alone. Go.
KREON I'll go. You can see nothing now.
But these men see that I'm right.
(Kreon goes off.)
LEADER Lady, what keeps you from taking your man in?
JOCASTA I will, when someone tells me what happened here.
LEADER Loose talk made one man's suspicion flare up,
which stung the other's sense of justice.
JOCASTA Both sides were at fault?
810 LEADER Both sides.
JOCASTA What was at issue?
LEADER Don't ask that. Our land needs no more trouble.
No more trouble! Stop it now where it stands.
OEDIPUS I know you mean well when you try to calm me,
but do you realize what it does to me?
LEADER King, I have said this more than once.
I would be mad, or have lost my good sense,
if I lost faith in you: you
who wrenched our loved country
820 back on course when you found her
wandering crazed with suffering.

 

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Steer us straight, againnow
with all your inspired luck.
JOCASTA In god's name, King, tell me why
you've hardened your mind in this rage.
LEADER I'll tell you, for it's you I respect, not the men.
Kreon caused my rage by his plots against me.
JOCASTA Go on. Explain what provoked the quarrel.
OEDIPUS He says I murdered Laius.
830 JOCASTA Does he know this himself? Or did someone tell him?
OEDIPUS Neither. He sent that vicious seer to make the charge
so he could keep his own mouth innocent.
JOCASTA Then you can clear yourself of all his charges.
Listen to me, for I can make you believe
that no man, ever, has mastered prophecy.
This one incident will prove it.
A long time back, an oracle reached Laius
I don't say that Apollo himself sent it,
but the priests who interpret him did
840 which said that when Laius came to die
his killer would be a son born to him and me.
Yet, as we heard the story, foreign bandits
murdered Laius at a place where three roads meet.
(Oedipus reacts with sudden intensity to her words.)
But that son of ours was less than three days old
when Laius pierced and yoked its ankle joints,
and had it left, by someone else's hands,
on a mountain far from any roads. Apollo failed!
That time Apollo failed to make Laius die
the way he fearedat the hands of his own son.
850 Does that show you how much sense
prophetic voices make of our lives?
You can forget them. When god wants
something to happen, he makes it happen,
then he shows it to usall with ease.
OEDIPUS Just now, as I listened to you, Lady, my heart raced,
something in my memory woke up terrified.
JOCASTA What chilling thought turned you toward me like that?
OEDIPUS I thought you said that Laius
was struck down where three roads meet.

 

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