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Updated: June 15, 2025
He questions Jocasta eagerly and rapidly the place where the murder happened, the time in which it occurred, the age and personal appearance of Laius and when he learns all, his previous arrogant conviction of innocence deserts him; and as he utters a horrid exclamation, Jocasta fixes her eyes upon him, and "shudders as she gazes."
There also Ulysses saw Jocasta, the unfortunate mother and wife of Oedipus; who, ignorant of kin, wedded with her son, and when she had discovered the unnatural alliance, for shame and grief hanged herself. He continued to drag a wretched life above the earth, haunted by the dreadful Furies.
And, for manner and tone, compare the speeches of Pheres in the Alcestis, and Jocasta in the Phoenissae, with those of Claudio in Measure for Measure, and Ulysses in Troilus and Cressida. The Greek dramatists were somewhat fond of a trick of words in which there is a reduplication of sense as well as of assonance, as in the Electra: So Shakespeare: "Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled";
The sphinx then threw herself down to the earth and perished; whereupon the Thebans, in their joy, chose OEdipus as king, and he married the widowed queen Jocasta, by whom he had two sons and two daughters.
Jocasta hears stunned and speechless till Oedipus, yet unconscious of the horrors still to come, turns to demand of her if she knew the herdsman who had found the child. Then she gasps wildly out "Whom speaks he of? Be silent heed it not Blot it out from thy memory! it is evil! Oedipus. It cannot be the clew is here; and I Will trace it through that labyrinth my birth. Jocasta.
Line by line the truth is dragged from him; the abandoned child came from another from a creature of Laius was said to be his son was given him by Jocasta to be destroyed because of an oracle why then passed over to the Corinthian messenger? "through pity, and he saved the child alive, for a mighty misery. If thou art that child, know that thou art born a hapless man".
As a reward Oedipus received the great kingdom of Thebes and the hand of the widowed queen Jocasta in marriage. Four children were born to them two sons, Eteocles and Polynices, and two daughters, Antigone and Ismené. Now the gods had decreed that Oedipus should murder his own father and marry his own mother, and by a curious chance this was precisely what he had done.
Jocasta tells how after the discovery of his identity Oedipus blinded himself but was shut up by his two sons whom he cursed for their impiety. Eteocles then usurped the rule while Polyneices called an Argive host to attack Thebes. A Choral description of this army is succeeded by an unexpected entry into the city of Polyneices who meets his mother and tells her of his life in exile.
While the princes contend, the queen, Jocasta, enters. She chides their quarrel, learns from Oedipus that Tiresias had accused him of the murder of the deceased king, and, to convince him of the falseness of prophetic lore, reveals to him, that long since it was predicted that Laius should be murdered by his son joint offspring of Jocasta and himself.
Instead of shunning her, as he had rejoiced in doing after the Jocasta scene, ere she had wounded him, he had a curious desire to compare her with the phantom that had dispossessed her in his fancy. Unconsciously when he saw her, he transferred the shame that devoured him, from him to her, and gazed coldly at the face that could twist to that despicable contortion.
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