| My aim has been to make a translation of Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus that is both accurate and playable. Total literal accuracy is probably beyond reach, given our imperfect and embattled knowledge of what Sophocles' Greek actually means at many points. Nor is it desirable, given the odd and distracting locutions literal translation of Greek will frequently impose on English. What is desirable is that a translation preserve as much of Sophocles' meaning, both primary and ramifying, as possible, in language clear enough to have dramatic effect. This I have tried to do. Some scholars have approached literal accuracy, most notably Thomas Gould in his translation and absorbing commentary on the play.1 I have translated with the exacting example of Gould and other scholars in my mind, but with the needs of actors and audience for strong speech rhythms in my ears. |
| A recent and very healthy interest of professional Hellenists has been to use their scholarly and critical understanding of Greek drama as a guide to performance.2 The absence of stage directions in the ancient manuscripts has made such projects both intriguing and necessary. My own practice has been to limit stage directions, mostly using them to suggest an appropriate entrance or exit line, or to propose an action that seems textually prompted. In this introduction, however, I will comment more freely about staging the play. Any play, and even more an ancient Greek play, that comes to us lacking not only stage directions, but its original musical score and choreography, asks for the fulfillment only a stage production can give. An ancient Greek drama is truly an unperformed richness until it is mated with action and music. (Modern productions in which the choral odes are chanted and the chorus rooted are rarely inspiring. The odes make their best dramatic sense when their words are set to music and sung, and the thought in the words expressed in the dance.) |
| Too often Oedipus The King in particular is treated less as a score to be sung than as one to be settled, a bitter arena in which the moral and philosophical forces of the cosmos contend, and where we imagine our own contribution might carry the day. Because so much of our cultural tradition radiates from it, and because the nerves it touches are so sensitive, and the issues so large, Oedipus The King provokes passionate debate. Is Oedipus innocent or guilty? What does the play imply about the nature of divinity? Of the |
 | | | | 1Sophocles, Oedipus The King, trans. with commentary by Thomas Gould (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1970). |
| | | 2The leading contemporary analyst of stage action in ancient Greek drama is Oliver Taplin, Greek Tragedy in Action (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978). |
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