ENGLISH 2201 OEDIPUS THE KING QUOTE TEST

I grieve for you, my children. Believe me, I know

All that you desire of me, all that you suffer;

And while you suffer, none suffers more than I.

You have your several griefs, each for himself;

But my heart bears the weight of my own, and yours

And all my people’s sorrows. I am not asleep. (27)

I grieve for you, my children. Believe me, I know

All that you desire of me, all that you suffer;

And while you suffer, none suffers more than I.

You have your several griefs, each for himself;

But my heart bears the weight of my own, and yours

And all my people’s sorrows. I am not asleep. (27)

Speaker: Oedipus

Audience: Priest / beggars

Significance: tragic hero (virtuous but not just)

There is an unclean thing,

Born and nursed on our soil, polluting our soil,

Which must be driven away, not kept to destroy us. (28)

Speaker: creon

Audience: Oedipus and priest / beggars

Significance: dramatic irony (directly after they say killer of laius needs to be found, Oedipus looking for himself)

You will find me as willing an ally as you could wish

In the cause of God and our country.

The killer of Laius,

Whoever he was, might think to turn his hand

Against me; thus, serving Laius, I serve myself. (29)

Speaker: oedipus

Audience: Creon / beggars

Significance: tragic hero (virtuous) / dramatic irony

**I tell you I do believe you had a hand

In plotting, and all but doing, this very act.

If you had eyes to see with, I would have said

Your hand, and yours alone, had done it all. (34)

Speaker: oedipus

Audience: teiresias

Significance: tragic hero (flaw) / external conflict

What was your vaunted seercraft ever worth?

And where were you, when the Dog-faced Witch was here?

Had you any word of deliverance then for our people?

There was a riddle too deep for common wits;

A seer should have answered it, but answer came there none

From you; bird-lore and god-craft all were silent. Until I came -

I, ignorant Oedipus, came -

And stopped the riddler’s mouth, guessing the truth

By mother-wit, not bird-lore. (36-37)

Speaker: oedipus

Audience: teiresias

Significance: tragic hero (pride making him feel better than teiresias) / external conflict

A swift and two-edged sword,

You mother’s and your father’s curse, shall sweep you

Out of this land. Those now clear-seeing eyes

Shall then be darkened, then no place be deaf,

No corner of Cithaeron echoless,

To your loud crying, when you learn the truth

Of that sweet marriage-song that hailed you home

To the fair-seeming haven of your hopes –

With more, more misery than you can guess,

To show you what you are, and who they are

That call you father. (37)

Speaker: teiresias

Audience: oedipus

Significance: foreshadowing / theme

The killer of Laius – that man is here;

Passing for an alien, a sojourner here among us;

But, as presently shall appear, a Theban born,

To his cost. He that came seeing, blind shall he go;

Rich now, then a beggar; stick-in-hand, groping his way/To a

land of exile; brother, as it shall be shown,

And father at once, to the children he cherishes; son,

And husband, to the woman who bore him; father-killer,/And

father-supplanter./Go in, and think on this./When you can

prove me wrong, then call me blind. (38)

Speaker: teiresias

Audience: oedipus

Significance: foreshadowing / external conflict

Citizens! They tell me that King Oedipus

Has laid a slanderous accusation on me.

I will not bear it! If he thinks that I

Have done him any harm, by word or act,

In this calamitous hour, I will not live -

Life is too long a time - to hear such scandal!

Nay, more than scandal, a grievous imputation,

If you, my friends, my country, call me traitor. (40)

Speaker: creon

Audience: chorus

Significance: internal conflict / external conflict (rumors and creon being oedipus subject)

Well, sir? What brings you here?

Have you the face to stand before my door,

Proved plotter against my life, thief of my crown?

Do you take me for a coward, or a fool?

Did you suppose I wanted eye to see

The plot preparing, wits to counter it?

And what a foolish plot! You, without backing

Of friends or puRse, to go in quest of kingship!

Kingdoms are won by men and moneybags. (40)

Speaker: oedipus

Audience: creon

Significance: tragic hero (flaw - pride/stubborn) / external conflict

**Then absolve yourself at once. For I can tell you,

No man possesses the secret of divination.

And I have proof. An oracle was given to Laius –

From Phoebus, no; but his ministers –

That he should die by the hands of his own child,

His child and mine. What came of it? Laius,

It is common knowledge, was killed by outland robbers/At a

place where three roads meet. (45)

Speaker: Jocasta

Audience: Oedipus

Significance: Dramatic irony / situational irony

Is this my sin? Am I not utterly foul?

Banished from here, and in my banishment

Debarred from home and from my fatherland,

Which I must shun forever, lest I live

To make my mother my wife, and kill my father …

My father … Polybus to whom I owe my life. (48)

Speaker: Oedipus

Audience: Jocasta

Significance: Internal conflict / dramatic irony

He cannot go back on it now – the whole town heard it.

Not only I. And even if he changes his story

In some small point, he cannot in any event

Pretend that Laius died as was foretold.

For Loxias said a child of mine should kill him.

It was not to be; poor child, it was he that died.

A fig for divination! (49)

Speaker: Jocasta

Audience: Oedipus

Significance: dramatic irony

Who walks his own high-handed way, disdaining

True righteousness and holy ornament;

Who falsely wins, all sacred things profaning;

Shall escape his doomed pride’s punishment? (50)

Speaker: Chorus

Audience: reader

Significance: Tragic hero (flaw) / theme

Where are you now, divine prognostications!

The man whom Oedipus has avoided all these years,

Lest he should kill him – dead! By a natural death,

And by no act of his! (51)

Speaker: Jocasta

Audience: audience/reader

Significance: Dramatic irony

I am the child of Fortune,

The giver of good, and I shall not be shamed.

She is my mother; my sisters are the Seasons;

My rising and falling march with theirs.

Born thus, I ask to be no other man

Than that I am, and will know who I am. (55)

Speaker: Oedipus

Audience: Chorus

Significance: dramatic irony / theme

Alas! All out! All known, no more concealment!

O Light! May I never look on you again,

Revealed as I am, sinful in my begetting,

Sinful in marriage, sinful in shedding of blood! (58)

Speaker: Oedipus

Audience: Sheppard 1

Significance: Tragic hero (destruction) / internal conflict (shame)

O you most honourable lords of the city of Thebes,

Weep for the things you shall hear, the things you must see,

If you are true sons and loyal to the house of Labdacus. Not all

the waters of Ister, the waters of Phasis,

Can wash this dwelling clean of the foulness within,

Clean of the deliberate acts that soon shall be known,

Of all horrible acts, most horrible, wilfully chosen. (59)

Speaker: attendant

Audience: chorus

Significance: tragic hero (death and destruction) / foreshadowing

He pierced his eyeballs time and time again,

Till bloody tears ran down his beard – not drops

But in full spate a whole cascade descending

In drenching cataracts of scarlet rain. (61)

Speaker: Attendant

Audience: Chorus

Significance: tragic hero (downfall) / visual imagery

Ah! Horror beyond all bearing!

Foulest disfigurement

That ever I saw! O cruel,

Insensate agony!

What demon of destiny

With swift assault outstriding

Has ridden you down? (61-62)

Speaker: chorus

Audience: Oedipus

Significance: theme / tragic hero (downfall)

I will not believe that this was not the best

That could have been done. Teach me no other lesson.

How could I meet my father beyond the grave

With seeing eyes; or my unhappy mother,

Against whom I have committed such heinous sin

As no mere death could pay for? Could I still love

To look at my children, begotten as they were begotten? (63-

64)

Speaker: Oedipus

Audience: chorus

Significance: tragic hero (knowledge through suffering/downfall) / internal conflict

Oedipus, I am not here to scott at your fall,

Nor yet to reproach you for your past misdeeds.

My friends, remember your respect for the Lord of Life,

The Sun above us - if not for the children of men.

The unclean must not remain in the eye of day;

Nor earth not air nor water may receive it.

Take him within; piety at least demands

That none but kinsmen should hear and see such suffering.

(65)

Speaker: creon

Audience: oedipus

Significance: Tragic hero (downfall) / external conflict

Where are you, children?

Come, feel your brother’s hands. It was their work

That darkened these clear eyes - your father’s eyes

As once you knew them, though he never saw

Nor knew what he did when he became your father.

They cannot see you; but they weep with you.

I think of your sorrowful life in the days to come,

When you must fae the world: the holy days,

High days and days of state, joyless for you,

Returning sadly home while others play. (66)

Speaker: oedipus

Audience: creon and daughters

Significance: internal conflict / tragic hero (downfall / knowledge through suffering)

As for me,

No longer let my living presence curse

This fatherland of mine, but let me go

And live upon the mountains – and die there.

Cithaeron! Name for ever linked with mine –

On Mount Cithaeron, which my parents chose

To be my deathbed, I will go and die

Obedient to their desires. (66)Sons and daughters of Thebes, behold; this was Oedipus,

Greatest of men; he held the key to the deepest mysteries;

Was envied by all his fellow-men for his great prosperity;

Behold, what a full tide of misfortune swept over his head.

Then learn that mortal man must always look to his ending,

And none can be called happy until that day when he carries

His happiness down to the grave in peace. (68)

Speaker: oedipus

Audience: creon

Significance: tragic hero (downfall / knowledge through suffering) / situational irony

Sons and daughters of Thebes, behold; this was Oedipus,

Greatest of men; he held the key to the deepest mysteries;

Was envied by all his fellow-men for his great prosperity;

Behold, what a full tide of misfortune swept over his head.

Then learn that mortal man must always look to his ending,

And none can be called happy until that day when he carries

His happiness down to the grave in peace. (68)

Speaker: chorus (ode)

Audience: reader

Significance: Tragic hero (all characteristics)