Abstract
The edited volume Oedipus at Colonus and King Lear: Classical and Early Modern Intersections, published in the Skenè Studies series, constitutes a valuable interdisciplinary project, bringing together classical and early modern scholars to explore the intersections between two canonical works, Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus (401 BC) and Shakespeare’s King Lear (1606). Oedipus at Colonus, one of Sophocles’ three Theban plays, covers the events from the final stage of Oedipus’ life, from exile to death at Colonus, outside Athens, where his body, buried in the sacred grove of the Eumenides, will provide protection for Athens against Thebes. The figure of Oedipus as an old blind man in exile from the court where he ruled as king, accompanied by his daughter Antigone, whose tragic fate is traced in the earlier play Antigone (442 BC), stands as a key analogue for Shakespeare’s later figure of Lear. The volume examines the various connections and parallels between these plays that, despite being written in very different cultural contexts and theatrical traditions, appear to be in dialogue.
The volume is divided into four parts: Being Classical, Oedipus, Oedipus and Lear and Revisiting Oedipus and Lear. Editor Silvia Bigliazzi (University of Verona), provides a comprehensive overview in the introduction, outlining the Oedipus narrative and its themes, current knowledge on Shakespeare’s sources for King Lear and on the circulation of Greek and Latin texts in early modern England. Drawing from the work of John Kerrigan among others, Bigliazzi argues for the need to reassess the position of ‘Sophocles as a possible catalyst’ among Shakespeare’s sources for Lear, and for the various parallels between the two plays (p. 17). The lens of this investigation is not simply one way, on the potential influence of the earlier play on the latter. In line with contemporary theories of adaptation, appropriation and intertextuality, the intersections between the two works prompt consideration of how Lear can have a ‘backwards influence’ on how we ‘are led to read Sophocles through Shakespeare’ (p. 18).
Part 1, Being Classical, comprises two chapters: Stephen Orgel’s ‘How to Be Classical’ and Carlo Maria Bajetta’s ‘Elizabeth I and Sir Walter Ralegh’s Classics: The Case of Sophocles’. Orgel’s chapter reminds us that the concept of the classical is historicised and that early modern versions can differ markedly from ours; ‘the meaningful re-creation of the past requires the semiotics of the present’ (p. 58). His wide-ranging considerations include issues of translation, the reception of Ovid’s mythological tales of transformation, architecture and costumes on stage. Bajetta approaches the question of the circulation of Sophocles in early modern England through the examples of Queen Elizabeth I and Sir Walter Ralegh, considering their available reading materials, through their personal collections and access to larger collections. While copies of Sophocles’ works in Greek or in Latin translation were rare, more available were various compendia and Seneca’s reworkings (p. 78).
Part 2 focuses on Oedipus and comprises five chapters. Laura Slatkin’s ‘Revisiting Oedipus at Colonus’ explores the play’s revisiting and revising of the past through Oedipus’ process of juridical inquiry, arguing that he is constructed not as a challenge to but as central to the political process. She points to his role as a ‘self-reviser, one who has been through cognitive, emotional, and ultimately ethical arcs’, reinterpreting the meaning of past traumas (p. 93). Slatkin emphasises Oedipus as both a pharmakos, a figure of pollution who transforms to a blessing (p. 95), and a liminal figure, a metoikos, who, like Lear, is neither a xenos, outsider, or insider, thus belonging nowhere (p. 96). Consideration of the multi-faceted nature of Oedipus is continued in Gherardo Ugolini’s chapter ‘A Wise and Irascible Hero: Oedipus from Thebes to Colonus’, in which he foregrounds the seemingly contradictory aspects of Oedipus; as a blind figure he is linked with wisdom, yet his uncontrolled outbursts point to his flawed, human nature. He seems a figure both human and divine. Although the chapter is focused on Oedipus, its insights invite parallels with Lear; for example, that Oedipus once blind ‘sees and understands better than before’ (p. 110) resonates with Lear, whose fall is a catalyst for insight, and Gloucester, whose literal blindness functions as a double of Lear’s metaphorical blindness.
Guido Avezzù’s contribution, ‘Some Notes on Oedipus and Time’, continues the exploration of Oedipus’ liminal position, exploring its implications for the concept of time and the paradoxes of Oedipus, who seems only to become something of value once he is reduced to nothing. The multiple layers of temporality in the play imply a distinction between human time and ‘a time transcending human time, from which one comes…and to which one then returns’ (p. 142). Francesco Lupi’s ‘Liminality, (In)accessibility, and Negative Characterization in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus’ approaches the aspect of Oedipus’ liminality through focusing on connections between the figure and place, the sacred grove at Colonus. Lupi points to the parallel constructions of the fallen ruler and the topography of his burial site; the sacred grove is liminal both in terms of its location and in temporal terms (p. 150) and ‘by stepping inside the grove, Oedipus moves beyond the human boundaries on his way to the final dissolution’ (p. 160). The final chapter in this section, Anton Bierl’s ‘Oedipus at Colonus as a Reflection of the Oresteia: The Abomination from Thebes as an Athenian Hero in the Making’, considers the play’s relation to Aeschylus’ The Eumenides (458 BC), part of the Oresteia trilogy, and in relation to the cultic reality and ritual concept of the chthonic heroes and gods, also taking into account Euripides’ Bacchae (405 BC). Bierl thus highlights the complex intertextuality of the play in alluding to other plays and inviting reflections in relation to myth and ritual, as well as its ‘metatragic’ dimensions through Oedipus’ knowledge (pp. 170, 173).
Part 3, Oedipus and Lear, presents six chapters that highlight dialogues between the plays. Robert S. Miola’s ‘Lost and Found in Translation: Early Modern Receptions of Oedipus at Colonus’ provides a valuable survey of the early modern reception contexts of the play, encompassing decontextualised fragmentation into sententiae and proverbs, Christian interpretations of Greek tragedy, and Milton’s reimagining with Samson Agonistes (1671). Miola points to the way in which readers adapted the play’s use to serve contemporary political and moral ends. Sheila Murnaghan’s ‘“More sinned against than sinning”: Acting and Suffering in Oedipus at Colonus and King Lear’ illuminates parallels and contrasts between the two plays, considering aspects such as suffering, agency and claims for sympathy. As she points out, Oedipus and Lear are ‘two old men in need of shelter, displaced by children who misjudge their worth’ and ‘both seek to justify themselves in strikingly similar terms’; her chapter draws out ‘the mutual entanglement of the two plays within the history of reception’ (p 228).
Seth L. Schein’s ‘Fathers Cursing Children: Anger and Justice in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus and Shakespeare’s King Lear’ provides a close reading of the ways that the fathers in both plays undertake verbal assaults against their children, focusing on the destructive family dynamics that underpin each of the plays. Anna Beltrametti also undertakes valuable comparative work examining thematic correspondences in her chapter “Oedipus” εϊδλον, “Lear’s shadow”. Silvia Bigliazzi’s contribution, ‘Time and Nothingness: King Lear’, investigates the different dimensions of time in King Lear and the multiple valences of ‘nothing’ that haunt the play. She points to the ways in which Lear precipitates these various states of nothingness; for example, he is ‘the creator of no-time’ for Cordelia, while also generating the events that led to his own ‘non-being’ (p. 295). The chapter also effectively dovetails with Avezzù’s earlier chapter on the theme of time. Part 3 concludes with David Lucking’s chapter ‘“More than two tens to a score”: Disquantification in King Lear’ which provides a useful exploration of the vein of mathematical imagery in the play.
The final part of the volume, Revisiting Oedipus and Lear, considers some of the afterlives of the plays. Nicola Pasqualicchio’s ‘Happy Endings for Old Kings: Jean-François Ducis’ Œdipe and Léar’ examines the work of French dramatist Jean-François Ducis, the only known author to write adaptations of both the focus plays, Œdipe chez Admète (1778) (which also takes elements from Euripides’ Alcestis (438 BC)) and Le Roi Léar (1783); Pasqualicchio finds that both plays enlarge the roles of Antigone and Cordelia. Barry A. Spence’s chapter ‘Shades of King Lear in Beckett’s Theatre and Late Work’ considers Worstward Ho (1981), a form of ‘theatre of the page’ (p. 367) that reiterates variations on a line from Lear, pointing to Beckett’s dramatic interest in the limits of language. Tamas Dobozy’s chapter ‘Sam Shepard’s “Body” of Tragedy: A Particle of Dread (Oedipus Variations)’ argues that Shepard’s play A Particle of Dread (Oedipus Variations) (2014), his last play, is informed by biographical contexts, the sclerosis that led to his death in 2017. The play’s focus on the diseased body resonates with both Sophocles’ and Shakespeare’s work in terms of the body as metaphor for ‘the moral order or the state’ (p. 404). The final chapter by Eric Nicholson and Avra Sidiropoulou ‘Opening up Discoveries through Promised Endings: An Experimental Work in Progress on Oedipus at Colonus and King Lear’ provides reflections on a theatrical project in Verona in 2018 of a bi-lingual script (Italian and English) which comprised scenes from both Oedipus at Colonus and King Lear. The project pursued ‘not endings and closures but rather beginnings and openings, celebrating process, liminal encounters, ruptures, and discoveries’ (p. 413) and thus seems an apt analogue for the project of the volume as a whole.
Ultimately, the volume interrogates our conceptions of ‘source’ and ‘reception’ while suggesting, as Bigliazzi aptly describes, the ‘exchangeability of perspectives in a game of mirrors’ (p. 19). This richly layered research reminds us of the value of interdisciplinary work, of critical dialogues across periods and disciplines, and of the importance of widening our terms of reference in continuing to investigate these landmark plays.