1 The Living Art of Greek Tragedy Marianne McDonald, Ph.D., MRIA ...

pain at the end really compensates for the pain he caused Deianeira and so many others. Moderns
feel sympathy for Deianeira
Horror and gloom oppress Seneca’s Oedipus. The description of the plague is as gory as
any description offered in literature. This is coupled with a vision of Hades, and bloody
sacrifices. Seneca gives Tiresias a daughter, Manto, who is able to describe the sacrificial victims
in gory detail.
It is Creon rather than Tiresias that tells Oedipus he is the murderer of Laius, information
that Creon gleans from the ghost of Laius summoned from the underworld. It still takes
shepherds to sort out that Oedipus is the son of Jocasta and Laius, and not the son, as he thought,
of King Polybus and Queen Merope of Corinth. When he realizes the full extent of his crimes,
Oedipus curses himself and puts out his eyes. This is again described in the most explicit detail:
the eyeballs themselves are said “to welcome Oedipus’ maiming hand.”
Jocasta does not disappear to hang herself, as she did in Sophocles, but confronts Oedipus
with the truth and when he refuses to kill her, she stabs herself fatally in the womb with his
sword. This violence on stage is different from that in the ancient Greek predecessor, and closer
to the violence staged in the Roman Coliseum.
Oedipus is sent into exile, and willingly invites the fates, disease, the plague and sorrow
itself to be his guides as he leaves the city. He is the ideal scapegoat. The wordplay and irony is
very different from the Sophoclean version, and the role of Jocasta is drastically reduced: the
children never appear. There are no moments of cautious optimism. Abandon all hope, ye who
read Seneca! Magic, ghosts, cruelty, torture, and fear abound. This is a study in unmitigated
darkness, not only of the sky, but the human soul.
In 1966 at the Old Vic in London, Peter Brook staged a production of Seneca’s Oedipus
in an adaptation by Ted Hughes. This ended with a demonstration of a six-foot phallus and
featured a Jazz band rendering of “Yes, we have no bananas.” Steven Berkoff said that he
shouted out “Rubbish!” during the performance. “it was an awful thing to do, but when they
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