"a Tragedy"" was regarded as the climax of Dryden's dramatic work. Charles Gildon, however, who revised many of Gerard Langbaine's articles in the manual on English Drama ""An Account of the English Dramatick Poets"", harshly criticised ""Oedipus, a Tragedy"", saying: The most understanding Judges wish they [i.e. Dryden/Lee] had followed Sophocles yet closer, it had then been the best of our Modern Plays, as ‘tis of the Ancients: but as it is, they have destroyed the Character of Oedipus… It remains uncertain which parts of this play were written by Dryden and by Lee. According to ""The London Stage"", Dryden"
"Sophocles Sophocles (; ""Sophoklēs"", ; 497/6 – winter 406/5 BC) is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than or contemporary with those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides. Sophocles wrote over 120 plays during the course of his life, but only seven have survived in a complete form: ""Ajax"", ""Antigone"", ""Women of Trachis"", ""Oedipus Rex"", ""Electra"", ""Philoctetes"" and ""Oedipus at Colonus"". For almost 50 years, Sophocles was the most celebrated playwright in the dramatic competitions of the city-state of Athens that took place during the"
"way that was more natural to them and more expressive of their individual character feelings. Sophocles Sophocles (; ""Sophoklēs"", ; 497/6 – winter 406/5 BC) is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than or contemporary with those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides. Sophocles wrote over 120 plays during the course of his life, but only seven have survived in a complete form: ""Ajax"", ""Antigone"", ""Women of Trachis"", ""Oedipus Rex"", ""Electra"", ""Philoctetes"" and ""Oedipus at Colonus"". For almost 50 years, Sophocles was the most celebrated"
"Sophocles' ""Oedipus Rex"" in his ""Poetics"" (c. 335 BC) as an example of the highest achievement in tragedy, which suggests the high esteem in which his work was held by later Greeks. Only two of the seven surviving plays can be dated securely: ""Philoctetes"" (409 BC) and ""Oedipus at Colonus"" (401 BC, staged after Sophocles' death by his grandson). Of the others, ""Electra"" shows stylistic similarities to these two plays, which suggests that it was probably written in the latter part of his career. ""Ajax"", ""Antigone"" and ""The Trachiniae"" are generally thought to be among his early works, again based"
"larger myth obliquely, which was already known to the audience in Athens at the time. The trilogy containing ""Oedipus Rex"" took second prize in the City Dionysia at its original performance. Aeschylus's nephew Philocles took first prize at that competition. However, in his ""Poetics"", Aristotle considered ""Oedipus Rex"" to be the tragedy which best matched his prescription for how drama should be made. Many modern critics agree with Aristotle on the quality of ""Oedipus Rex"", even if they don't always agree on the reasons. For example, Richard Claverhouse Jebb claimed that ""The ""Oedipus Tyrannus"" is in one sense the masterpiece"
"of Attic tragedy. No other shows an equal degree of art in the development of the plot; and this excellence depends on the powerful and subtle drawing of the characters."" Cedric Whitman noted that ""the ""Oedipus Rex"" passes almost universally for the greatest extant Greek play..."" Whitman himself regarded the play as ""the fullest expression of this conception of tragedy,"" that is the conception of tragedy as a ""revelation of the evil lot of man,"" where a man may have ""all the equipment for glory and honor"" but still have ""the greatest effort to do good"" end in ""the evil"
"Senecan tragedy Senecan tragedy refers to a set of ancient Roman tragedies. Ten of these plays exist, of which most likely eight were written by the Stoic philosopher and politician Lucius Annaeus Seneca. The group includes ""Hercules Furens"", ""Medea"", ""Troades"", ""Phaedra"", ""Agamemnon"", ""Oedipus"", ""Phoenissae"", ""Thyestes"", ""Hercules Oetaeus"", and ""Octavia"". ""Hercules Oetaeus"" is generally considered not to have been written by Seneca, and ""Octavia"" is certainly not. In the mid-16th century, Italian humanists rediscovered these works, making them models for the revival of tragedy on the Renaissance stage. The two great, but very different, dramatic traditions of the age — French"
"tradition is ""Poetics"" by Aristotle (written around 335 BC). In this work Aristotle analyzes tragedy. Aristotle considers ""Oedipus Rex"" (c. 429 BC) as the quintessential dramatic work. He analyzes the relations among character, action, and speech, gives examples of good plots, and examines the reactions the plays provoke in the audience. Many of his ""rules"" are referred to today as ""Aristotelian drama"". In ""Poetics"", Aristotle discusses many key concepts of drama, such as anagnorisis and catharsis. ""Poetics"" is the earliest surviving Western work of dramatic theory. The earliest non-Western dramaturgic work is probably the Sanskrit work ""Natya Shastra"" (""The Art"
"Rhesus (play) Rhesus (, ""Rhēsos"") is an Athenian tragedy that belongs to the transmitted plays of Euripides. Its authorship has been disputed since antiquity, and the issue has invested modern scholarship since the 17th century when the play's authenticity was challenged, first by Joseph Scaliger and subsequently by others, partly on aesthetic grounds and partly on peculiarities in the play's vocabulary, style and technique. The conventional attribution to Euripides remains controversial. ""Rhesus"" takes place during the Trojan War, on the night when Odysseus and Diomedes sneak into the Trojan camp. The same event is narrated in book 10 of Homer's"
"considered complex and superior to simple plots without anagnorisis or peripeteia, such as when Medea resolves to kill her children, knowing they are her children, and does so. Aristotle identified ""Oedipus Rex"" as the principal work demonstrating peripety. (See Aristotle's ""Poetics"".) In Sophocles' ""Oedipus Rex"", the peripeteia occurs towards the end of the play when the Messenger brings Oedipus news of his parentage. In the play, Oedipus is fated to murder his father and marry his mother. His parents, Laius and Jocasta, try to forestall the oracle by sending their son away to be killed, but he is actually raised"
"order to end a plague ravaging Thebes, unaware that the killer he is looking for is none other than himself. At the end of the play, after the truth finally comes to light, Jocasta hangs herself while Oedipus, horrified at his patricide and incest, proceeds to gouge out his own eyes in despair. ""Oedipus Rex"" is regarded by many scholars as the masterpiece of ancient Greek tragedy. In his ""Poetics"", Aristotle refers several times to the play in order to exemplify aspects of the genre. Many parts or elements of the myth of Oedipus occur before the opening scene of"
"imagination which was ‘so encompassing, so receptive to the plurality of diverse orders of experience.’ When compared to the drama of Greek antiquity and French classicism Shakespeare’s forms are ‘richer but hybrid'. Aristotle wrote in his work ""Poetics"" that tragedy is characterised by seriousness and involves a great person who experiences a reversal of fortune (""Peripeteia""). Aristotle's definition can include a change of fortune from bad to good as in the ""Eumenides"", but he says that the change from good to bad as in ""Oedipus Rex"" is preferable because this induces pity and fear within the spectators. Tragedy results in"
"at the Royal (National) Theater of Greece in 1938 has remained indelibly written in the history of 20th century Greek theater, to appear in the homonymous role. Under the direction of Fotos Politis, ""Oedipus Rex"" opened in the old 19th century neoclassical theater ""Olympia"" on Academias Street. The performance became a milestone in the revival of ancient tragedy, with the ideas of Max Reinhardt often evident, in the interpretation of the play. Politis was acclaimed as a director, the tickets were sold out, while the prominent reviewer Marios Ploritis wrote of ""The first face to face confrontation with the interpretation"
"unnatural lust brings about the creation of the monstrous bull that dismembers Hippolytus. Phaedra (Seneca) Phaedra, is a Roman tragedy with Greek subject of c. 1280 lines of verse by philosopher and dramatist Lucius Annaeus Seneca, which tells the story of Phaedra, wife of King Theseus of Athens, and her consuming lust for her stepson, Hippolytus. Based on Greek Mythology and the tragedy ""Hippolytus"" by Greek playwright Euripides, Seneca's ""Phaedra"" is one of several artistic explorations of this tragic story. Seneca portrays the title character as knowing and direct in the pursuit of her stepson, while in other iterations of"
"jealousy of Oedipus, which led to the catastrophe. Most scholars agree that the play ended with Jocasta joining Oedipus in exile. The date for ""Oedipus"" has not been definitively established but metrical analysis on the extant fragments, particularly the incidence of resolutions by Cropp and Fick, indicates that the play was likely written in the latter part of Euripides' life, between 419 BCE and 406 BCE, and most likely after 415 BCE. Oedipus (Euripides) Oedipus ( or ; , ""Oidípous"") is a play by the 5th-century BCE Athenian dramatist Euripides. The play is now lost except for some fragments. What"
"a character learns something he had been previously ignorant of, this is normally distinguished from peripeteia as anagnorisis or discovery, a distinction derived from Aristotle's work. Aristotle considered anagnorisis, leading to peripeteia, the mark of a superior tragedy. Two such plays are ""Oedipus Rex"", where the oracle's information that Oedipus had killed his father and married his mother brought about his mother's death and his own blindness and exile, and ""Iphigenia in Tauris"", where Iphigenia realizes that the strangers she is to sacrifice are her brother and his friend, resulting in all three of them escaping Tauris. These plots he"
"is the Stoic philosopher Seneca. Nine of Seneca's tragedies survive, all of which are ""fabulae crepidatae"" (tragedies adapted from Greek originals); his ""Phaedra"", for example, was based on Euripides' ""Hippolytus"". Seneca is well known for composing works which feature a heavy presence of violence and horror. Seneca appears as a character in the tragedy ""Octavia"", the only extant example of ""fabula praetexta"" (tragedies based on Roman subjects, first created by Naevius), and as a result, the play was mistakenly attributed as having been authored by Seneca himself. However, though historians have since confirmed that the play was not one of"
"screened at the 7th edition of the LGBT Film Festival In Warsaw, Poland and received a People's Choice Award at the festival. All titles listed below were written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini unless stated otherwise. ""Oedipus Rex"" and ""Medea"" are loosely based on plays by Sophocles and Euripides respectively. Pier Paolo Pasolini Pier Paolo Pasolini (; 5 March 1922 – 2 November 1975) was an Italian film director, poet, writer, and intellectual. Pasolini also distinguished himself as an actor, journalist, novelist, playwright, and political figure. He remains a controversial personality in Italy due to his blunt style and"
"Paul Roche Donald Robert Paul Roche (26 September 1916 – 30 October 2007) was a British poet, novelist, and professor of English, a critically acclaimed translator of Greek and Latin classics, notably the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Sappho, and Plautus. Born in Mussoorie, India, Roche was an associate of the Bloomsbury group, especially of painter Duncan Grant, whom he met in the summer of 1946 and who lived with Roche and his family until Grant's death in 1978. He used his translation of Sophocles', ""Oedipus Rex"", to write a screenplay for a film version of the work released"
"In his ""Poetics"", Aristotle used the plot of ""Odysseus Acanthoplex"", under the title ""Odysseus Wounded"", as one of three examples of an effective type of plot for tragedy in which a character performs a horrific deed to a relative in ignorance and only learns the truth after the fact. The other examples Aristotle gave of this type of effective plot were Sophocles' ""Oedipus Rex"" and a play about Alcmaeon by 4th century BCE tragic playwright Astydamas. Roman philosopher Cicero praised Pacuvius' play ""Niptra"", which was an imitation of Sophocles' ""Odysseus Acanthoplex"", because in Pacuvius' play Odysseus does not lament his"
"Greek (opera) Greek is an opera in two acts composed by Mark-Anthony Turnage to a libretto adapted by Turnage and Jonathan Moore from Steven Berkoff's 1980 verse play ""Greek"". The play and the opera are a re-telling of Sophocles's Greek tragedy ""Oedipus Rex"" with the setting changed to the East End of London in the 1980s. The opera was first performed on 17 June 1988 in the Carl-Orff-Saal of the Gasteig, Munich, in a co-production by the Munich Biennale, the Edinburgh International Festival and the BBC. Turnage composed ""Greek"" between 1986 and 1988 as a commission from the City of"
"plays is seen as his crowning achievement. Other refiners of playwriting were Sophocles and Euripides. Sophocles is credited with skillfully developing irony as a literary technique, most famously in his play ""Oedipus Rex"". Euripedes, conversely, used plays to challenge societal norms and mores—a hallmark of much of Western literature for the next 2,300 years and beyond—and his works such as ""Medea"", ""The Bacchae"" and ""The Trojan Women"" are still notable for their ability to challenge our perceptions of propriety, gender, and war. Aristophanes, a comic playwright, defines and shapes the idea of comedy almost as Aeschylus had shaped tragedy as"
"was later turned into a popular play ""Oedipus Rex"" by Greek writer Sophocles, tells of how Laius hears of a prophecy that his son will kill him. Fearing the prophecy, Laius abandons his son, Oedipus', who is raised in the city of Thebes. Oedipus later crosses paths with Laius and gets into a fight and, not knowing that Laius is his father, kills him. Adams, thus, states that the ""break-room conversation"" Dwight and Clark share starts to make Dwight paranoid and fear that Clark is after his job. Many reviewers noted that the episode made references to previous episodes of"
"Electra (Sophocles play) Electra or Elektra (, ""Ēlektra"") is a Greek tragedy by Sophocles. Its date is not known, but various stylistic similarities with the ""Philoctetes"" (409 BC) and the ""Oedipus at Colonus"" (401 BC) lead scholars to suppose that it was written towards the end of Sophocles' career. Set in the city of Argos a few years after the Trojan War, it recounts the tale of Electra and the vengeance that she and her brother Orestes take on their mother Clytemnestra and step father Aegisthus for the murder of their father, Agamemnon. When King Agamemnon returns from the Trojan"
"the Theban plays not a true trilogy (three plays presented as a continuous narrative) but they are not even an intentional series and contain some inconsistencies among them. He also wrote other plays having to do with Thebes, such as the ""Epigoni"", of which only fragments have survived. Each of the plays relates to the tale of the mythological Oedipus, who killed his father and married his mother without knowledge that they were his parents. His family is fated to be doomed for three generations. In ""Oedipus Rex"", Oedipus is the protagonist. Oedipus' infanticide is planned by his parents, Laius"
"Phaedra (Seneca) Phaedra, is a Roman tragedy with Greek subject of c. 1280 lines of verse by philosopher and dramatist Lucius Annaeus Seneca, which tells the story of Phaedra, wife of King Theseus of Athens, and her consuming lust for her stepson, Hippolytus. Based on Greek Mythology and the tragedy ""Hippolytus"" by Greek playwright Euripides, Seneca's ""Phaedra"" is one of several artistic explorations of this tragic story. Seneca portrays the title character as knowing and direct in the pursuit of her stepson, while in other iterations of the myth she is more of a passive victim of fate. This Phaedra"
"Achaeus of Eretria Achaeus of Eretria (; born 484 BC in Euboea) was a Greek playwright author of tragedies and satyr plays, variously said to have written 24, 30, or 44 plays, of which 19 titles are known: ""Adrastus"", ""Aethon"", ""Alcmeon"", ""Alphesiboea"", ""Athla"", ""Azanes"", ""Cycnus"", ""Eumenides"", ""Hephaestus"", ""Iris"", ""Linus"", ""Moirai"" (Fates), ""Momus"", ""Oedipus"", ""Omphale"", ""Philoctetes"", ""Phrixus"", ""Pirithous"", and ""Theseus"". Achaeus of Eretria was regarded in antiquity as being the 2nd greatest writer of satyr plays, after Aeschylus. Achaeus' first play was produced in 447 and won a prize. A quote in Aristophanes' ""The Frogs"" suggests he was dead by 405."
"""Euripides The Irrationalist"" (""The Classical Review"", July 1929). Herakles (Euripides) Herakles (, ""Hēraklēs Mainomenos"", also known as """") is an Athenian tragedy by Euripides that was first performed c. 416 BCE. While Herakles is in the underworld obtaining Cerberus for one of his labours, his father Amphitryon, wife Megara, and children are sentenced to death in Thebes by Lycus. Herakles arrives in time to save them, though the goddesses Iris and Madness (personified) cause him to kill his wife and children in a frenzy. It is the second of two surviving tragedies by Euripides where the family of Herakles are"
"of his father, husband of his mother. Shattered, Oedipus leaves. The messenger reports the death of Jocasta: she has hanged herself in her chambers. Oedipus breaks into her room and puts out his eyes with her pin. He departs Thebes forever as the chorus at first vents their anger, and then mourns the loss of the king they loved. Many insights to this opera are found in Leonard Bernstein's analysis of it in his sixth and last Norton lecture from 1973. Bernstein stated that ""Oedipus Rex"" is the most ""awesome product"" of Stravinsky's neoclassical period. Much of the music borrows"
"Halys river where Lydian and Bactrian girls perform sacred music for Artemis as the goddess of Mount Tmolus. Diogenes of Athens (tragedian) Diogenes of Athens () was a writer of Greek tragedy in the late 5th or early 4th century BC. His works are listed by the Suda as ""Semele"", ""Achilles, Helen, Herakles, Thyestes, Medea, Oedipus,"" and ""Chrysippus"". He was either born or flourished at the time of the Thirty Tyrants and the suppression of Athenian democracy, around 404–403 BC. This Diogenes is sometimes confused with Diogenes of Sinope, to whom a similar list of tragedies is attributed by Diogenes"
"Odysseus Acanthoplex Odysseus Acanthoplex (, ""Odysseus Akanthoplēx"", ""Odysseus wounded by a spine""; also known as ""Odysseus Wounded"", ""Odysseus Spine-struck"" and ""Odysseus Wounded by the Spine"") is a lost play by the Athenian dramatist Sophocles. Several fragments are extant. The plot told of Odysseus' death, accidentally killed by his son Telegonus. Some scholars believe that another Sophocles' title, Niptra (Νιπτρα, ""The Footwashing"", ""The Washing""), is the same play as ""Odysseus Acanthoplex"". Dana Sutton, however, disputes this, suggesting that ""Niptra"" was a separate play dealing with Odysseus' return to Ithaca but not with his death. The plot of ""Odysseus Acanthoplex"" was based"
"Ajax (play) Sophocles' Ajax, or Aias ( or ; , gen. ), is a Greek tragedy written in the 5th century BCE. ""Ajax"" may be the earliest of Sophocles' seven tragedies to have survived, though it is probable that he had been composing plays for a quarter of a century already when it was first staged. It appears to belong to the same period as his ""Antigone"", which was probably performed in 442 or 441 BCE, when he was 55 years old. The play depicts the fate of the warrior Ajax, after the events of the ""Iliad"" but before the"
"with the execution of Christians by damnatio ad bestias. Julius Caesar (play) The Tragedy of Julius Caesar (First Folio title: The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar) is a history play and tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1599. It is one of several plays written by Shakespeare based on true events from Roman history, which also include ""Coriolanus"" and ""Antony and Cleopatra"". Although the play is named ""Julius Caesar"", Brutus speaks more than four times as many lines as the title character; and the central psychological drama of the play focuses on Brutus' struggle between the conflicting"