Œdipe/Antigone

The tragedy of Antigone was the first one Sophocles wrote, but it is in fact the direct sequel to Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus —both in terms of the history of the Labdacid lineage (the family of Laius and Oedipus) and the political fate of the city of Thebes, their homeland.

On today’s stages, these three plays are generally performed separately, but it is clear that, when viewed as a single narrative, they shed light on one another and shift our understanding of the myth and its political, religious, and psychological implications. The way in which misfortune befalls the descendants of Labdacus from generation to generation is indeed one of the essential themes of a comprehensive reinterpretation of this myth.

Oedipus Rex, first of all, recounts the downfall of Oedipus—or how the beloved king of Thebes, the man who freed the city from the clutches of the Sphinx by solving its riddle, seeks to save his city a second time: the city is ravaged by the plague, and an oracle declares that, to cure it, the man who defiles it—the unidentified murderer of King Laius—must be driven out. Convinced that he can solve this new riddle, Oedipus embarks on a sort of police investigation that quickly takes the form of a quest for identity: he successively discovers himself to be the murderer of Laius, the son of Laius—and thus a parricide—and the incestuous husband of Jocasta, his own mother.