Derek Mahon: Oedipus

Length/Form The two Sophoclean plays form two acts in this reworking. The play keeps to an informal rhyme scheme but is, for the most part, composed in rhyming couplets. The chorus lines are shorter in length and form stanzas

Allusion to Classical figure Oedipus, Jocasta, Creon, Ismene, Tiresias, Antigone, Theseus, Chorus of Citizens, etc.

Allusion to classical place Thebes

Relationship to Classical text Mahon notes in the Introduction that, since he has no knowledge of Greek, he is indebted to various literal translations of Sophocles. In order to combine two plays into one, he makes significant elisions and also diverges from the source text in bringing Ismene to the fore and giving more positive emphasis to her character, whilst Polyneices is left out altogether.

Close translation of words/phrases/excerpts The play is closely based on the text of Sophocles’ King Oedipus and Oedipus at Colonus

Classical/post-Classical intertexts In the Introduction Mahon lists a string of artists inspired by Sophocles’ Theban plays, including Seneca, Shakespeare, Webster, Racine, Yeats, Stravinsky, Cocteau, Pasolini, Becket and his own contemporary, Seamus Heaney, to whom the play is dedicated and whose own version of Antigone, The Burial at Thebes, was performed and published in 2004 (London: Faber & Faber). There is a subtle reference to the title of Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes on p.56.