Plays of Sophocles: Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus; Antigone

About the book

This collection brings together Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone, three plays connected by the history of Oedipus and his family. The first makes a public investigation inseparable from a ruler's identity. The second places an aged wanderer and those accompanying him within competing claims over refuge, loyalty, and the meaning of his presence. Antigone turns to a conflict between a city's decree and the obligations owed to the dead. The plays were separately composed, and each develops its own dramatic problem rather than serving merely as an episode in a continuous story. Read together, they make authority appear in sharply different forms, asking what rulers, relatives, and communities can legitimately demand when their accounts of justice no longer agree.

• Authority
• Family obligation
• Justice and belonging

Why read it

For three distinct approaches to tragic conflict within one family history, from an inquiry into the past to a confrontation over duty.

Three plays · English translation by F. Storr