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Article: At the crossroads: gendered desire, political occasion, and Dryden and Lee's Oedipus.(Critical Essay)
- Article from:
- Papers on Language & Literature
- Article date:
- June 22, 2004
- Author:
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Let me begin with three common observations about the 1678 Oedipus of Dryden and Lee. First, more than their predecessor versions by Sophocles, Seneca, and Corneille, the Restoration playwrights emphasize the erotic nature of the incestuous relationship between Oedipus and Jocasta. (1) Second, Creon is transformed from the relatively ambitionless playboy prince of Sophocles' original to the physically and morally twisted precipitator of the crisis, analogous to "the figure of Shaftesbury seen through royalist eyes and representations" (Novak, "Commentary to Oedipus" 462). (2) Third, as the previous suggests, Dryden and Lee's play, while offering no strict allegory, has ...