Oedipus (Dryden) - Career and Reputation of Oedipus, A Tragedy

Career and Reputation of Oedipus, A Tragedy

Oedipus, a Tragedy may today have an unintended comic effect, given the bloodthirsty ending of the drama. In past centuries, however, there was a wide range of views, ranging from enthusiasm to condemnation.

“Celebratur Oedipus…” In 1700, the journal “Acta eruditorum”, published in Leipzig, celebrated Dryden and Lee's adaptation of Oedipus. Along with All for Love, Oedipus, 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 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 wrote the first two acts, Lee the last three. In his introduction to Oedipus, a Tragedy of 1808, Walter Scott says that the first and the third acts were wholly written by Dryden, maintaining a decided superiority over the rest of the piece. Since there are “many excellent passages through Lee’s scenes” and “the tragedy has the appearance of general consistence and uniformity”, Scott supposes that the whole play was corrected by Dryden afterwards.

Oedipus, a Tragedy was licensed on 3 January 1678 by Roger L'Estrange and published in 1679 by R. Bentley and M. Magnes in Russel Street in Covent Garden. Bentley and Magnes were already Lee's publishers. Financial considerations were probably the motivation for Dryden's decision to change publishers at this time, ending his long association with Henry Herringman, which dated back to the days before the Restoration. Bentley and Magnes also printed The Kind Keeper, though Dryden complained that they had done so in his absence and without his supervision. With his next play, Troilus and Cressida, he began an association with Jacob Tonson that would last the rest of his life. It remains uncertain when exactly the tragedy was performed on stage for the first time; but it may have been the first new play of the season: The Prologue refers to it as „the first Play bury´d since the Wollen Act,“ the Act going into effect on 1 Aug. 1678.

The tragedy was performed by the Duke's Company in London, surprisingly not by the King's Company, with whom Dryden had a contract to produce three plays a year from 1668 until 1683. Dryden produced his plays at a steady rate, though not three a year: there were twenty-two plays between 1663 and 1683. The King's Company, who anticipated a huge success from the “combined talents of Dryden and Lee”, complained about the fact that the play Oedipus, a Tragedy, was given to the Duke's Company, and not to them.

„Mr Dryden has now jointly with Mr. Lee (who was in Pension with us to the last day of our Playing, & shall continue) Written a play call´d AEdipus, and given it to the Duke's Company, contrary to his said agreemt, his promise, and all gratitude to the great prejudice and almost undoing of the Company, They being the only Poets remaining to us.”

But this complaint went unheeded, and the scenic complexity of the play shows that Dryden and Lee originally intended it for the Duke's Theatre. In 1671, the Duke's Company moved to a new theatre at Dorset Garden which had arrangements for even more elaborate scenic effects, their mastery of spectacle was never matched by the King's Company, particularly after a fire destroyed the Theatre Royal in 1672. The replacement building, designed by Wren, was only a "Plain Built House". Dryden's divorce from the King's players was now complete. During the remaining years of the company, which finally merged with the Duke’s men in 1682, he wrote a number of prologues for his old associates, but he was probably paid a set fee for those. For the rest of his plays, Dryden was now paid like other playwrights, with the profits of the third performance on stage.

“Dryden’s share of the third day’s proceeds from Oedipus, which he had to divide with Lee, probably amounted to no more than 50 pound, but any payment was welcome under the circumstances.”

The amount of 50 pounds is considered to be a meagre wage here for a popular playwright. In comparison to the earnings of contemporary skilled workers and other professions, however, one might assume that Dryden received an appropriate if not overly generous share of money. The premiere and the following performances of this drama on stage were highly successful. The “bombastic violence of Oedipus”, as Kinsley puts it, was a “scandalous success, with the Bettertons playing Oedipus and Jocasta.”

“This play was Admirably well Acted; especially the Parts of Oedipus and Jocasta: One by Mr Betterton, the other by Mrs Betterton; it took prodigiously being Acted 10 Days together.”

Dryden's All for Love, by contrast, despite its high place in the estimation both of Dryden and of his modern critics, seems to have had much less general appeal. Published early in 1678, a few months after its first stage presentation, it was only twice reprinted in Dryden's lifetime. Oedipus, a Tragedy, by contrast, reached six editions by 1701 and ten editions by 1734. The heroic drama by Dryden and Lee remained popular for a long period of time and was constantly performed on stage, almost every year between 1678 and 1710. After the premiere, it was restaged in the following years: 1686, 1692, 1696, 1698, 1702, 1703, and between 1705 and 1710 almost every year. The performance of Thursday 13, October 1692, is especially remarkable:

“On Thursday last was acted the tragedy of Oedipus king of Thebes at the theater, where Sandford and Powell acting their parts together, the former by mistake of a sharp dagger for one that runs the blade into the handle, stab'd the other 3 inches deep: said the wound is mortal.”

The effect of this 'accident' on the audience attending the play is impossible to reconstruct. Such incidents might have increased the popularity of the play to a certain extent or might have satisfied the audience's cravings for sensation.

There must have been a change in the reputation of the drama on stage in the late 18th and early 19th century. In his introduction to Oedipus, a Tragedy, written in 1808, Scott considers the performance of the play to be unbearable for the audience about thirty years before, because it was considered to be too bloodthirsty.

“It is certain, that, when the play was revived about thirty years ago, the audience were unable to support it to an end; the boxes being all emptied before the third act was concluded. Among all our English plays, there is none more determinedly bloody than Oedipus, in its progress and conclusion. The entrance of the unfortunate king, with his eyes torn from their sockets, is too disgusting for representation.”