Characters
- Oedipus is the king of Thebes, husband of Jocasta, and he is the supposed son of king Polybus of Corinth. He is the main protagonist of the play.
- Jocasta is the widow of the former king Laius, wife of Oedipus and sister of Creon
- Creon is Jocasta's brother, and the chief aid to Oedipus in Thebes
- Teiresias is a blind prophet who is charged by Oedipus to find the killer of king Laius
- Manto is the daughter of Tiresias. She is used in the play to describe Tiresias' sacrifice to him, and therefore also to the audience.
- An Old Man is a messenger from Corinth who comes to tell Oedipus that Polybus is dead, and reveals part of Oedipus' history to him.
- Phorbas is an old shepherd who had given Oedipus to the Old Man when he was a child and who reveals Oedipus' real parentage to him.
- Messenger is the man who relates what has happened to Oedipus in the beginning of Act 5
- Chorus are singers that help the audience understand what emotion they should feel after a scene.
Read more about this topic: Oedipus (Seneca)
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“Philosophy is written in this grand book—I mean the universe—
which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it.”
—Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)
“My characters never die screaming in rage. They attempt to pull themselves back together and go on. And that’s basically a conservative view of life.”
—Jane Smiley (b. 1949)
“The major men
That is different. They are characters beyond
Reality, composed thereof. They are
The fictive man created out of men.
They are men but artificial men.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)