Reputation
Along with Seneca's other plays, Oedipus was regarded as a model of classical drama in Elizabethan England. The translator Alexander Neville regarded the play as a work of moral instruction. He said of the play "mark thou ... what is meant by the whole course of the History: and frame thy lyfe free from such mischiefes"
In recent times, A. J. Boyle in his 1997 book Tragic Seneca: An Essay in the Theatrical Tradition rejects the criticism of T. S. Eliot that Oedipus, like the other plays of Seneca, is simplistically peopled by stock characters. He says that "In the Oedipus, for example, it is hard to name any stock character except the messenger." The play, in its theme of powerlessness against stronger forces has been described as being as "relevant today in a world filled with repeated horrors against those who are innocent, as it was in ancient times"
Read more about this topic: Oedipus (Seneca)
Famous quotes containing the word reputation:
“Talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you, and at the end of your first season you will have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“The reputation of generosity is to be purchased pretty cheap; it does not depend so much upon a man’s general expense, as it does upon his giving handsomely where it is proper to give at all. A man, for instance, who should give a servant four shillings, would pass for covetous, while he who gave him a crown, would be reckoned generous; so that the difference of those two opposite characters, turns upon one shilling.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Our culture, therefore, must not omit the arming of the man. Let him hear in season, that he is born into the state of war, and that the commonwealth and his own well-being require that he should not go dancing in the weeds of peace, but warned, self- collected, and neither defying nor dreading the thunder, let him take both reputation and life in his hand, and, with perfect urbanity, dare the gibbet and the mob by the absolute truth of his speech, and the rectitude of his behaviour.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)