Oedipus the King

Sophocles' most profound and celebrated play in a vivid and dynamic new translation by award-winning poet Robert Bagg

Oedipus the King remains, after 2,500 years, a shocking, suspenseful, and highly emotional drama in which a royal family is brought to hellish ruin by fate, an inscrutable god, and the kindness of a stranger.

Oedipus must find and destroy the murderer of his predecessor, King Laios, to rid Thebes of the plague caused by the killer's undetected and malignant presence. The play's headlong action resembles a tautly woven criminal investigation, but one whose immense stakes pose a host of wrenching and still unresolved questions: What constitutes human guilt? Why do gods punish the innocent? What are the limits of human intellect? Why do family bonds so often prove destructive?

Robert Bagg's spare, idiomatic, and nuanced translation is ideally suited for reading, teaching, or performing. This is Sophocles for a new generation.