Oedipus the King the Classical

Oedipus the King

The classical Greek theatre and the Shakespearean plays, although abounding of murders and suicide acts, spilled with blood and horrifying acts of brutality, still left place for their audience's imagination to be put to work. Sophocles' play, Oedipus Rex, is one of those literary pieces that keeps the climax away from the eyes of the audience. It is an another character, an intermediary, a messenger, who witnessed the actual events in Jocasta's and Oedipus' end, who sole role is to tell about what he saw. Similarly, in Shakespeare's Richard III, the final scene where Richmond kills Richard and beheads him is kept off stage, the audience being left to guess how I happened and only seeing Richmond showing Richard's head in triumph. This technique of keeping key moments away from the eyes of their audiences has widely been abandoned in contemporary theater, most of the play writes favoring the means of offering their public their exact version.

Some have argued that in the past, the lack of modern technical means made it difficult for those on stage to create a credible scene in an act of killing and dismembering, such as the case in Richard III or of self-blinding, as in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex. Regardless of the reasons that made authors keep such scenes off stage, every spectator was able to recreate such a particular scene according to his or her own imagination. Although the messenger is generous with the details describing Oedipus' self blinding act upon his discovery of Jocastas' hanged body, the intensity of a scene presenting the public with Oedipus's torture, his torment, are left to one's own judgment: "He smote his eyeballs with the pins, not once, / Nor twice; and as he smote them, blood ran down / His face, not dripping slowly, but there fell / Showers of black rain and blood-red hail together. Not on his head alone, but on them both" (Stroph 2, Antistrophe 2, Lines 1276-1280).

The ancient Greek audiences and the way theater plays were presented on stage differed to a large degree from the way plays are put on stage today. The mystery along with the sacredness is left behind, in favor of the art of showing every detail, according to the directors and screen players' vision. The fact that the evolution of technology gave the audience countless possibilities to watch every possible version of a play on stage and choose the one that most fits one's image or philosophy about a particular subject, presents the advantage of letting one choose what mostly appeals to one's character and disposition. On the other hand, the way Sophocles presented the audience with the climax in Oedipus Rex, the only way Greek audiences in ancient times were able to see it, left more place for debate following the actual show. Although in Sophocles' times, plays were mainly destined to be presented to huge gatherings of people, as a part of religious ceremonies, both ancient and modern audiences were participating at such shows for the sake of entertainment. From the point-of-view of their access to various means of information and entertainment, contemporary audiences are clearly in advantage.