“They Are My Sons!”

Oedipus and His Daughters

Oedipus and his Daughters
at Colonus

In a previous posting I looked at the working of fate in the Theban plays of Sophocles.1 There I looked at Greek ideas concerning fate and how the idea of the “tragic flaw” that dooms the protagonist of Oedipus the King is in itself flawed given that what actually works out in the play is a tragic fate doomed by our protagonist to suffer from before he was born. Here I will examine another aspect of the plays or more specifically the one called Oedipus at Colonus that is Oedipus and his children.

The Queers are Coming!

The Queers are Coming!

Edward Albee

More than 40 years ago several American Theatre critics were afflicted with a terrible fear that the American way of life was under insidious attack by an evil force that sought to undermine and destroy the family and marriage.

That evil force was the "Homosexual" playwright who because of his distorted sense of self wrote about the family and women in a false and insidious fashion and therefore undermined both.

Afternoon in Eprius

Orestes murdering Clytaemnestra

In a previous posting I posted a part of a play I was writing concerning Andromache former wife of Hector and now 15 years after the fall of Troy Queen of Eprius. In that part I gave queen Andromache a long soliloquy has a prologue to the play. In this prologue Andromache gave the story of how she became Queen of Eprius and how a crisis is threatening her kingdom in the form of a Greek attack. In the prologue Andromache mentions that Orestes and Eleckra, the Son and daughter of Agamemnon of Mycenae wish to talk with her concerning this threat. Orestes and Eleckra father Agamemnon had been murdered by Clytaemnestra mother of Orestes and Eleckra who avenged their father by killing their mother. Both of them had been driven into exile as matricides. Andromache has reluctantly decided to see them. However a unforeseen guest has arrived in the form of Chrysothemis sister of Elecra and Orestes and hated by them for refusing to help in avenging their father.

In this scene it is early afternoon and Orestes, Electra are trying to justify their act of vengeance and antipathy towards their sister to the Queen Andromache. Chrysothemis is not interested in justifying her behavior, she sees her siblings as blinded by hate and delusion and utterly oblivious to actual justice.

Orestes and Eleckra see their dead father has a hero and cannot tolerate the truth about him, further they see their mother has the reason for their suffering they have and still are enduring. They see their act of revenge as justice. Their mother they see as unnatural, un-womanly and evil and thus deserving of death.

Chrysothemis sees revenge as poisonous and dangerous. She has no illusions about her father or for that matter her mother. She sees ambition as a corrupter of men's nature and sees her father as one so corrupted. Honour and nobility she sees as high ideals easily corrupted and perverted. Her mother she sees has someone corrupted by suffering and rage. Chrysothemis believes that Agamemnon's deeds against their mother Clytaemnestra and corrupted her the way ambition corrupted Agamemnon. She is also infuriated to no end by the double standard applied to Agamemnon's sexual behavior as against their mother's.

A Play fragment
Andromache and Hector

The following is a prologue soliloquy from a play I've been writing off and on for the last year or so. The play is inspired by Greek myth and concerns, in part, the fate of Andromache wife of the Trojan hero Hector after the sack of Troy (Ilium). The other part is the fate of the cursed House of Atreus, in this case Agamemnon and his children Orestes and his sisters Electra and Chrysothemis.

I have taken many liberties with the material, but I have I hope remained respectful of the material and the Ancient Greek concepts that underpinned their mythological traditions.

(It is winter in Epirus. The setting is the audience hall of the Royal palace. The Throne, on a dais of two steps, is in the centre back. The throne is polished dark wood with a crimson cloak draped over one of its arms. In front to the right is a long table with simple seats with no backs, were the Royal councillors sit. It is late at night and except for several torches burning the room is dark. Sitting at the table unable to sleep and lost in thought is Andromache. She is Queen of Epirus, called also Molossia and its people Molossians. In the back hedged by black curtains is a large window through which can be dimly seen mountains covered with snow. It is cold and Andromache, wearing a white full length tunic has covered her head and shoulders with a shawl.)

(Raising her head)

Andromache:

The wind moves down from the mountains into this room and I shiver from it. One might think that being Queen I would at least be warm. For is it not by my word that men live or die? But how that is or better came to be is a story. How did Andromache daughter of (unknown), dweller of well-walled Ilium and wife of Hector, tamer of horses end up here in this wintry mountain land far away from the Scamander’s meanderings? How did I become undisputed mistress of Epirus, Queen of the Molossians? Here my word is law and my commands obeyed. Yet once I was simply Hector’s wife, with just the household slaves and servants to command, not, armies, fleets. A whole kingdom!! If I could, I would undo all this and again be Hector’s wife. Then I was happy, but happiness is hubris, which the Gods do punish. For to call oneself, or any man happy is to tempt the providence of the Gods and earn their wrath. Call no one happy until they are cold and buried.

So what is the story of my fate?

My fate was cursed by Helen and Paris. Did not Paris return after being cast away by his parents to die, for prophecy said he would destroy Ilium. But die he did not and when he returned out of love and guilt his parents took him back glad that their infanticide had failed. Loving my own children I blame Priam and Hecuba neither for the fear that made them cast out Paris nor the love with which they embraced him upon his return. But like a scorpion he betrayed them. Knowing the prophecy he insisted on fulfilling it. Instead of being mild and meek, he boldly embraced his desires and destroyed us all.

His partner in this madness was Helen. As beautiful as the mountains and has pitiless! Paris conceived a reckless passion for her and she for him. Helen was married to Menelaus. Who by marrying her had become King of un-walled Sparta. So rather than say goodbye to Helen and her aching loins, which no man could ever satisfy, Menelaus was compelled in order to remain King of Sparta to get her back. He called upon his brother, the vile and blood-splattered Agamemnon, husband by force and murder of Clytaemnestra sister of Helen, King of rich in gold Mycenae, to help him. Now Agamemnon was high King of the Greeks and so he called his vassals to his side at Aulis and from there they sailed to Troy.

There for 10 long years they besieged Ilium. Not all their bravery or power could break the will of Ilium. My husband Hector, son of Priam led the Trojans. For all their Achilles, Ajaxes and Odysseuses, and so forth, none could match my Hector in valour and none could defeat him. Then Achilles, a man without pity or mercy by a trick defeated and slew my Hector and then tied his body to his chariot and drove round the walls of Ilium. How I wailed my grief that day! How I wished I was dead beside him! Priam by gold got Hector’s body from Achilles, having abjected himself before his son’s murderer.

Impious Achilles was shortly after slain by Paris, who killed him by poison in manner Achilles well deserved. Paris was shortly slain also thus not living to see Troy’s black fate, dying in pain and disgrace. The fruits of his selfish, heedless desires, disdainful of law or honour!

Black-hearted Odysseus, no stranger to lying and treachery, then devised a piece of deception to breach Ilium’s walls. Which stood un-breached despite Hector’s fall. If valour will not work, there is always deception.

I will not repeat the story of the Wooden Horse. How it was pulled into Troy. How that night the Greeks concealed within opened Troy’s gates and the Greeks, who had seemed to leave returned and entered.

Shall I describe the horrors of that night? How Priam, a helpless aged supplicant was murdered clinging to Zeus’ alter. That night the temples were sacrilegiously sacked. In that night my sister by marriage prophecy intoxicated Cassandra, whose virginity was consecrated to the God Apollo, was taken by Agamemnon, right in Apollo’s temple, on the alter. There he enjoyed her in defiance of the God and all justice. Stifling her screams with his hands. Yes the outrages, murders, rapes, impious, acts were never ending. Thus in their victory did the Greeks defy both Man’s and the God’s justice.

But what I remember the most is the day that followed. Pain so great that I did not know I could bear it. The Greeks in council decided that Asytanax, my son and Hector’s should die least he live and grow and rebuilt Ilium and avenge her wrongs. Odysseus, seconded by Agamemnon urged this terrible horror upon the Greeks. With some reluctance the Greeks shed the last of justice and honour and agreed. Only Neoptolemos son of Achilles, and Odysseus could do it. They climbed the ruined wall in order to throw my son into Elysium. At the last moment even those stone men hesitated, but urged by Agamemnon they threw my little one down to shatter on the ground.

I felt and saw nothing. Like a piece of wood I was insensible for hours, nay days. Like a fire in my soul I burned for seemly an eternity. Any parent who loses a child will feel such pain but how much worst is it when it is by man’s cruelty.

I was given to Neoptolemos, Achille’s son. A man hateful to me. Son of the murderer of Hector, and slayer of my son.

So I went with him to here called Epirus by the Greeks Molossia by the inhabitants. For they wanted a great warrior has their King, to unite the tribes and bring them prestige with the Greeks.

I had another child by Hector. Born before he died on the day in honour of Hestia, guardian of hearth and home. So I named her Hestia, although Hector called her also Hecuba in honour of his mother the Queen.

A slave named Kimon, unknowing to me, saved her by claiming the child to be his and her mother a fellow slave who had died. I thought her dead. After all if it was too dangerous to allow Asytanax to live, least he grow up to avenge Troy. Then it must follow that Hestia must die least she marry and have a male child that lives and avenges sacked Ilium.

By the Gods will Kimon was given to Neoptolemos, and since the Greeks could not be bothered with a girl child they allowed him to keep Hestia.

My joy was unbounded when I found that Hestia lived; yet I could not let the Greeks know she lived. Least my joy slay her, I kept the face and manner of a beaten captive.

So some years past in Molossia, with iron hearted Neoptolemos ruling with hatred and terror over the Molossians. They at first thought that his cruelties were just politics to make his rule secure and would once their purpose achieved be moderated. That was not to be for like his blood soaked father Neoptolemos kept death has his most favoured mistress and terror has his favourite councillor.

At this time Neoptolemos become besotted with me. Frankly I suppose because I hated him so and took but little effort to hide my endless hate. Thus he desired me because I would not yield to him.

Certainly he could have taken me by force, his servants holding me down while he satiated his lust. But that meant nothing to him, he wanted me willingly and totally. He wished to possess me utterly. Not just this slave’s body but her mind and soul has well.

He cast about how to do this. At length certain servants out of fear and or for favour told him of certain things I had said too and done with the slave child Hestia.

Neoptolemos seized Kimon and tortured him so savagely that Kimon’s wits left him. But Kimon said nothing, broken though he was. So much for the worthless taunts about “slave honour”. Kimon has more of it than virtually any “nobly” born man.

Leaving Kimon shattered in a dank dungeon. Neoptolemos, that ignoble man, took Hestia and put a dagger to her throat and threatened to kill her while I would be forced to watch until he knew the secret. The point of the dagger cut and red blood was flooding out when I shrieked. “Stop Stop!!! She is my daughter! Stop!!!”. I collapsed and was insensible for a day.

Hestia lived although I’m told it was by mere chance. Maybe but I suppose Neoptolemos’ threat to castrate and disembowel the Doctors and Nurses if she died played a part.

There was no mercy in Neoptolemos’ action for he intended to use my daughter has a weapon against me.

It came to past that once I had regained my senses Neoptolemos told me that has the price of my daughter’s life I must marry him and be an entirely devoted wife to him. Should I falter in this Hestia would die before my eyes. Thus far did Neoptolemos go in his infamous defiance of justice.

How could I do it! I hated him so. Sooner or later I would show the hate I bore him and Hestia would die. Further how could I marry the man who murdered Asytanax!! Who also took part in the impious sacking of Troy? And was guilty of countless other pollutions and sacrilege.

The other Greeks were enraged upon learning that seed of Hector remained and pressured him to slay Hestia. Meanwhile Hermione daughter of Neoptolemos was furious concerning the marriage. For she was betrothed to Orestes the accursed, murderer of his mother, avenger of an ignoble, worthless father. Orestes with his friend Pylades came to Epirus and there they conspired with Hermione to slay Neoptolemos. For Orestes if he could not be king of Golden Mycenae, being banished from there, wanted kingship of Molossia, which he could only get by marrying Hermione and succeeding Neoptolemos has king. Both Orestes and Hermione were fearful that should I marry Neoptolemos I would have a son who would get the Kingship.

I was not aware of Orestes and Hermione’s plans. I instead sought to save Hestia by marrying Neoptolemos and then by the most frightful oaths bind him, upon everlasting torment in Tartarus and execration to the end of time among men, to protect Hestia. Then I would retire to my apartments and slay myself. Thus I would save Hestia.

The Greek pressure to murder Hestia grew so I agreed to marry Neoptolemos quickly. I further did not know that many of the Molossian Nobles hated Neoptolemos to such an extent that they too were conspiring to slay him. For both Noble and Commoner were groaning under him and cursed him. What was keeping them from acting was they could not decide what frightful form of torture to kill him by and who should be King after his well deserved murder. Some of the conspirators got wind of Orestes and Hermione’s plot and decided to let it happen and then move in if it either failed or succeeded. In one case to clean up the mess and ensure Orestes and Hermione did not become rulers of Epirus and in the other to ensure that Neoptolemos was indeed slain.

So the day came and with a false smile and acting happiness I went through the marriage ceremony, knowing not that Orestes and Pylades lay in wait to slay Neoptolemos after the ceremony.

After the ceremony and the Oaths for Hestia, I retired to my room supposedly to get ready for the bridal bed. Has I lay the knife to my wrist I saw. Priam and Hecuba appear.

They cried out “ Daughter No, Oh please daughter NO! NO!”

Then Cassandra appeared and cried out “In the name of Apollo Live sister!”

Hector than appeared behind me, holding me saying “Beloved wife please live on!”

Clutching the knife still I nerved myself to banish those cowardly daemons. But then dearest Asytanax appeared and said quietly “Mother! for my sake d’ont!”.

I dropped the knife and collapsed into a heap. Raging at my cowardice, weeping for my weakness. At length I heard dimly through the door and then louder and louder.

“All Hail Andromache Queen of the Molossians” over and over and over again, until the sound was deafening; until the very roof shook. Then the door opened.

Thrasybullus was at the door He hailed me has Queen between gritted teeth and knelled. For he was one of the conspirators and he secretly longed to be King himself. I was speechless and in a stupor. But enough! this story could last a eternity if I don’t end it.

To get to the end. Orestes and Pylades had murdered Neoptolemos in his chamber where they had laid in wait for him. Piercing him with their swords and laying him dead in his blood splattered bridegroom robe with his marriage garland festooned with his blood and brains. Word soon spread that Neoptolemos was dead by the hand of the cursed Orestes. Instead of hailing him has their hero and deliverer he was cursed has a matricide hated by the gods and all those associated with him similarly accursed. Since I was married to Neoptolemos and much pitied by the people for my miseries the cry arose that it was the God’s will that Neoptolemos die and I be Queen. Before the Conspirators could act the commons, called by the stupid the “mob”, had proclaimed me Queen. They dared not for fear of their lives go against the people and so they went along knowing that I would not be Queen long, or so they hoped. That hope was forestalled by the support the commons gave me through out the land, out of piety and the belief that my ruling was just. It certainly helped that the nobles realized that supporting me was the only alternative to a vicious civil war among many claimants.

So I was crowned, and Hestia proclaimed my heir to Epirus. It has been 10 years since then, 15 since Iluim was made a ruin. Despite the intrigues of Nobles and the alliances and conspiracies of the other Greek states who fear the reborn house of Priam, I am still Queen. The calamines and hatred of the Greeks have merely reinforced the peoples love for me and softened the Nobles antipathy to me. Thrasybullus is my chief Councillor and if I trust him not completely I trust him well enough. And if he still finds it hard to accept me has Queen he prefers it to virtually all other possibilities. Except him becoming King. However he knows he would not survive deposing me. So he stakes his and his families future on his son Creon marrying Hestia. A match I approve of given that Hestia likes Creon much and such a marriage would remove most of the remaining opposition to me and Hestia.

As for Orestes, Pylades and Hermione, they fled into exile still stirring up opposition on behalf of Hermione’s “rights”. Orestes still dreams of becoming king of Golden Mycenae. Electra, Orestes fellow matricide and sister, has married Pylades and has had two still born children. So the God’s curse follows them both.

A new alliance of Greek states is being formed against us. For the Greeks have recovered from the storms both natural and man made that decimated the Greeks upon their homecoming from desecrated Ilium and punished them for their damnable innumerable sins against justice. Fleets destroyed by storms, lands decimated by plague, civil war, family homicidal strife, murder, thievery, dishonour, exile, were their just reward for their “honourable” victory.

Thus did the Gods reward their self proclaimed champions.

But late I heard a secret message from Orestes saying he wishes to meet me so we can “act to our mutual benefit”, and requesting safe conduct for himself, Electra, and Pylades.

Against the advice of my council I have given Orestes what he wants. For I hope what he proposes will weaken if not break the alliance against Molossia that threatens us.

As for my happiness? I have little and it is mostly my daughter. But then I’m a wife again. For upon becoming Queen I freed Kimon, mad though he was, and then married him. My advisers were aghast!! Ha! Ha! I did it for three reasons. 1, I did not wish to have endless disputes and fighting over who would marry me. 2, Hestia already regarded Kimon has her father. 3, Mainly I married him because next to Hector and Priam, not excluding my own father, he is the most honourable man I have ever known. So marrying him was definitely the just and right thing to do.

Kimon is simply my consort and not King and I am pleased to say is now quite sane, most of the time anyway.

But soft I hear someone approaching.

Bibliography

Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth, v. 1 & 2, The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore MA, 1993.

Graves, Robert, The Greek Myths, Revised Edition, v. 1 & 2, Penguin Books, London, 1960.

Schwab, Gustav, Gods and Heroes: Myths and Epics of Ancient Greece, Pantheon Books, New York, 1946.

Aeschylus, The Oresteian Trilogy, Penguin Books, London, 1956. Contains the plays Agamemnon, The Choephori, (The Libation Bearers), The Eumenies, (The Furies), which I used.

Sophocles, Electra and Other Plays, Penguin Books, London, 1953. Contains Electra which I used.

Euripides, The Bacchae and other Plays, Second Edition, Penguin Books, London, 1973. Contains The Trojan Women which I used.

IBID, Orestes and Other Plays, 1972. Contains Orestes and Andromache which I used.

IBID. Medea / Hecabe / Electra / Heracles, 1963. Contains Electra, and Hecabe which I used.

Racine, Jean, Andromache and Other Plays, Penguin Books, London, 1967. Contains Andromache which I used.

Pierre Cloutier

Oedipus’ Fate

Oedipus and the Sphinx
From a Greek Vase 
One of the great characters in all fiction is King Oedipus, not only is he a central figure in Greek mythology but he is the central figure of one of the greatest plays ever written; Sophocles’ Oedipus the King. It is forgotten that Oedipus is not simply the central character of that play but also the central character of Sophocles’ last play Oedipus at Colonus, which was first performed after Sophocles death, (Which occurred in 406 B.C.E.) c. 401 B.C.E.1

Here I shall deal with a common trope, that of fate and its relationship to the character of Oedipus in Sophocles’ plays.

That trope is the concept of Oedipus as a tragic hero, who through a fatal character flaw is brought down to destruction. I will not go through the acres of ink that have been spent trying to find Oedipus’ tragic flaw. The bottom line is that Oedipus at least in terms of Sophocles own concept of the character has no tragic flaw, no defect that causes his downfall.2 The search for the tragic flaw began with a misreading of Aristotle’s Poetics and requires a deliberately obtuse reading of Sophocles to find any such flaw.3

In chapter 13 of Aristotle’s Poetics, Aristotle says:

…on the other hand, the change to bad fortune which he undergoes is not due to any moral defect or depravity, but to an error of some kind.


…
It follows that a well-formed plot will be simple rather than (as some people say) double, and that it must involve a change not to good fortune from bad fortune, but (on the contrary) from good fortune to bad fortune – and this must be due to not to depravity but to a serious error on the part of someone of the kind specified.4

The Greek word hamartia, which in the translation above was translated as “error” and “serious error” was translated in the past as “flaw”, “character flaw” or / and “tragic flaw”. The term “flaw” assumes that what doomed the character was some personal, inward defect. This is wrong, at least in the case of Oedipus, for what doomed him was his fate sealed before he was born. He certainly makes mistakes, but those mistakes were made because of his ignorance of what was really going on not from some character flaw.5 So Oedipus is in effect from a modern point of view “innocent” of his fate.

Why is this the case? It is simple; Oedipus was doomed by a curse uttered by the Gods before he was born that he would murder his father and marry his mother. It was his fate to do those terrible things. Nothing about his character enters into it at all. It is simply his fate. Of course the very attempts of men to evade their fate simply insures that the divine curse is fulfilled. Thus Oedipus’ father’s (Laius) attempt to avoid this fate by leaving young Oedipus to die on a hill is thwarted. Oedipus is raised by the King and Queen of Corinth as their son. When he finds out from the Oracle of Delphi that he is fated to be a patricide and marry his mother he flees Corinth to avoid this fate because he thinks the King and Queen of Corinth are his parents and being a dutiful, loving child he does not want to do those things to his parents. Oedipus decides to go to Thebes. On the way there he has an altercation with a man who tries to kill him, and who he kills in self defence. Unknowingly Oedipus as killed Laius his father. Just outside Thebes Oedipus solves the riddle of the Sphinx, who has been terrorizing Thebes. The Sphinx kills herself, mortified that any mere human could solve her riddle. Without a King since Laius’ disappearance The Thebans in gratitude make Oedipus King of Thebes and he marries Laius’ widow Jocasta, who Oedipus does not know is his mother. The marriage proves happy and they have four children; Eteocles and Polynices boys and Ismene and Antigone girls. Thus did Oedipus fulfill the second part of the curse. Years go by and finally the Gods send plague and famine to punish Thebes for letting an incestuous parricide get away with it and not be punished. Oedipus being the diligent and devoted King he is spares no effort to find and punish the evil doer in an effort to save Thebes from the wrath of the Gods. Oedipus finds out that he is the incestuous parricide. Jocasta kills herself in horror upon finding out. Oedipus blinds himself in an act of horror stricken self mutilation.6

Oedipus is eventually driven into exile accompanied only by his daughter Antigone, while Oedipus’ other daughter Ismene stays in Thebes to watch how things are going and sends help from time to time. Meanwhile Oedipus’ sons Eteocles and Polynices, who sent their father into exile, are fighting over the throne of Thebes. Eventually Oedipus reaches Colonus near Athens where, after an attempt by the Thebans to abduct him for selfish purposes, he is transfigured and disappears from the earth.7

In none of this is there the working out of a character flaw; there is instead the implacable, irresistible working out of fate. In the ideological world of the Greeks at the time fate was implacable it even controlled the Gods. Human attempts to thwart it were always unavailing and pointless. For note in none of this is Oedipus actually from a modern point of view guilty of anything worthy of being punished. After all he killed his father in self defence and he did not know the man was his father at the time. Further he did not know Jocasta was his mother when he married her and had children with her. In other words Oedipus is innocent. However this means nothing in the eyes of fate because he, Oedipus was destined to do terrible things and he is guilty because he did those terrible things despite his from our point of view, innocent.8 As Oedipus says:

I tell you, then, I have endured Foulest injustice; I have endured Wrong undeserved; God knows Nothing was of my choosing.9

Oedipus later says, without contradiction:

Yes, You shall here. He (Laius) whom I killed Had sought to kill me first. The Law Acquits me, innocent, as ignorant, Of what I did.10

Oedipus is a polluted, damned figure because of what he did. The fact that he is innocent makes no difference to either his guilt for his acts or to in anyway mitigating the horror of what he did. This view is so different from a modern view that views guilt as laying in motivation and intent. Here it is in the act itself. The fact that Oedipus killed his father and married his mother makes him guilty, his actual innocence changes nothing about his terrible fate. As Finley states regarding the Oedipus story:

We are usually taught to see in the story and the play the tragic hero who is brought low. But what was Oedipus’ fault? His guilt was objective. That is to say: it existed, first, because he had been destined to it; second, because, in fulfilling his destiny, he murdered his father and married his mother. It existed in several actions, not in his character or his soul, not in the inner motives behind his actions. When Oedipus discovers the truth, he promptly and fully accepts his guilt despite his subjective innocence; he curses his fate not because it was unjust or because he regretted having done what he might have avoided, but because his fate was to do terrible things; he curses what he as done and therefore what he is.11

Attempts to find a character flaw in Oedipus include such absurd ideas as Oedipus’ single minded drive to find out the truth is a character flaw. Aside from forgetting that Oedipus has already done the terrible things that render him a polluted incestuous parricide, this ignores the fact that Oedipus MUST find out who and where this person is or the Gods will continue to send plague and famine to curse Thebes until either this person is found or Thebes utterly destroyed by the God's curses. Besides it would be a truly horrible character flaw if Oedipus out of concern for himself refused to find out the truth and thus sacrificed Thebes to his selfish personal needs. That would be pride, hubris, which the Gods abominate in ancient Greek myth, on a truly colossal scale.

Another foolish idea is the notion that Oedipus’ character flaw is attempting to escape his fate. Aside from the rather absurd implied notion that if Oedipus had embraced his fate he would have escaped it. This idea ignores that the Gods and fate are implacable they would have found a way for Oedipus regardless of what he did or did not do for him to fulfill his fate. Finally what human being with even the weakest sense of ethics would not fight, much less embrace a fate that consisted of murdering your father and marrying your mother. If fighting that sort of fate is a character flaw then I’m all for having that character flaw.

In the end Oedipus is a much abused, innocent whose terrible fate was to do terrible things. He is the polluted innocent whose very presence dirties and defiles and yet in Oedipus at Colonus this very pollution; the fact that Oedipus is guilty of acts of the most extreme defiling nature in the eyes of the Greeks of Sophocles time, turns him into a man of sanctity of the holy and supernatural. This is because of his innocence. Oedipus is objectively guilty because he did indeed commit the profane, defiling acts he is accused of. Yet he did not do them deliberately, there is no malice, no evil intent in the acts. Oedipus is quite simply a very good man fated to do terrible things. It is his goodness and his endurance of suffering, calumny and hatred and a remorselessly cruel fate that make him holy. He is a good man so polluted with unspeakable crimes that he is holy and divine.

So in the end the Athenian King Theseus saw Oedipus’ passing but no other man did. As the messenger relates:

In what manner Oedipus passed from this earth, no one can tell. Only Theseus knows. We know he was not destroyed by a thunderbolt from heaven nor tide-wave rising from the sea, for no such thing occurred. Maybe a guiding spirit from the gods took him, or the earth’s foundations gently opened and received him with no pain. Certain it is that he was taken without a pang, without grief or agony – a passing more wonderful than that of any other man.12

Meanwhile perhaps we can take the warning of Sophocles to heart at the end of Oedipus the King:

Call no man happy until he is dead.13

1. Watling, E. F., Introduction, in Sophocles, The Theban Plays, Penguin Books, London, 1947, pp. 7-22, at 13.

2. Finley, M.I., Desperately Foreign, in Aspects of Antiquity, Penguin Books, London, 1968, pp. 11-15, Jones, John, Aristotle and Greek Tragedy, Chatto & Windus Ltd., London, 1962, pp. 192-235.

3. IBID, See Aristotle, Poetics, Penguin Books, London, 1996.

4. Aristotle, ch. 13, p. 21.

5. Finley, Jones, pp. 12-20, Heath, Malcolm, Introduction, in Aristotle, pp. vii-lxviii, at xxxi-xxxiii, xlix-liii. Heath’s attempt on pages xxxi-xxxiii to introduce some level, (He grudgingly admits that it would not be a serious moral failing.) of a moral failing as a error and not mere ignorance or some other intellectual error as a possible meaning for hamartia falls because it ignores, in the case of Oedipus at least, the implacable workings of fate. Oedipus is doomed to do terrible things from before he was born, any errors he commits are irrelevant his destiny is fated, no doomed, for him to fulfill.

6. Watling, pp. 23-24, 69-70, 125, See also Sophocles.

7. IBID, Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus.

8. IBID, Sophocles, see also Footnote 2.

9. Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, p. 87.

10. IBID, p. 88.

11. Finley, p. 12.

12. Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, p. 121.

13. Finley, p. 13, quoting Oedipus the King.

Pierre Cloutier

Shakespeare and Henry V

Henry V (Left), Shakespeare (Right)

Henry V, 1413-1422 C.E., is considered one of the greatest of English Kings. He was born in either 1386 0r 1387. The reason for this disparity is probably because of his status as the son of Henry of Bolingbroke who was not in line to the throne.1

Henry of Bolingbroke eventually got on King Richard II’s bad side was exiled in 1398 upon which Richard II took charge of Henry’s son Henry. Now the future Henry V apparently got along very well with Richard.2

The next year Henry of Bolingbroke invaded England while Richard II and young Henry were in Ireland and overthrew Richard II. Henry of Bolingbroke became Henry IV. Richard was confined to Pontefract castle and was almost certainly murdered at Henry IV’s urgings early in the following year.3

Because Henry, now Prince of Wales, liked Richard II, Richard’s murder apparently caused bad blood between father and son.

Now Henry IV’s claim to the throne was weaker than several others more specifically the Earl of March and so Henry IV’s reign was characterized by violence and rebellion and by a general atmosphere of repression and disorder.

Henry IV sought to expiate his sin of regicide by going on a Crusade but never actually did so. Henry, as Prince of Wales, showed considerable skill as a military commander dealing with the various rebellions against his father.

When his father died in 1413 Henry, Prince of Wales became Henry V King of England. Rather than consolidate the rather shaky Lancastrian hold on the English throne Henry let himself be dragged into the interminable Hundred Years War with France.

The contortions and convolutions need not detain us suffice to say that Henry won the battle of Agincourt, a spectacular, one sided, victory over a considerably larger French Army and in subsequent years Henry V was able to conquer Normandy and because of the vicious French civil war between the Burgundians and Armagnacs, climaxing in the murder of Jean, the fearless, Duke of Burgundy in 1419, was able to secure the Treaty of Troyes in 1420, which made him the heir of the French king Charles VI and married him to Charles VI’s daughter Catherine of Valois.4

This was success on a truly spectacular level. When Henry V died in 1422, of dysentery, having contracted it besieging the city of Meaux in 1421-1422, it seemed that his death forclosed the alleged dazzling prospects ahead of him.

Shakespeare and other writers have waxed eloquent over Henry V, creating in him the myth of the perfect ruler, and creating the image of a sublime man and supremely capable and good man, cut down in his prime. However, Shakespeare had beneath the enthusiasm indications of a different view.

For example there is the famous St. Crispin speech in Shakespeare’s play Henry V:

What's he that wishes so?

My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin:

If we are mark'd to die, we are enow

To do our country loss; and if to live,

The fewer men, the greater share of honour.

God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.

By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,

Nor care I who doth feed upon mycost;

It yearns me not if men my garments wear;

Such outward things dwell not in my desires:

But if it be a sin to covet honour,

I am the most offending soul alive.

No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:

God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour

As one man more, methinks, would share from me

For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!

Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,

That he which hath no stomach to this fight,

Let him depart; his passport shall be made

And crowns for convoy put into his purse:

We would not die in that man's company

That fears his fellowship to die with us.

This day is called the feast of Crispian:

He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,

Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,

And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

He that shall live this day, and see old age,

Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,

And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:

'Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.

And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.

'Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,

But he'll remember with advantages

What feats he did that day: then shall our names.

Familiar in his mouth as household words

Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,

Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,

Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.

This story shall the good man teach his son;

And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remember'd;

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition:

And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accursed they were
not here,And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

(Henry V, Act 4, Scene III)5

Certainly a rousing and heartfelt display of love of country and not surprisingly loved by English audiences to this day.

This play, along with Henry IV Parts I & II, by Shakespeare with its portrayal of an outstanding and seemingly ideal monarch has warmed the hearts of patriotic Englishmen for centuries and as coloured views of the English monarch by English Historians and Scholars.

Yet it is important to remember that Shakespeare was no Historian and that his Henry V was a literary creation not an historical character. Also underneath all of the patriotic bluster and huzzahs Shakespeare, being Shakespeare was not quite so blinded by patriotic fever. If Shakespeare’s 8 connected History plays6 are viewed together the story is darker. In the plays Henry IV becomes King by overthrowing and murdering the rightful King Richard II. This is a crime against the way the Universe should operate in Shakespeare's eyes. Henry IV is racked with remorse because of this crime and promises to go on Crusade. However he does not abdicate his ill gotten throne and so is punished by leprosy and eventually dies a loathsome and terrible death.

So apparently the father’s sin is punished and the son may reign in peace. Things are not quite so simple. Henry continues to deny the throne to the rightful heir The Earl of March and suppresses by brutal execution a conspiracy to place the Earl of March on the throne.

Shakespeare also gave Henry V a few choice lines indicating that this ideal King was far from ideal. His speech to the Governor of Harfleur is rather interesting in revealing a very unpleasant facet of Henry V’s character.

How yet resolves the governor of the town?
This is the latest parle we will admit
Therefore to our best mercy give yourselves;
Or like to men proud of destruction
Defy us to our worst: for, as I am a soldier,
A name that in my thoughts becomes me best,
If I begin the battery once again,
I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur
Till in her ashes she lie buried.
The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,
And the flesh'd soldier, rough and hard of heart,
In liberty of bloody hand shall range
With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass
Your fresh-fair virgins and your flowering infants.
What is it then to me, if impious war,
Array'd in flames like to the prince of fiends,
Do, with his smirch'd complexion, all fell feats
Enlink'd to waste and desolation?
What is't to me, when you yourselves are cause,
If your pure maidens fall into the hand
Of hot and forcing violation?
What rein can hold licentious wickedness
When down the hill he holds his fierce career?
We may as bootless spend our vain command
Upon the enraged soldiers in their spoil
As send precepts to the leviathan
To come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur,
Take pity of your town and of your people,
Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command;
Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace
O'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds
Of heady murder, spoil and villany.
If not, why, in a moment look to see
The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters;
Your fathers taken by the silver beards,
And their most reverend heads dash'd to the walls,
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,
Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused
Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry
At Herod's bloody-hunting slaughtermen.
What say you? will you yield, and this avoid,
Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy'd?
(Henry V, Act 3, Scene III)7

This speech is sometimes cut out entirely and almost always cut so to remove the less congenial bits. Directors and audiences do not seem to want Henry V out of his own mouth to show what a monster he can be. So it is, if it is used at all, carefully cut. But then why should such a speech be a surprise coming from the son of a usurper who is a usurper himself and as such a violator of the proper order of the Universe. Such is in my opinion what Shakespeare is getting at, here at least.

Henry V by occupying the throne has inherited his father’s guilt and like his father he fails to show true penitence by abdicating but instead retains the throne. Henry V’s reburial of Richard II, the prayers he has said for Richard II’s soul mean nothing in the face of the refusal to abdicate. Henry V in the play realizes that to some extent; he says:

O God of battles! steel my soldiers' hearts;

Possess them not with fear; take from them now

The sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers

Pluck their hearts from them. Not to-day, O Lord,

O, not to-day, think not upon the fault

My father made in compassing the crown!

I Richard's body have interred anew;

And on it have bestow'd more contrite tears

Than from it issued forced drops of blood:

Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay,

Who twice a-day their wither'd hands hold up

Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built

Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests

Sing still for Richard's soul. More will I do;

Though all that I can do is nothing worth,

Since that my penitence comes after all,

Imploring pardon.
(Henry V, Act 4, Scene I)8

Henry V wins the battle and it appears divine favour. He marries Katherine of Valois, daughter of French King Charles VI, and is made heir to Charles VI. It appears that God as forgiven him and granted him his protection. Yet it is all a delusion. Divine punishment is coming and Henry V dies young from disease caught trying to crush continued French resistance.

Henry V is succeeded by an infant who grows up to be a weak King and touched by madness inherited from his grandfather Charles VI of France. France is progressively lost to the resurgent Charles VII son of Charles VI. England falls prey to factions. One around the ruling house of Lancaster, and the other the rival house of York.

England succumbs to corruption, weakness, civil war and murderous violence. Henry VI and his heir Edward are murdered extinguishing the line of Henry IV. The house of York similarly is victimized by murder and violence. Only when Henry VII establishes the house of Tudor is legitimacy finally restored and the cosmic, divine balance disrupted by Henry IV’s overthrow and murder of Richard II righted.

On the surface it appears that Shakespeare takes seriously Henry V’s claim to the French throne and certainly it is easy to find in this play and the others in Shakespeare’s series of History plays passages indicating contempt for the French and bravo declarations of English rights and honour. Yet again that may be what Shakespeare is saying in parts of the play yet at the heart is a problem with thinking that Shakespeare was just a hyper patriot, “My country is always right” sort of person. The reason is simple if Henry V’s claim to the English throne is entirely illegitimate than his claim to the French throne is equally bogus.

Thus Shakespeare makes the speech given by the Archbishop of Canterbury9 in support of Henry V’s claim to the French throne a model of comic tediousness and absurdity. It is digressive, repetitious and convoluted nonsense. And why does the Archbishop support Henry’s claim? Well in the previous scene A group of English magnates including the Archbishop agree that in order to kill a Parliamentary bill that threatens to take away ½ of the Churches land to support Henry’s claim to the French Throne.10 Such is the less than honest reason given to support Henry V trying to conquer France in the play.

Thus despite all the surface depreciation of the French Shakespeare seems to recognize that they are right to reject Henry V’s claim and to violently resist it.

The stunning, indeed almost miraculous, victory at Agincourt is thus nothing but a fiendish divine trap to enmesh and entangle England so that divine punishment for the overthrow, and murder of a rightful King and his replacement with a usurper would be met out by the truly terrible and awful wrath of God.

It is forgotten that this celebration of patriotic sentiment the play Henry V contains within it the story of a illegitimate usurper trying to conquer a foreign country which he, with no legitimate basis, lays claim too. For all the surface patriotic posturing, which is what most audiences and frankly directors of the play hear, just underneath is a story of wicked usurpation, an unjust war of conquest and the inevitable righteous retribution that will inevitably come on the breakers of human and divine law.

1. Wikipedia, Henry V, Here.

2. Jones, Terry, et al, Who Murdered Chaucer?, Thomas Dunne Books, New York, 2006, pp. 110-112.

3. Seward, Desmond, Henry V as Warlord, Penguin Books, London, 1987, pp. 13-15. I suspect that Henry IV almost certainly never directly ordered Richard II’s murder but simply put out lots of hints that things would be so much better if Richard II was dead. Richard was probably suffocated and the usual cock and bull story put out that Richard died of natural causes.

4. IBID, pp. 51-158.

5. Shakespeare, William, Henry V, Here.

6. The Plays are in Chronological order, Richard II, Henry IV Part One, Henry IV Part Two, Henry V, Henry VI Part One, Henry VI Part Two, Henry VI Part Three, Richard III.

7. Shakespeare.

8. IBID.

9. IBID, Act 1, Scene 2.

10. IBID, Act 1, Scene 1.

I heavily used the following book. Sutherland, John & Watts, Cedric, Henry V, War Criminal & Other Shakespeare Puzzles, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000. The two essays in the book I relied on are Henry V, War Criminal?, pp. 108-116, Henry V’s claim to France: valid or invalid?, pp. 117-125.

Pierre Cloutier