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  1. Home
  2. Monologue for Men
  3. Dramatic Monologue for Men
  4. Oedipus the King
  • A Monologue from the play "Oedipus the King" by Sophocles
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CharacterPriest
GenderMale
Age Range(s)Adult (36-50), Senior (>50)
Type of monologue / Character isCrying, Persuasive, Depressed, Lamenting, Frustrated, Afraid, Praising
TypeDramatic
PeriodAncient Greek
GenreTragedy, Drama
DescriptionThe priest seeks the help of King Oedipus
LocationScene 1

Summary

In the background story of Oedipus the King, King Laius, Oedipus' father, learns from an oracle that he will die by the hand of his son. As a consequence, Laius orders his wife Jocasta to kill their infant son. A servant saves the baby and abandons him in the fields where he is found by shepherds who later bring him to Corinth where he is adopted by King Polybus and raised as his own child. One day Oedipus learns from an oracle that he will be responsible for his father's death and that he will marry his own mother. Thinking that his father is King Polybus, he leaves Corinth and heads towards Thebes, the city where he was actually born. By chance he meets his real father and in a quarrel, he kills him. Later he also solves the riddle of the Sphinx, liberating the city of Thebes of her curse. As a reward he becomes king and is offered the hand of Jocasta, his real mother. The prophecy has been fulfilled.

The play starts with a plague, sent by Apollo, hitting the city of Thebes. An oracle says that the plague has been sent by the gods because the murderer of the city's previous king, Laius, has never been caught. Oedipus doesn't know the person that he killed was Laius.

In this monologue a priest, who has just arrived at Oedipus' palace, describes how the plague is afflicting the city and begs for the king's help.

Written by Administrator

Excerpt
PRIEST
Yea, Oedipus, my sovereign lord and king,
Thou seest how both extremes of age besiege
Thy palace altars--fledglings hardly winged,
And greybeards bowed with years, priests, as am I
Of Zeus, and these the flower of our youth.
Meanwhile, the common folk, with wreathed boughs
Crowd our two market-places, or before
Both shrines of Pallas congregate, or where
Ismenus gives his oracles by fire.
For, as thou seest thyself, our ship of State,
Sore buffeted, can no more lift her head,
Foundered beneath a weltering surge of blood.
A blight is on our harvest in the ear,
A blight upon the grazing flocks and herds,
A blight on wives in travail; and withal
Armed with his blazing torch the God of Plague
Hath swooped upon our city emptying
The house of Cadmus, and the murky realm
Of Pluto is full fed with groans and tears.

Therefore, O King, here at thy hearth we sit,
I and these children; not as deeming thee
A new divinity, but the first of men;
First in the common accidents of life,
And first in visitations of the Gods.
Art thou not he who coming to the town
Of Cadmus freed us from the tax we paid
To the fell songstress? Nor hadst thou received
Prompting from us or been by others schooled;
No, by a god inspired (so all men deem,
And testify) didst thou renew our life.
And now, O Oedipus, our peerless king,
All we thy votaries beseech thee, find
Some succor, whether by a voice from heaven
Whispered, or haply known by human wit.
Tried counselors, methinks, are aptest found
To furnish for the future pregnant rede.
Upraise, O chief of men, upraise our State!
Look to thy laurels! for thy zeal of yore
Our country's savior thou art justly hailed:
O never may we thus record thy reign:--
"He raised us up only to cast us down."
Uplift us, build our city on a rock.
Thy happy star ascendant brought us luck,
O let it not decline! If thou wouldst rule
This land, as now thou reignest, better sure
To rule a peopled than a desert realm.
Nor battlements nor galleys aught avail,
If men to man and guards to guard them tail.

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