perhaps more than one man had killed Laius after all. An ominous ode about destiny and its workings is followed by the entry of the Queen who describes the mad terrors of Oedipus. She is come to pray to Apollo to solve their troubles. At that moment a messenger enters from Corinth with the tidings that Polybus is dead. In eager joy Jocasta summons Oedipus, sneering at the truth of oracles. The King on his appearance echoes her words after hearing the tidings-only to sink back again into gloomy despondency. What of Merope, is she also dead? The messenger assures him that his anxiety about her is groundless, for there is no relationship between them. Little by little he tells Oedipus his true history. The messenger himself found him on Cithaeron in his infancy, his feet pierced through. He had him from a shepherd, a servant of Laius, the very man whom Oedipus had summoned. Suddenly turning to Jocasta, the King asks her if she knows the man. Appalled at the horror of the truth which she knows cannot be concealed much longer she affects indifference and beseeches him search no further. When he obstinately refuses, bidding the man be brought at once, she leaves the stage with the cry: "Alack, thou unhappy one; that is all I may call thee and never address thee again." Oedipus by a masterstroke of art is made to imagine that she has departed in shame, fearing he may be proved the son of a slave. "But I account myself the son of Fortune, who will never bring me to dishonour; my brethren are the months, who marked me out for lowliness and for power. Such being my birth, I shall never prove false to it and faint in finding out who I am." The awful power of this astonishing scene is manifest. The bright joyousness of the King's impulsive speech prepares the way for the coming horror. When the shepherd appears, the messenger faces him claiming his acquaintance. The shepherd doggedly attempts to deny all knowledge of him, cursing him for his mad talkativeness. Oedipus threatens torture to open his lips. Line by line the truth is dragged from him; the abandoned child came from another--from a creature of Laius--was said to be his son--was given him by Jocasta--to be destroyed because of an oracle--why then passed over to the Corinthian messenger?--"through pity, and he saved the child alive, for a mighty misery. If thou art that child, know that thou art born a hapless man".