In one thing, at any rate, the English drama was especially fortunate, that is, in the fact that its form and its content were so largely determined by two such remarkable men as Marlowe and Shakespeare. The conditions in France in the sixteenth century were strikingly similar to those in England, except for the number of public theaters. M. Petit de Julleville points out that France as well as England possessed every item of the motley list of dramatic types enumerated by Polonius; and he continues: "Rien n'empêchait alors qu'un Shakespeare naquit en France; les circonstances n'étaient-elles pas merveilleusement favorables? Mais, en dépit de certaines théories, les grands hommes ne paraissent pas tout juste au moment où ils sont nécessaires. Il nous fallait un Shakespeare; il naquit un Alexandre Hardy!" OEDIPUS OEDIPUS DRAMATIS PERSONAE OEDIPUS King of Thebes; the son, as he supposed, of Polybus, king of Corinth, and Merope, his wife, but found to be the son of Laius and Jocasta. _Jocasta_ Wife and, as the play develops, found to be also the mother of Oedipus. _Creon_ Theban prince, brother of Jocasta. _Tiresias_ A celebrated prophet of Thebes, now old and blind. _Manto_ His daughter. _Old Man_ Sent from Corinth to announce to Oedipus the death of Polybus. _Phorbas_ Head-shepherd of the royal flocks of Thebes. _Messenger_ Who announces the self-inflicted blindness of Oedipus and the suicide of Jocasta. _Chorus_ Of Theban elders. THE SCENE is laid before the royal palace of Thebes; the play opens in the early morning of the day within which the tragedy is consummated. _An oracle once came to Laius, king of Thebes, that he should perish by his own son's hands. When, therefore, a son was born to him, he gave the infant to his chief of shepherds to expose on Mount Cithaeron. But the tenderhearted rustic gave the babe instead to a wandering herdsman of Polybus, the king of Corinth._ _Years later, a reputed son of Polybus, Oedipus by name, fearing an oracle which doomed him to slay his father and wed his mother, fled from Corinth, that so he might escape this dreadful fate. As he fared northward, he met and slew an old man who imperiously disputed the narrow way with him. Upon arriving at the Theban land, he read the riddle of the Sphinx, and so destroyed that monster which Juno had sent to harass the land which she hated; and for this service, Oedipus was made the husband of Jocasta, the widowed queen of Laius (who had recently been slain upon the road), and set upon the vacant throne._ _Now other years have passed, and sons and daughters have been born to the royal pair. But now a dreadful pestilence afflicts the state. Oedipus has sent Creon to consult the oracle, to learn the cause and seek the means of deliverance from the scourge. And while he waits his messenger's return, the murky dawn still finds him grieving for his kingdom's wretched plight._ ACT I