all come true, all burst to light! 0 light-now let me look my last on you! l stand revealed at last..,:. cursed in my birth, cursed in marriage, cursed in the lives I cut down with these hands

ER: If you ran from tltem, always dodging home

Many a man before you, in his dreams, has shared his mother's bed

Destiny guide me always Destiny find me filled with xeverence

You are fated to couple with your mother, you will bring a breed of children into the light no 1112n can bear to see-you will kill your father, the one who gave you life!"

three roads meet.

now I can see it all, clear as day. 830 Who told you all this at the time,Jocasta?

An oracle came to Laius one fine day (J won't say from Apollo himself but his underlings, his priests) and it declared that doom would strike him down at the hands of a son, our son, to be born of our own flesh and blood. But Laius, so the report goes at least, was killed by strangers, thieves, at a place where three roads meet ... my son--he wasn't three days old and the boy'5 father fastened his ankles, had .1 henchman fling him away on a barren, trackless mountain.

Then out with it! CHORUS: The man's your friend, your kin, he\, under oaths--don't cast him out, disgraced, branded with guilt on the strength of hearsay only. OIIDJPUS: Know full well, if that is what you want you want me dead or banished from the land.

I did. Aud I'd do the same again.

You-here?You have the gall 595 to show your face before the palace gates? You, plotting to kill me, kill the king-I see it all, the marauding thief himself scheming to steal my crown and power! Te

, brother and father both to the children he embraces, to his mother son and husband both-he sowed the loins his father so,ved, ~e spilled his father's blood

darkness shrouding your eyes that now can see the light!

I came by, Oedipus the ignorant, I stopped the Sphinx! With no help from the birds, the flight of my own intelligence hit the mark

aren't you appalled to start up mch a story

You criticize my temper ... unaware 385 of the one }'Oil live with, you revile me

o see the truth when the truth is only pain to him who sees!

Blind as you are

I will tell you what I heard from the god. Apollo comm.ands us-he was quite dear-"Drive the corruption from the land, 110 don't harbor it any longer, past all cure, don't nurse it in yom soil----root it out!"

, let that man drag out his life in agony, step by painful step-I curse myself as well ... ifby any chance 285 he pmves to be an intimate of our house, here at my hearth, with my full knowledge, may the curse I just called down on him strike me

: banish this man-whoever he may be-never shelter him, never speak a word to him, never make him "partner

You freed us from the Sphinx, you came to Thebes and cut us loose from the bloody tribute we had paid that harsh, brutal singer. We taught you nothing, no skill, no extra knowledge, still you triumphed.

, let that man drag out his life in agony, step by painful step-I curse myself as well ... ifby any chance 285 he pmves to be an intimate of our house, here at my hearth, with my full knowledge, may the curse I just called down on him strike me!

if anyone knows the murderer is a stranger, a man from alien soil, come, speak up.

your raving women's cries your army on the march

Whoever killed the king may decide to kill me too, with the same violent hand

Our leader, my lord, was once a man named Laius,

Banish the man, or pay back blood with blood. 115 Murder sets the plague-storm on the city

Creon, my wife's own brother

I see-how could I fail to see

see with your own eye

Our city reeks with the smoke of burning incense, 5 rings with cries for the Healer and wailing for the dead