The heroic drama Oedipus: A Tragedy, is an adaptation of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, written by John Dryden and Nathaniel Lee. After being licensed in 1678 and published in 1679, it became a huge success on stage during the Restoration period.

Career and reputation Oedipus, a Tragedy may today have an unintended comic effect, given the bloodthirsty ending of the drama. In past centuries, however, there was a wide range of views, ranging from enthusiasm to condemnation.

"Celebratur Oedipus…" In 1700, the journal "Acta Eruditorum", published in Leipzig, celebrated Dryden and Lee's adaptation of Oedipus. Along with All for Love, Oedipus, a Tragedy was regarded as the climax of Dryden's dramatic work.Brunkhorst 1976, p. 386. Charles Gildon, however, who revised many of Gerard Langbaine's articles in the manual on English Drama An Account of the English Dramatick Poets, harshly criticised Oedipus, a Tragedy, saying:

The most understanding Judges wish they [i.e. Dryden/Lee] had followed Sophocles yet closer, it had then been the best of our Modern Plays, as 'tis of the Ancients: but as it is, they have destroyed the Character of Oedipus…

It remains uncertain which parts of this play were written by Dryden and by Lee. According to The London Stage, Dryden wrote the first two acts, Lee the last three.The London Stage, Vol. 1, p. 273. In his introduction to Oedipus, a Tragedy of 1808, Walter Scott says that the first and the third acts were wholly written by Dryden, maintaining a decided superiority over the rest of the piece. Since there are "many excellent passages through Lee's scenes" and "the tragedy has the appearance of general consistence and uniformity", Scott supposes that the whole play was corrected by Dryden afterwards.

Oedipus, a Tragedy was licensed on 3 January 1678 by Roger L'Estrange and published in 1679 by R. Bentley and M. Magnes in Russel Street in Covent Garden. Bentley and Magnes were already Lee's publishers. Financial considerations were probably the motivation for Dryden's decision to change publishers at this time, ending his long association with Henry Herringman, which dated back to the days before the Restoration. Bentley and Magnes also printed The Kind Keeper, though Dryden complained that they had done so in his absence and without his supervision. With his next play, Troilus and Cressida, he began an association with Jacob Tonson that would last the rest of his life.Winn 1987, p. 314. It remains uncertain when exactly the tragedy was performed on stage for the first time; but it may have been the first new play of the season: The Prologue refers to it as "the first Play bury´d since the Wollen Act," the Act going into effect on 1 Aug 1678.

The tragedy was performed by the Duke's Company in London, surprisingly not by the King's Company, with whom Dryden had a contract to produce three plays a year from 1668 until 1683. Dryden produced his plays at a steady rate, though not three a year: there were twenty-two plays between 1663 and 1683. The King's Company, who anticipated a huge success from the "combined talents of Dryden and Lee", complained about the fact that the play Oedipus, a Tragedy, was given to the Duke's Company, and not to them.

Mr Dryden has now jointly with Mr. Lee (who was in Pension with us to the last day of our Playing, & shall continue) Written a play call´d AEdipus, and given it to the Duke's Company, contrary to his said agreemt [the contract of 1668], his promise [allegedly made after they granted him a third day for All for Love], and all gratitude [,] to the great prejudice and almost undoing of the Company, They being the only Poets remaining to us.

But this complaint went unheeded, and the scenic complexity of the play shows that Dryden and Lee originally intended it for the Duke's Theatre. In 1671, the Duke's Company moved to a new theatre at Dorset Garden which had arrangements for even more elaborate scenic effects, their mastery of spectacle was never matched by the King's Company, particularly after a fire destroyed the Theatre Royal in 1672. The replacement building, designed by Wren, was only a "Plain Built House". Dryden's divorce from the King's players was now complete. During the remaining years of the company, which finally merged with the Duke's men in 1682, he wrote a number of prologues for his old associates, but he was probably paid a set fee for those. For the rest of his plays, Dryden was now paid like other playwrights, with the profits of the third performance on stage.

Dryden's share of the third day's proceeds from Oedipus, which he had to divide with Lee, probably amounted to no more than 50 pound, but any payment was welcome under the circumstances.

The amount of 50 pounds is considered to be a meagre wage here for a popular playwright. In comparison to the earnings of contemporary skilled workers and other professions, however, one might assume that Dryden received an appropriate if not overly generous share of money.Winn, p. 314. The premiere and the following performances of this drama on stage were highly successful. The "bombastic violence of Oedipus", as Kinsley puts it, was a "scandalous success, with the Bettertons playing Oedipus and Jocasta."Kinsley 1971, p. 5.

This play was Admirably well Acted; especially the Parts of Oedipus and Jocasta: One by Mr Betterton, the other by Mrs Betterton; it took prodigiously being Acted 10 Days together.

Dryden's All for Love, by contrast, despite its high place in the estimation both of Dryden and of his modern critics, seems to have had much less general appeal. Published early in 1678, a few months after its first stage presentation, it was only twice reprinted in Dryden's lifetime. Oedipus, a Tragedy, by contrast, reached six editions by 1701 and ten editions by 1734. The heroic drama by Dryden and Lee remained popular for a long period of time and was constantly performed on stage, almost every year between 1678 and 1710. After the premiere, it was restaged in the following years: 1686, 1692, 1696, 1698, 1702, 1703, and between 1705 and 1710 almost every year. The performance of Thursday 13, October 1692, is especially remarkable:

On Thursday last was acted the tragedy of Oedipus king of Thebes at the theater, where Sandford [as Creon] and Powell [as Adrastus] acting their parts together, the former by mistake of a sharp dagger for one that runs the blade into the handle, stab'd the other 3 inches deep: said the wound is mortal.The London Stage, Vol. 1, p. 413.

The effect of this 'accident' on the audience attending the play is impossible to reconstruct. Such incidents might have increased the popularity of the play to a certain extent or might have satisfied the audience's cravings for sensation.

There must have been a change in the reputation of the drama on stage in the late 18th and early 19th century. In his introduction to Oedipus, a Tragedy, written in 1808, Scott considers the performance of the play to be unbearable for the audience about thirty years before, because it was considered to be too bloodthirsty.

It is certain, that, when the play was revived about thirty years ago, the audience were unable to support it to an end; the boxes being all emptied before the third act was concluded. Among all our English plays, there is none more determinedly bloody than Oedipus, in its progress and conclusion. The entrance of the unfortunate king, with his eyes torn from their sockets, is too disgusting for representation.

Concept and composition

Underlying concept Oedipus Rex was originally written by Sophocles in 430 BC, and later on the subject was adapted by Seneca and Corneille. In the preface to Oedipus, a Tragedy, Dryden refers to these authors and comments on their works. By doing so, he reveals his concept of Oedipus, a Tragedy, and explains why he thinks that the Latin and French adaptions of the drama were inferior to the original work by Sophocles.

In our Age, Corneille has attempted it, and it appears by his Preface, with great success: But a judicious Reader will easily observe, how much the Copy is inferiour to the Original.If not otherwise stated, the quotations are taken from Dryden’s preface to Oedipus, a Tragedy.

Dryden disapproves of the way Corneille has treated the subject, but not the subplot – a love story involving Theseus and Dirce: in Oedipus, a Tragedy, Dryden himself uses a love story as subplot. According to Dryden, however, the French dramatist failed to create a heroic Oedipus. Instead of showing Oedipus as a just and merciful monarch, Corneille attaches only negative traits to Oedipus. The love story involving Theseus and Dirce gets too much attention and is put into the centre of his work.

…if he desir'd that Oedipus should be pitied, he shou'd have made him a better man. He forgot that Sophocles had taken care to shew him in his first entrance, a just, a merciful, a successful, a Religious Prince, and in short, a Father of his Country: instead of these, he has drawn him a suspicious, designing, more anxious of keeping the Theban Crown, than solicitous for the safety of his People: Hector'd by Theseus, contemn'd by Dirce, and scarce maintaining a second part in his own Tragedie…"

Dryden criticises Seneca's adaptation of the drama for lacking any naturalness of emotion and blames the Latin author for using artificial language, and as a consequence the lack of effects on stage:

Seneca […] is always running after pompous expression, pointed sentences, and Philosophical notions, more proper for the Study than the Stage: The French-man follow’d a wrong scent; and the Roman was absolutely at cold Hunting.

Dryden disapproves of the fact that Seneca has failed to introduce new aspects, except one: the scene when Lajus's ghost is called and appears on stage, which Dryden and Lee implement in their adaptation.

Seneca supply'd us with no new hint, but only a Relation which he makes of his Tiresias raising the Ghost of Lajus: which is here perform'd in view of the Audience…

Sophocles's Oedipus is praised and considered "the most celebrated piece of all Antiquity" by Dryden. The Greek author, who was

not only of the greatest Wit, but one of the greatest Men in Athens, made it for the Stage at the Publick Cost, and that it had the reputation of being his Masterpiece, not only amongst the Seven of his which are still remaining, but of the greater Number which are perish'd.

Since Sophocles is "admirable every where", Dryden and Lee claim to follow the Greek author as closely as they can. Dryden points out the compositional differences, saying:

…the Athenian Theater, (whether more perfect than ours is not now disputed) had a perfection differing from ours.

Dryden summarises the distinctive features of Greek theatre. A Greek tragedy is composed of three acts, each act generally comprising one scene "… (or two at most) which manage the business of the Play." The three unities are distinctive features of the Athenian theatre. What Dryden disapproves of in Greek theatre is only that the "principal person" appears constantly throughout the plot of a play, "but the inferiour parts seldome above once in the whole Tragedie."

Dryden/Lee's adaptation of Oedipus extends Sophocles's plot in two respects: by adding two further acts to the play and introducing a subplot with secondary characters, namely the love story of Eurydice and Adrastus. In the preface of the play, Dryden justifies the subplot as a necessary gesture towards English "Custom":

The conduct of our Stage is much more difficult, where we are oblig´d never to lose any considerable character which we have once presented. Custom likewise has obtain´d, that we must form an under-plot of second Persons, which must be depending on the first, and their by-walks must be like those in a Labyrinth, which all of 'em lead into the great Parterre: or like so many several lodging Chambers, which have their out-lets into the same Gallery.