The Metamorphoses of Theseus in Oedipus at Colonus
by Brian Johnston

II. The Three Actors in Oedipus at Colonus

Oedipus at Colonus might be unique in tragedy where single roles (Theseus, Antigone) are played by more than one actor. (Ismene also goes from speaking to mute then back to speaking parts). In comedy, this was to become a staple of the genre. Menander stretched the convention, one imagines, to its limits. The occasion of the performance of Oedipus at Colonus , the last great tragedy to appear at the festival – in 401 B.C., following the death of Sophocles and the defeat of Athens by Sparta, though after Athens had begun to regain its democratic independence – must be unrivaled in history of the theater. Even before his death, as Sophocles prepared for the performance he would not see, he must have looked up the space of the amphitheater much as a famous bullfighter looks upon the ring where he had spent his entire victorious career. For this was the space of Sophocles' unrivaled series of victories in the dramatic contests.

The sense of the theatrical space of the play being memory haunted, filled with the ghosts not only of Sophocles' own plays but of those also of his rivals, has struck many commentators. I will not dwell at length on the palpable presence of these ghosts: of the Oresteia , The Seven against Thebes , The Phoenician Women , Antigone , Philoctetes , and, above all Oedipus Tyrannos , for this is part of the accepted critical commentary on this play. Instead I will simply look at how Sophocles deploys the physical space of the theater and especially how he employs the three-actor convention to convey the 'miraculous' event that the play finally depicts. I will emphasize different aspects of this staging than does David Seale, but my account owes much to his chapter on this play in Vision and Stagecraft in Sophocles . Above all, I share with him and others the idea of the play as an almost point-by-point reversal of the dramaturgy of Oedipus the King , the later play looking at the earlier as if in a mirror where all the earlier terms are wonderfully reversed: a drama of gaining semi-divine status versus a drama of losing it; a drama of establishing the right to occupy an exalted (sacred) place despite the chorus' initial horror versus a drama of being ejected in horror from an exalted space despite the chorus' initial sympathy; a drama of beginning as blind outcast and ending as wonderfully accepted visionary insider versus a drama of beginning as kingly and visionary insider and ending as blind outsider; and so on. In a manner unique in drama, the two plays counterpoint each other continuously while drawing into this counterpoint the “melodies” and themes of the other plays that have appeared in this theater space for over more than half a century. I mention this ingenious counterpointing in the play to remind the reader that the old Sophocles was consummately in control of his medium and that very few, if any, of his effects are likely to be accidental – i.e., he is not “nodding” and unprecedentedly requiring a fourth actor.

Sophocles condenses, more powerfully than ever before, the three areas of theater's physical space, making each tremendously momentous: the parodoi , left and right, the orchestra , and the skene – though, again, the similar model of the Oedipus Tyrannos is ever present. Especially significant is the contrast of the left parodos with that of the right. The left represents the direction from Thebes. From it comes menace, deceit, and danger in the person of Creon. It is Oedipus' past. Towards it Oedipus directs his tremendous curses. In Creon, Oedipus, Antigone, and Ismene, all of whom enter from this side, we see Thebes' terrible past, its current victims, and its tragic future. The right parados represents Athens; always, in Athenian drama, a non-tragic space, a refuge from tragedy, as Froma Zeitlin reminds us. 13 From this side will come acceptance by the chorus and rescue by the king. Towards this parodos Oedipus directs his blessings for the future. Thus he performs the role of the Eumenides , whose sacred grove he occupies, of both cursing and blessing, especially (as in Aeschylus' Eumenides) of blessing Athens. The two parodoi , therefore, physically enact or stage much of the play's meaning and much of the theater's memory.

The skene's emphatic separation from the orchestra emphasizes the sacred aspect of the setting and the momentous impact of Oedipus' presence there, and it establishes, as Seale notes, a barrier between the sacred and the profane reams of existence, the “bronze threshold.” 14 But it also will be the scene of a theatrical “miracle” at the conclusion when one actor, the protagonist, in swift succession undergoes three momentous changes of identity, and this astonishing succession will itself embody Oedipus' final blessing and the concluding meaning of the whole play. It is a 'miracle' that is apparent only in the theatric performance and much of it depends on the skene being established as a place of the miraculous.

I have indicated this symbolic division of the theatrical space, which others have noted, to set the scene for what I believe to be a highly significant deployment of the three-actor convention within it. Thus I will not be examining the text so much as the choreography of the play and its interchange of masks, voices, and identities. This can be seen as a kind of performative grid which we later could take to the text to see if its pattern of movement is verbally (poetically) confirmed and amplified.

If we look at the disposition of actors and roles and the doublings necessitated by the plot, we find the following roles taken up by the three actors in succession: 15

These roles are distributed throughout the plot in the following way (entering roles are italicized and appear on the second line if each section except for the fifth episode; I have printed the Theseus role in bold print so that the reader more easily can see the adoption of this role by the three actors):

Distribution of Episodes and Actors

The strongest argument against the employment of a fourth actor, which would be unique to this play, is that if he were so employed this whole structure of entrances and exits would be unnecessary. There would be no need for a mute Ismene or for Theseus' exit at the conclusion of the second episode – an exit which leaves Oedipus in danger prior to the entrance of Creon, played by this same third actor. What we notice in the above pattern is that its exigencies can fully be accounted for only from the requirements of the three-actor rule, whereas if a fourth actor were available, a different ( and far less suggestive) pattern would have emerged. Now, a great dramatist always converts his problems into opportunities, makes symbolic and metaphoric sense out of them, and I propose that the three-actor discipline allows Sophocles to discover in it the opportunities for a profound symbolic patterning.

We notice that Theseus does not make his appearance until the family unit of Oedipus, Antigone, and Ismene is completed, and the play will end with the re-assertion of this unit;  in this instance, however, with Theseus taking the place of Oedipus. The action of the play is the defeat and expulsion from the scene of the forces that threaten this unity – i.e., Creon and Polyneices, “both antagonists” roles that will be played by actors who also played Theseus. The “Theseus actors”, 3 and 2, therefore between them “travel through” the whole family history of Oedipus and also take on the “sympathetic” roles of Ismene and Antigone. Only the Oedipus actor does not change as these other actors variously affect him – until the last moments of the play when he will change miraculously.

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