TIME AND SCENE: The royal house of Thebes. Double doors dominate the façade; a stone altar stands as the center of the stage.

OEDIPUS: Oh my children, the new blood of ancient Thebes,

Why are you here? Huddling at my altar,

Praying before me, your branches wound in wool.

Our city reeks with the smoke of burning incense,

Rings with cries for the Healer and wailing for the dead.

I thought it wrong, my children, to hear the truth

From others, messengers. Here I am myself-

You all know me, the world knows my fame:

I am Oedipus.

Helping a Priest to his feet.

Speak up old man. Your years,

Your dignity- you should speak for the others.

Some sudden fear? Some strong desire?

You can trust me. I am ready to help,

I'll do anything. I would be blind to misery

Not to pity my people kneeling at my feet

PRIEST: Oh Oedipus, king of the land, our greatest power!

You see before you now, men of all ages

Clinging to your altars. Here are boys,

Still too weak to fly from the nest

And here are the old, bowed down with the years,

The holy ones-a pries of Zeus myself-and here

The picked, unmarried men, the young hope of Thebes

And all the rest, your great family gathers now,

Branches wreathed, massing in the squares,

Kneeling before the two temples of queen Athena

Or the river-shrine where the embers glow and die

and Apollo sees the future in the ashes.

Our city-

look around you, see with your own eyes-

Our ship pitches wildly, cannot lift her head

From the depths, the red waves of death….

Thebes is dying. A blight on the fresh crops

And the rich pastures, cattle sicken and die,

And the women die in labor, children stillborn,

And the plague, the fiery god of fever hurls down

On the city, his lightning slashing through us-

Raging plague in all its vengeance, devastating

The house of Cadmus! And black Death luxuriates

in the raw, wailing miseries of Thebes.

Now we pray to you. You cannot equal the gods,

Your children know that, bending at your altar.

But we do rate you first of men,

Both in the common crisis of our lives

and face-to-face encounters with the gods.

You freed us from the Sphinx, you came to Thebes

And cut loose from the bloody tribute we had paid

that harsh, brutal singer. We taught you nothing,

No skill no extra knowledge, still you triumphed.

A god was with you, so they say, and we believe it-

You lifted up our lives.

So now again,

Oedipus king, we bend to you, your power-

We implore you, all of us on our knees:

Find us strength, rescue! Perhaps you've heard

The voice of a god or something from other men,

Oedipus… what do you know?

The man of experience-you see it every day-

His plans will work in a crisis, his first of all.

Act now-we beg of you, best of men, raise up our city!

Act, defend yourself, your former glory!

Your country calls you savior now

For your zeal, your action years ago.

Never let us remember of your reign:

You helped us stand, only to fall once more.

Oh raise up our city set us on our feet.

The omens were good that day you brought us joy-

be the same man today!

Rule our land, you know you have the power,

But rule a land of the living, not a wasteland.

Ship and towered city are nothing stripped of men

alive within it, living all as one.