Oedipus at Colonus” was Sophocles’ last play, his love song to Periclean Athens. Written in the closing years of the fifth century B.C., when Athens was losing the Peloponnesian War, it comes after “Oedipus the King” in the chronology of the Oedipus story, and before “Antigone.” According to David Greene, who co-edited the University of Chicago series that now publishes Robert Fitzgerald’s translation of the play—the one used in “The Gospel at Colonus,” currently being revived at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater—“Antigone” was first produced around 441 B.C., “Oedipus the King” some fifteen years later, and “Oedipus at Colonus,” posthumously, in 404 Continue reading

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