Oedipus at Colonus

About “Oedipus at Colonus”

W. B. Yeats translated Sophocles' Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus from Victorian translations into English and French by classicists R. C. Jebb and Paul Masqueray. He completed Oedipus the King in the fall of 1926 and Oedipus at Colonus a year later. Both plays were given directly to the Abbey players, and Yeats revised them extensively to achieve his goal of presenting the plays in "simple speakable prose." Oedipus at Colonus had a successful run in September 1927 but was not published until 1934. The edition includes photographs and transcriptions of three revised typescripts, a reading text based on the first publication, and an appendix of other typescripts and proofs. It also contains a brief account of the music written for the play by Lennox Robinson, its first director, and includes an introduction and chronology of the play's composition.