This classic play is an out and out dramatic classic of murder,
incest, self-mutilation and suicide. It is amazing to think that this play was performed nearly 2,500 years ago, five times longer ago than Shakespeare's plays. Put another way, when Jesus was born and lived, this play was as far in the past to people living then as Shakespeare's plays are to us now in 2024. It won second prize in a competition in 429 BC to a play now lost to us written by a nephew of Euripides, one of the other two most prominent Greek tragic writers of the era. What huge influence this and other plays of the era have had on the literature of the past two and a half millennia. ( )

Really, really funny.

It's a classic melodrama, and I'm sure it was great in it's time, but by my modern standards it is written in a terribly unsatisfactory way. Long, long, long build up, to a climax so gaudy it puts eastern soap operas to shame.
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This translation by F. Storrs was disappointing. My Kindle edition also was missing formating (such as line breaks between different speakers) which made it difficult to read. ( )

This is one of those classics that I know about through pop culture but have never actually read. (It’s officially been on my to-read list since 2008, so it took me “only” 15 years to get around to it.) It’s a lot more visceral than I was expecting, even though the famous “Oedipus gouges out his own eyes” scene happens off stage. The way the chorus describes it is stomach-churning, especially for someone like me who is very eye-injury-phobic. I haven’t read very many ancient Greek plays, so I’m still not entirely clear on the role of the chorus; can they be seen by the main actors in the play? Are they part of the story? Or do they come and go? I’ll have to do some more research on this subject. ( )