Character guide

Oedipus

major

Also known as O Oedipus, King Oedipus, The simple Oedipus, Exit Oedipus, Oedipus Madam, Oedipus The knave methinks, Oedipus Monster, Oedipus Merope

Oedipus rules Thebes as the man who solved the Sphinx's riddle and won both crown and queen, and when plague strikes he takes the suffering of every citizen as his own: 'Your sorrow touches each man severally... but I grieve at once both for the general and myself and you.' His confidence is total — he has already sent Creon to Delphi and boasts he has 'threaded many a maze of weary thought' to catch one clue of hope. That same certainty, and a temper that flares when anyone questions him, will prove as dangerous as the plague he is trying to cure.

Jocasta

major

Also known as Enter Jocasta

Jocasta stands at the center of Thebes's royal house — sister to Creon, mother of Oedipus's children, and the one person who remembers the city before the plague. When Oedipus's search for Laius's killer begins to circle too close, she offers comfort and skepticism, urging him to ignore prophets and oracles whose predictions, she insists, have failed before. Her composure and her buried history make her both the story's calmest voice and its most fragile fault line.

Creon

supporting

Also known as O Creon, Creon Friends, Creon Yea, The trusty Creon, Creon The riddling Sphinx

Creon is the king's right hand — 'the trusty Creon' — sent to Pythian Phoebus to learn how Thebes might be saved, and he comes back crowned with laurel and bad news: the city harbors a pollution that must be driven out. He delivers the oracle plainly, naming Laius's unsolved murder and the god's command to punish the killers, and he refuses to soften it for his royal cousin. His steady, unglamorous loyalty makes him the hinge on which Oedipus's investigation turns, and later the man everyone will look to when the throne shakes.

Teiresias

supporting

Also known as lord Teiresias, Oedipus Teiresias, Teiresias Thou, Teiresias Not Creon

Teiresias is the seer whose sight outlives his eyes, the one man in Thebes who can name the pollution the oracle demands be expelled. Summoned by Oedipus to help track Laius's killer, he resists — he would rather go home than speak — and when pressed he tells the king plainly that the murderer he seeks is standing in the palace. His refusal to flatter, and his willingness to accuse the most powerful man in the city, make him the play's first crack in Oedipus's certainty.

Laius

supporting

Laius ruled Thebes before Oedipus and died abroad on the road to Delphi, killed by robbers — or so the one surviving witness claimed. His murder, never avenged amid the city's troubles, is the 'fell pollution' the god commands be driven out, and his name is the first clue Oedipus follows. Long before the play begins, an oracle warned Laius that his own son would kill him, and the measures he took to prevent it are the buried machinery of everything that follows.

Herdsman

supporting

Also known as Herdsman Alack

The herdsman is the last living witness to Laius's murder, the one man who fled the attack and could say how many robbers struck. He is also the shepherd who, years earlier, was given a doomed infant with riveted feet and instead of leaving it on the mountain passed it to a Corinthian herder. When Oedipus and Jocasta finally summon him to confirm the old story, his reluctance to speak is the last wall standing between the king and the truth.

Messenger

supporting

Also known as Messenger One, Second Messenger, Messenger Friend

He comes as a stranger bearing what sounds like simple tidings: Polybus, king of Corinth, is dead, and the Corinthians want Oedipus to rule them. But he carries a second, older story — that he himself once received an infant on a mountainside and passed it to another shepherd. That memory turns an ordinary embassy into the hinge on which Oedipus's whole identity swings, and it is his patient, almost cheerful testimony that forces the king to keep asking the questions no one wants answered.

Polybus

minor

King of Corinth, adoptive father of Oedipus, whose death sets events in motion.

Apollo

minor

Also known as King Phoebus, Phoebus, Loxias

God whose oracle at Delphi prophesied Oedipus's fate.

Menoeceus

minor

Father of Creon and Jocasta, mentioned as part of Theban royal lineage.

Merope

minor

Queen of Corinth, adoptive mother of Oedipus.

Sphinx

minor

Also known as the riddling Sphinx, the Sphinx

Monster whose riddle Oedipus solved, becoming king of Thebes.