The Infernal Machine
Infernal Machine, The (La Machine infernale) Author: Jean Cocteau
First Performance: 1934, Paris
Published: 1934
First English Translation: 1936
Genre: Trag. in 4 acts; French prose
Setting: Thebes, mythical past
Cast: 12m, 5f
A Voice tells the story of Oedipus, ‘one of the most perfect machines devised by the infernal gods for the mathematical destruction of a mortal’. Jocasta and Tiresias, walking on the ramparts of Thebes, are warned of impending tragedy by the ghost of Laius but cannot see or hear him. When Oedipus appears, the Sphinx, an attractive young woman allied with the Egyptian god of the dead Anubis, falls in love with Oedipus and reveals her secret; he callously abducts her. Oedipus marries Jocasta, happy to find an older woman, but is alarmed when he looks into...
[The entire page is 314 words long]
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