Oedipus Rex Group

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salma1988
salma1988
Student

How does Shakespeare in “King Lear”, and Sophocles in “Oedipus Rex”, follow the three unities of time, action and place?

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Posted by salma1988 on Wednesday December 3, 2008 at 5:14 PM and tagged with action, aristotle, king lear, oedipus rex, place, poetics, shakespeare, sophocles, time, unities.

Answers:


  1. robertwilliam

    The unities were invented by Aristotle in his famous incomplete work the "Poetics", and they work as follows:

    1. The unity of action: the play should have one main story which it follows from start to finish. There should be no subplots (other stories worked into the first one).
    2. The unity of place: the stage should represent only one location, and not require scene changes to shift from place to place. 
    3. The unity of time: the action of a play should take place fluidly, without jumping forward. This is sometimes interpreted as meaning that a play must take place within a time scale of 24 hours.

    Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex", which Aristotle believed was the perfect tragedy (though there is some scholarly debate about exactly why) follows these unities. The play takes place in one location, requires no scene changes, and follows a single plot (though, of course, it doesn't seem like that to begin with) - that of Oedipus' realisation of who he is.

    "King Lear" of course, does not follow the unities - at all. It has a multiplicity of scenes in a variety of locations from the palace to Dover beach, it takes place over a longer time than 24 hours (difficult to know precisely how much longer, but certainly longer) and - of course - it has two plots: the one which follows Lear's family and the one which follows Gloucester. 

    Hope this helps!  

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    Posted by robertwilliam on Wednesday December 3, 2008 at 5:33 PM