JOCASTA
Oh, as thou carest for thy life, give o'er
This quest. Enough the anguish I endure.
OEDIPUS
Be of good cheer; though I be proved the son
Of a bondwoman, aye, through three descents
Triply a slave, thy honor is unsmirched.
JOCASTA
Yet humor me, I pray thee; do not this.
OEDIPUS
I cannot; I must probe this matter home.
JOCASTA
'Tis for thy sake I advise thee for the best.
OEDIPUS
I grow impatient of this best advice.
JOCASTA
Ah mayst thou ne'er discover who thou art!
OEDIPUS
Go, fetch me here the herd, and leave yon woman
To glory in her pride of ancestry.
JOCASTA
O woe is thee, poor wretch! With that last word
I leave thee, henceforth silent evermore.
CHORUS
Why, Oedipus, why stung with passionate grief
Hath the queen thus departed? Much I fear
From this dead calm will burst a storm of woes.
OEDIPUS
Let the storm burst, my fixed resolve still holds,
To learn my lineage, be it ne'er so low.
It may be she with all a woman's pride
Thinks scorn of my base parentage. But I
Who rank myself as Fortune's favorite child,
The giver of good gifts, shall not be shamed.
She is my mother and the changing moons
My brethren, and with them I wax and wane.
Thus sprung why should I fear to trace my birth?
Nothing can make me other than I am. (1077-1086)
Stubborn Oedipus is unwilling to heed Jocasta’s wise advice to abandon his search for Laius’s murderer and for his own identity.
JOCASTA
My lords, ye look amazed to see your queen
With wreaths and gifts of incense in her hands.
I had a mind to visit the high shrines,
For Oedipus is overwrought, alarmed
With terrors manifold. He will not use
His past experience, like a man of sense,
To judge the present need, but lends an ear
To any croaker if he augurs ill.
Since then my counsels naught avail, I turn
To thee, our present help in time of trouble,
Apollo, Lord Lycean, and to thee
My prayers and supplications here I bring.
Lighten us, lord, and cleanse us from this curse!
For now we all are cowed like mariners
Who see their helmsman dumbstruck in the storm. (911-924)
Jocasta laments Oedipus’s blindness and suggests that the ability to remember and perceive one’s past mistakes is central to acting wisely.