my contender for best dramatic scene, ev0r

He Saw. And bellowing in anguish
he reached up, loosening the noose that held her.
With the poor lifeless woman laid out on the ground
this, then, was the terror we saw: he pulled
the long pins of hammered gold clasping her gown,
held them up, and punched them into his eyes,
back through the sockets. He was screaming:
"Eyes, now you will not, no, never
see the evil I suffered, the evil I caused.
You will see blackness--where once
were lives you should never have lived to see,
yearned-for faces you so long failed to know."
While he howled out these tortured words--
not once, but many times--his raised hands
kept beating his eyes. The blood kept coming,
drenching his beard and cheeks. Not a few wet drops,
but a black storm of bloody hail lashing his face.
                             (Oedipus the King l. 1434-50)

Comments

[Z]

I don't know. It's not so dramatic, really, since we just hear the report from the Nuncio.

[dhawhee]

but the blood-soaked beard!! i like the stage directions when he does appear, though: "Oedipus emerges from the slowly opening palace doors. He is blinded, with blood on his face and clothes, but the effect should arouse more awe and pity than shock."