Brian Aldiss - Jocasta - Wife and Mother

The playwright was therefore left with two alternatives. He could characterise the woman as a wanton, who secretly recognised her lover as her brother—

‘Stop it! I know nothing about writing plays. I don’t want to listen!’ Jocasta heard her own voice shrill in the confined space.

Sophocles continued, unperturbed by the outburst. He regarded this alternative as the more interesting of the two. However, the play was to be centrally about the male, not the female. Therefore, he would adopt the second alternative, which was to give the female in the case as small a role in the plot as possible – even if she provided the hinge of it.

Her cheeks were flaming. She hid her face in her hands, to babble that she had no interest in this hypothetical play. Finally, controlling herself, she asked, ‘What is this plot you keep talking about? Is someone plotting against me?’

Sophocles went into a long explanation of the way in which a dramatist worked. In his play it was the circumstances which were against the characters. ‘Circumstance makes character,’ he said. That was his idea of drama: men caught in the net of destiny … His genius in dramatising this idea was to have the central character’s fate revealed step by step, until he was brought low. Sophocles cackled to recall how low …

The judgement, he said, was not always to the just. However noble the characters, circumstances conspired to bring them down. For instance, he had written another play in which Jocasta’s daughter, Antigone, had a good meaty role, fighting stubborn circumstance. Her brother Polynices—

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