Oedipus Rex
Sophocles · -429
The play that invented dramatic irony. Oedipus hunts for the source of Thebes' plague and discovers he is both detective and criminal. Aristotle used it as the gold standard for tragedy in the Poetics, and twenty-four centuries later nobody has written a tighter plot.
The case against
Everything hinges on Oedipus having ruled Thebes for years without once asking how the previous king died, while married to a woman old enough to be his mother and fleeing a prophecy about marrying his mother. Convention covers what plot logic cannot. You will also never read it clean; Freud sits beside you the whole way through.
Drama · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
