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Sophocles' King Oedipus (1928) is a modern English translation with music by the Irish poet and playwright William Butler Yeats, who says of his translation: "This version of Sophocles' play was written for Dublin players, for Dublin liturgical singers, for a small auditorium, for a chorus that must stand stock still where the orchestra are accustomed to put their chairs, for an audience where nobody comes for self-improvement or for anything but emotion. In other words, I put readers and scholars out of my mind and wrote to be sung and spoken." The Wikisource copy has players embedded for listening to the musical passages.
The Yeats translation formed the basis of the Canadian Stratford Festival production in 1956 under Tyrone Guthrie, who then directed a film adaptation released the following year.
Oedipus. Children, descendants of old Cadmus, why do you come before me, why do you carry the branches of suppliants, while the city smokes with incense and murmurs with prayer and lamentation? I would not learn from any mouth but yours, old man, therefore I question you myself. Do you know of anything that I can do and have not done? How can I, being the man I am, being King Oedipus, do other than all I know? I were indeed hard of heart did I not pity such suppliants.
Priest. Oedipus, King of my country, you can see our ages who are before your door; some it may be too young for such a journey, and some too old, Priests of Zeus such as I, and these chosen young men; while the rest of the people crowd the market-places with their suppliant branches, for the city stumbles towards death, hardly able to raise up its head. A blight has fallen upon the fruitful blossoms of the land.
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