At the Crossroads: Gendered Desire, Political Occasion, and Dryden and Lee's Oedipus

The majority of Restoration political tragedies polemically defend Stuart monarchial theory of hereditary succession, especially at the time of the most severe political crisis of the era, 1678-88, from the Popish Plot through the Exclusion Crisis to the Glorious Revolution. A handful of plays offer a counter ideology-or at least expose the fatal Oedipal crisis lurking at the heart of monarchial ideology. (41)9

Given the dilemma inherent in the Oedipus story they had inherited and given Dryden's (at least) staunch royalist convictions, Dryden and Lee could do neither one of these, exactly. The uneasy nature of what they did do has been largely explained by commentators insisting on the strict division of labor, forte, and intention between Dryden and Lee. McCabe, for instance, says that "Dryden is intent upon the tragedy of fate [. . .] Lee upon a tragedy of desire" (276):

Lee was interested in the psychological Oedipus, Dryden in the political, in the virtuous "Father of his Country" overcome by circumstance, and his part of the play duly reflects the moral and political confusion of the age through the strategy of oblique allusion at which he excelled [....] In this play, if anywhere, Dryden evokes something of Sir Robert Filmer's atavistic respect for the king as patriarch [....] (275)

So, according to McCabe, Lee's additions "[undermine] Dryden's insistence upon [Oedipus's] purity of motive in wedding Jocasta" (275). But, as my analysis of the play has shown, Dryden's parts too question "purity of motive"; Dryden too is interested in the "tragedy of desire" and the "psychological Oedipus." There is more coherence in the two playwrights' efforts than divisionary analyses suggest. Moreover, both playwrights are interested in "purity of motive," "desire," and the "psychological" in relation to Jocasta as much as, perhaps even more than, in relation to Oedipus. The role of Jocasta, and by extension the depiction of woman, does much of the cultural work that would be required of royalist playwrights. Greenfield has argued in relation to Absalom and Achitophel that the poem's "emphasis on [David's] promiscuity has been effaced by increasing references to a feminine sexual desire and productivity so dangerous that the king appears reliable by contrast" (267). Jocasta's characterization in Oedipus functions similarly: in deflecting much of the attention, perhaps condemnatory attention to issues of desire and agency as depicted in the female, the playwrights do not excuse Oedipus, who is, when all is said and done, inexcusable; but they do manage to mitigate it as much as possible under the circumstances. As Greenfield concludes in relation to Absalom and Achitophel,

In many respects Dryden at first seems remarkably sensitive to the mothers, reflecting what James Winn has described as his "more than occasion insight into the hard lot of ... women." But this insight is, as Winn notes of other works, also balanced by Dryden's tendency to lapse into misogynistic conventions. Ultimately [. . .] by the end only the standard negative implications about female sexuality persist. (272)