Scotland in 1877; when Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin may be
said to have 'created' the part of Deanira. Thus encouraged, I
completed the translation of the seven plays, which was published by
Kegan Paul in 1883 and again by Murray in 1896. I have now to thank
Mr. Murray for consenting to this cheaper issue.

The seven extant plays of Sophocles have been variously arranged. In
the order most frequently adopted by English editors, the three plays
of the Theban cycle, Oedipus Tyrannus, Oedipus Coloneus, and Antigone,
have been placed foremost.

In one respect this is obviously convenient, as appearing to present
continuously a connected story. But on a closer view, it is in two
ways illusory.

1. The Antigone is generally admitted to be, comparatively speaking,
an early play, while the Oedipus Coloneus belongs to the dramatist's
latest manner; the first Oedipus coming in somewhere between the two.
The effect is therefore analogous to that produced on readers of
Shakespeare by the habit of placing Henry VI after Henry IV and V. But
tragedies and 'histories' or chronicle plays are not _in pari
materia_.

2. The error has been aggravated by a loose way of speaking of 'the
Theban Trilogy', a term which could only be properly applicable if the
three dramas had been produced in the same year. I have therefore now
arranged the seven plays in an order corresponding to the most
probable dates of their production, viz. Antigone, Aias, King Oedipus,
Electra, Trachiniae, Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonos. A credible
tradition refers the Antigone to 445 B.C. The Aias appears to be not
much later--it may even be earlier--than the Antigone. The Philoctetes
was produced in 408 B.C., when the poet was considerably over eighty.
The Oedipus at Colonos has always been believed to be a composition of
Sophocles' old age. It is said to have been produced after his death,
though it may have been composed some years earlier. The tragedy of
King Oedipus, in which the poet's art attained its maturity, is
plausibly assigned to an early year of the Peloponnesian war (say 427
B.C.), the Trachiniae to about 420 B.C. The time of the Electra is
doubtful; but Professor Jebb has shown that, on metrical grounds, it
should be placed after, rather than before, King Oedipus. Even the
English reader, taking the plays as they are grouped in this volume,
may be aware of a gradual change of manner, not unlike what is
perceptible in passing from Richard II to Macbeth,