s.

_OEdip._ There's magic in it, take it from my sight;
There's not a beam it darts, but carries hell,
Hot flashing lust, and necromantic incest:
Take it from these sick eyes, oh hide it from me!--
No, my Jocasta, though Thebes cast me out,
While Merope's alive, I'll ne'er return.
O, rather let me walk round the wide world
A beggar, than accept a diadem
On such abhorred conditions.

_Joc._ You make, my lord, your own unhappiness,
By these extravagant and needless fears.

_OEdip._ Needless! O, all you Gods! By heaven, I would rather
Embrue my arms, up to my very shoulders,
In the dear entrails of the best of fathers,
Than offer at the execrable act
Of damned incest: therefore no more of her.

_AEge._ And why, O sacred sir, if subjects may
Presume to look into their monarch's breast,
Why should the chaste and spotless Merope
Infuse such thoughts, as I must blush to name?

_OEdip._ Because the god of Delphos did forewarn me,
With thundering oracles.

_AEge._ May I entreat to know them?

_OEdip._ Yes, my AEgeon; but the sad remembrance
Quite blasts my soul: See then the swelling priest!
Methinks, I have his image now in view!--
He mounts the tripos in a minute's space,
His clouded head knocks at the temple-roof;
While from his mouth,
These dismal words are heard:
"Fly, wretch, whom fate has doomed thy father's blood to spill,
And with preposterous births thy mother's womb to fill!"

_AEge._ Is this the cause,
Why you refuse the diadem of Corinth?

_OEdip._ The cause! why, is it not a monstrous one!

_AEge._ Great sir, you may return; and though you should
Enjoy the queen, (which all the Gods forbid!)
The act would prove no incest.

_OEdip._ How, AEgeon?
Though I enjoy my mother, not incestuous!
Thou ravest, and so do I; and these all catch
My madness; look, they're dead with deep distraction:
Not incest! what, not incest with my mother?

_AEge._ My lord, queen Merope is not your mother.

_OEdip._ Ha! did I hear thee right? not Merope
My mother!

_AEge._ Nor was Polybus your father.

_OEdip._ Then all my days and nights must now be spent
In curious search, to find out those dark parents
Who gave me to the world; speak then, AEgeon.
By all the Gods celestial and infernal,
By all the ties of nature, blood and friendship,
Conceal not from this racked despairing king,
A point or smallest grain of what thou knowest:
Speak then, O answer to my doubts directly,
If royal Polybus was not my father,