What are the settings in the play?

The
setting for 's ancient Greek tragic play is the same as it is for many
tragic plays of the fourth and fifth centuries BCE, which was, essentially, "in front of
something." The setting for Rex is "Before [in front of] the
Palace at Thebes." The setting for , also by Sophocles, is the
same.

The "in front of" setting for most Ancient Greek plays is a
result of the construction of Ancient Greek theaters.

The theaters were
constructed with three main parts: skene, orchestra, and
theatron.

The theatron is where the audience
sat to watch the play. Before actual theaters were constructed, the
theatron was just a hillside, but it eventually evolved into the rows of
stone seats we see in photographs of the remaining ancient Greek theaters, some of which held up
to 20,000 or more audience members.

The orchestra was a
cleared circle in front of the audience. Thedanced and sang in this area.

In
the center of the orchestra was an altar (the
thymele), wheremight pray to the gods, and around which thedanced and
sang.

Keep in mind that the Ancient Greek tragic plays were performed as part
of religious festivals, and the plays were written to teach a moral or religious lesson to the
audience.

Across the orchestra from the audience was the
skene. This was originally a hut or tent from which the main actors made
their entrances and exits onto a raised stage in front of the skene. (The
chorus entered from the sides of the orchestra area.)

The side of the tent or hut facing the audience might have been painted with a scene
appropriate to the play being presented, or a painted, movable wall might be placed in front of
the skene to show different locations of different scenes.

In time, the skene became a stone building, with a raised area in
front of it, usually with two or three steps leading up to the stage area. This stage area was
later incorporated into the skene building, and was called the
proskenion, meaning "in front of the
skene."

The main actors didn't "act" in
the orchestra, as might be expected, but on the raised area in front of the
skene building. The large masks that the main actors wore, along with
raised footwear called cothurni, made moving around the theater difficult.
The actors stayed on the raised stage area and didn't move around very much, other than to make
their entrances, act out their lines, and make their exits.

As the
skene building evolved, with its stone construction, columns, and large
entranceways, it formed a natural background for many of the ancient tragic plays, which focused
on upper-class and high-born characters like Oedipus and his wife, , the king and queen of
Thebes. It appeared natural for them to make their entrances and exits from such an imposing
building.

As far as scholars can determine, there were no stage directions
about a play's setting in the original scripts of the Ancient Greek plays. Notes about a play's
setting were added much later, in much the same way that setting descriptions and stage
directions were added to Shakespeare's plays long after he wrote them.

In
fact, no stage directions were needed. The audience simply assumed that if a character came out
of the skene building dressed like royalty and wearing a mask denoting that
the character was a king, the setting was in front of the king's palace.

If
it was necessary for the audience to know where the characters were, other than where they could
figure out for themselves, a character would say something much like a character in one of
Shakespeare's plays does: "Here we are in the vasty fields of France," or something to
that effect.

In any event, the main setting of Oedipus
Rex is "Before the Palace at Thebes." References are made to Delphi and
Corinth during the play, but no action of the play actually takes place other than in front of
the palace at Thebes.