After the death of James Earl Jones, I noted that a few people expressed a mild interest in Mr. Jones’ father, Robert Earl Jones, an acclaimed stage and film actor in his own right (though nowhere near as famous as his son).
I noted on Wikipedia that among his credits is one of my absolute favorite plays ever; a play that I have never seen live but I have seen via video three times. Honestly, everyone should take an hour and half out of their weekend to sit down with this play, The Gospel at Colonus.
For those who don’t know, yes, it’s a Black gospel music adaptation on one of the Oedipus plays by the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles.
I began scrolling through the video trying to take a screenshot of Robert Earl Jones...and I found it soon enough.
Robert Earl Jones as Creon in “The Gospel at Colonus.”
But not before I went back and began at the beginning and enjoyed this play as I never had before.
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For those who have not read Oedipus Rex, the first (though not the oldest) story of Sophocles’ “trilogy,” here are the sketchiest of details: An oracle foretold that Oedipus would kill his father and marry his mother, the king and queen of Thebes. The oracle was correct and, as a result, Jocasta (the mother) committed suicide, Oedipus blinded himself, and the entire family (Oedipus and four of the children; the two daughters, Antigone and Ismene, were the children of Jocasta and Oedipus) was cast out of Thebes.
Which is where Oedipus at Colonus begins.
To jump to the ending of both Sophocles’ original and director Lee Breuer’s adaptation, Oedipus dies and he is forgiven or, in the words of the Messenger (played spectacularly by Morgan Freeman), “he was taken without lamentation, suffering, or pain...indeed, his ending was wonderful as mortals ever was.”
I did remember that Sophocles wrote Oedipus at Colonus just before he died and that it was his grandson who produced the play five years after his death.
I’m sure that the topic of death and everything that goes with that was very much on Sophocles’ mind when he wrote Oedipus at Colonus.
Secondly, if even the hamartia or the non-equivalent (but probably the closest) Christian term “sin” of Oedipus could be forgiven; anyone can be redeemed.
Anyone?
The Athenians, themselves, asked this very question two years after the initial production of Oedipus at Colonus.
As many peoples have had to do, before and since. Peoples and nations and even I “miss the mark” more frequently than I’d like to admit.
I’ve even wondered whether I have to consider these possibilities for the shoe salesman, even if it’s a given that he doesn’t feel there is a missing of the mark; his actions are quite purposeful and, besides, he doesn’t think that he is in need of forgiveness or redemption or anything of the kind.
Whatever.
Other than my own actions, I don’t think that’s any of my business. My responsibilities, at best, are to render and carry out “judgments” of my own actions and sometimes the actions of others in the imperfect human way that I am capable of at a given moment and leave that redemption stuff to the gods.
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