but jocasta is here and can say as well as any. dearest, the shepherd we have asked to come, is this the man in question? why bother with the man at all? pay no attention. forget all that's been said. it's pointless. impossible. with clues such as these in my possession, i can't fail to uncover my birth. but for god's sake, don't. if you care for your own life at all, call off the hunt. i'm plagued enough already. i may be found by triple slave and my mother, a slave of a third generation, but nothing base will attach itself to you. please. please listen to me and don't do it. i won't listen. i must find the truth. i'm speaking in our own best interests. i'm tired of hearing of my own best interests. unhappy man, god save you from knowing who you are. will someone go and bring that shepherd to me? let the queen joy in her noble family. poor, lost soul. i have no other word for you. i will never have another. oedipus, why has the queen left us in such a passion of wild grief? i fear a storm of disaster will break from her reticence.

queen jocasta is dead. poor woman. what was the cause? suicide. the worst of what happened, you are escaping, you didn't see it. still, so far as memory serves me, you shall learn her wretched fate. she came franticly into the hall then made straight for her bridal bed running the fingers of both hands through her head. the minute she was inside, she slammed the door and cried out, "laius," though he was long dead. she was recalling the seeding and breeding, which brought his death, leaving the mother to be a breeder of polluted children with his own. she cried against her double marriage, poor woman, producing one husband from another one child from another. after that, i don't know how she died. we couldn't observe what happened to her. oedipus burst in screaming. our eyes were on him. to and fro, he paced, calling for a sword, asking where to find the wife that was no wife, the mother--and twice sold with himself and his children. he was half crazy. some spirit showed the way, none of us humans who were standing around. he screamed at the top o