How long does it take to read Oedipus at Colonus?
Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles takes about 2 hours 24 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 2 hours 24 minutes
An evening's read
First published 1819. 131 pages, about 36,025 words.
5 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 4 hours |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 2 hours 24 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 1 hour 30 minutes |
The page count is the median across 42 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
"Working from Victorian translations into English and French by classicists R. C. Jebb and Paul Masqueray, Yeats completed Oedipus the King in the fall of 1926 and Oedipus at Colonus a year later. Yeats gave the second play, like the first, directly to the Abbey players, prompting him to revise and hone his texts through many versions to achieve his stated goal of putting the play "into simple speakable prose" that he hoped would be his "contribution to the Abbey Repertory." The play had a successful run in September of 1927 but was not published until 1934." "The edition presents photographs and transcriptions of three revised typescripts that Yeats prepared and extensively revised over a period of eight-and-a-half months and a reading text based on the first publication of the play, which is presented with an apparatus of collations from the many proofs for three different intended publications. Included also are photographs and transcriptions of the verse choruses, except for the two appearing in The Tower (1928), also in this series; an appendix of other typescripts and proofs that invite detailed treatment; and a brief account of the music written for the play by Lennox Robinson, who was also its first director. The texts are prefaced by a census of manuscripts, an introduction discussing Yeats's development of the play,and a chronology of composition."--BOOK JACKET.
Subjects: Drama, Facsimiles, Manuscripts, Oedipus (Greek mythology)
