Oedipus (Dryden play) the construction of a play, the playwright is the "master-workman" who needs "many subordinate hands, many tools to his assistance", including "history, geography, or moral philosophy." The plot is the base of the building, the characters and their manners the sides of it. All parts must be fitted properly to the whole; every part is neatly tied in. "Oedipus, a Tragedy" was based on Sophocles's "Oedipus", but the original drama was crucially changed in several respects. Dryden and Lee add a subplot of secondary characters – a love story about Adrastus, prince of Argos, and Eurydice, Oedipus' daughter. Unlike Corneille,
Oedipus (Dryden play) wrote the first two acts, Lee the last three. In his introduction to "Oedipus, a Tragedy" of 1808, Walter Scott says that the first and the third acts were wholly written by Dryden, maintaining a decided superiority over the rest of the piece. Since there are "many excellent passages through Lee's scenes" and "the tragedy has the appearance of general consistence and uniformity", Scott supposes that the whole play was corrected by Dryden afterwards. "Oedipus, a Tragedy" was licensed on 3 January 1678 by Roger L'Estrange and published in 1679 by R. Bentley and M. Magnes in Russel Street in