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 Rex of Attic tragedy. No other shows an equal degree of art in the development of the plot; and this excellence depends on the powerful and subtle drawing of the characters." Cedric Whitman noted that "the "Oedipus Rex" passes almost universally for the greatest extant Greek play..." Whitman himself regarded the play as "the fullest expression of this conception of tragedy," that is the conception of tragedy as a "revelation of the evil lot of man," where a man may have "all the equipment for glory and honor" but still have "the greatest effort to do good" end in "the evil