While the dramatist may use stage direction to clarify setting, situation, or tone, for the most part he conveys his intentions through dialogue. Therefore, in reading a play we should assume that the writer has set down precisely what he wishes to say, but that, because he must convey his intentions through a likeness of conversation, we must be sensitive-as in real life-to the implications, unspoken feelings, and even deliberate deceptions typical of human interaction. Therefore, the reader must be alert to the nuances and shadings of each word and phrase.

Take, for example, the opening lines of the oldest play�Sophocles' Oedipus the King (a Greek tragedy written about 430 B.C. and usually considered one of the greatest dramas of all times).

OEDIPUS: My children�
Why have you strewn yourselves before these altars
In supplication, with your boughs and garlands?
The breath of incense rises from the city
With a sound of prayer and lamentation.
Children,
I would not have you speak through messengers
And therefore I have come myself to hear you-
I, Oedipus, who bear the famous name.

The surviving manuscripts of this play include practically no stage directions. (Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald, the translators of the English version quoted here, have prefaced the opening scene with a descriptive passage based on what they have deduced from the dialogue and from information about Greek theatre architecture. Such added stage directions remind us that it is often necessary to reread a play several times before we become fully aware of the implications summed up in such additions, especially if the play is remote from us in time or unfamiliar in style.

The title of Sophocles' play informs us that Oedipus is the king, and from later lines we learn that the action takes place in front of the palace. But what does this palace look like? Unless in our minds the place of the action is to remain wholly abstract we must form some image of it.

We learn almost immediately that there are altars (but where are they placed and what is their physical appearance?) and that those who are assembled are praying for help (but it takes some knowledge of Greek customs to know that the boughs and garlands mentioned in the lines were symbols associated with suppliants and that the incense referred to is rising from altars dedicated to the various gods�)