The highly melodramatic play Oedipus, written by John Dryden and Nathaniel Lee based Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, was licensed in 1678 and first performed by the Duke's Company at London's Dorset Garden Theatre. It proved immensely popular and was revived several times in the late 17th century and throughout the first half of the 18th century. This print represents the moment at the beginning of Act II in which Oedipus, played by John Philip Kemble, implored the gods to save Thebes on seeing: 'The perfect vision of a man and woman/ A sceptre bright with gems in each right hand'.

John Philip Kemble was one of the leading actor-managers in London in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Born in Prescot, Lancashire, in 1757, the first son and second child of the actors Roger Kemble and Sarah Ward, he first appeared on the stage aged 10 with his father's company at Worcester, as the young Duke of York in William Havard's King Charles the First. He made his adult début at Wolverhampton on 8 January 1776 in the title role of Nathaniel Lee's Theodosius.

Fluent in French with a good education in Latin and Greek, Kemble acted a wide variety of roles in the provinces with Joseph Younger's company; with Tate Wilkinson's company, and with Richard Daly's company at the Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin, before making his London début at Drury Lane Theatre as Hamlet on 30 September 1783. During his second season he played opposite his already famous elder sister Sarah Siddons as Othello to her Desdemona, and, for his benefit on 31 March 1785, Macbeth to her Lady Macbeth. He went on to become acting manager at Drury Lane for Sheridan the owner in 1788, and in 1803 a shareholder in Covent Garden theatre where he made his début as Hamlet on 24 September 1803, and where his management was subjected to the double catastrophes of the destruction of the theatre by fire in 1808 and the so-called Old Price riots that succeeded the opening of the rebuilt theatre in 1809.

Dogged with bad health Kemble nevertheless made his name as an eminent tragedian, especially in the classical roles he prized, such as that of the Roman statesman Cato. He did not act the part of Oedipus in London, but for his farewell performance at Drury Lane on 23rd June 1817 chose the part of the Roman general Coriolanus. He died in Lausanne, Switzerland, less than six years later, on 26th February 1823.