Antigone E-Book

Sophocles

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Serie: NHB Drama Classi
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 80

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price The first great 'resistance' drama - and perhaps the definitive Greek tragedy. Creon, the King of Thebes, has forbidden the burial of Antigone's brother because he was put to death as a traitor to the crown. Despite being engaged to Creon's son Haemon, Antigone disobeys the King and buries her brother. Enraged, Creon condemns Antigone to death and buries her alive in a cave. The prophet Teiresias warns Creon against such rash actions, and eventually Creon relents – but when he goes to release Antigone it is too late: she has already hanged herself. This version of Sophocles' Antigone is translated and introduced by Marianne McDonald.

Leseprobe

DRAMA CLASSICS

ANTIGONE

bySophocles

translated and with an introduction by

Marianne McDonald

NICK HERN BOOKSLondon

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Sophocles: Key Dates

Characters

Antigone

Glossary

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Introduction

Sophocles

Sophocles was born at Colonus near Athens in about 496 BC and died in 406 BC. He was spared the sight of Athens’ final defeat at the hands of Sparta in 404 BC.

Sophocles was a model citizen. He acted as Hellenotamias (‘a treasurer,’ 443/2) in the league Athens organized after the Peace of Callias with Persia. He studied dance and was said to have danced around the trophy after the battle of Salamis. He also served as a general dealing with the Samian revolt in 441. Some say that the Antigone earned him this position. Others suggest that Sophocles’ disgust at the exposure of the enemies’ corpses might have led him to write this play. After the Sicilian defeat in 413 BC he was one of the Probouloi (‘special Athenian officials’) elected to deal with the political aftermath of the disaster.

Sophocles followed in Aeschylus’ footsteps by serving his city when he could, in either a political or a cultural function. He lived to about 90, and it is said that he was sued by one of his sons, who claimed he was no longer capable of managing his own affairs. His defence was to read lines from the recently written Oedipus at Colonus, and he was acquitted. The story of a lawsuit is probably spurious, since there is other testimony that Sophocles got on well with both of his sons. Phrynichus (the comic poet) wrote that ‘Sophocles lived to a ripe old age, and he was happy and clever. After writing many excellent tragedies, he died well without suffering any serious misfortune.’ Perhaps a fragment from one of Sophocles’ plays may reveal his own outlook: ‘It is fairest to live justly, and most profitable to live healthily, but the sweetest is to have a bit of love each day’.

The ancients regarded Sophocles as a man at ease with himself and contented with life. In Plato’s Republic Sophocles is reported to have claimed that he was happy that he was finally free from that wild taskmaster, love. After his death he was said to have become a sacred hero like Oedipus, and was worshipped as Dexion, roughly translatable as ‘he who receives’. because of his association with the cult of Asclepius, which he had helped to introduce into Athens after the plague. He also was a priest of the healing spirit Halon.

Sophocles is the playwright of heroism. His Antigone is the first female character in drama to be a hero in the full sense of the word. She is the first conscientious objector. The play is often performed as veiled criticism of an abusive government to show that something is rotten in that particular state.

Even at his or her best, it is difficult to feel empathy towards a Sophoclean hero, who is both alienated and alienating, but one has to admire the single-minded pursuit of goals that so often entail self-destruction, along with the destruction of others. As Bernard Knox says, ‘Sophocles creates a tragic universe in which man’s heroic action, free and responsible, brings him sometimes through suffering to victory but more often to a fall which is both defeat and victory at once; the suffering and glory are fused in an indissoluble unity’.

Sophocles shows his characters struggling to right the wrongs they perceive in the world about them, and there is some objective justification for their struggles. What Sophoclean heroes do, they also do in isolation. Antigone goes to her death alone, as does Ajax. They die for ideals, which, although somewhat misguided in their one-sidedness, can still be respected. Sophocles celebrates the hero, whereas Euripides (as we shall see later) laments the victim. Sophocles is a master of character and of the language that creates character. He steers a path between the grandeur of Aeschylus and the witty colloquialisms of Euripides.

Antigone: What Happens in the Play

In Sophocles’ Theban plays, Laius, king of Thebes, was given a prophecy that he would be killed by his son. So when his son Oedipus was born, Laius ordered that he should be left on a mountainside to die. The servant commanded to abandon the baby took pity on him, and gave him to a shepherd who brought him to the king of Corinth to be raised by the royal family. The Delphic oracle told Oedipus he would kill his father and marry his mother. He left Corinth to escape this fate, but killed a man at a crossroads, who, unknown to him, was his father. He arrived in Thebes. After saving the people from the sphinx who was ravaging the land, he married the queen, his mother, Jocasta. He had two sons by her, Eteocles and Polyneices, and two daughters, Antigone and Ismene. A plague struck and he was identified as the source of the pollution. Jocasta committed suicide. Having cursed his sons, Oedipus went to Colonus to die. The sons agreed to alternate the rule of Thebes, but Eteocles refused to give up the throne. Polyneices attacked Thebes with the help of forces from Argos. They killed each other in the fight. Creon, brother of Jocasta, has now taken over the rule of Thebes and issued a proclamation forbidding burial of Polyneices.

The play opens after a war between Eteocles, the city’s ruler, and Polyneices, his brother, who has attacked the city. Both died in the encounter. Their uncle Creon, the new ruler, decrees that Eteocles should be buried, but not Polyneices. Against the warnings of her sister Ismene, Antigone tries to bury her brother’s body. For this act of defiance, Creon condemns Antigone to be confined in what will become a tomb, with just enough food and water so that the city will avoid the pollution of her death. His son Haemon, who is engaged to be married to her, protests and says that the people of Thebes are on his side, but they are too afraid of Creon to speak up. The prophet Teiresias tells Creon he must bury the body of Polyneices. He reluctantly gives in. He finds Antigone has hanged herself. Haemon attacks him in the rocky tomb, then falls on his own sword, embracing Antigone as he dies. Eurydice, Haemon’s mother, hears of his death and stabs herself. Creon is a broken man at the end. Both he and Antigone have paid a high price for their refusal to compromise. The chorus conclude with apt words:

If a person is to be happy he needs good sense.

Never show disrespect to the gods.

Loud words from those with high pretensions

Lead to heavy blows of punishment;

Good sense is hammered out on the anvil of age.

Antigone

Antigone is the first, and remains the greatest, play in western literature about the consequences of individual conscience defying civil authority. In her clash with King Creon, as she defends the rights of the family, Antigone invokes ‘the unwritten law of the gods’, whereas Creon rests his case on defending the safety and security of the state against anarchy. Both he and Antigone break their heads on the principle the other represents, one the law of the city, and the other the family. In this play Sophocles is suggesting that a humane city’s laws should be based on recognition of the rights of the family, and respect for the gods.

These protagonists do not give up. Both Creon and Antigone suffer from their inability to compromise. This play is a human drama and a tragedy that shows two passionate people who, in their determination to defend their positions, end up destroying themselves and others. The price of supporting their beliefs is paid in human blood.

Antigone’s hot-headedness is particularly clear in a couple of brutal exchanges with her sister. Nevertheless she is indisputably a heroine who knows her duty to her family. Here her duty lies: to her beloved brother and the unwritten laws of the gods.

Creon opposes Antigone with the might of law, on which he says personal happiness is based, namely via a well-controlled city. What Antigone does is the opposite of what Socrates recommends: he declared that he would follow the city’s laws even if the decision was unjust (Crito). With Sophocles’ usual dramatic economy, Antigone is punished by the ruler and the polis (the city) she opposes, and Creon is punished by the loss of his own family, whose values he subordinated to those of the polis.

Justification can be found for Creon’s refusing burial to an enemy, though this view is unpopular in some circles. It was clearly acceptable law to refuse burial to traitors in the city. Just as heroes were celebrated, enemies and particularly traitors were punished. Polyneices chose to wage war against his native city, and even if his brother refused to share the rule of Thebes, as it had been arranged after the death of Oedipus, this was not sufficient justification to bring an army against one’s own people.

Sophocles never presents us with black vs. white, heroes vs. villains. As Oscar Wilde said, ‘A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.’ One may even claim that the play should be called the Creon, because it is more his tragedy. Sophocles’ Ajax declares that a noble man ought either to live with honour, or die with honour (479–