Antigone

A Play

Sophocles, F. Storr

• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781504062848
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Drama
• Index: Literature

The classic Greek tragedy about a woman who valiantly defies a tyrant to honor her brother and please the gods.

When Polynices—a military leaders in Thebes's civil war—dies on the battlefield, Thebes's ruler, Creon, decrees that Polynices's body will lie unburied and left as prey for the vultures. But Antigone, the late warrior's sister, answers to a higher authority than the state, and breaks the law to follow her conscience and bury her brother with the proper rites.

Antigone's act of civil disobedience urges great upheaval in this timeless play that explores the conflicts that can arise between worldly and divine law, and the questions raised by the idea of individual freedom.

Antigone

ANTIGONE and ISMENE before the Palace Gates

ANTIGONE: Ismene, sister of my blood and heart,

See’st thou how Zeus would in our lives fulfill

The weird of Oedipus, a world of woes!

For what of pain, affliction, outrage, shame,

Is lacking in our fortunes, thine and mine?

And now this proclamation of today

Made by our Captain-General to the State,

What can its purport be? Didst hear and heed,

Or art thou deaf when friends are banned as foes?

ISMENE: To me, Antigone, no word of friends

Has come, or glad or grievous, since we twain

Were reft of our two brethren in one day

By double fratricide; and since i’ the night

Our Argive leaguers fled, no later news

Has reached me, to inspirit or deject.

ANTIGONE: I know ‘twas so, and therefore summoned thee

Beyond the gates to breathe it in thine ear.

ISMENE: What is it? Some dark secret stirs thy breast.

ANTIGONE: What but the thought of our two brothers dead,

The one by Creon graced with funeral rites,

The other disappointed? Eteocles

He hath consigned to earth (as fame reports)

With obsequies that use and wont ordain,

So gracing him among the dead below.

But Polyneices, a dishonored corse,

(So by report the royal edict runs)

No man may bury him or make lament—

Must leave him tombless and unwept, a feast

For kites to scent afar and swoop upon.

Such is the edict (if report speak true)

Of Creon, our most noble Creon, aimed

At thee and me, aye me too; and anon

He will be here to promulgate, for such

As have not heard, his mandate; ‘tis in sooth

No passing humor, for the edict says

Whoe’er transgresses shall be stoned to death.

So stands it with us; now ‘tis thine to show

If thou art worthy of thy blood or base.

ISMENE: But how, my rash, fond sister, in such case

Can I do anything to make or mar?

ANTIGONE: Say, wilt thou aid me and abet? Decide.

ISMENE: In what bold venture? What is in thy thought?

ANTIGONE: Lend me a hand to bear the corpse away.

ISMENE: What, bury him despite the interdict?

ANTIGONE: My brother, and, though thou deny him, thine

No man shall say that I betrayed a brother.

ISMENE: Wilt thou persist, though Creon has forbid?

ANTIGONE: What right has he to keep me from my own?

ISMENE: Bethink thee, sister, of our father’s fate,

Abhorred, dishonored, self-convinced of sin,

Blinded, himself his executioner.

Think of his mother-wife (ill sorted names)

Done by a noose herself had twined to death

And last, our hapless brethren in one day,

Both in a mutual destiny involved,

Self-slaughtered, both the slayer and the slain.

Bethink thee, sister, we are left alone;

Shall we not perish wretchedest of all,

If in defiance of the law we cross

A monarch’s will?—weak women, think of that,

Not framed by nature to contend with men.

Remember this too that the stronger rules;

We must obey his orders, these or worse.

Therefore I plead compulsion and entreat

The dead to pardon. I perforce obey

The powers that be. ‘Tis foolishness, I ween,

To overstep in aught the golden mean.

ANTIGONE: I urge no more; nay, wert thou willing still,

I would not welcome such a fellowship.

Go thine own way; myself will bury him.

How sweet to die in such employ, to rest,—

Sister and brother linked in love’s embrace—

A sinless sinner, banned awhile on earth,

But by the dead commended; and with them

I shall abide for ever. As for thee,

Scorn, if thou wilt, the eternal laws of Heaven.

ISMENE: I scorn them not, but to defy the State

Or break her ordinance I have no skill.

ANTIGONE: A specious pretext. I will go alone

To lap my dearest brother in the grave.

ISMENE: My poor, fond sister, how I fear for thee!

ANTIGONE: O waste no fears on me; look to thyself.

ISMENE: At least let no man know of thine intent,

But keep it close and secret, as will I.

ANTIGONE: O tell it, sister; I shall hate thee more

If thou proclaim it not to all the town.

ISMENE: Thou hast a fiery soul for numbing work.

ANTIGONE: I pleasure those whom I would liefest please.

ISMENE: If thou succeed; but thou art doomed to fail.

ANTIGONE: When strength shall fail me, yes, but not before.

ISMENE: But, if the venture’s hopeless, why essay?

ANTIGONE: Sister, forbear, or I shall hate thee soon,

And the dead man will hate thee too, with cause.

Say I am mad and give my madness rein

To wreck itself; the worst that can befall

Is but to die an honorable death.

ISMENE: Have thine own way then; ‘tis a mad endeavor,

Yet to thy lovers thou art dear as ever.

[Exeunt]

CHORUS:

(Str. 1)

Sunbeam, of all that ever dawn upon

Our seven-gated Thebes the brightest ray,

O eye of golden day,

How fair thy light o’er Dirce’s fountain shone,

Speeding upon their headlong homeward course,

Far quicker than they came, the Argive force;

Putting to flight

The argent shields, the host with scutcheons white.

Against our land the proud invader came

To vindicate fell Polyneices’ claim.

Like to an eagle swooping low,

On pinions white as new fall’n snow.

With clanging scream, a horsetail plume his crest,

The aspiring lord of Argos onward pressed.

(Ant. 1)

Hovering around our city walls he waits,

His spearmen raven at our seven gates.

But ere a torch our crown of to...