Antigone thrived throughout the twentieth century as the perfect ancient play to dramatize rebellion against tyrants. Kreon could be costumed and directed to represent any number of oppressors, and Antigone’s fearless eloquence inflected to expose their evil and banality. Productions have reimagined her as a martyred fighter in various righteous causes: she’s been a member of the French resistance, the sister of an IRA terrorist or an Argentinean desaparacido, and a Vietnam War resister. Antigone will undoubtedly be drafted to face down tyrants yet unborn.

There’s a downside, however, to interpreting Antigone solely through its capacity for embodying contemporary political battles. None of the play’s clashes is as clear-cut, or its characters as consistent, as they first seem. (Thebes’ resident prophet—Tiresias, who appears in a single scene as the play’s most commanding figure and who delivers an unambiguous condemnation of Kreon—is the sole exception.) Kreon, for instance, addressing his aristocratic peers hours after assuming power, reassuringly articulates his democratic principles and policies. He promises to accept good advice, act on it, avoid and denounce policies that would lead Thebes to destruction, and punish any citizen who betrays Thebes, including his traitorous and deceased nephew. But Kreon will fail to follow every one of his precepts. In the end, the consequences of his own actions will even force him to order a proper burial for Polyneikes. A look into Kreon’s soul to locate his core beliefs—opening him up like a wax writing tablet in its case, to paraphrase Kreon’s son Haimon—would reveal his moral emptiness. As Kreon puts his crowd-pleasing but insincere inaugural speech behind him, he acts on intense and ugly prejudices, not principles.

Antigone, who possesses both character and principle in abundance, also has suppressed something of her nature in order to steel herself against Kreon’s power and arrogance. She will accept nothing less than giving Polyneikes his full burial rights and will welcome her own death, if that’s what it takes. But as she elaborates her view of the world, she reveals the life-suppressing extremity of her allegiances. The deaths of her parents and brothers have made her passionate to rejoin them in Hades. But when actually facing death, Antigone suddenly yearns for the marriage and childbearing she has denied herself. The number and decisiveness of his characters’ reversals suggest that Sophocles views human nature as often unsure or unaware of its own deepest desires. As the pressure of catastrophic events increases, sudden surges of desire reveal the major characters’ contradictions, their second thoughts, and their consequent desperation. The conflicted Guard, who debates whether it’s safe or suici...