Antigone By Sophocles The Prologue

Antigone | Prologue | Summary

Antigone has no acts or scenes. This written report guide uses stage directions, entrances, and exits to divide the text into sections for analysis.

Summary

The set up is plain, commonly a blank phase with three entrances. The actors wear evening clothes. The Chorus tells united states of america that the cast members, who are grouped on the phase, are most to act out the story of Antigone. He introduces the play'due south characters, and they file offstage every bit he does so.

Adjacent, the Chorus explains that since the death of the king (Antigone'south father, Oedipus), his sons Eteocles and Polynices were to accept turns ruling Thebes, each for a year. Just when the time came for Eteocles to give up the throne, he refused, throwing the land into civil war. The brothers killed each other in combat outside the city walls. Creon gave Eteocles—whose side he favored—a state funeral, but he branded Polynices a traitor. He has prohibited the burial of Polynices's body on pain of decease. It lies rotting exterior the city walls as a warning to would-exist rebels.

Analysis

The Chorus focuses the audience'southward attention on the theatricality of what they are near to see. Speaking directly to the audience and pointing out the actors' office-playing are hallmarks of metatheater. Instead of persuading the audience that what'south happening in the theater is real, metatheater suggests that what happens in the real world is something like theater. The audience is all, to some extent, defenseless upward in roles.

Neither all of the audition nor all of the characters are enlightened of how decisive these roles are. However, Antigone is unlike: "From the moment the mantle went up, she began to feel inhuman forces were whirling her out of this earth." The Chorus says that when Haemon abruptly asked her to marry him, Antigone wasn't at all surprised: "She looked up at him out of those solemn eyes of hers ... and said 'yes.'" She knows how things are going to plough out.

Creon too is enlightened he has a role to play, though he doesn't relish information technology: "like a conscientious workman, he does his job." Different Antigone he doesn't embrace the disaster that is almost to unfold. Among the balance of the characters, simply the messenger, who "has a premonition of catastrophe," seems to feel the "inhuman forces"—which explains why he, like Antigone, is "brooding."

Audiences familiar with Sophocles'due south A ntigone will notice the absenteeism of Tiresias in the bandage of players. Tiresias was Creon'south most vocal critic in Sophocles's drama. His absenteeism will brand it harder for the audience to conclude that Creon is the villain. Another departure between Sophocles's Antigone and Anouilh'southward is the complete absence in the latter of whatsoever reference to the gods. Any "inhuman forces" are controlling the characters, they don't seem to be divine. What those forces are is a question audiences tin can ponder during the play and long after it ends.

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