Inse antigone and craan often use similar words, but with different meanings. They are using those same terms, but theyare using them to mean two different world views. One character says one line, and then the next one responds dately. And what that allows is this playing backwards and forwards of the same vocabulary between the two characters. So when he talks about friends and enemies him, a friend is some one who supports the city, and an enemy is someone who attacks it. But we can see in that exchange between the two-them that they're using the same terms,. but completely different systems behind them which mean that they don't actually communicate. They talk past each
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss what is reputedly the most performed of all Greek tragedies. Antigone, by Sophocles (c496-c406 BC), is powerfully ambiguous, inviting the audience to reassess its values constantly before the climax of the play resolves the plot if not the issues. Antigone is barely a teenager and is prepared to defy her uncle Creon, the new king of Thebes, who has decreed that nobody should bury the body of her brother, a traitor, on pain of death. This sets up a conflict between generations, between the state and the individual, uncle and niece, autocracy and pluralism, and it releases an enormous tragic energy that brings sudden death to Antigone, her fiance Haemon who is also Creon's son, and to Creon's wife Eurydice, while Creon himself is condemned to a living death of grief.
With
Edith Hall
Professor of Classics at Durham University
Oliver Taplin
Emeritus Professor of Classics, University of Oxford
And
Lyndsay Coo
Senior Lecturer in Ancient Greek Language and Literature at the University of Bristol
Producer: Simon Tillotson