The Royal Line of Thebes

The Royal Line of Thebes or the ancient Greek audience, the fate of blinded himself and left the city of Thebes in disgrace. Antigone would have been common knowledge. His sons, Eteocles and Polyneices were elected co- The tragic poets took their stories from mytholo- rulers of the city and agreed to reign in alternate gy. The characters on the stage were the men, years. women and gods from a far-off time, but the an- As the story of Antigone begins, a bloody battle Fcient Greeks had an especially close relationship with has been waged in Thebes. Polyneices led an army history and an ap- against Eteocles, who preciation for their “Sorrows of the dead are heaped on sorrows of the living. refused to relinquish own mythology. Sorrows of the living are heaped on sorrows of the dead. the throne at the end Antigone was of his first term. born into a great, Generation cannot be freed by generation. Both brothers were but cursed family. But each is undeliverable, stricken by some god.” killed in the battle, Her father was —Chorus, Antigone and Antigone’s uncle, Oedipus, son of Creon, declared him- Laius and Jocasta, the rulers of Thebes, who were self King. As his first act of government Creon issued warned in prophecy that their son would murder his an edict declaring Polyneices a traitor and forbidding father and marry his mother. Although they took any person from burying his corpse. Antigone must steps to prevent it, the prophecy eventually came to choose whether to obey her King or bury her brother. pass. Once he learned of his fate, King Oedipus –Jennifer Kiger Ares m. Aphrodite Agenor Harmonica m. Cadmus (Founder of Thebes) Polydorus Semele m. Zeus Labdacus Menoeceus Dionysus Laius m. Jocasta m. Creon m. Eurydice Oedipus Eteocles Polyneices Ismene Antigone Haemon Megareus King of Thebes in Italics Antigone •SOUTH COAST REPERTORY P3 Doing Justice to Antigone by Brendan Kennelly loyal to my experience of life in Ireland, in the modern world. We are all both limited and stimulated by hile writing Antigone I noticed that the char- such experience. Family life. Brothers and sisters. acters seemed to come more and more alive Fathers and mothers. Moments of love and hate. with each re-writing, as if, in this play Public life. Governments. Politicians. Rulers. Peo- where people are constantly judging others ple making speeches. People interested in power. and being in turn constantly judged, they People whose hearts and minds are moulded by Wwish themselves and what they believe and do to be power. People who betray, conspire and manipulate properly understood, to be accurately evaluated, to in order to achieve power. have justice done to them. Justice is of paramount So, in any serious, sustained attempt to “trans- importance in Antigone and it is frequently in conflict late” a play like Antigone, the conflict between the with reality. I would define justice as a vision of what past and the present in the mind of the translator is should prevail; reality I would define as the knowl- as real as any conflict in the play itself. We are all, to edge of what does prevail. Antigone is in the grip of some extent, creatures of conflict and, when we her vision of justice and she wants to make it reality. come to use words, we struggle to be true to our ex- Creon, too, is in the grip of his vision and he is deter- perience and understanding of that conflict. Conflict mined to make it prevail. But Antigone’s vision of is served by the language it creates. justice, love and loyalty is not Creon’s. The ancient, original Greek infiltrates life in We have a conflict of visions, a conflict of two modern Ireland. In many ways, the past shapes and passionate people, two living hearts, brought about, directs the present. The past educates and enlightens perhaps ironically, by the dead Polyneices, or rather the present. The present selects from that education, by attitudes among the living to the burial or non- that enlightenment, and makes its own way forward, burial of the corpse. Behind these conflicting atti- as we all must, into a future that can be known only tudes are a number of histories: histories of family re- by experiencing it, and then only partially, depending lationships, of personal values, of civil stability, of on our willingness to give ourselves with whatever political change, of the growth of power and effective passion we are capable of into the arms of every mo- government, of ideas concerning what actually con- ment that is waiting to be lived. stitutes civilised living. These histories are like insis- Antigone lives with passion because of her loy- tent, vigorous ghosts haunting every word that the alty to, and love for the dead. But in living out her characters say. This is a truly haunted play; the pres- love for her dead brother she loses her love for ence of the dead in the hearts and minds of the living Haemon, her living lover, Creon’s son. There is a is a fierce, driving and endlessly powerful force. This conflict between the claim of a dead brother and a presence haunts the language and makes it, at certain living lover. This conflict is resolved ‘in a black hole moments, tremble with a peculiar intensity. among the rocks’. Or is it? Will the consequences of At the end, one is left with more questions than what happens in that ‘black hole’ resonate among the answers. What is the deepest source of Antigone’s unborn, the Antigones, Creons and Haemons of the passion? What was Polyneices like? Why does future? The present is soon past. The future be- Antigone feel with such unquestioning and unques- comes the present. The mills of consequence grind tionable intensity about him? Are love and loyalty on. one and the same? What is Creon’s concept of loyal- Even now, after many re-writings, the more I ty? What is Ismene’s? What is Tiresias’s? Haemon’s? think about this play the more questions present What is the influence of the dead on the living? I’m themselves. That fact is, perhaps, the truest testimo- sure there are many people today who would reply— ny to the strange complexity and enduring attraction very little influence—very little indeed. But there are of Antigone. others who would reply in a very different vein. This version of Antigone tries to be true, to be loyal to my Excerpted from the end notes to Brendan Kennelly’s Antigone, pub- understanding of the Greek world; but it must also be lished by Bloodaxe Books, Ltd., Northumberland, 1996. P4 SOUTH COAST REPERTORY • Antigone The Funeral Rite: Family Duties and the Afterlife he ancient Greeks had distinct methods gods. When it came of burial, and it was often believed if time for the burial, you were not provided a proper burial before the dawn of along with the appropriate rituals, you the third day, the were destined to suffer between worlds body was taken to untilT your rites of passage into the under- the tomb by cart. world were completed. The men led the In classical Greece the burial rituals procession and the consisted of three parts. First there was women followed. At the internment, the corpse or ashes I shall vanish and be no more were placed in the But the land over which I now roam tomb along with Shall remain the grave goods of And change not. pottery, jewels, vases or other per- —Warrior song of the Hethúshka Society sonal property. Along with these gifts, offerings of prosthesis, or laying out of the body. The fruit were made women washed, anointed, dressed, and the mourners crowned, covered the body and adorned it sang and danced. with flowers. The Beginning in mouth and eyes Classical times [in were shut to pre- the era when vent the psyche Sophocles wrote (phantom or soul) Antigone] there from leaving the came to be a concept of punishment after body before re- death or a state of blessedness. The soul re- ceiving the proper sponsible for a person’s personality and burial rites and the moral decisions received eternal punishment corpse was dressed or bliss for the choices of the human form. in a long, ankle- The burial rituals perhaps spawned this be- length garment. lief that the soul must be guided to the af- The body was pre- terlife. If the body was not given a proper sented so it could burial, according to Greek ritual, the soul be viewed for two would remain trapped between the worlds days. At the view- of the living and the underworld. ings, the mour-ners Excerpted from Kristina Bagwell’s dressed in black in “Burial Rituals and the Afterlife of honor of the de- Ancient Greece” ceased and the women stood at the head of the couch to Left, the Northeast wind and the West wind grieve and sing while carry away the dead body of a young soldier to his grave. Above, the goddess Athene stands in the men stood with sorrow over a monument to the Athenian dead. their palms out to the Antigone •SOUTH COAST REPERTORY P5 ‘Antigone’ in America ntigone holds the pride of place for being the At the 1946 staging of Anouilh’s Antigone, most very first Greek tragedy ever offered as a com- drama critics were reluctant to recognize the possibili- mercial venture in this country. In 1845 a New ty that an ancient play could have modern political York businessman, hoping to inaugurate the meaning.

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