FOREWORD RICHARD HUNTER REGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK Sophocles’ Antigone, originally its importance for the very idea performed perhaps in around of what tragedy is. 440 bc, is one of the best known of all Greek plays: regularly Obedience and submissiveness performed, translated and also lie at the heart of filmed, it stands as an enduring Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (411 bc), monument to the power of or rather very obviously do not. the Greek tragic idea. One The central character, whose of the sources of that power name translates as ‘Disbander is its brutal simplicity: Creon’s of Armies’, persuades the fatal order not to offer funeral women of the warring Greek rites to Polyneices, who had cities not to have sex with led an Argive army against his their husbands until they make own city of Thebes, sets off a peace; at the same time, the chain reaction of unavoidable women of Athens seize control disaster. The Antigone has very of the Acropolis and hence often been interpreted and of the city’s finances. This play performed as a dramatization too is often interpreted and of the fact that there are times performed as an anti-war when an individual should play and/or a play about stand up for higher ideals, female empowerment, but the what Antigone calls ‘unwritten remarkable central character laws’, rather than the mere will is in fact very different from of the government, whether the women around her: in that government be a Theban some ways, she is a comic and tyrant or the Nazis in Germany. human embodiment of Athena, Part of the fascination of the goddess who saves the city the play, however, is the from the folly of its male citizens. complexity of the emotional storm which Creon’s apparently The pairing of these two simple order unleashes. The famous plays is itself, we public and the private cannot hope, a demonstration of be separated, particularly why Greek drama still matters when the antagonists are a to us. The place of women domineering man and an in society remains a matter unmarried woman, from whom of fundamental struggle all obedience and submissiveness over the world. As for male are expected. The foreboding rashness and folly in public and sense of impending life…Aristophanes would have disaster which hangs over the written a very funny play about play makes it comparable to Brexit. Sophocles’ Oedipus the King in 1 ANTIGONE LYSISTRATA Characters for her brother and her respect for religion. Characters Chorus: The Chorus of Men try to smoke Antigone, daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta Creon sentences her to death. Lysistrata, an Athenian woman the women out of the Acropolis. Ismene, Antigone’s sister Calonice, a neighbour of Lysistrata Chorus of Theban citizens Chorus: The Chorus sing of the terrifying Myrrhine, an Athenian woman Chorus: The Chorus of Women, led by Creon, Antigone’s uncle and ruler of Thebes power of the gods and of Zeus’s Stratyllis, an older Athenian woman Stratyllis, put the fire out. Guard unbreakable law. Lampito, a Spartan woman Haemon, son of Creon and Eurydice Chorus of Women Episode: The Magistrate orders the men Teiresias, the blind prophet Episode: Haemon, Creon’s son and Chorus of Men to take back the Acropolis. Lysistrata Messenger Antigone’s intended husband, tries to Magistrate of Athens challenges him, and a fight breaks Eurydice, Creon’s wife persuade his father to change his mind, Cinesias, husband of Myrrhine out. After the women defeat the men, but Creon refuses to listen. Haemon leaves, Messenger from the men of Sparta Lysistrata explains why they have gone on Background: swearing never to forgive him. Spartans strike. The Magistrate is humiliated and sent Thebes, in the aftermath of a devastating off. civil war. Following the death of Oedipus, Chorus: The Chorus sing of the destructive Background his sons, Polyneices and Eteocles, fight power of love. Athens has been at war with Sparta for Chorus: The Chorus of Men strip for action. for power, eventually killing each other in 20 years and has recently suffered a Kommos: Antigone laments the injustice of single combat. They are survived by their major defeat in Sicily. (Lysistrata was first Episode: Several women try to desert, her coming ‘marriage’ to death, while the sisters, Antigone and Ismene. performed in 411 BC. The Peloponnesian desperate for sex. Chorus insist it is self-inflicted. Creon cuts War, which tore the states of Greece them short; Antigone is led off, insisting that The succession passes to Oedipus’s brother apart, had begun in 431 and would end Episode: Cinesias arrives and begs to she has broken no divine law. Creon. He ordains full funeral honours for with Athens’ defeat in 404. The ‘Sicilian see his wife, Myrrhine. On Lysistrata’s Eteocles, but decrees that Polyneices - Episode: The blind Teiresias warns Creon expedition’ of 415–413 had resulted in instructions, Myrrhine gets Cinesias to whose invasion of Thebes had triggered huge Athenian losses.) agree to seek peace terms, and agrees to the war - be denied burial rites. that executing Antigone will cause his own destruction. Creon dismisses him as a false have sex with him - but disappears when prophet, but when the Chorus urge him to Synopsis the moment comes. Synopsis: Prologue: Athens, near the Acropolis. With Episode: Antigone brings Ismene to the reconsider, he begins to question his own plenty of innuendo (this is Aristophanes), Episode: A Spartan Messenger arrives, edge of the city and asks her to help bury judgment. Creon rushes out, hoping to Lysistrata explains to Calonice that she asking the Athenians to agree peace Polyneices. Ismene refuses to go against prevent Antigone’s death. has summoned the women of Athens and terms and so make the women end their Creon’s decree. Chorus: The Chorus pray to Dionysus for Sparta to a meeting. sex-strike. Chorus’s entrance: The Chorus sing of deliverance from this new horror. Chorus: The Chorus of Women make the civil war and of Polyneices’s betrayal, Episode: The other women arrive and celebrating victory and the onset of Episode: A Messenger arrives and tells Lysistrata explains her plan: they will all overtures to the Chorus of Men, and they peace. the Chorus and Eurydice, Creon’s wife, refuse to have sex until the men agree come together. what has taken place: Creon reached the on terms to end the war. Despite initial Episode: Creon condemns Polyneices and tomb to find that Antigone had already reluctance, she convinces the women to Episode: The Spartans arrive and peace anyone who seeks to bury him in defiance hanged herself; Haemon, overcome with take an oath of abstinence. News comes terms are agreed on a large map. of the city’s laws. The Guard reports that grief, tried to attack Creon before falling that the Chorus of Women have taken someone has attempted a burial. Creon on his own sword. Hearing this news of her over the Acropolis, cutting the men off Final sequence: The men and women of sends him to find out who is guilty of such son’s death, Eurydice goes silently into the from the war chest. Lysistrata and co set Athens and Sparta celebrate the peace disobedience. palace. out to join them. and the resumption of normal service. Chorus: The Chorus sing of man’s achievements Final sequence: Creon enters carrying over the natural and divine world. Haemon’s body and grieving for his son. But his suffering has not ended: the Episode: The Guard returns with Antigone, Messenger reports that Eurydice has whom he found attempting to bury the committed suicide, with a curse against body. Creon confronts her and Ismene. her husband on her lips. Creon is left Antigone is unrepentant, citing her love devastated and alone. The Chorus lead him off. 2 3 ARISTOPHANES AND FEMINISM? GREEK PLAY MEMORIES Aristophanes’ Lysistrata takes as its VANESSA LACEY theme the idea that women and men TIM WHITMARSH have different identities and different ARCHIVIST, CAMBRIDGE GREEK PLAY perspectives on the world. The men, A G LEVENTIS PROFESSOR OF GREEK CULTURE the Greek play tradition - a dedicated Lysistrata observes in the opening scene, never forget that this is a play written by a copy of The Wisdom of Sophocles by J T have stuffed up the international politics, man, acted by men, and performed for Sheppard, later Sir John Sheppard, Provost leading the city of Athens (and the whole an audience that consisted (largely, or of King’s College.” Sheppard, who played of Greece) into a disastrous war. (She has even entirely) of men. That said, the men Peithetairos in Birds (1903), also directed a point: the play was premiered in 411 are portrayed just as foolishly, no one more the first Cambridge Greek play, Antigone, BCE, in the aftermath of the Athenians’ in 1939. (An Antigone had already been than the overbearing magistrate who staged - as a double bill with Lysistrata, in failed attempt to capture Sicily, a harangues them, and whose attempts to Each Cambridge Greek play has only a desperate attempt to generate new silence them with sexist abuse fare very brief life onstage, but happily all have a fact - by the Cambridge Festival Theatre resources.) It is up to the women, then, to badly. What is more, Lysistrata (apparently far longer existence in the memories of of Terence Grey in 1931.) Ronald Millar, sort things out. The women band together the cast. We asked the last Antigone and who played Creon in that production, half-modelled on a real woman, an Lysistrata to share their reminiscences. remembered his challenge to the cast: and occupy the Acropolis, the sacred and influential priestess of Athena called “Ninety-five per cent of the audience civic heart of the city.