1. The Good, the Bad, and the — What?
you’ll remember that we started by asking why – why did a girl, barely an adolescent, probably, have to die. that girl was, of course, Iphigenia….. so that very specific question was a way to begin to approach a bigger one: why does tragedy have to happen? – tragedy both in the popular, metaphorical sense of a terrible calamity, and tragedy in the very narrow and literal sense of tragic plays – especially the tragedies produced in ancient Athens and rome. in many ways, tragedy as dramatic-literary genre, as a type of play, is an exploration of human suffering.. which sort of explains the genre, but not completely. so this course explores what is left incomplete by that explanation. for that still doesn’t explain the “why?” of tragic drama. why this focus on the suffering of others? what is the pleasure to be taken therein? (for tragedy wouldn’t have existed had it not been pleasurable.) what else is going on?
Sophocles’ Antigone 2

2. Agenda Recap and Update Performance Project
Structure, themes, thought, character, act
Performance Project
An Impromptu Rehearsal. . .

3. Recap and Update Structure, themes, thought, character, act 1-13-99
7-Sep-2011
Antigone 2
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz

4. Myth Background: House of Thebes
Myth Background: House of Thebes
Labdacus
Menoeceus
important point: that this is family drama, the drama of a house
indeed, it is the drama of a house’s fall – itself a tragic theme. the cycle of violence as a cursed inheritance. the challenge: somehow to escape.
so we tend to think of the “tragic” as bad fortune, disaster, etc.
but the disasters and reversals of staged tragedy in classical Athens by and large counts as something healthful – misfortune through which individuals and groups atone for a family history of transgression, and a means through which the community is purified, is freed of the “bad karma” these royal transgressions entail
aristotle’s contribution will, then, have been to make that relate to us. not only does tragedy clear the decks within the dramatic reality. it clears up our own – those of audience and readers – psychic impurities. it is for us a “purification” of the unhealthful pathē pity and fear.
Laius
Jocasta
Creon
Eurydice
Oedipus
Jocasta
Polynices
Eteocles
Antigone
Ismene
Haemon
Megareus
7-Sep-2011
Antigone 2
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz

5. Play Analysis (nums.= to Penguin pages)
Play Analysis (nums.= to Penguin pages)
Prologue (59 ff.)
Antigone, Ismene (burial)
Parodos (choral entry ode, 65 f.)
victory song
1st episode
Creon, Sentry (Polynices’ burial)
1st stasimon (choral ode, 76 f.)
“Many the wonders …”
2nd episode
Sentry, Creon; Creon, Antigone, Ismene (Creon-Antigone agōn)
2nd stasimon (91 f.)
“Blest they who escape misfortune”
3rd episode (92 ff.)
Creon, Haemon (agōn)
3rd stasimon (101)
madness of erōs
4th episode (101 ff.)
Choral dialogue (kommos) w/ Antigone (bride of death); Antigone, Creon
4th stasimon (108 f.)
myth parallels to Antigone
5th episode (110 ff.)
Tiresias, Creon (prophecy, warning, agōn)
Hyporchema (choral ode, 118 f.)
Dionysus save the day!
Exodos (119 ff.)
Messenger, Eurydice; Choral dialogue (kommos) w/ Creon
parodos
stasimon
koruphaios
kommos
108 ff. myth parallels. these focus on being locked away, but vary all the same in terms of the why of the locking. but the locked away are male and female, guilty and innocent. this stasimon mirrors the moral ambiguities of the actions of ant and cre.
danae, mother of perseus. doubly locked away by a threatened father (Acrisius, prophesied to die by hand of grandson).
Lycurgus, sinner against Dionysus, locked away in a cave (“encased in the chain mail of rock”). lyc is unambiguously hubristic.
cleopatra (name not given), wife of Phineus and daughter of boreas and Athenian oreithyia. blinds her sons out of jealousy at husbands second marriage. Phineus imprisoned her, walled up in a tomb.
all three a threat to someone’s position/power.
5th ep. Tiresias. seeks to persuade creon not to go through with the punishment – indicates the anger of the gods with cr’s actions. as with oed, so creon angered resistant. trading of insults: the seer and the tyrant as both desiring gain. prophecies death of Haemon. p. 115, refers to the erinues, “furies,” divine agents of retribution – or are they divine machinery? overdetermined punishment: the peple are against him. on t’s exit, creon is shaken.
119 ff. messenger speech to chorus. ant dead, death of Haemon.
7-Sep-2011
Antigone 2
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz

6. Disturbed Dichotomies
Disturbed Dichotomies
ANTIGONE
female
private
inside
oikos (family, household)
lamentation
divine law
CREON
male
public
outside
polis (politics, city)
retribution
human law
so in the study guide, for the fdirst class, I asked you to evaluate the issues and conflicts of the plays. let’s assemble some of these now.
then, given that, and given what you know about the characters in the play, are there good guys? bad guys? If so, who are they and why? Or if not, then what?
and with specific ref to things like….
what is the point of
creon’s weeping at end? p. 123, messenger accuses cr of aboulia, “lack of judgment” – why?
antigone’s take-charge approach?
within the ideological horizon of play, is each somehow bad?
and if so, how do you read that?
shall we buy into that vision?
shall we condemn it and the play as well?
CREON: “I am not the man, not now: she is the man / if this victory goes to her and she goes free” (p. 83)
7-Sep-2011
Antigone 2
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz

7. Antigone – Tragic Patterns
Hubris (arrogance, transgression)
“Zeus hates with a vengeance all bravado, / the mighty boasts of men” (Chorus, p. 65)
Cycle of suffering
“… once / the gods have rocked a house to its foundations / the ruin will never cease, cresting on and on” (Chorus, p. 91)
Atē (delusion, ruin). Peripeteia (reversal)
“Sooner or later / foul is fair, / fair is foul / to the man the gods will ruin” (Chorus, p. 92)
Knowledge too late
“Too late, / too late, you see what justice means” (Chorus Leader, p. 124)
these, we’ll find, are tragic themes. . .
7-Sep-2011
Antigone 2

8. Thought, Character, Act (cont.)
Antigone
“I will bury him myself. / And even if I die in the act, that death will be like a glory” (p. 63)
Ismene
“… rest assured, … / you are truly dear to the ones who love you” (p. 64)
Creon
“She is the man / if this victory goes to her and she goes free” (p. 83)
Haemon
“… look less to my years and more to what I do” (p. 96)
Antigone
“So, do as you like — / I will bury him myself. / And even if I die in the act, that death will be like a glory” (p. 63)
her outsized desire for glory (philotimia) goes along with her outsized anti-sociality. she embodies the family, acc. to the usual hegelian dialectic, yet she embraces dead family, not living. she seems driven by fatal eros in ways recalling her father.
Ismene
“Then go if you must, but rest assured, … / you are truly dear to the ones who love you” (p. 64)
timid yet sensible. she truly feels familial affection rather than simply grandstanding some ideological position.
Creon
“She is the man / if this victory goes to her and she goes free” (p. 83)
his insecurity and paranoia can be form part of the make-up of the tragic tyrant.
Haemon
“… look less to my years and more to what I do” (p. 96)
sensible in ways that seem to mirror ismene.
ARISTOTLE “Thought”: dianoia. “Character”: ēthos. “Action”: drama.
7-Sep-2011
Antigone 2

9. Performance Project An Impromptu Rehearsal. . . 7-Sep-2011 Antigone 2
in trying to come up with a theory for a thing, we often ask ourselves how we already instinctively understand it, or how we typically find it used – we ask what it is that we already assume it to be. that could be viewed as a circular process, but it could also be viewed as a dynamic process where, through trial and error, each turn of the wheel seems to bring us closer to our destination.
only ONE comment selected a chorus!
Performance Project
An Impromptu Rehearsal. . .
7-Sep-2011
Antigone 2

10. And the Winner Is… (nums.= to Penguin pages)
And the Winner Is… (nums.= to Penguin pages)
Prologue (59 ff.)
Antigone, Ismene (burial)
Parodos (choral entry ode, 65 f.)
victory song
1st episode
Creon, Sentry (Polynices’ burial)
1st stasimon (choral ode, 76 f.)
“Many the wonders …”
2nd episode
Sentry, Creon; Creon, Antigone, Ismene (Creon-Antigone agōn)
2nd stasimon (91 f.)
“Blest they who escape misfortune”
3rd episode (92 ff.)
Creon, Haemon (agōn)
3rd stasimon (101)
madness of erōs
4th episode (101 ff.)
Choral dialogue (kommos) w/ Antigone (bride of death); Antigone, Creon
4th stasimon (108 f.)
myth parallels to Antigone
5th episode (110 ff.)
Tiresias, Creon (prophecy, warning, agōn)
Hyporchema (choral ode, 118 f.)
Dionysus save the day!
Exodos (119 ff.)
Messenger, Eurydice; Choral dialogue (kommos) w/ Creon
“The king himself, coming toward us…” — p. 123 ff.
… 124-end, Creon’s “reversal” scene
7-Sep-2011
Antigone 2
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz