Essay: Sophocles’ ‘Antigone’

Sophocles’ ‘Antigone’
Greek playwright Sophocles is believed to have written Antigone circa 441 BC in Athens. Over his lifetime, Sophocles wrote roughly 120 plays however only 7 remain in their completed form. Sophocles also won an impressive 24 competitions for his literary work and was never ranked lower than 2nd place in the 6 remaining competitions he entered. A noteworthy and undoubtedly revolutionary aspect of Sophocles’ work is the inclusion of a third actor; therefore reducing the need for the Chorus. Antigone stands as one of three Theban plays that explore the fate of the city of Thebes. The two remaining plays are Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus.
During this time period, plays were performed in amphitheatres which were venues carved into hillsides with staggered seating. The structure of the amphitheatre enables all spectators to get a good view of the theatron; the section of the amphitheatre where the actors would perform. Similarly, performers usually wore masks to not only help differentiate characters (as most characters were multi-rolled) but to also aid their projection in the vast amphitheatre. Alongside the over-exaggerated facial expressions of the masks, actors would perform in an over-the-top manner to ensure all their movements could be identified by spectators. Additionally, performers relied on sunlight to light their productions as that was all that was available to them. The Greeks did however manipulate the lighting using mirrors so that they could spotlight particular characters or scenes. As the audiences were lit, audience interaction and participation was heavily encouraged especially by ensembles such as the Greek Chorus, typically a group of 10-24 members who had a narrator-like role. Women were also forbidden from performing and therefore all female roles would be played by men; who would frequently wear a prosterneda ( a breastplate worn to imitate the female form). Women had a very much subordinate role in society and so were only able to visit the theatre on rare occasions. Within performances, actors were forbidden from showing deaths onstage as it was deemed disrespectful to the Gods. To counteract this, the Chorus would often fill in details to an audience to save them having to show the passing of a character.
A lot of plays during this time were influenced by regional tension or conflict such as the civil war between Sparta and Athens, referenced in Aristophanes’s Lysistrata. In Ancient Greece, plays were crafted as a sign of worship for the Greek God Dionysus and they were often performed in a festival-like atmosphere. Because of that, the audiences were frequently quite boysterous and disruptive; often even throwing fruit at the performers to express their discontent.
Perhaps the four most legendary and leading playwrights of Ancient Greece were: Aristophanes, Euripides, Aeschylus and Sophocles. Plays typically fell into two main categories, tragedy or comedy. As with modern plays, both categories have their common conventions and features that help characterise them. For example, Greek comedies often include innuendos and sexual humour with an underlying political message. Tragedies on the other hand, as the name suggests, are far more sombre and usually contain a lot of deaths and heartache.
Seamus Heaney’s ‘The Burial at Thebes’
Irish laureate Seamus Heaney published a modern adaptation of Sophocles’ work in 2004; during Ireland’s sixth presidency of the EU. Much of Sophocles work revolved around the issues within authority figures, despite gaining most of his life experience in private in Athens. This made Heaney a seemingly perfect author to adapt the piece as he had experienced both a personal and civic life. The production was first performed on April 5th 2004 in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. During his life, Heaney travelled to Belfast to study English language and literature and stated that during his travels “suddenly, the matter of contemporary poetry was the material of my own life”. One of Heaney’s many accolades is his Nobel Prize in literature in 1995. After his passing in 2013, the Independent noted Heaney as “probably the best-known poet in the world”.
Heaney made a bold decision to re-name Antigone in order to create a more neutral title. He believed the multiple burials in the play were imperative and that the word burial itself “retains a sacral first-world force”. This later encouraged Heaney to draw connections between ‘The Burial at Thebes’ and the IRA hunger strikes. Another alteration Heaney made was in his adaptation was reducing the number of Chorus members from a traditional 10-15 to 2. It is believed that Heaney’s adaptation is thought to have been inspired by former President George Bush’s war on Iraq. There is a parallel between the idea that as a citizen you are either an ally of the state or an enemy, and therefore a supporter of terrorism. This adaptation was possibly spurred on by Bush’s arrival into Ireland in 2003. And once again encouraged by Bush’s return to Ireland in 2004 for an EU/US conference. Contextually in 2003, Ireland was in the foreground of strife when 100,000 people in Dublin actively protested against the imminent invasion of Iraq. Because of that, it made sense to adapt Antigone in the current political climate at the time. Additionally, there is an underlying link between Bush and King Creon; enhanced by the ‘bushisms’ added by Heaney. There is even a direct reference to the similarities between Creon and Bush’s foreign policies, addressed by Heaney when he discusses Bush “trying to boss the nations of the world into uncritical agreement with his edicts in much the same way as Creon tries to boss the chorus of compliant Thebans into conformity with his”.