About this episode
Mary and Charlotte explore the enduring significance of Antigone and its themes of loyalty and authority.
Antigone is one of the most regularly staged Greek tragedies with great actors lining up to play the part. Juliette Binoche, Juliet Stevenson and Gillian Anderson have all had a crack in recent years. In this episode, Mary and Charlotte look at why Antigone is such an enduringly interesting role. She is sometimes framed as a female Hamlet caught between family loyalties and the needs of the state. Antigone was written by Sophocles in the mid-5th Century BCE. It tells the story of King Creon’s attempts to restore order to the city of Thebes following a civil war. He orders that the body of the defeated rebel Polynices should lie unburied as punishment. Antigone, sister of Polynices, disobeys this order and gives her brother proper burial rites (as the gods demand). Creon sentences her to death for betrayal. Antigone is often portrayed as a proto-feminist icon - the brave woman standing up to the patriarchy. But is this really what Sophocles intended? King Creon has far more lines and is, like Antigone, caught in an impossible situation. There’s even one way of viewing the play as a parable on what happens when women meddle in the affairs of the state. It is, of course, precisely…
People in this episode
Hosts: Mary, Charlotte
Topics covered
- Greek tragedy
- feminism
- family loyalty
- state authority
- Antigone
- Sophocles
Keywords
- Antigone
- Sophocles
- Greek tragedy
- feminism
- Creon
- Polynices
- theatre
- family loyalty
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Oxford UP
Books & works: Antigone, Antigones
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