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Sophocles Theban Plays Translated, with Introduction and Notes, by Peter Meineck and Paul Woodruff Hackett Publishing Company,Inc. Indianapolis/Cambridge Copyright © 2003 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 08 07 06 2 3 4 5 6 7 For further information, please address: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. P.O. Box 44937 Indianapolis, IN 46244–0937 www.hackettpublishing.com Cover design by Brian Rak and Abigail Coyle Interior design by Meera Dash Composition by William Hartman Printed at R. R. Donnelley Excerpt from “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” by Dylan Thomas, from The Poems of Dylan Thomas, copyright © 1952 by Dylan Thomas. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. In Walford Davies and Ralph Maud, eds., Collected Poems, 1934–1953 (London: Dent, 1993). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sophocles. [Selections. English. 2003] Theban plays / Sophocles; translated with introduction and notes, by Peter Meineck and Paul Woodruff. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. Contents: Antigone—Oedipus tyrannus—Oedipus at Colonus. ISBN 0–87220-586-X (cloth) — ISBN 0–87220-585–1 (paper) 1. Sophocles—Translations into English. 2. Antigone (Greek mythology)—Drama. 3. Oedipus (Greek mythology)—Drama. 4. Thebes (Greece)—Drama. I. Meineck, Peter, 1967–. II. Woodruff, Paul, 1943–. III. Title. PA4414.A2 M45 2003 882’.01—dc21 2002038790 ISBN-13: 978–0-87220–586-4 (cloth) ISBN-13: 978–0-87220–585-7 (pbk.) PRC ISBN: 978-1-60384-727-8 Contents Preface Introduction Sophocles and the Composition of the Plays Athenian Theatre and Performance Antigone Oedipus Tyrannus Oedipus at Colonus Suggestions for Further Reading Note on the Translations Acknowledgments Theban Royal Family Tree Antigone Oedipus Tyrannus Oedipus at Colonus Endnotes A. Antigone B. Oedipus Tyrannus C. Oedipus at Colonus Appendix: Hegel on Antigone Selected Bibliography Preface The first of the three Theban plays, Antigone, was written in the glory days of Athens while the Parthenon was being built. Then came Oedipus Tyrannus, probably staged after Athens had gone to war with the Spartan alliance and had been struck by a fearful plague. And, last of all of Sophocles’ plays, Oedipus at Colonus was written in the twilight of the Athenian empire and staged after its author’s death. More than thirty years passed between the writing of the first and the last of these three plays, yet they are often read together. And why not? They are Sophocles’ most famous plays, they have common themes, and they follow one family through a cycle of disasters. Do not think of them as a trilogy, however, for Sophocles did not write them to be performed together. They are not anything like the plays in the Oresteia of Aeschylus, which follow a distinct, tight chain of events from bloody beginning to peaceful resolution and were written to be seen together as presenting an almost continuous story in which one play shows the cause from which spring the actions of the next, and in which the final play brings the cycle to a resolution. If we saw the Theban plays in the order of the stories they tell, we would not find—and should not look for—a similar chain of causes. Each play is complete in itself, presenting the causes of its own action in its own terms. We would see Oedipus first as the mature ruler of Thebes (Oedipus Tyrannus), a ruler with a terrible secret who is, at the same time, a man who takes pride in his talent for bringing what has been secret into the light. In the second play (Oedipus at Colonus), we would see him as a homeless old man, reduced to begging for a place to sit—and die—on sacred ground near Athens, but also as a man who brings a blessing to the Athenians, a hero who will have the powers of a god. And what brought this situation about? Nothing in the first story prepares us for Oedipus’ extraordinary death. The last play would be an anticlimax; here we would see Oedipus’ daughter Antigone daring the wrath of the king in order to give proper burial to her outlawed brother. In itself, this is a splendid play, but it does nothing to resolve the family drama except to kill off most of its survivors. If these three stories have a resolution, it is in Oedipus at Colonus, but what this play resolves is far grander than the story of this family. Oedipus himself has become an enormously powerful figure in this last play: his presence throughout the action, seated on the forbidden ground he has chosen, which the gods have chosen for him, concentrates in one man great themes of the sacred and the profane, of the acceptance and denial of mystery, and of the violence that destroys peace and the violence that sustains it. Perhaps some details from the plays would allow our seeing them in narrative order. Oedipus at Colonus, for example, alludes to the issue of burial. Also, the characters show some consistency across the plays. Oedipus is prone to explosions of fierce and fatal anger, as we see in the two plays that bear his name. Antigone loves her brother in both of the plays in which she has a part. Creon uses sneaky arguments in the two Oedipus plays and shows a fondness for cliché in both Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus. Both of the translators of this volume, however, want to emphasize the independence of these plays from one another. Each play stands alone, brilliantly. Sophocles’ style as a
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