50 Fun Facts About Antigone

A South African play about two cellmates rehearsing Antigone is set in a prison modelled on which notorious jail?

Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was held, is the clear model for the unnamed prison in The Island. One inmate plays Antigone and the other plays Creon before their fellow prisoners.

Which queen of Thebes was both mother and grandmother to Antigone, having unknowingly married her own son?

Jocasta bore Oedipus to King Laius, and years later the two married with neither knowing who the other was. Their four children included Antigone and the brothers whose war sets the play in motion.

How does Antigone die inside the rocky vault where Creon has had her sealed alive in Sophocles' play?

She hangs herself with a noose of fine linen, so Creon's change of heart comes too late. He reaches the tomb to find his son clinging to her body.

How is Creon, the new king of Thebes, related to Antigone in the tragedy by Sophocles?

Her uncle Creon is her mother's brother, and he took the throne only because both male heirs had just died. He is also due to become her father-in-law.

How do the two brothers of Antigone die in the war for the throne of Thebes?

They kill each other on the same day, leaving no male heir to rule. Creon then honours the brother who defended the city and shames the one who attacked it.

What becomes of Creon himself at the very end of Antigone, the tragedy by Sophocles?

He lives on in grief, still king but begging to be led away as 'a rash, foolish man'. His wife and son are both dead, and he blames no one but himself.

Which cautious sister refuses to help Antigone bury their brother in the opening scene of Sophocles' play?

Ismene urges obedience to the king, yet once the crime is discovered she tries to claim a share of the guilt. Her sister refuses to let her.

Who performed the role of Antigone and every other female part when Sophocles first staged the play in Athens?

Men wearing masks played every part, since the Athenian stage had no actresses. Swapping a mask let one performer return as a completely different character.

Which son of Creon is engaged to marry Antigone and begs his father to spare her life?

Haemon begins respectfully, but the quarrel ends with him storming out and vowing his father will never see him again. He is next found in her tomb.

Creon vows in Sophocles' Antigone that as long as he lives he will never be ruled by whom?

A woman, he insists: 'While I live, no woman shall rule me.' Creon treats Antigone's defiance as a threat to male authority as much as a breach of his law.

Which blind prophet warns Creon in Antigone that the gods are refusing every sacrifice from Thebes?

Tiresias tells the king that the city's altars are polluted by scraps of the unburied corpse. The same seer delivers the terrible truth in Oedipus Rex.

What is the name of Creon's wife, who kills herself at the end of Antigone after cursing her husband?

Eurydice appears only briefly, near the end of the play. A messenger reports that she died at the household altar, leaving Creon entirely alone.

Which brother of Antigone does Creon bury with full honours for dying in defence of Thebes?

Eteocles held the throne and died defending it, so Creon treats him as a patriot. The edict that follows denies the same rites to the brother who attacked.

What does Antigone sprinkle over the corpse of Polynices to give him a symbolic burial in Sophocles' play?

Dry dust is all she can manage alone, yet a light covering is enough to complete the rite. She is caught only when she comes back to pour offerings over the body.

Which nervous character brings Creon the news that someone has secretly buried Polynices in Antigone?

A sentry posted over the corpse arrives stammering excuses, and Creon threatens to execute him unless he finds the culprit. He soon returns with Antigone as his prisoner.

The famous 'Ode to Man' in Antigone praises human skill but names which one thing people cannot escape?

Death alone defeats a creature who has crossed the oceans, tamed animals and found cures for sickness. The ode opens by calling man the greatest of the world's many wonders.

Antigone tells Creon that no mortal decree can override the laws of heaven, which she describes as what?

Unwritten and unfailing, she calls them: laws that are 'not of today or yesterday' and whose origin no one knows. Her speech sets them above anything a king can proclaim.

Which reason does the sister of Antigone give for refusing to defy Creon and bury Polynices?

They are only women, she argues, not made to fight against men and ruled by those who are stronger. Antigone replies that she would no longer welcome her help even if it were offered.

The chorus that comments on the action in Sophocles' Antigone is made up of which group?

City elders of Thebes form the chorus, old men summoned by Creon to back his rule. They begin by deferring to him and end by urging him to give way.

From which rival Greek city did Polynices march an army against Thebes before Antigone begins?

Argos gave the exiled prince a royal bride and an army to win back his throne. The chorus's entrance song celebrates that army's headlong flight.

Which punishment does Creon's edict first threaten for anyone who buries Polynices in Antigone?

Public stoning is the penalty Antigone reports to her sister in the opening scene. Creon later switches her own sentence to being sealed in a cave.

Which motive does Creon in Antigone suspect behind both the forbidden burial and the seer's later warning?

Bribery is his first thought each time: he calls money the worst evil ever to circulate among men. He accuses his own men of taking pay from rebels and the seer of selling his prophecies.

In his first speech as king in Antigone, Creon pictures the state as what, carrying its people to safety?

A ship is his image: only while the country stays on course, he says, can anyone aboard make true friends. So he ranks loyalty to the city above every personal tie.

Creon's son warns him in Antigone that what survives a winter flood by bending rather than standing stiff?

Trees that bend keep every twig, he says, while the rigid ones are torn out by the roots. He adds a sailor who never slackens his sail and ends up capsized.

Which creatures does the blind prophet in Antigone hear screaming and tearing at each other in a frenzy?

Birds are how the seer reads the future, and their savage noise tells him the gods are angry. They have been feeding on the corpse Creon left unburied.

According to the closing lines of the chorus in Sophocles' Antigone, what is the greatest part of happiness?

Wisdom comes first, the chorus sings, and the proud learn it only in old age after heavy blows. Creon is being led into the palace as they say it.

Which tragedian wrote Seven Against Thebes, the play about the brothers' war that Antigone picks up from?

Aeschylus's play now closes with Antigone herself defying a ban on the burial. Scholars think that scene was added after his lifetime to match Sophocles.

Which term from Aristotle, often translated 'tragic flaw', names the fatal error of a hero like Creon in Antigone?

Hamartia comes from a Greek verb meaning 'to miss the mark', so some critics read it as an honest mistake and not a moral failing.

What does Creon's son try to do with his sword in the tomb of Antigone before turning it on himself?

He tries to stab his father, first spitting in his face without a word. Creon dodges the blow, and the young man leans on the blade himself.

Antigone defends herself to Creon by saying that which god never proclaimed his ban on the burial?

Zeus did not issue that edict, she says, and neither did the Justice who lives with the gods below. She admits the deed at once and makes no attempt to deny it.

As Creon hurries off to free Antigone, the chorus sings a hymn to which god, hailed as a dweller in Thebes?

Dionysus is praised as the child of a Theban bride and the guardian of her city. Antigone itself was first staged at his festival in Athens.

On her way to the tomb, Antigone likens her fate to which grieving queen who was turned to stone?

Niobe wept for her slaughtered children until she became a rock that still runs with water. When the chorus calls the comparison an honour, Antigone feels mocked.

In their quarrel in Antigone, Creon's son tells him that a true city never belongs to what?

One man, he adds, would make a fine king of a desert. Creon retorts that a city is held to be its ruler's own.

Creon's son reports in Antigone that which group is secretly grieving for the condemned girl?

The citizens dare not say so to the king's face, but in the dark they murmur that nobody ever deserved such a fate less.

Which stage innovation does Aristotle credit to Sophocles, the playwright who wrote Antigone?

A third actor let Sophocles put three speaking characters in one scene, which shrank the role of the chorus. Aristotle also credits him with painted scenery.

Sophocles, the author of Antigone, came from which village near Athens that he later made the setting of a play?

Colonus is where Sophocles brings the aged Oedipus, led by Antigone, to a sacred grove. He wrote that play at the very end of his life, and his grandson staged it.

Which French playwright's version of Antigone opened in Paris in 1944 during the Nazi occupation?

Jean Anouilh had to get his script past German censors, so it gives Creon a real case as well as Antigone. The parallels with the French Resistance were clear all the same.

Which Greek term names the entrance song of the chorus, sung in Antigone straight after the opening scene?

Parodos also names the side passage by which the chorus walked into the theatre. In Antigone the song celebrates the defeat of the army that attacked Thebes.

In Antigone, how was the unlucky man chosen who had to tell Creon that Polynices had been buried?

By drawing lots, the group settled who would carry news that might get its bearer killed. Each had first sworn innocence, ready to grasp red-hot iron to prove it.

Why does Antigone say she would defy the city for Polynices but not for a husband or child?

A brother is irreplaceable, she reasons, because both her parents are dead and no more can be born. A new husband or another child, she says, could always be found.

Asked in Antigone whether he will really kill his own son's bride, Creon replies that there are other what?

Fields to plough is his crude answer, treating a wife as land his son can simply swap. The question comes from Antigone's sister, who cannot believe he will go through with it.

Creon says in his first speech in Antigone that a man's true character is known only once he has done what?

Held power and made laws: only then, Creon says, can anyone judge a man's soul and mind. The rest of the play puts him to exactly that test.

How does Creon's wife react on stage in Antigone when a messenger describes how her son died?

She leaves in silence, and the chorus fears that quiet as much as any loud weeping. Moments later word comes from the palace that she has taken her own life.

Why does Creon leave a little food with Antigone when he seals her alive inside the rocky vault?

To keep the city guiltless, he provides just enough to claim that nobody actually killed her. If she dies in there, he reasons, that is between her and the god of the dead.

Which creature does the chorus of Antigone liken the white-shielded army of Polynices to?

An eagle with snow-white wings is the image, screaming as it circles the city's gates. Thebes, the defender, is pictured as the dragon that fought it off.

Which Irish Nobel laureate retold Antigone as The Burial at Thebes for Dublin's Abbey Theatre?

Seamus Heaney wrote it in 2004 and slipped in 'Bushisms', lines that echo George W. Bush, to link Creon with the politics of the day.

Which German philosopher read Antigone as a tragic clash between divine law and human law?

Hegel takes up the play in his Phenomenology of Spirit, where Antigone stands for the divine law and Creon for the human one.

When her sister promises to keep the burial plan secret, what does Antigone urge her to do instead?

Tell the whole city, she snaps: her sister will be far more hateful for keeping quiet. Antigone wants the deed known, not hidden.

Who guides the blind prophet onto the stage when he comes to warn Creon in Sophocles' Antigone?

A young boy leads him by the hand and describes the omens he cannot see. As the seer puts it, the child is his guide just as he is a guide to others.

The chorus consoles Antigone with the tale of which princess shut in a chamber as secret as the grave?

Danaë was locked behind metal walls by her own father, though she came of a proud line. The chorus's point is that even the noblest cannot escape fate.