Antigone

Páginas: 45 (11141 palabras) Publicado: 13 de diciembre de 2012
Antigone
Sophocles Translated by E.F. Watling

Characters:
Ismene –daughter of Oedipus
Antigone – daughter of Oedipus
Creon – King of Thebes
Haemon – Son of Creon
Teiresias – a blind prophet
A Sentry
A Messenger
Eurydice – wife of Creon
Chorus of Theban Elders
The following characters do not speak in the play
King’s Attendants
Queen’s Attendants
A Boy leading Teiresias
SolidersScene: Before the palace in Thebes

Enter ISMENE from the central door of the Palace. ANTIGONE follows, anxious and urgent; she closes the door carefully, and comes to join her sister.

ANTIGONE: O sister! Ismene dear, dear sister Ismene!
You know how heavy the hand of God is upon us;
How we who are left must suffer for our fathers, Oedipus.
There is no pain, no sorrow, nosuffering, no dishonor
5 We have not shared together, you and I.
And now there is something more. Have you heard this order,
The latest order that the King has proclaimed to the city?
Have you heard how our dearest are being treated like enemies?
ISMENE: I have heard nothing about any of those we love,
10 Neither good or evil—not, I mean, since the death
Of our two brothers,both fallen in a day.
The Argive army,1 I hear was withdrawn last night.
I know no more to make me sad or glad.
ANTIGONE: I thought you did not. That’s why I brought you out here,
15 Where we shan’t be heard, to tell you something alone
ISMENE: What is it, Antigone? Black news, I can see already.
ANTIGONE: O Ismene, what do you think? Our two dear brothers…
Creon hasgiven funeral honors to one,2
And not to the other; nothing but shame and ignominy.
______________________________________________________________________
1 Argive: The army that attacked Thebes from Argos, a city in southern Greece.
2 Funeral Honors to one: In Greek myth, the souls of unburied human beings could not cross into the underworld – the realm of the dead, so the soul wouldwander forever with no permanent resting place. Therefore, burial was a sacred duty of the surviving friends and relatives.


20 Eteocles3 had been buried, they tell me, in state,
With all honorable observances due to the dead.
But, Polynices,4 just as unhappily fallen—the order
Says he is not to be buried, not to be mourned;
To be left unburied, unwept, a feast of flesh
25 For keen-eyedcarrion birds.5 The noble Creon!
It is against you and me he had made this order.
Yes, against me. And soon he will be here himself
To make it plain to those who have not heard it,
And to enforce it. This is no idle threat;
30 The punishment for disobedience is death by stoning.
So now you know. And now is time to show
Whether or not you are worthy of your high blood
ISMENE: My poorAntigone, if this is really true,
What more can I do, or undo, to help you?
35 ANTIGONE: Will you help me? Will you do something with me? Will you?
ISMENE: Help you do what, Antigone? What do you mean?
ANTIGONE: Would you help me lift the body.. you and me?
ISMENE: You cannot mean…to bury him? Against the order?
ANTIGONE: Is he not my brother, and yours, whether you like it40 Or not? I shall never desert him, never.
ISMENE: How could you dare, when Creon has expressly forbidden it?
ANTIGONE: He has no right to keep me from my own.
ISMENE: O sister, sister, do you forget how our father
Perished is same in misery, his awful sin
45 Self proved, blinded by his own self-mutilation?
And then his mother, his wife—for she was both—
Destroyed herselfin a noose of her own making6
And now our brothers, both in a single day
Fallen in an awful exaction of death for death.
50 Blood for blood, each slain by the other’s hand.
Now we two are left; and what will be the end of us,
If we transgress the law and defy the king?
O think, Antigone; we are women; it is not for us
To fight against men; our rulers are stronger than...
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