Theban Plays

408 Pages·2003·1.64 MB·English

by  Sophocles

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
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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