Antigone

Acts

• Prologue

  After the battle, Creon has decreed that Polyneices must lie unburied. Antigone tells Ismene she will bury their brother regardless. Ismene refuses to help.

  99 lines
• Parodos

  The chorus celebrates Thebes's victory over the seven attackers. The city is saved — but the twin brothers lie dead.

  55 lines
• First Episode

  Creon declares his edict publicly: anyone who buries Polyneices will be executed. A guard arrives with disturbing news — someone has already sprinkled dust on the corpse.

  171 lines
• First Stasimon

  The famous Ode to Man: the chorus marvels at human ingenuity and power, but warns that cleverness without justice leads to ruin.

  36 lines
• Second Episode

  The guard brings Antigone, caught performing burial rites a second time. She openly defies Creon, declaring that the laws of the gods outrank the laws of men.

  198 lines
• Second Stasimon

  The chorus traces the doom of the house of Labdacus through the generations. One disaster follows another; the gods' anger is never spent.

  34 lines
• Third Episode

  Haemon, Creon's son and Antigone's betrothed, pleads with his father to relent. Creon refuses. Father and son part in fury.

  150 lines
• Third Stasimon

  The chorus sings of the power of Eros — love that bends even the minds of the just. It is love that has set father against son.

  15 lines
• Fourth Episode

  Antigone is led to her living tomb. She laments that she will die unmarried, without children, her only wedding the grave.

  55 lines
• Fourth Stasimon

  The chorus recalls others sealed alive — Danae, Lycurgus, Cleopatra. Fate spares no one, however noble.

  61 lines
• Fifth Episode

  Tiresias warns Creon that the gods are angry. Creon finally relents and rushes to free Antigone.

  34 lines
• Fifth Stasimon

  The chorus invokes Dionysus, patron of Thebes, begging him to come and heal the city.

  128 lines
• Messenger Scene

  Too late. A messenger reports: Antigone has hanged herself. Haemon found her, spat in his father's face, then turned his sword on himself.

  30 lines
• Eurydice

  Eurydice, Creon's wife, hears the news and goes silently inside. The silence is ominous.

  106 lines
• Creon's Return

  Creon returns carrying Haemon's body. A second messenger reports that Eurydice has killed herself, cursing Creon with her last breath.

  79 lines
• Exodos

  Creon is broken. The chorus pronounces: wisdom is the greatest good, and the proud are taught it by catastrophe.

  6 lines