Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T02:31:48.736Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A Note on Sophocles' Antigone, Lines 531–811

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Extract

This scene constitutes the first meeting between Antigone and her sister Ismene since their dramatic parting at the end of the first scene, in which, as Jebb says (Antig. Introd., p. xxix), there has been shown to be ‘a spiritual division which no emotional after-impulse can cancel’. It is plainly seen that Ismene can never rise to taking part with Antigone in Polyneices’ burial; Antigone realizes this; so do the spectators, and no further scene should be required to emphasize it.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1948

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Page 80 note 1 Not, as Webster says of this scene (Greek Interpretations, p. 47), ‘to kill Antigone and spare Ismene’, which in fact he does not do till line 771, after Antigone has been condemned. Vide infra for the significance of this.