SOURCE: Howarth, W. D. “Anouilh's Antigone: An Analytical Commentary.” InAnouilh: Antigone, pp. 22-47. London: Edward Arnold, 1983.

In the following essay, Howarth provides a close reading of Antigone and surveys critical and popular reaction to the play.

Though longer than Sophocles' original, Anouilh's is not a long play, and structurally the two works are very similar. Like the Greek tragedy, Anouilh's Antigone is not divided into acts, and is written for continuous playing without interval. Moreover, it respects in large measure the Greek convention referred to above, according to which there were seldom more than two principal characters on stage together, and each scene, or episode, was normally a dialogue. Here, the only exceptions are brief linking scenes in which one or more of the Gardes, La Nourrice or Le Choeur, is temporarily present with two of the principal characters, and one isolated occasion on which Créon...