in defiance of Creon who rules in his stead, resolves to bury her brother Polyneices, slain in his attack on Thebes.  She is caught in the act by Creon’s watchmen and brought before the king.  She justifies her action, asserting that she was bound to obey the eternal laws of right and wrong in spite of any human ordinance.  Creon, unrelenting, condemns her to be immured in a rock-hewn chamber.  His son Haemon, to whom Antigone is betrothed, pleads in vain for her life and threatens to die with her.  Warned by the seer Teiresias Creon repents him and hurries to release Antigone from her rocky prison.  But he is too late:  he finds lying side by side Antigone who had hanged herself and Haemon who also has perished by his own hand.  Returning to the palace he sees within the dead body of his queen who on learning of her son’s death has stabbed herself to the heart.

*****

Dramatispersonae

Antigone and Ismene—­daughters of Oedipus and sisters of Polyneices
      and Eteocles.

Creon, King of Thebes.

Haemon, Son of Creon, betrothed to Antigone.

Eurydice, wife of Creon.

Teiresias, the prophet.

Chorus, of Theban elders.

A WATCHMAN

A MESSENGER

A SECOND MESSENGER

*****

Antigone

Antigone and Ismene before the Palace gates.

Antigone
Ismene, sister of my blood and heart,
See’st thou how Zeus would in our lives fulfill
The weird of Oedipus, a world of woes! 
For what of pain, affliction, outrage, shame,
Is lacking in our fortunes, thine and mine? 
And now this proclamation of today
Made by our Captain-General to the State,
What can its purport be?  Didst hear and heed,
Or art thou deaf when friends are banned as foes?

Ismene
To me, Antigone, no word of friends
Has come, or glad or grievous, since we twain
Were reft of our two brethren in one day
By double fratricide; and since i’ the night
Our Argive leaguers fled, no later news
Has reached me, to inspirit or deject.

Antigone
I know ’twas so, and therefore summoned thee
Beyond the gates to breathe it in thine ear.

Ismene
What is it?  Some dark secret stirs thy breast.

Antigone
What but the thought of our two brothers dead,
The one by Creon graced with funeral rites,
The other disappointed?  Eteocles
He hath consigned to earth (as fame reports)
With obsequies that use and wont ordain,
So gracing him among the dead below. 
But Polyneices, a dishonored corse,
(So by report the royal edict runs)
No man may bury him or make lament—­
Must leave him tombless and unwept, a feast
For kites to scent afar and swoop upon.