Antigone

ISBN-13: 9780413776044 / Angielski / Miękka / 2008 / 128 str.

Sophocles

Opis

Antigone, defying her uncle Creon's decree that her brother should remain unburied, challenges the morality of man's law overruling the laws of the gods. The clash between her and Creon with its tragic consequences have inspired continual reinterpretation.The plot revolves around King Creon who believes that a traitor in the kingdom does not warrant a proper burial, and Polyneices has died a traitor. However, the traitor's sister, Antigone, protests against Creon's refusal to bury her brother and, in light of her rebellion, is ordered by the king to be buried alive, despite being engaged to the king's son. However, the gods are on Antigone's side, as proven by the play's blind prophet, and only then does Creon changes his mind about the burial right, with persuasion from the prophet. As he goes to properly bury the traitor and release Antigone from captivity, Antigone is discovered having hanged herself. Antigone's fiance attacks his own father and kills himself, and then the king's wife takes her life, too. Sophocles' play speaks loudly to the ongoing conflict between the freedom of the individual and the power of the state, and addresses the basic human right to freedom of speech.This translation by Don Taylor, accurate and poetic, was made for a BBC TV production of the Theban Plays in 1986, which he directed.

O autorze

Sophocles (496-406 BC) was one of the three great tragic playwrights of ancient Greece; he wrote 123 plays during a career of 60 years and was still writing at the age of 90. Only seven tragedies survive, of which the most famous is Oedipus Rex. Don Taylor (1936-2003) was a playwright and poet, and a director of theatre, television and radio plays. He worked as drama director at the BBC, and between 1960 and 1990, he directed nearly a hundred television plays. He translated and directed for BBC Television the Theban plays of Sophocles - Oedipus the King, Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus. He followed this with translations of three Euripides war plays - Iphigenia at Aulis, The Women of Troy and Helen. He was co-director of Compass Theatre for while and set up First Writes Radio with Ellen Dryden. Don Taylor's many stage plays include The Roses of Eyam, The Exorcism, Daughters of Venice, Brotherhood, When the Actors Come, Retreat from Moscow, When the Barbarians Came and his last play The Road to the Sea.