“Antigone” Read by PEL with Lucy Lawless and Paul Provenza

0:07 Mark: You're listening to the Partially Examined Life. This is our performance of Sophocles Antigone, the translation by Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald. This is Mark Linsenmayer calling in from Madison, Wisconsin, and I will be playing the chorus leader, otherwise known as Choragos, which I will pretend is his name, even though he's just an elder in the town.

0:27 Seth: This is Seth Paskin. I'm in Austin, Texas, and I will be playing a sentry, as well as

0:34 Mark: I would say the regular podcasters are the chorus, but we're not gonna try to have them talk in unison because that would be strange.

0:41 Wes: This is Wes Alwan in Boston, Massachusetts, and I'm gonna be a messenger.

0:45 Dylan: This is Dylan Casey in Middleton, Wisconsin, and I'm playing Tiresias.

0:50 Lucy: This is Lucy Lawless in Auckland, New Zealand, and I'm playing Antigone.

0:54 Paul: This is Paul Provenza, and I am playing Creon.

0:57 Alice: And this is Alice Sinclair, and I am playing Ismene.

1:00 John: Hi, I'm John Castro and I'm playing Hymon.

1:03 Mark: So we're going to call him Hymon. We're not going to call him Heyman or He Man.

1:06 Seth: Is that what we're doing?

1:07 John: I'm just going by the spelling in the script here, buddy.

1:09 Lucy: So I like He Man.

1:11 Paul: That's good.

1:12 John: Yeah, I'd actually prefer to play she Ra, if that's okay.

1:17 Mark: So some ground rules. It's okay to giggle. Yeah, that's pretty much it.

1:23 Wes: So if something's actually funny.

1:26 Mark: All right, before we start the performance, a little business. If you're not familiar with the Partially Examined Life, we are a philosophy podcast. We normally discuss classic works, not perform them. And though a couple of the folks on here are professional actors, the rest of us are rank amateurs. This is a cold read, unrehearsed, so just adjust your expectations accordingly. The play is about an hour long, and then We've got about 15 minutes of discussion afterwards with the cast about Greek drama and the translation we used and some other things.

And then we're going to wrap up with an original song, a theme song to Antigone that I wrote and recorded just for this occasion. There will be a full regular Partially Examined Life podcast discussion that you can get from partiallyexaminedlife.com or our iTunes channel. Now the Seth is going to tell you about our sponsor. If you are a Partially Examined Life citizen, which you can become@PartiallyExaminedLife.com for a mere $5, you can get an ad free version of this episode that even has some additional discussion and bloopers at the end of it, so you might want to check that out.

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4:53 Mark: Our scene is before the palace of Creon, king of Thebes. There's a central double door and two lateral doors. A platform extends the length of the facade, and from this platform three steps lead down into the orchestra or chorus ground. That's really not necessary for them to know, is it? However, I should read the footnote which gives the background here, because it's not explained here. Oedipus, once king of Thebes, was the father of Antigone and Ismene and the brother and the brothers Polyneices and Eteocles. Oedipus unwillingly killed his father.

You guys know that story? And married his mother. When he learned what he had done, he blinded himself and left Thebes. But what you probably didn't know is then his sons Eteocles and Polynices quarreled. Polynices was driven out, but returned to assault Thebes. In the battle, each brother killed the other other. Creon became king and ordered that Polyneices be left to rot unburied on the battlefield. As a traitor. So that's what's going on here. Antigone and Ismene enter from the central door of the palace.

5:53 Lucy: Ismene, dear sister, you would think that we had already suffered enough for the curse on Oedipus. I cannot imagine any grief that you and I have not gone through. And now, have they told you of the new decree of our king Creon?

6:07 Alice: I have heard nothing. I know that two sisters lost two brothers. A double death in a single hour. And I know that the Argive army fled in the night. But beyond this, nothing.

6:17 Lucy: I thought so. And that is why I wanted you to come out here with me. There is something we must do.

6:23 Alice: Why do you speak so strangely?

6:25 Lucy: I come from New Zealand. Handle it, girl. Handle it, girlfriend. Listen, Ismene. Creon buried our brother Eteocles with military honours and gave him a soldier's funeral. And it was right that he should. But Polynices, they fought as bravely and died as miserably. They say that Creon has sworn no one shall bury him so no one mourn for him. But this body must lie in the fields. A sweet treasure for carrion birds to find as they search for food. That is what they say. And our good Creon is coming here to announce it publicly. And the penalty? Stoning to death in the public square. There it is. And now you can prove what you are. A true sister or a traitor to your family.

7:10 Alice: Antigone you are mad. What could I possibly do?

7:14 Lucy: You must decide whether you will help me or not.

7:17 Alice: I do not understand you. Help you in what?

7:19 Lucy: Ismene? I am going to bury him. Will you come?

7:24 Alice: Bury him? You have just said the law forbids it.

7:27 Lucy: He is my brother. He is your brother too.

7:30 Alice: But think of the danger. Think what Creon will do.

7:34 Lucy: Creon is not enough to stand in my way.

7:37 Alice: Ah, sister. Oedipus died, everyone hating him. For what? His own search brought to light, his eyes ripped out by his own hand. And Iocaste died, his mother and wife. At once she twisted the cords that strangled her life. And our two brothers died, each killed by the other's sword. We are left but, O Antigone, think how much more terrible than these our own death would be if we should go against Creon and do what he has forbidden. We are only women. We cannot fight with men. Antigone, the law is strong. We must give in to the law. In this thing and in worse. I beg the dead to forgive me, but I am helpless. I must yield to those in authority. And I think it is a dangerous business to be always meddling.

8:19 Lucy: If that is what you think, I should not want you, even if you ask to come. You have made your choice. You can be what you want to be. But I will bury him. And if I must die, I say that this crime is holy. I shall lie down with him in death, and I shall be as dear to him as he is to me. Is the dead not the living who make the longest demands? We die for ever? You may do as you like, since apparently the laws of God mean nothing to you.

8:47 Alice: They mean a great deal to me. But I have no strength to break laws that were made for the public good.

8:53 Lucy: That must be your excuse, I suppose. But as for me, I will bury the brother I love.

8:59 Alice: Antigone, I am so afraid.

9:00 Lucy: For you need not be. You have yourself to consider, after all.

9:07 Alice: But no one must hear of this. You must tell no one. I will keep it a secret, I promise.

9:12 Lucy: Oh, tell it. Tell everyone. Think how they'll hate you when it comes out, if they learn that you knew about it all the time.

9:19 Alice: So fiery. You should be cold with fear.

9:23 Lucy: Perhaps. But I'm only doing what I must.

9:26 Alice: But can you do it? I say that you cannot.

9:29 Lucy: Very well. When my strength gives out, I shall do no more.

9:33 Alice: Impossible things should not be tried at all.

9:36 Lucy: Go away, Ismene. I shall be hating you soon. And the dead will too, for your words are hateful. Leave me my Foolish plan. I am not afraid of the danger. If it means death, it will not be the worst of deaths. Death without honour.

9:51 Alice: Go then, if you feel you must. You are unwise. But a loyal friend indeed to those who love you.

9:59 Wes: Now the long blade of the sun, lying level east to west, touches with glory Thebes of the seven gates open unlidded eye of golden day. O marching light across the eddy and rush of Dirce's stream, striking the white shields of the enemy, thrown headlong backward from the blaze of morning, Polynices their

10:19 Mark: commander, roused them with windy phrases. He, the wild eagle, screaming insults above our land, his wings their shields of snow, his crest their marshalled helms.

10:31 Seth: Against our seven gates in a yawning ring the famished spears came onward in the night. But before his jaws were sated with our blood or pine fire took the garland of our towers, he was thrown back. And as he turned, great Thebes, no tender victim for his noisy power, rose like a dragon behind him, shouting war.

10:54 Mark: For God hates utterly the bray of bragging tongues. And when he beheld their smiling their swagger of golden helms, the frown of his thunder blasted their first man from our walls.

11:05 Dylan: We heard his shout of triumph high in the air, turned to a scream far out in a flaming arc he fell with his windy torch, and the earth struck him. And others storming in fury no less than his found shock of death. In the dusty joy of battle, seven

11:22 Mark: captains at seven gates yielded their clanging arms to the God that bends the battle line and breaks it. These two only brothers in blood, face to face in matchless rage, mirroring each the other's death, clashed in long combat.

11:37 Wes: But now, in the beautiful morning of victory, let Thebes of the many chariots sing for joy, with hearts for dancing. We'll take leave of war. Our temple shall be sweet with hymns of praise, and the long night shall echo with our chorus.

11:51 Lucy: Oh, Wes, that was very good.

11:54 Wes: Thank you.

11:56 Alice: I like Lucy.

12:00 Mark: Scene 1 I guess I'm not at last, but now at last. Our new king is coming. Creon of Thebes. Menoikeus' son, in this auspicious dawn of his reign, what are the new complexities that shifting fate has woven for him? What is his counsel? Why has he summoned the old men to hear him?

12:19 Paul: Gentlemen, I have the honour to inform you that our ship of state, which recent storms have threatened to destroy, has come safely to harbour at last, guided by the merciful wisdom of heaven. I have summoned you here this morning because I know that I can depend upon you, your Devotion to King Laios was absolute. You never hesitated in your duty to our late ruler, Oedipus. And when Oedipus died, your loyalty was transferred to his children. Unfortunately, as you know, his two sons, the princes Eteocles and Polynices, have killed each other in battle.

And I, as the next in blood, have succeeded to the full power of the throne. I am aware, of course, that no ruler can expect complete loyalty from his subjects until he has been tested in office. Nevertheless, I say to you at very outset that I have nothing but contempt for the kind of governor who is afraid, for whatever reason, to follow the course that he knows is best for the state. And as for the man who sets private friendship above the public welfare, I have no use for him either. I call God to witness that if I saw my country headed for ruin, I shall not be afraid to speak out plainly.

And I need hardly remind you that I would never have any dealings with an enemy of the people. No one values friendship more highly than I. But we must remember that friends made at the risk of wrecking our ship are not real friends at all. These are my principles, at any rate. And that is why I have made the following decision concerning the sons of Eteocles, who died as a man should die fighting for his country, is to be buried with full military honors, with all the ceremony that is usual when the greatest heroes die. But his brother Polyneices, who broke his exile to come back with fire and sword against the native city and the shrines of his father's gods, whose one idea was to spill the blood of his blood and to sell his own people into slavery.

Polynices, I say, is to have no burial. No man is to touch him or say the least prayer for him. He shall lie on the plain unburied, and the birds and the scavenging dogs can do with him whatever they like. This is my command, and you can see the wisdom behind it. As long as I am king, no traitor is going to be honored with a loyal man. But whoever shows by word and deed that he is on the side of the state, he shall have my respect while he is living and my reverence when he is dead.

14:51 Mark: If that is your will, Creon, son of Menoikeus, you have the right to enforce it. We are yours.

14:56 Paul: That is my will. Take care that you do your part.

15:00 Mark: We are old men. Let the younger ones carry it out.

15:03 Paul: I do not mean that. The sentries have been appointed.

15:06 Mark: And what is it that you would have us do?

15:09 Paul: You will give no support to whomever breaks this law.

15:13 Mark: Only a crazy man is in love with death.

15:16 Paul: And death it is. Yet money talks. And the wisest have sometimes been known to count a few coins too many.

15:24 Mark: Why, here comes a sentry.

15:29 Seth: I'll not say that I'm out of breath from Running King. Because every time I stopped to think about what I have to tell you, I felt like going back. And all the time a voice kept saying, you fool. Don't you know you're walking straight into trouble? And then another voice. Yes, but if you let somebody else get the news to Creon first, it will be even worse than that for you. But good sense won out. At least I hope it was good sense. And here I am with a story that makes no sense at all. But I'll tell it anyhow, because as they say, what's going to happen is going to happen. And come to the point.

16:03 Paul: What have you to say?

16:06 Seth: I did not it. I did not see who did it. You must not punish me for what someone else has done.

16:13 Paul: A comprehensive defense. More effective perhaps, if I knew its purpose. Come. What is it?

16:19 Seth: A dreadful thing. I don't know how to put it out with it. Well, then, the dead man, Polynices out there. Someone new dust on the slimy flesh. Someone has given it burial that way and gone.

16:40 Paul: And the man who dared to do

16:41 Seth: this, I swear, I do not know. You must believe me. Listen. The ground was dry. Not a sign of digging. No, not a wheel track in the dust. No trace of anyone. It was when they relieved us this morning. And one of them, the corporal, pointed to it. There it was, the strangest look. The body just mounded over with light dust, you see? Not buried, really, but as if they'd covered it just enough for the ghost's peace. And no sign of dogs or any wild animal that had been there. And then, what a scene. There was every man of us accusing each other. We all proved the other man did it.

We all had proof that we could not have done it. We were ready to take hot irons into our hands and walk through fire and swear by all the gods it was not I. I do not know who it was, but it was not I. And then when this came to nothing, someone said a thing that silenced us and made us stare down at the ground. You had to be told the news. And one of us had to do it. We threw the dice and the bad luck fell to me. So here I am. No happier to be here than you are to have me. For nobody likes the man who brings bad news.

17:47 Mark: I've been wondering, King. Can it be that the gods have done this?

17:51 Paul: Stop. Must you doddering wrecks go out of your heads entirely? The gods. Intolerable. The gods favor this corpse.

18:01 John: Why?

18:02 Paul: How had he served them? Try to loot their temples, burn their images? Yes, and the whole state and its laws with it. Is it your senile opinion that the gods love to honour bad men? A pious thought. No. From the very beginning there have been those who have whispered together stiff necked anarchists putting their heads together, scheming against me in alleys. These are the men. And they have bribed my own guard to do this thing. Money. There is nothing in the world so demoralizing as money. Find that man, bring him here to me. Or your death will be the least of your problems. I'll string you up alive and there will be certain ways to make you discover your employer before you die. The process may teach you a lesson you seem to have missed. The dearest profit is sometimes all too dear. That depends on the source. Do you understand me? A fortune won is often misfortune.

19:02 Seth: King, may I speak?

19:04 Paul: Your voice distresses me.

19:07 Seth: Are you sure that it is my voice and not your conscience?

19:10 Paul: By God, he wants to analyze me now.

19:14 Seth: It is not what I say, but what has been done that hurts you.

19:18 Paul: You talk too much.

19:20 Seth: Maybe, but I've done nothing.

19:22 Paul: Sold your soul for some silver, that's all you've done.

19:26 Seth: How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.

19:30 Paul: Your figures of speech may entertain you now, but unless you bring me the man, you will get little profit from them in the end.

19:38 Mark: Bye, Creon. See you later.

19:42 Seth: Bring me the man. I'd like nothing better than to bring him the man. But bring him or not, you have seen the last of me here. At any rate, I am safe.

19:53 Wes: Numberless are the world's wonders, but none more wonderful than men. The storm grey sea yields to his prows, the huge crests bear him high. Earth, holy and inexhaustible, is graven with shining furrows where his ploughs have gone year after year. The timeless labor of stallions, the light

20:12 Dylan: boned birds and beasts that cling to cover the lithe fish lightening their reaches of dim water. All are taken, tamed in the net of his mind. The lion on the hill, the wild horse windy, maned, resigned to him and his blunt yoke has broken the sultry shoulders of the mountain bull.

20:33 Wes: Words also, and thought, as rapid as air he fashions to his good use. Statecraft is his and his the skill that deflects the Arrows of snow, the spears of winter rain. From every wind he has made himself secure from all but one. In the late wind of death he cannot stand.

20:54 Dylan: O clear intelligence, force beyond all measure. O fate of man, working both good and evil. When the laws are kept, how proudly his city stands. When the laws are broken, what of his city then? Never may the anarchic man find rest at my hearth and never be it said that my thoughts are his thoughts.

21:16 Mark: All right, we're on scene two now. Hey. Looks like that rascally sentry is back. And he's leading someone. What does this mean? Surely this captive woman is the Princess Antigone. Why should she be taken?

21:31 Seth: Here is the one who did it. We caught her in the very act of burying him. Where is Creon?

21:36 Mark: Just coming from the house.

21:38 Paul: What has happened? Why have you come back so soon?

21:41 Seth: Oh, King, A man should never be too sure of anything. I would have sworn that you'd not see me here again. Your anger frightened me so. And the things you threatened me with. But how could I tell then that I'd be able to solve the case so soon? No dice throwing this time. I was only too glad to come. Here is this woman. She is the guilty one. We found her trying to bury him. Take her, then. Question her, judge her as you will. I am through with the whole thing now, and glad of it.

22:09 Paul: But this is Antigone. Why have you brought her here?

22:12 Seth: She was bearing him, I tell you.

22:15 Paul: Is this the truth?

22:16 Seth: I saw her with my own eyes. Can I say more?

22:20 Paul: The details? Come, tell me quickly.

22:23 Seth: It was like after those terrible threats of yours, King. We went back and brushed the dust away from the body. The flesh was soft by now, and stinking. So we sat on a hill to windward and kept guard. Nothing happened until the white round sun whirled in the center of the round sky over us. Then suddenly a storm of dust roared up from the earth and the sky went out. The plain vanished with all its trees in the stinging dark. We closed our eyes and endured it. The whirlwind lasted a long time, but it passed. Then we looked and there was Antigone.

I have seen a mother bird come back to a stripped nest. Heard her crying bitterly. A broken note or two for the young one stolen just so. When this girl found the bare corpse and all her love's work wasted, she wept and cried on heaven to damn the hands that had done this thing. And then she brought more dust and sprinkled wine three times for her brother's ghost. We ran and took her at once. She was not afraid. Not even when we charged her with what she had done. She denied nothing. And this was a comfort to me. And some uneasiness, for it is a good thing to escape from death.

But it is no great pleasure to bring death to a friend. Yet I always say there is nothing so comfortable as your own safe skin.

23:43 Paul: And you, Antigone, with your head hanging, do you confess this thing?

23:50 Lucy: I do. I deny nothing.

23:54 Paul: Sentry, you may go. Tell me. Tell me briefly, had you heard my proclamation touching this matter?

24:05 Lucy: It was public. Could I help hearing it?

24:09 Paul: And yet you dared defy the law.

24:13 Lucy: I dared. It was not God's proclamation. That final justice that rules the world below makes no such laws. Your edict, King, was strong. But all your strength is weakness itself. Against the immortal, unrecorded laws of God. They are not merely now. They were and shall be operative for ever beyond man. Utterly I knew I must die. Even without your decree. I am only mortal. And if I must die now, before it is my time to die, surely this is no hardship. Can anyone, living as I live with evil all about me, think death less than a friend? This death of mine is of no importance. But if I had left my brother lying in death unburied, I should have suffered. Now I do not. You smile at me. Ah, Creon, think me a fool if you like, but it may well be that a fool convicts me of folly.

25:18 Mark: Like father, like daughter. Both headstrong, deaf to reason. She has never learned to yield.

25:26 Paul: She has much to learn. The inflexible heart breaks first, the toughest iron cracks first. And the wildest horses bend their necks at the pull of the smallest curb. Pride in a slave. This girl is guilty of a double insolence. Breaking the given laws and boasting of it. Who is the man here? She or I. If this crime goes unpunished. Sister's child. Or more than sister's child. Or closer yet in blood, she and her sister win bitter death for this. Go, some of you. Arrest Ismene. I accuse her equally. Bring her. You will find her sniffling in the house there. Her mind's a traitor. Crimes kept in the dark cry for light and the guardian brain shudders. But now much worse than this is brazen boasting of bare faced anarchy.

26:27 Lucy: Creon, what more do you want than my death?

26:31 Paul: Nothing that gives me everything.

26:35 Lucy: Then I beg you. Kill me. This talking is a great weariness. Your words are distasteful to me, and I am sure that mine seem so to you. And yet they should not seem so. I would have praise and honour for what I have done. All these men here would praise me. Were their lips not frozen shut with fear of you? Ah, the good fortune of kings. License to say and do whatever they please.

27:07 Paul: You are alone here in that opinion.

27:09 Lucy: No, no, they're with me. But they keep their tongues in leash.

27:14 Paul: Maybe. But you are guilty. They are not.

27:19 Lucy: There's no guilt and reverence for the dead.

27:22 Paul: But Eteocles. Was he not your brother too?

27:25 Lucy: My brother too.

27:27 Paul: And you insult his memory.

27:31 Lucy: The dead man would not say that I insult it.

27:36 Paul: He would for you, honour a traitor as much as him.

27:40 Lucy: His own brother, traitor or not, and equal in blood.

27:46 Paul: He made war on his country. Eteocles defended it.

27:51 Lucy: Nevertheless, there are honours due all the dead.

27:55 Paul: Not the same for the wicked as for the just.

28:00 Lucy: Ah, Creon, Creon. Which of us can say what the gods hold wicked?

28:04 Paul: An enemy is an enemy even dead.

28:07 Lucy: It is my nature to join in love, not hate.

28:12 Paul: Go join them, then. If you must have your love, find it in hell.

28:18 Mark: But see Ismene comes. Those tears are sisterly. The cloud that shadows her eyes rains down gentle sorrow.

28:26 Paul: You too, Ismene. Snake in my ordered house, sucking my blood stealthily. And all the time I never knew that these two sisters were aiming at my throne. Ismene, do you confess your share in this crime or deny it? Answer me.

28:43 Alice: Yes. She will let me say so. I am guilty.

28:48 Lucy: No, Ismene. You have no right to say so. You would not help me and I will not have you help me.

28:55 Alice: But now I know what you meant. And I'm here to join you, to take my share of punishment.

29:00 Lucy: The dead men and the gods who rule the dead know whose act this was. Words are not friends.

29:07 Alice: Do you refuse me? Antigone, I. I want to die with you. I too have a duty that I must discharge to the dead.

29:16 Lucy: I shall not lessen my death by sharing it.

29:18 Alice: What do I care for life when you are dead?

29:21 Lucy: Ask Creon. You're always hanging on his opinions.

29:26 Alice: You are laughing at me. Why, Antigone?

29:31 Lucy: It's a joyless laughter, Ismene.

29:34 Alice: Can I do nothing?

29:36 Lucy: Yes. Save yourself. I shall not envy you. There are those who will praise you. I shall have honour too.

29:42 Alice: But we are equally guilty.

29:45 Lucy: No more. Ismene. You're alive. But I belong to death.

29:50 Paul: Gentlemen, I beg you to observe these girls. One has just now lost her mind. The other, it seems, has never had a mind at all.

30:00 Alice: Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver. King.

30:03 Paul: Yours certainly did when you assumed guilt with the guilty.

30:07 Alice: But how could I go on living without her?

30:11 Paul: You are. She is already dead.

30:14 Alice: For your own son's bride?

30:16 Paul: There are places enough for him to push his plough. I want no wicked women for my son.

30:21 Alice: Oh, dearest Hymen, how your father wrongs you.

30:25 Paul: I've had enough of your childish talk of marriage.

30:27 Mark: Do you really intend to steal this girl from your son?

30:31 Alice: No.

30:31 Paul: Death will do that for me.

30:34 Mark: Then she must die.

30:37 Paul: You dazzle me. But enough of this talk. You there. Take them away. Guard them well, for they are but women. And even brave men run when they see death coming.

30:47 Wes: Fortunate is the man who has never tasted God's vengeance. Where once the anger of heaven has struck, that house is shaken forever. Damnation rises behind each child like a wave cresting out of the black northeast when a long darkness under sea roars up and bursts, drumming death upon the wind whipped sand.

31:09 Dylan: I have seen this gathering sorrow from time long past loom upon Oedipus children. Generation from generation takes the compulsive rage of the enemy God. So lately this last flower of Oedipus line drank the sunlight, but now a passionate word and a handful of dust have closed up all its beauty.

31:31 Seth: What mortal arrogance transcends the wrath of Zeus? Sleep cannot lull him, nor the effortless long months of the timeless gods. But he is young forever, and his house is the shining day of high Olympus. All that is and shall be, and all the past is his. No pride on earth is free of the curse of heaven.

31:54 Wes: The straying dreams of men may bring them ghosts of joy, but as they drowse, the waking embers burn them, or they walk with fixed eyes as blind men walk. But the ancient wisdom speaks for our own time. Fate works most for woe with folly's fairest show. Man's little pleasure is the spring of sorrow.

32:16 Mark: But here is Hymon King, the last of all your sons. Is it grief for Antigone that brings him here? And bitterness at being robbed of his bride?

32:24 Paul: We shall soon see. And no need of diviners. Son. You have heard my final judgment on that girl. Have you come here hating me? Or have you come with deference and with love?

32:35 John: Whatever I do, I am your son, Father. You are my guide. You make things clear for me, and I obey you. No marriage means more to me than your continuing wisdom.

32:47 Paul: Good. That is the way to behave. Subordinate everything else, my son, to your father's will. That is what a man prays for, that he may get sons attentive and Dutiful in his house, each one hating his father's enemies, honouring his father's friends. But if his sons fail him, if they turn out unprofitably, what has he fathered but trouble for himself and amusement for the malicious? So you are right not to lose your head over this woman. Your pleasure with her would soon grow cold, Hymen, and then you'd have a hell cat in bed and elsewhere. Let her find her husband in hell.

Of all the people in this city, only she has had contempt for my law and broken it. Do you want me to show myself weak before the people or to break my sworn word? No, and I will not. The woman dies. I suppose she'll plead family ties. Well, let her. If I permit my own family to rebel, how shall I earn the world's obedience? Show me the man who keeps his house in hand. He's fit for public authority. I'll have no dealings with lawbreakers, critics of the government. Whoever is chosen to govern should be obeyed. Must be obeyed in all things great and small, just and unjust.

Oh, Hymen. The man who knows how to obey. And that man only knows how to give commands. When the time comes, you can depend on him, no matter how fast the spears come. He's a good soldier. He'll stick it out. Anarchy. Anarchy. Show me a greater evil. This is why cities tumble and the great houses rain down. This is what scatters armies. Now, Now. Good lives are made so by discipline. We keep the laws, then, and the lawmakers, and no woman shall seduce us. If we must lose, let's lose. To a man, at least. Is a woman stronger than we?

34:54 Mark: Unless time has rusted my wits. What you say, King, is said with point and dignity.

35:02 John: Father. Reason is God's crowning gift to man, and you are right to warn me against losing mine. I cannot say. I hope that I shall never want to say that. You have reasoned badly. Yet there are other men who can reason too, and their opinions might be helpful. You are not in a position to know everything that people say or do or what they feel. Your temper terrifies them. Everyone will tell you only what you like to hear. But I, at any rate, can listen. And I have heard them muttering and whispering in the dark about this girl. They say no woman has ever so unreasonably died so shameful a death. For a generous act, she covered her brother's body. Is that indecent? She kept him from dogs and vultures. Is this a crime?

35:50 Lucy: Death.

35:51 John: She should have all the honor that we can Give her. This is the way they talk out there in the city. You must believe me. Nothing is closer to me than your happiness. What could be closer? Must not any son value his father's fortune as his father does his? I beg you, do not be unchangeable. Do not believe that you alone can be right. The man who thinks that, the man who maintains that only he has the power to reason correctly, the gift to speak, the soul. A man like that, when you know him, turns out empty. It is not reason. Never to yield to reason.

In flood time you can see how some trees bend, and because they bend, even their twigs are safe, while stubborn trees are torn up, roots and all. And the same thing happens in sailing. Make your sheet fast, never slacken, and over you go, head over heels and under, and there's your voyage. Forget you are angry. Let yourself be moved. I know I am young, but please let me say this. The ideal condition would be. I admit that men should be right by instinct. But since we are all too likely to go astray, the reasonable thing is to learn from those who can teach.

37:10 Mark: You will do well to listen to him, King, if what he says is sensible and. And you, Hymen, must listen to your father. Both speak well.

37:20 Paul: You consider it right for a man of my years and experience to go to school to a boy?

37:27 John: It is not right if I am wrong, but if I am young and right, what does my age matter?

37:34 Paul: You think it right to stand up for an anarchist?

37:37 John: Not at all. I pay no respect to criminals.

37:41 Paul: Then she is not a criminal.

37:42 John: The city proposes to teach me how to rule.

37:46 Paul: And the city proposes to teach me how to rule.

37:49 Wes: Ah.

37:50 John: Who is it that's talking like a boy now?

37:53 Paul: My voice is the one voice giving orders in this city.

37:57 John: It is no city if it takes orders from one voice.

38:00 Paul: The state is the king.

38:03 John: Yes, if the state is a desert.

38:07 Paul: This boy, it seems, has sold out to a woman.

38:11 John: If you are a woman. My concern is only for you, sir.

38:17 Paul: Your concern? In a public brawl with your father?

38:20 John: How about you? In a public brawl with justice.

38:23 Paul: With justice? When all that I do is within my rights.

38:27 John: You have no right to trample on God's right.

38:30 Paul: Fool. Adolescent fool. Taken in by a woman.

38:35 John: You'll never see me taken in by anything vile.

38:38 Paul: Every word you say is for her

38:41 John: and for you and for me and for the gods under the earth.

38:49 Paul: You'll never marry her while she lives.

38:52 John: Then she must die. But her death will cause another.

38:57 Paul: Another? Have you lost your senses? Is this an open threat?

39:01 John: There Is no threat in speaking to emptiness.

39:05 Paul: I swear you will regret this superior tone of yours. You are the empty one.

39:11 John: If you were not my father, I'd say you were perverse.

39:15 Paul: You girl struck fool. Don't play at words with me.

39:18 John: I am sorry. You prefer silence now?

39:22 Paul: By God, I swear by all the gods in heaven above us, you'll watch it. I swear you shall. Bring her out. Bring the woman out. Let her die before his eyes. Here, this instant, with her bridegroom beside her.

39:37 John: Not here. No, she will not die here, King. And you will never see my face again. Go on raving as long as you have a friend to endure you.

39:49 Mark: Gone. He's gone. Creon. A young man in a rage is dangerous.

39:56 Paul: Let him do, or dream to do more than a man can. He shall not save these girls from death.

40:03 Mark: These girls. You sentenced them both.

40:08 Alice: No.

40:08 Paul: You are right. I will not kill the one whose hands are clean.

40:13 Mark: But Antigone.

40:15 Paul: I will carry her far away, out there in the wilderness and lock her living in a vault of stone. She shall have food, as the custom is to absolve the state of her death. And there let her pray to the gods of hell. They are her only gods. Perhaps they will show her an escape from death. Or she may learn, though late, that piety shown the dead is pity in vain.

40:41 Mark: By Creon.

40:45 Lucy: What a bastard.

40:48 Wes: Let's talk about him now.

40:52 Mark: What do you think, Chorus member number two?

40:58 Dylan: Love, unconquerable waster of rich men, Keeper of warm lights, and all night vigil in the soft face of a girl, Sea wanderer, forest visitor. Even the pure immortals cannot escape you. And mortal man in his one day's dusk trembles before your glory.

41:18 Seth: Surely you swerve upon ruin, the just man's consenting heart, as here you have made bright anger strike between father and son, and none has conquered but love. A girl's glance working the will of heaven. Pleasure to her alone who mock us. Merciless Aphrodite.

41:39 Mark: Here comes Antigone with a guard. But I can no longer stand in awe of this, nor seeing what I see. Keep back my tears. Here is Antigone, passing to that chamber where all find sleep at last.

41:54 Lucy: Look upon me, friends, and pity me. Turning back at the night's edge to say goodbye to the sun that shines for me no longer. Now, sleepy death summons me down to Acheron, that cold shore. There is no bride song there, nor any music yet.

42:14 Wes: Not unpraised, not without a kind of honor. You walk at last into the underworld, untouched by sickness, broken by no sword What woman has ever found your way to death.

42:26 Lucy: How often have I heard the story of Niobe Tantalos, wretched daughter. How the stone clung fast about her. Ivy close. And they say the rain falls endlessly, and rifting soft snow. Her tears are never done. I feel the loneliness of her death. And mine.

42:47 Dylan: But she was born of heaven. And you are woman. Woman born. If her death is yours, a mortal woman's. Is this not for you glory in our world and in the world beyond?

42:59 Lucy: You laugh at me. Ah, friends, friends. Can you not wait until I am dead? O Thebes, O men, many charioted in love with fortune, Dear spring of Dirce, sacred Theban grove, Be witnesses for me, denied all pity, unjustly judged. And think a word of love for her whose path turns under dark earth where there are no more tears.

43:31 Seth: You have passed beyond human daring and come at last into a place of stone where justice sits. I cannot tell what shape of your father's guilt appears in this.

43:43 Lucy: You have touched it at last. That bridal bed. Unspeakable horror of son and mother mingling their crime, infection. Of all your family, Oedipus, father and brother. Your marriage strikes from the grave to murder mine. I have been a stranger here in my own land all my life. The blasphemy of my birth has followed me.

44:10 Wes: Reverence is a virtue, but strength lives in established law. That must prevail. You have made your choice. Your death is the doing of your conscious hand.

44:21 Lucy: Then let me go. Since all your words are bitter and the very light of the sun is cold to me, lead me to my vigil, where I must have neither love nor lamentation. No song, but silence.

44:35 Paul: If dirges and planned lamentations could put off death, men would be singing forever. Take her. Go. You know your orders. Take her to the vault. Leave her there alone. And if she lives or dies, that's her affair, not ours. Our hands are clean.

44:54 Lucy: O tomb, vaulted bride-bed in eternal rock. Soon I shall be with my own again, where Persephone welcomed the thin ghost underground. And I shall see my father again, and a new mother. And dearest Polyneices. Dearest indeed to me, since it was my hand that washed him clean and poured the ritual wine. And my reward is death before my time. And yet, as men's hearts know, I have done no wrong. I have not sinned before God. Or if I have, I shall know the truth in death. But if the guilt lies upon Creon who judged me, then I pray may his punishment equal my own.

45:39 Mark: O passionate Heart unyielding, tormented still by the same winds.

45:46 Paul: Her guards shall have good cause to regret their delaying.

45:49 Lucy: Ah, that voice. The voice of death.

45:52 Paul: I can give you no reason to think you are mistaken.

45:56 Lucy: Thebes and you, my father's gods and rulers of Thebes, you see me now the last unhappy daughter of a line of kings, your kings led away to death. You will remember what things I suffer and at what men's hands, because I would not transgress the laws of heaven. Come, let us wait no longer.

46:23 Alice: Thanks, sister, I'm still going.

46:25 Mark: Bye, Antigone. We love you.

46:27 Lucy: Bye.

46:27 Alice: Bye.

46:29 Lucy: It's been real.

46:35 Wes: All Danae's beauty was locked away in a brazen cell where the sunlight could not come. A small room still, as any grave, enclosed her. Yet she was a princess too. And Zeus, in a rain of gold, poured love upon her. O child, child. No power in wealth or war or tough sea, blackened ships can prevail against untiring destiny.

47:00 Seth: And Dryas' son also, that furious king bore the gods prisoning anger for his pride. Sealed up by Dionysus in deaf stone, his madness died among echoes. So at last he learned what dreadful power his tongue had mocked. For he had profaned the revels and fired the wrath of the nine implacable sisters that loved the sound of the flute.

47:25 Wes: And old men tell a half remembered tale of horror done, where a dark ledge splits the sea and a double surf beats on the grey shores. How a king's new woman, sick with hatred for the queen he had imprisoned, ripped out his two sons eyes with her bloody hands. While grinning, Ares watched the shuttle plunge four times. Four blind wounds crying for revenge.

47:50 Seth: Crying tears and blood mingled piteously born those sons whose mother was of heavenly birth. Her father was the God of the north wind and she was cradled by gales. She raced with young colts on the glittering hills and walked untrammeled in the open light. But in her marriage, deathless fate found means to build a tomb like yours for all her joy.

48:16 Mark: Hey, here comes blind Tiresias, led by a boy.

48:22 Dylan: This is the way the blind man comes. Princes, Princes. Lockstep. Two heads lit by the eyes of one.

48:29 Paul: What new thing have you to tell us, old Teiresias?

48:32 Dylan: I have much to tell you. Listen to the prophet Creon.

48:36 Paul: I admit my debt to you, but what have you to say?

48:40 Dylan: Listen, Creon. I was sitting in my chair of augury at the palace when the birds gather about me. They were all a chatter as in their habit, when suddenly I heard a strange note in their jangling a scream, a withering fury. I knew they were fighting, tearing at each other, dying in a whirlwind of wings clashing. And I was afraid. I began the rites of burnt offering at the altar, but Hephaestus failed me. Instead of a bright flame, there was only the sputtering slime in that fat thigh, flesh melting, the entrails dissolved in grey smoke, the bare bone burst from the welter and no blaze.

This was a sign from heaven. My boy described it, seeing for me as I see for others. I tell you, Creon, you yourself have brought this new calamity upon us. Our hearths and altars are stained with the corruption of dogs and carrion birds that glut themselves on the corpse of Oedipus' son. The gods are deaf when we pray to them. Their fire recoils from our offering. Their birds of omen have no cry of comfort, for they are gorged with the thick blood of the dead. O my son, these are no trifles. Think. All men make mistakes. But a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong and repairs the evil.

The only crime is pride. Give in to the dead man, then. Do not fight with a corpse. What glory is it to kill a man who is dead? Think, I beg you. It is for your own good that I speak as I do. You should be able to yield for your own good.

50:34 Paul: It seems that prophets have made me their special province. All my life long I have been a kind of butt for dull arrows of dark, doddering fortune tellers. No, Teiresias. If your birds, if the great eagles of God himself should carry him stinking bit by bit to heaven, I would not yield. I am not afraid of pollution. No man can defile the gods. Do what you will. Go into business, make money, speculate in India gold or that synthetic gold from Sardis. Get rich otherwise than by my consent to bury him. Teiresias. It is a sorry thing when a wise man sells his wisdom, lets out his words for hire.

51:24 Dylan: A Creon. Is there no man left in the world?

51:28 Paul: To do what? Come, let's have the aphorism.

51:32 Dylan: No man who knows that wisdom outweighs

51:34 Paul: any wealth, as surely as bribes are baser than any baseness.

51:40 Dylan: You are sick, Creon. You are deathly sick.

51:44 Paul: As you say, it is not my place to challenge a prophet.

51:47 Dylan: Yet you have said my prophecy is for sale.

51:51 Paul: The generation of prophets has always loved gold.

51:54 Dylan: The generation of kings has always loved brass.

52:00 Paul: You forget yourself. You are speaking to your king.

52:05 Dylan: I know it. You are king because of Me?

52:09 Paul: You have a certain skill. But you have sold out, King.

52:14 Dylan: You will drive me to words that.

52:17 Paul: Say them. Say them only. Remember, I will not pay you for them.

52:23 Dylan: No. You will find them too costly, no doubt.

52:28 Paul: Speak whatever you say. You will not change my will.

52:33 Dylan: Then take this and take it to heart. The time is not far off when you shall pay back. Corpse for corpse. Flesh for your own flesh. You have thrust the child of this world into living night. You have kept from the gods below the child that is theirs. The one on a grave before her death, the other dead, denied the grave. This is your crime. And the Furies and the dark gods of hell are swift with terrible punishment for you. Do you want to buy me now, Creon? Not many days and your house will be full of men and women weeping. And curses will be hurled at you from far cities, grieving for sons unburied, left to rot before the walls of Thebes. These are my arrows, Creon. They are all for you. But come, child, lead me home. Let him waste his fine anger on younger men. Maybe he will learn at last to control a wiser tongue in a better head.

53:41 Mark: The old man has gone, King. But his words remain to plague us. I am old too. But I cannot remember he was ever false.

53:51 Paul: That is true. That troubles me now. It is hard to give in. But it is worse to risk everything for stubborn pride.

54:03 Mark: Creon, take my advice.

54:07 Paul: What shall I do?

54:09 Mark: Go quickly. Free Antigone from her vault and build a tomb for the body of Polyneices.

54:16 Paul: You would have me do this, Creon?

54:18 Mark: Yes. And it must be done at once. God moves swiftly to cancel the folly of stubborn men.

54:26 Paul: It is hard to deny the heart. But I will do it. I will not fight with destiny.

54:35 Mark: You must go yourself. You cannot leave it to others.

54:41 Paul: I will go. Bring axes. Servants, come with me to the tomb. I buried her. I will set her free quickly. My mind misgives. The laws of the gods are mighty, and a man must serve them to the last day of his life.

55:01 Mark: By Creon, God of many names.

55:08 Seth: O Iacchos, son of Cadmean Semele. O born of Thunder, Guardian of the West, Regent of Eleusis Plain. O Prince of maenad Thebes and the dragon field. By rippling Ismenos, God of many names. The flame of torches flares on our hills. The nymphs of Iacchos dance at the spring of Castalia. From the vine-close mountain come all in ivy Evohé evohé sings through the streets of Thebes, God of many names, Iacchos of Thebes. Heavenly child of Semele, bride of the thunderer. The shadow of plague is upon us. Come with clement feet. Oh, come from Parnassus, down the long slopes, across the lamenting water.

55:55 Mark: Actually, I just inserted that whole thing for you, Seth, just to torture you.

55:59 Wes: That was the only reason that's in there. That's not an answer.

56:03 Mark: I. O fire, chorister of the throbbing stars. O purest among the voices of the night, Thou, son of God, blaze for us.

56:13 Seth: Come with choric rapture of circling maenads who cry, Iò Iacche, God of many names,

56:24 Paul: yo yake.

56:25 Mark: Hey, here comes a messenger.

56:27 Seth: Hey.

56:27 Wes: Y' all men of the line of Cadmos, you who live near Amphion Citadel, I cannot say of any condition of human life. This is fixed. This is clearly good or bad. Fate raises up and fate casts down the happy and unhappy alike. No man can foretell his fate. Take the case of Creon. Creon was happy once, as I count happiness. Victorious in battle, sole governor of the land, fortunate father of children nobly born. And now it is all gone from him. Who can say that a man is still alive when his life's joy fails? He is a walking dead man. Grant him rich. Let him live like a king in his great house. If his pleasure is gone, I would not give so much as the shadow of smoke for all he owns.

57:17 Mark: Your words hint at sorrow. What is your news for us?

57:22 Wes: They are dead. The living are guilty of their death.

57:26 Mark: Who is guilty? Who is dead? Speak.

57:28 Wes: Hymen. Hymen is dead. And the hand that killed him is his own hand.

57:33 Mark: His father's or his own?

57:36 Wes: His own. Driven mad by the murder his father had done.

57:39 Mark: Teiresias. Teiresias. How clearly you saw it all.

57:44 Wes: This is my news. You must draw what conclusions you can from it.

57:49 Mark: But look. Eurydice, our queen, has she overheard us?

57:54 Lucy: I have heard something. Friends. As I was unlocking the gates of Pallas shrine, for I needed her help to day, I heard a voice telling of some new sorrow and I fainted there at the temple, with all my maidens about me. But speak again. Whatever it is, I can bear it. Grief and I are no strangers.

58:12 Wes: Dearest lady, I will tell you plainly all that I have seen. I shall not try to comfort you. What is the use? Since comfort could lie only in what is not true, the truth is always best. I went with Creon to the outer plain where Polynices was lying. No friend to pity him, his body shredded by dogs. We made our prayers in that place to Hecate and Pluto, that they would be merciful. And we bathed the corpse with holy water, and we brought fresh broken branches to burn what was left of it. And upon the urn we heaped up a towering barrow of the earth of his own land.

When we were done, we ran to the vault where Antigone lay on her couch of stone. One of the servants had gone ahead, and while he was yet far off, he heard a voice grieving within the chamber, and he came back and told Creon. And as the king went closer, the air was full of wailing, the words lost, and he begged us to make all haste. Am I a prophet? He said, weeping, and must I walk this road, the saddest of all, that I have gone down before my son's voice calls me on. Oh, quickly, quickly. Look through the crevice there and tell me if it is Hymen or some deception of the gods.

We obeyed. And in the cavern's farthest corner we saw her lying. She had made a noose of her fine linen veil and hanged herself. Hymen lay beside her, his arms about her waist, lamenting her, his love lost underground, crying out that his father had stolen her away from him. When Creon saw him, the tears rushed to his eyes, and he called to what have you done, child? Speak to me. What are you thinking? What makes your eyes so strange? O my son, my son, I come to you on my knees. But Hymen spat in his face. He said not a word, staring, and suddenly drew his sword and lunged.

Creon shrank back, the blade missed, and the boy, desperate against himself, drove it half its length into his own side and fell. And as he died, he gathered Antigone close in his arms again, choking, his blood bright red on her white cheek. And now he lies dead with the dead. And she is his at last, his bride in the houses of the dead.

1:00:28 Mark: And I guess we didn't have a stunt guy, so we couldn't show that action on screen. Is that what's going on?

1:00:33 Wes: That's all gonna be cgi.

1:00:36 Mark: She has left us without a word. What can this mean?

1:00:40 Wes: It troubles me too. Yet she knows what is best. Her grief is too great for public lamentation. And doubtless she has gone to her chamber to weep for her dead son, leading her maidens in his dirge.

1:00:53 Mark: It may be so, but I fear this deep silence.

1:00:57 Wes: I will see what she is doing. I will go in.

1:01:02 Mark: Hey. But here is the king himself. Oh, look at him, bearing his own damnation in his arms. That is Hymen's. Body.

1:01:13 Paul: Nothing you say can touch me any more. My own blind heart has brought me from darkness to final darkness. Here you see the father murdering the murdered son. And all my civic wisdom. Hymen, my son. So young. So young to die. I was the fool, not you. And you died for me.

1:01:44 Mark: That is the truth. But you were late in learning it.

1:01:49 Paul: This truth is hard to bear. Surely a God has crushed me beneath the hugest weight of heaven, driven me headlong in a barbaric way to trample out the thing I held most dear. The pains that men will take to come to pain.

1:02:11 Wes: The burden you carry in your hands is heavy. But it is not all. You will find more in your house.

1:02:19 Paul: What burden, worse than this, shall I find there?

1:02:24 Wes: The queen is dead.

1:02:27 Paul: O port of death. Deaf world. Is there no pity for me? And you, angel of evil? I was dead. And your words are death again. Is it true, boy? Can it be true? Is my wife dead? Has death bred death?

1:02:52 Wes: You can go see for yourself.

1:02:56 Paul: Oh, pity. All true. All true. And more than I can bear. Oh, my wife, my son.

1:03:07 Wes: She stood before the altar and her heart welcomed the knife, her own hand guided. And a great cry burst from her lips. For Megareus, dead. And for Hymen, dead. Her sons. And her last breath was a curse for their father, the murderer of her sons. And she fell. And the dark flowed in through her closing eyes.

1:03:28 Paul: O God, I am sick with fear. Are there no swords here? Has no one a blow for me?

1:03:36 Wes: Her curse is upon you for the deaths of both.

1:03:39 Paul: It is right that it should be. I alone am guilty. I know it, and I say it. Lead me in quickly, friends. I have neither life nor substance. Lead me in.

1:03:55 Mark: You are right. If there can be right in so much wrong, the briefest way is best in a world of sorrow.

1:04:02 Paul: Let it come. Let death come quickly and be kind to me. I would not ever see the sun again.

1:04:10 Mark: All that will come when it will. But we, meanwhile, have much to do. Leave the future to itself.

1:04:18 Paul: All my heart was in that prayer.

1:04:22 Mark: Then do not pray any more. The sky is deaf.

1:04:27 Paul: Lead me away. I have been rash and foolish. I have killed my son and my wife. I look for comfort. My comfort lies here, dead. Whatever my hands have touched has come to nothing. Fate has brought all my pride to a thought of dust.

1:04:54 Mark: There is no happiness where there is no wisdom. No wisdom but in submission to the gods. Big words are always punished. And proud men in old age learn to be wise. Thank you.

1:05:12 Paul: That little rod swirling. Touch at the end there.

1:05:17 Mark: Well, Jeez.

1:05:18 Wes: Yeah. Thank you, everyone. Good stuff.

1:05:25 Lucy: So we can have credits rolling?

1:05:28 Alice: Yes.

1:05:31 Mark: All right, so now that we've got the performance out of the way, maybe we should provide a little context. Why are we doing this when we are a philosophy podcast and we talk about things? Well, it's because our audience likes to listen to things. And so we're going to have a discussion talking about Antigone next time. And in fact, John Castro, our hymen, will be joining us for that. So that was a major factor in him being here with us for this.

1:05:56 Wes: And also that he makes a very good Hyman. It's my favorite drink.

1:06:01 Mark: Isn't that his nickname in college?

1:06:03 Lucy: Do you remember there was a singer in the. I don't know if it was the 70s or 80s called Buster Hyman? Do you remember that?

1:06:08 Alice: No.

1:06:08 Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I do.

1:06:10 Paul: I remember Buster Hyman. Yeah, yeah.

1:06:12 Lucy: I don't know. So what are you going to talk about?

1:06:14 Wes: What are we going to talk about?

1:06:16 John: Guys, we'll deal with that.

1:06:17 Alice: I like how we took this up a notch. At the end, we decided to discuss Hyman.

1:06:20 Lucy: It's not necessary.

1:06:24 Paul: Yeah. So what speaks to you guys about this particular piece?

1:06:27 Mark: I think we have to figure that out. Perhaps we'll go and find some scholarly sources about this kind of thing. I know that Sophocles, the author here, his view of tragedy, has been taken to provide perhaps a challenge to standard ethical thinking that says there's a right thing to do in any situation where it seems in this situation, you should obey the state, yet you should obey the gods yet.

1:06:49 Wes: Yeah, that's the obvious conflict to talk about.

1:06:52 Paul: Well, isn't it also a question of fate? Whether or not you can control your fate or any action you take is in service of your fate ultimately.

1:07:02 Wes: Right. The curse of Oedipus and whether you

1:07:05 Dylan: have duty to your blood or the city.

1:07:06 Lucy: Is it more a comment on pride of rulers at the time? Can I ask a stupid question? Was Creon a real ruler?

1:07:13 Wes: Did he really live? Sophocles is working off of the mythology.

1:07:17 Paul: Yeah, he's in the mythology, but he's also different in the three plays in the trilogy.

1:07:23 Wes: Is this his most arrogant and unreasonable appearance?

1:07:27 Paul: Yeah, pretty much.

1:07:27 Lucy: Is it a reaction to whoever was in power at the time, you know, that Creon is standing in for whoever your prime minister is at the time?

1:07:34 Paul: You know, that's a good question. I wonder what the history of it is.

1:07:36 Mark: Yeah, it could be an argument against the divine right of kings sort of thing. Political comment of some sort.

1:07:41 Paul: It is interesting when you look at this really classical theater like this, that it's all pre Freudian, it's pre subtext, it's all very black and white. It's all definitive in that there was no understanding of the sort of characters, internal motivations and that informs it a lot.

1:07:59 Wes: If anything, the chorus is doing some of that. Right. The chorus is sort of emoting separately and giving us all the.

1:08:05 Paul: The emotional information.

1:08:07 Wes: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:08:09 Lucy: Choragos is kind of wise, isn't he? You find yourself liking him because he seems kind of. He's got it all together and the others have no insight whatsoever.

1:08:16 Dylan: But he kind of changes his mind along the way. Right at the beginning he's sort of agreeing with Creon more.

1:08:22 Wes: Yeah, I was thinking he was a big kiss ass actually, like all wise people.

1:08:28 Mark: So I think in some of the translations it doesn't distinguish between chorus and Choragos, that it's all just chorus.

1:08:34 Paul: Yeah. Choragos, I think, is more of an acting note than anything else.

1:08:39 Mark: We're not going to make all these people say all this stuff in unison, so let's give it a.

1:08:44 Paul: Have you guys ever seen any Greek drama like this performed in the classical form?

1:08:50 Lucy: I have, I have actually. Yeah.

1:08:52 John: Yeah.

1:08:52 Paul: It's fascinating.

1:08:53 Alice: It's really.

1:08:54 Paul: It's all declarative and a lot of mask work and stuff. And it's really interesting and kind of hellish.

1:09:01 Lucy: Like you get it in the first five minutes and then it goes on for another two hours.

1:09:05 Paul: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think that has something to do with the fact that most people weren't. They didn't read anything. So even something as sort of simple and two dimensional as these kind of morality plays are, it's like literature to the viewer, to those who hear the play.

1:09:20 Dylan: And you should remember that the Greek is all rhyming. It's all in verse, it's also all metered. And Ancient Greek is tonal. So it's very sing songy.

1:09:31 Paul: Right. The chorus especially is sort of musical in its writing. But that also has a lot to do with why all the action happens off stage is because the art form was more about the poetry of describing it than it was the actual doing of the actions. Yep.

1:09:48 Lucy: So I think you could look that up on YouTube, you know, a proper Greek interpretation of it to hear that tonal, the music of it.

1:09:56 Seth: We're going to do that right now. Did Mark tell you, is there any

1:09:59 John: conjecture or at this point?

1:10:01 Dylan: No, there. Well, it might be a source of some discussion. There's A guy who was at St. John's when I was there, who would put on these performances with students where he understood, based upon his study, that there was, in fact, special dancing and rhythmic elements to it, based upon both the tonal language and the meter in it. And so they would do these performances of sections of Greek tragedies, including a kind of rhythmic dancing to it. It was very interesting.

1:10:32 Paul: Yeah. And there's usually music as well, if I'm not mistaken.

1:10:35 Lucy: And I wonder if, being tonal, it would be a virtuosity and getting the tones just right, you know, almost like the forms or any of that, that their philosophy and their music and getting it just so would have a double resonance, you know, the music wouldn't have

1:10:50 Paul: been polyphonic, would it?

1:10:51 Lucy: What the hell does that mean?

1:10:55 Mark: No harmonies. The chorus would all be in unison.

1:10:58 Paul: Yeah, the chorus would all be in the same tone. The same melody, if you will. Pretty droney.

1:11:03 Mark: Would sound all like Gregorian monks. Is that what you're saying?

1:11:07 Wes: There you go.

1:11:08 Lucy: That's the accurate African and Indian music. They find our scale very limited because we just have these semitones in our scale that sounds euphonic to us, but they use all those in between tones as well. So maybe. Is that what polyphonic means? That you can just, like, pizzle all over the notes? What does polyphonic mean?

1:11:29 Paul: Well, polyphonic is just basically different voices simultaneously, different melodies simultaneously. Like a chorus as we know it today with bass parts, harmonies, all that sort of stuff that all work together in unison. Whereas prior to polyphonism, which I think is 1500s, polyphonism came around before that. It was also dirge, like the very

1:11:50 John: interesting thing that Nietzsche says about ancient Greek theater, that he uses that idea, the musical aspect of it, as a challenge to Aristotle's conception of the way this was supposed to affect you. We're kind of trained in this idea that there's a catharsis, right? There's some sort of release by watching this person go through the struggle or these people go through the struggle. And so something like Oedipus Rex, it's very clearly delineated in the character of one person. And here it's kind of spread out. But Nietzsche said that the reason why all the action was happening offstage was because it wasn't so important to see the moments of catharsis. In fact, at the moments when the climax is happening, you have somebody run on and describe it to you. I think he concludes this passage by saying the Greeks wanted to hear people say things beautifully.

1:12:34 Paul: Yes. Seeing the action got in the way of the poetry of describing the action.

1:12:38 John: He would argue that it's not about an emotional experience in the way that we're used to, like, let's say, seeing a Shakespeare tragedy or something even more modern where there's this sort of collective gasp or release of feeling. It's the appreciation of the. Of these beautiful moments.

1:12:57 Lucy: Wow, how interesting.

1:12:58 Paul: I think we all did that justice today.

1:13:01 John: Yeah, I know.

1:13:02 Wes: I have to say, I do find this stuff, like the emotional part of it, I find it touching. I find that it works somehow, even though it's not the type of thing we're useful and even though I can't actually deliver the emotion into the lines as I'm speaking them.

1:13:15 John: But that's an interesting thing about style, in that you can become so good at that cathartic style that it's no longer affecting at all. Right. I mean, you can see there.

1:13:25 Wes: You mean it's too contrived to.

1:13:27 John: Well, no, it becomes like a sort of wooden thing that's no longer interesting. So in some ways you might be able to re. Approach the feeling through a very artificial means, which is what might be happening here for us.

1:13:39 Mark: One thing that was probably not obvious from our performance is that there is one bit of graphic violence. Just the after effect. After Eurydice has killed herself, has gone into the palace. The messenger says you can see for yourself and says the doors are opened and the body of Eurydice is disclosed within. As if it's like a phone booth or something like that. She just went right inside the door, killed herself or somebody dragged her body to the door. Anyway, it's on display for the rest of the play. So you didn't know that, Lucy, that you're lying dead for the rest of

1:14:08 Lucy: the play and naked?

1:14:12 Mark: Is that what it says?

1:14:13 Dylan: Is that the stage direction?

1:14:14 Lucy: Well, I'm using my imagination,

1:14:18 Alice: but I

1:14:19 Lucy: wonder if they would even have doors at the back of the stage, as you might in a proscenium where you'd open the doors and there is the displayed box dead. And it would be gasp, shock. Or if just telling the audience about it is enough. And it's really about the denouement. So you want to see how people cope after the fact.

1:14:35 Seth: Yeah.

1:14:36 John: And definitely when we're thinking about discussing it, we should look into whether or not the stage directions are just interpolations of the guy who's translating it at that particular moment.

1:14:48 Paul: Why did you guys settle on this particular translation?

1:14:51 Wes: I looked around and I just. Most of the translations are even less. I mean, this was actually the most readable translation.

1:14:59 Paul: Yeah. This is pretty reasonably contemporary.

1:15:02 Dylan: It leaves out a ton of the Greek.

1:15:05 Wes: There is another translation that John Castro recommended that's even better. It's by the poet John. Who's it?

1:15:11 John: Seamus Heaney.

1:15:12 Wes: Yeah. And we didn't get that together in time. We were thinking about switching to that, because that's. In a way, he was thinking, I think, of the modern stage when he was doing that translation. But this one was still. I thought, it's much more readable than if you go and look at a lot of the other very stiff academic translations.

1:15:31 Dylan: I would say that if you just look at the Greek, you would note that there's a ton of the Greek that's just left out in this translation. It's not even close to an attempt at a literal translation, which may be all for the best.

1:15:42 Mark: I read online the very first line of the play, which in our version is Ismene, dear sister. Another translation is O Common, one of the same womb, dear head of Ismene.

1:15:53 Dylan: Yeah. My own flesh and blood, Dear sister, dear Ismene is the Fagles translation at the beginning.

1:15:59 Lucy: Yeah.

1:15:59 Paul: It's tough to put on a birthday cake.

1:16:01 John: You are, in a sense, really discussing the translation when you discuss these pieces, right?

1:16:05 Paul: I think so, really significantly. I think translations really make a difference. But this one seems to be more focused on the plot line than it is on the poetry.

1:16:15 Lucy: Yeah.

1:16:15 Mark: Tell that to the God of many names.

1:16:17 John: It is in meter.

1:16:19 Paul: Well, yeah, kind of, sorta.

1:16:20 John: Somebody made an effort.

1:16:22 Paul: Lucy, do you feel this way, too? Is it. Whenever I read translations like this in meter, it always seems like the meter is pointless when you've contemporaneous the language. It seems like I just.

1:16:34 Lucy: I couldn't feel the meter, to be honest with you, I couldn't with justice, when all that I do is within my rights. I mean, you have no right to trample on God's right. Full adolescent fool. Take it. How can you say it when it's in modern English?

1:16:47 Paul: That's my point. Yeah. It's like almost like the meter is pointless when you've made the language so contemporaneous.

1:16:52 John: You need a good poet to do it. That's the thing.

1:16:54 Paul: Yeah.

1:16:55 Lucy: And a scholar, you know, there has to be some.

1:16:57 John: Somebody who's a scholar and a poet, like Ted Hughes does amazing things with. With the Greeks.

1:17:02 Wes: Yeah. He did the Ovid's Metamorphoses. Well, not the Greeks, but the Romans.

1:17:06 Alice: Yeah.

1:17:06 John: I mean, Shakespeare essentially was writing modern English in poetic form. It can be done, but.

1:17:12 Paul: But it was also first language. It wasn't the translation of Shakespeare.

1:17:15 John: Absolutely. But this guy is doing the iambic hexameter, right? It's like six feet to the line.

1:17:21 Lucy: It's where you.

1:17:23 John: It's a little awkward compared to what we're used to when we're speaking verse, right? It's like, got an extra piece to it.

1:17:30 Paul: I'm with Lucy on this one. I could not hear the meter at

1:17:32 Lucy: all at any point, and not just because we're bad.

1:17:36 Wes: Here's the beginning of the Seamus Heaney translation. Ismene, quick, come here. What's to become of us? Why are we always the ones? There's nothing, sister, nothing. So he has these short, terse little lines, and of course he's very non literal.

1:17:53 Lucy: But if there is a meter and he's got two short little things that might be indicating that there is a break as she pulls her over and. Right, Says there's this reason that that has left a gap. And sometimes the form, the way it's written indicates whether somebody's interrupting somebody by sharing the meter, you know, sharing.

1:18:10 Paul: Right, right, right.

1:18:11 John: Our guy did it at the top of this translation, right?

1:18:14 Lucy: Yeah, he does it all the time in this one. But it was a little hard on a cold read, wasn't it, fellas, to get it all together?

1:18:22 Paul: Absolutely right.

1:18:23 Mark: Well, too bad, because this was the definitive edition. All the other versions will fall to the wayside, and this is the only one that people will be listening to 200 years from now, I guarantee you.

1:18:33 Paul: I blew past any sense of poetry or rhythm of meter. I blew past it.

1:18:38 Wes: Creon is above poetry and meter.

1:18:42 Lucy: It crossed my mind that it might not be right, as I was admittedly reading it cold, but it crossed my mind that I might not be being appropriate, but it was like, oh, to hell with it, you know, I just. I can't imagine that a modern audience wants to hear it declaimed, you know, because it would just lose them. Because we are about ideas and we are about emotion and we are about catharsis. That to do it over a podcast in a sort of droning or tonal style would just lose the audience.

1:19:10 Wes: Yeah, we took care of the droning, Lucy. And it was good that someone was.

1:19:13 Dylan: That's why we were the chorus.

1:19:15 Paul: You look beautiful. It's foreign to our understanding to do it that way because we're. It's such a different world when it comes to. To what performance is and what literature is and all that. It's impossible to not approach this with a modern sensibility in terms of, well, what's going on inside the character and all that sort of stuff, which is completely irrelevant as to the writing.

1:19:38 Lucy: And why would we. The whole point is to communicate ideas. And if this is our mode of operation these days, you have to reauthorize it, don't you?

1:19:47 Paul: I think so. That's what struck me weird about this translation is that there's things like sarcasm and there's sort of wry kinds of dialogue in it, which I think is kind of antithetical to this kind of declamatory.

1:20:01 Mark: I don't know. I hope not. I hope that subtlety is there.

1:20:05 Dylan: Yeah.

1:20:06 Lucy: And yet it is in there. So, I mean, people weren't essentially any different, but talking about a convention, aren't we in entertainment of the time? Makes them seem different. But they weren't essentially different.

1:20:17 Paul: Yeah, maybe. I don't know. Again, that's a translation question, I guess. It's hard to be sarcastic. It's hard to be sarcastic in poetry.

1:20:24 Mark: 1939 is the translation

1:20:28 Dylan: Sophocles.

1:20:29 Paul: Sophocles 35. I have it here.

1:20:35 Seth: It says it was 441 BC was shortly after the play was released.

1:20:40 Lucy: Yeah.

1:20:40 Paul: And how'd it do on its opening weekend?

1:20:42 Seth: Lucy, you were right about the context. It was national fervor. And Sophocles was appointed as a general to lead a military expedition against Samos. So he really. He was writing during a time of war.

1:20:54 Dylan: He was a general author.

1:20:56 Lucy: So I wonder if Creon was just his man of the moment, like a satirical hand puppet for him for whatever was going on.

1:21:03 Paul: It was his comment on the war in Iraq.

1:21:08 Mark: Nice.

1:21:09 Lucy: Splendid.

1:21:10 Mark: Well, I think the lesson that we all learned from this is don't kill yourself immediately. Wait a little while, at least.

1:21:17 Lucy: Yeah. I mean, pack a sandwich in your

1:21:19 Paul: pocket, you know, I learned that from Romeo and Juliet, too.

1:21:22 Dylan: Yeah.

1:21:22 Seth: Now you guys understand why the James Bond villains always take so long to kill James Bond in those movies is because they're not sure. They're not going to have a moment of epiphany and want to go running back and save his life.

1:21:35 Wes: They're conflicted villains, always the most interesting.

1:21:38 Mark: That's in the Villain Handbook. To leave an actual.

1:21:41 Seth: It is in the Villain Handbook, which was written shortly after Antigone.

1:21:46 Mark: I want to say a special thank you for Alice for stepping up and taking these mayonnaise.

1:21:50 Paul: Oh, she's not here to hear that, but I will pass that on to her.

1:21:54 Lucy: Yes, we love Alice and her dulcet. Tones. Thank you for your help.

1:21:58 Paul: She actually knows how to speak English.

1:22:00 Mark: It sounds like she was reading a story about Peter Rabbit or something. That was the image I got in my mind. It was very nice.

1:22:06 Lucy: It's a little off Aussie accent.

1:22:08 Paul: You should hear her Peter Rabbit. Three people die at the end.

1:22:17 Lucy: Well, I'm off to work on Evil Dead now. Oh, Ash versus Evil Dead.

1:22:23 Paul: Well, it was a treat to share the Internet with you.

1:22:25 Lucy: Likewise, fellas.

1:22:27 Wes: Thanks again, Lucy.

1:22:28 Lucy: Let's do it again sometime.

1:22:30 Dylan: Thanks so much, Paul. Thanks, Paul.

1:22:32 Seth: You did the heavy lifting on this one.

1:22:34 Paul: That was really fun. Okay, that was a great rehearsal. Let's go. Roll tape.

1:22:40 Dylan: Thanks for joining us.

1:22:41 Seth: All right, you guys, thanks.

1:22:43 Mark: Thanks to everybody. Good night.

1:22:45 Lucy: Good night, everybody.

1:22:46 Wes: Good night.

1:22:47 Alice: Bye.

1:22:48 John: Adios,

1:22:51 Mark: Antigone.

1:22:52 Paul: You got to do what you gotta do. Why did you do it twice?

1:23:02 Mark: You got away.

1:23:03 Paul: You sprinkled dust on your brother. Yeah, but why return to the scene of the crime?

1:23:14 Mark: Wouldn't the gods have been satisfied without getting yourself caught. Why couldn't you just apologize?

1:23:28 Paul: Why couldn't you just be distraught?

1:23:33 Mark: Isn't it hard enough having your dad be a brother?

1:23:38 Paul: Or wasn't it bad enough when you bros killed each other?

1:23:43 Mark: And your mom slash grandma, she did some bad deciding.

1:23:49 Paul: Can we just stop all this fate driven suicidin'.

1:24:04 Mark: Antigone. Creon is just puffed up ass. It could be putty in your hand. You know, I think he's got a thing for you. You just go along with his petty demands Antigone, think of your sister boyfriends too. And just hunker down through the glass.

1:24:35 Paul: Antigone, you've got to know that I love you. Please work the system and make all this will pass.

1:24:45 Mark: Isn't it hard enough having your dad be brother?

1:24:51 Paul: Wasn't it bad enough when your bros killed each other and your mom slash grandma?

1:24:58 Mark: She did some bad deciding.

1:25:01 Paul: Can we just stop all this fate driven Suicidin.

1:25:14 Mark: Antigone, I know God's got it out

1:25:17 Paul: for you,

1:25:20 Mark: but you brought this one on yourself.

1:25:24 Paul: Antigone, you've got to do what you gotta do.

1:25:30 Mark: But I don't think I can help.