by the third and last great Athenian playwright, Euripides. His plays are thus each to be interpreted as independent from any other work.Īfter achieving his celebrity status in 468, success would follow Sophocles for the next twenty years until he would be beaten at the Athenian drama contest in 441 B.C. In contrast, Sophocles condensed the meaning of each play he wrote into a self-contained unit in and of itself, without any need to compare. In addition, previous traditions partly established by Aeschylus dictated that tragedies would be divided into a series of three plays, called a trilogy, which was usually followed by a fourth, lighthearted Satyr play. These characters control their own actions. As a result, human events become a matter of cause and effect, rather than blaming everything on the cruelty of the gods. Haemon dies because of his grief at Antigone's death, and Eurydice dies because of the deaths of her two sons. This theme is seen in Antigone because all of the characters suffer due to decisions they themselves have made: Antigone buries Polyneices, knowing that she will be put to death if she is caught, and Creon knows that his actions violate religious law but he does not care. Rather than focusing on the archaic perspective that gods control all human events, Sophocles gives responsibility to humans and holds them accountable for their actions based upon the decisions they make. Sophocles' work added to the technical elements of playwriting, but his thematic content is much more immediate to the opinions of Athenians as well. He continually entered the annual drama contest held in nearby Athens until he won first place in 468, shortly before he was thirty years old, taking popularity away from Aeschylus, the first great Greek tragedian who had until then reigned supreme. in the very same Colonus region seen in Oedipus at Colonus, part of the ancient Greek city-state of Athens, Sophocles began writing early on in life. Greek drama has a long evolution, but the great tragic playwright Sophocles played a key role in this process by adding a third actor to the stage, and minimalizing the role of the Chorus that had always had a central role in the earlier plays of Aeschylus. Antigone Book Notes Antigone Book Notes Antigone by Sophocles
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