THE PROLOGUE ✎ — Well, here we are. These people that you see here are about to act out the story of Antigone for you. 🔊✎ Antigone, that's the skinny little girl sitting over there, who's saying nothing. 🔊✎ She's staring straight ahead. She's thinking. 🔊✎ She's thinking that she will soon be Antigone, that she is suddenly going to burst forth from the slight, dark-haired girl that no one in the family takes seriously and rise up to face the whole world alone, face Creon, her uncle, who is the king. 🔊✎ Another thing that she is thinking is this: she is going to die. Antigone is young. She would much rather live than die. 🔊✎ But there is no help for it. 🔊✎ Her name is Antigone and she has to play her role through to the end. 🔊✎ And as soon as the curtain goes up, she feels that she is moving away at breakneck speed from her sister Ismene, who's chatting and laughing with a young man, from all of us, who are sitting here safely watching her, from all of us who don't have to die this evening. 🔊✎ The young man who is talking with pretty, happy, blonde Ismene is Haemon, the son of Creon. 🔊✎ He is Antigone's fiancé. 🔊✎ Everything disposed him towards Ismene: his taste for dance and games, his taste for happiness and success, his sensuality too, because Ismene is much more beautiful than Antigone. 🔊✎ And then one night, a ball night when he had danced with no one but Ismene, a night when Ismene had been dazzling in her new gown, he had gone over to find Antigone, who was dreaming in a corner like she is now, her arms around her knees, and he had asked her to be his wife. 🔊✎ No one has ever understood why. 🔊✎ Antigone raised her serious eyes towards him without surprise and said "yes", with a poor, sad little smile. 🔊✎ The orchestra started up a new dance, you could hear Ismene laughing over there, in the middle of the other boys, and well, now he is going to be the husband of Antigone, 🔊✎ He doesn't know that there will never be any husband of Antigone on this earth, and that this title only gives him the right to die. 🔊✎ The powerfully built white-haired man over there, standing lost in thought next to his page, is Creon. He is the king. 🔊✎ His face is lined. He is tired. 🔊✎ He practices the difficult art of being a leader of men. 🔊✎ Before, in the time of Oedipus, when he was only the first gentleman of the court, he loved music, beautiful old volumes, looking slowly around the little bookshops of Thebes. 🔊✎ But Oedipus and his sons are dead. 🔊✎ He had left his books, his works of art, he has rolled up his sleeves and taken their place. 🔊✎ Sometimes, in the evening, he is tired, and he wonders if it isn't pointless to try and govern men. 🔊✎ If it isn't a dirty job which one should leave to other, less sensitive people... 🔊✎ And then, in the morning, there are specific problems that need to be solved, and he gets up calmly, like a workman at the start of his day. 🔊✎ The old lady who's knitting next to the nurse who raised the two young girls is Eurydice, Creon's wife. 🔊✎ She is going to knit through the whole tragedy until her turn comes to get up and die. 🔊✎ She is kind, worthy, loving. 🔊✎ She is of no help to him whatsoever. 🔊✎ Creon is alone. Alone with his little page who is too young and who anyway couldn't help him either. 🔊✎ The pale boy over there at the back, who's standing dreaming on his own with his back against the wall is the Messenger. 🔊✎ He's going to come in by and by to tell us that Haemon is dead. 🔊✎ That's why he doesn't feel like hanging out with the others and chatting. He already knows... 🔊✎ And the three red-faced men playing cards with their caps pushed back, they're the guards. 🔊✎ They're not such bad guys. They have wives and children and their own little problems, just like everyone, but when the moment comes they will find it easy to grab hold of the person they're told to arrest. 🔊✎ They smell of garlic and leather and red wine and have no imagination at all. 🔊✎ They are the instruments of justice, always innocent and always quite pleased with themselves. 🔊✎ For the moment, until a new and duly appointed king of Thebes tells them to arrest him in his turn, they are Creon's instruments of justice. 🔊✎ And now that you know everyone, they will be able to act out their story. 🔊✎ It begins at the moment when the two sons of Oedipus, Eteocles and Polynices, who were supposed to take turns ruling Thebes one year at a time, fought each other to the death under the walls of the city, because Eteocles, the older one, had at the end of his first year of power refused to give up his place to his brother. 🔊✎ Seven great princes from foreign parts, whom Polynices had won over to his cause, were defeated before the seven gates of Thebes. 🔊✎ Now the city has been saved, the two brothers who became enemies are dead, and King Creon has ordered that Eteocles, the good brother, will be buried with full honours, while Polynices, the good-for-nothing traitor, will be left without tomb or ceremony to be the prey of the crows and the jackals. 🔊✎ Anyone who dares to give him a proper funeral will be pitilessly put to death. 🔊✎