Antigone. Sophocles. ed. Francis Storr. London. 1912.
Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.
Funding provided by The Annenberg CPB/Project.
Antigone. Sophocles. ed. Francis Storr. London. 1912.
Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.
Funding provided by The Annenberg CPB/Project.
Ἀντιγόνη (Greek) (Sophocles, Volume 1. Storr, Francis, editor. London; New York: William Heinemann Ltd.; The Macmillan Company, 1912.)
Provisional text from uncorrected OCR; expect errors.
223-330. mvp-comment-136-1 The half-comic or rustic character of the watchman in this play is an extension of the common character of the messenger, whose natural rudeness of speech and thought brings into greater prominence the horror or pathos of the events he describes. The grotesqueness disappears when he speaks of the action of Antigone in 407-440. The employment of this artifice by Sophocles arises from the same motive to which Shakespeare gave a far wider range in such creations as the gravediggers in Hamlet, and the rural fellow in Antony and Cleopatra. The Messenger in the Trachiniae, the Corinthian in the Oedipus Tyrannus, Menelaus in the Ajax, the pretended Shipmaster in the Philoctetes, afford the same sort of contrast to the more tragic personages: and the superstition of the Coloniatae may be compared with the cowardice of the Phrygian slave in the Orestes of Euripides.
223-330.
mvp-comment-136-2
The vulgarity of the common-place Athenian of the fifth century в.с. takes the form of misplaced subtlety of wit. Cp.
Shak. Hamlet, 5. 1
,
320. mvp-comment-187-1 λάλημα The reading is doubtful between ἄλημα, A clever rogue, and λάλημα, Α prating fellow. ἄλημα is better known, and was read by the Scholiast, but λάλημα is sufficiently supported by Eur. Andromache 937, τούσδε Σειρήνων λόγους, | σοφῶν, πανούργων, ποικίλων λαλημάτων. And this word τίνεσθαι. fits more closely to the context of the present passage. 'Fie, tis too clear you are a born chatterbox. Then it is clear that I never did this deed. 323. What a pity that one who is opinionated should have a false opinion. For the subjunctive δοκῇ, cp. О. Т. 316, 317.