Antigone (Modern Classics) - Softcover

Jean Anouilh

Softcover

ISBN 10: 041330860X ISBN 13: 9780413308603

Publisher: Methuen Drama, 1960

Synopsis

Antigone was originally produced in Paris in 1942, when France was occupied and part of Hitler's Europe. The play depicts an authoritarian regime which mirrors the predicament of the French people of the time. Based on Sophocles' ancient Greek tragedy, Antigone which was first performed in Athens in the 5th century BC, its theme was nevertheless topical. For in Antigone's faithfulness to her dead brother and his proper burial and her reiterated ""No!"" to the dictator Creon, the French audience saw its own resistance to the German occupation. The Germans allowed the play to be performed presumably because they found Creon's arguments for dictatorship so convincing. The play is regularly performed and studied around the world.

""Anouilh is a poet, but not a poet of words: he is a poet of words-acted, of scenes-set, of players-performing"" Peter Brook

About this title

About the Author

Jean Anouilh was born in Bordeaux in 1910. He studied law briefly at the Sorbonne and then became a copywriter for an advertising agency. In 1931 he became secretary to the actor-manager, Louis Jouvet, and his first play, The Ermine, was staged the following year. Antigone firmly established his popularity in France in 1944, and Peter Brook's 1950 production of Ring Round the Moon in Christopher Fry's translation made his name in England. His best-known plays are: Restless Heart (1934); Dinner with the Family, Traveller without Luggage (both 1937); Thieves' Carnival (1938); Léocadia (1939); Point of Departure (Eurydice) (1941); Romeo and Jeannette (1945); Medea (1946); Ardèle (1948); The Rehearsal (1950); Colombe (1951); The Waltz of the Toreadors (1952); The Lark (1953); Ornifle (1955); Poor Bitos (1956); Becket (1956); The Fighting Cock (1966); Dear Antoine (1971); The Director of the Opera (1973); Number One (1981). Twice married, he lived mainly in Switzerland for the last thirty years of his life. Anouilh died in 1987.

Edition details

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Publication date: 1960
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 041330860X
• ISBN 13: 9780413308603
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 81