Some nuances of the text of Antigone, as of every Greek tragedy, must
have been thrown into view by performance, especially since this was
so stylized—the language markedly different from speech, many pas-
sages chanted or sung to accompanying music and dance, the dialogue
exchanges punctuated by commentary within the play itself in the form
of the choral odes. And the actors' masks would have shifted all facial
expressiveness to the voice and body. The very artificiality of ancient
performance could not help calling attention to the language itself
rather than to action or the apparent personalities of the characters
(something in which we take more interest than did the ancient Greek
poets, for whom the play was an exploration not so much of character
as of ultimate questions of human fate and freedom). We do not know
how ancient audiences reacted to the theatrical convention of actors
changing roles, yet surely the stagecraft would have had some effect
on the audience's sense of the language they were hearing. For ex-
ample, how could one not listen very keenly to such remarkably staged
moments as the beginning?—when, as George Steiner concisely de-
scribes it, “the masked male actor who impersonates Antigone addresses
the masked male actor who impersonates Ismene” (206). Then it is
very probably the actor who plays Antigone who also returns as her
betrothed, Haimon—and then as Teiresias, and then as Haimon's
mother, Eurydike! This actor's changing of roles enacts a striking idea:
that each character who in vain challenges Kreon brings back on stage
the futile challenges of the others. This theatrical practice is scarcely
ever repeated today, nor, on the page, is there any way to “translate”
the effect of that actor appearing in different roles, or of the actor
playing Ismene returning as the Guard and the Messenger. Or to
“translate” the strange stubbornness of role of the one actor who plays

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