plays, the playwright adheres to all three of the unities. The play takes place just in front of gates of the palace ofCreon in the city of Thebes. All of the action of the play is about Antigone’s attempt to get her brother’s body a proper burial. The play takes place in less than one day.

As the play begins, Antigone and her sister Ismene enter, talking. It is late at night and they are having a secret meeting:

ISMENE
What is it? Some dark secret stirs thy breast.

ANTIGONE
What but the thought of our two brothers dead,
The one by Creon graced with funeral rites,
The other disappointed?

It is their brother Polyneices who has not been properly buried. Antigone decides to find her brother’s body and give it a proper burial. Ismene refuses to join her, thinking it will not be possible to pull it off, but Ismene cannot stop her head-strong sister.

We need more back story about what has happened before than this tense scene between sparring sisters can give us. Fortunately, Sophocles had a marvelous tool in his playwright’s tool box: the chorus. The chorus can now step forward and narrate for us what has gone before so we may comprehend the unfolding action. It is the chorus who narrates the events of the battle that led to the death of two brothers, how it all played out, and who is related to whom:

Save two alone, that ill-starred pair
One mother to one father bare,
Who lance in rest, one 'gainst the other
Drave, and both perished, brother slain by brother.

Creon, the king of Thebes, leaves his palace and addresses the chorus, asking them “not to connive at disobedience.” It seems this is a chorus of the elder men of Thebes, and their role in the play is to watch and report various pieces of action that occur in other locales. This makes it quite easy to stick to the unities in the drama—the chorus function like a roving camera who see and report back on events.

Antigone is quickly caught by a guard as she attempts to properly bury her brother and brought to Creon. Here the crux of the problem: two conflicting laws about proper burials are argued by these two proud people. Each represents a brother—one is Antigone’s brother Polyneices, and the other was the step brother of Polyneices (and the true son of Creon, who has had two wives). Neither wishes to lose this argument, and neither will back down. This leads to a tragic and swift downfall for everyone in these families.

Though he is warned by the blind prophet Tiresias not to take this course of action, Creon orders Antigone buried alive in a tomb as punishment for her crime. He alienates his son Haemon, who is in love with Antigone. Everything quickly falls to pieces. A messenger arrives (once again, the messenger functions as a reporter of offstage action that we do not see) to tell Creon that Antigone has killed herself and that his son Haemon, finding her body, has done the same. After he goes to collect his son’s body, he finds out his own wife Eurydice has also committed suicide. Broken, Creon admits everything that has happened was his own fault:

Away with me, a worthless wretch who slew
Unwitting thee, my son, thy mother too.
Whither to turn I know now; every way
Leads but astray,
And on my head I feel the heavy weight
Of crushing Fate.

Crushing fate is felt acutely in this play, and its adherence to the three unities is partly why. By playing out the drama in real time, in one location, without a single diversion or sub-plot, Antigone presents a breathless unfolding tragedy.