Sophocles: Life and Work Collected in Only Seven Plays

Abstract

Sophocles was the ancient Shakespeare. Not only is he a link between the ancient and the new Greek theater, but with the clarity of his style, the precise verse, and the perfectly refined tragedy, he was for centuries the model of a writer for the ancient Greeks and their heirs. Yet almost three times less tragedies has survived from Sophocles than from Euripides. Why is this so? Textual analysis indicates that this is precisely because Sophocles was canonized and his plays in manuscripts were preserved in a small number of special places. Today, seven plays survive and one that is still uncertainly attributed to Sophocles. Antigone is among the tragedies that have formed the backbone of understanding Sophocles for centuries. Less well known is that a kind of proto-Antigone exists in Sophocles’s last written play: Oedipus at Colonus.