Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, the late king of Thebes, in defiance of
Creon who rules in his stead, resolves to bury her brother Polyneices,
slain in his attack on Thebes. She is caught in the act by Creon’s
watchmen and brought before the king. She justifies her action,
asserting that she was bound to obey the eternal laws of right and
wrong in spite of any human ordinance. Creon, unrelenting, condemns her
to be immured in a rock-hewn chamber. His son Haemon, to whom Antigone
is betrothed, pleads in vain for her life and threatens to die with
her. Warned by the seer Teiresias Creon repents him and hurries to
release Antigone from her rocky prison. But he is too late: he finds
lying side by side Antigone who had hanged herself and Haemon who also
has perished by his own hand. Returning to the palace he sees within
the dead body of his queen who on learning of her son’s death has
stabbed herself to the heart.