Each actor will be required to perform a variety of characters throughout the play and thus wear multiple masks due to the Greek rule that allows only three actors to have speaking parts in any one play. In addition, if a female role exists in the play, the male actors must assume the persona of a female and wear both an intricate mask and feminine clothing. For example, in the production of Antigone, a male will play the characters of Antigone and Ismene, the two daughters of Oedipus and Iokaste. After hours of preparation, Sophocles will finally conduct the production of his play for an audience of approximately fifteen thousand in a Greek theatre set into the side of a hill that is located at the foot of the Acropolis.
In context and in performance, the tragic heroine of Antigone is in fact Antigone, niece of King Kreon, sister of Ismene, and fiancé of Haimon. In the opening of the play, Antigone is in opposition with Ismene over the conflict of the burial of her slain brother Polynices. Prior to the beginning of Antigone, Polynices and Eteocles, the brother of Polynices, Antigone, and Ismene, engage in a dual that takes the lives of both. King Kreon orders a proper burial for Eteocles but not for Polynices, and Antigone refuses to allow this to happen by continuously covering the body of her brother with dirt and even going as far as digging a grave for him with her bare hands in broad daylight. When King Kreon discovers what she has done, he insistently tries to convince her to follow his orders, but she repeatedly refuses, stating that it is her fate to say no and die. At the end of the play, Antigone hangs herself in her cell, Haimon stabs himself in his own misery, and King Kreon is left alone. By further examining the character of Antigone, one can conclude that she in fact fits the pattern of a tragic heroine as outlined by Aristotle. Aristotle believes that the chief character in a tragic play should be a person of great consequence and one of exalted station.
