SOURCE: "The Plays: Antigone," in Jean Anouilh: Poet of Pierrot and Pantaloon, Russell & Russell, 1953, pp. 107-20.

In the following excerpt, Marsh analyzes Antigone as both a play of character and a play of ideas.

Anouilh's second wartime play was not produced until February 1944, in the last six months of the German Occupation, when tempers on both sides were rising and every play was discovered to contain some measure of allusion to the national situation. The Antigone plot of personal loyalties in conflict with the demands of authority was as close as any subject could be to the problem of the moment for so many Frenchmen. Anouilh's play was a centre of dispute: some saw in it a clear demand for revolt against authority, others thought is was a justification of "Vichyism". Whatever the political allusions in the play, in most other countries of the world where the emotions...