the righteous defiance of a man by a
woman--both before our eyes, passionately flaming with strong
antagonistic emotions--than we are with a man's unrighteous defiance of
abstract and invisible Fate.

As "Antigone" was given at Orange, the softening influences which had
subdued the harshness of "Oedipus" still farther were extended, making
its deep tenderness still deeper and more appealing. The inspersion of
music of a curiously penetrating, moving sort--composed by Saint-Saens
in an approximation to Grecian measures--added a poetic undertone to the
poetry of the situations and of the lines; and a greater intensity was
given to the crises of the play--an artistic reproduction of the effect
caused by the accident of the night before--by extinguishing the
electric lamps and so bringing the action to a focus in the mellow
radiance which came from the golden footlights and richly lighted the
stage.

The poetic key-note was struck in the opening scene: when _Antigone_ and
_Ismene_, robed all in white, entered together by the royal doorway and
stood upon the upper plane of the great stage, alone--and yet so filled
it that there was no sense of emptiness nor of lack of the ordinary
scenery. Again, the setting was not an imitation, but the real thing.
The palace from which the sisters had come forth rose stately behind
them. Beside the stage, the branches of the fig-tree waved lightly in
the breeze. In the golden glow of the footlights and against the golden
background the two white-robed figures--their loose vestments, swayed by
the wind, falling each moment into fresh lines of loveliness--moved with
an exquisite grace. And all this visible beauty reinforced with a moving
fervour the penetrating beauty of _Antigone's_ avowal of her love for
her dead brother--tender, human, natural--and of her purpose, born of
that love, so resolute that to accomplish it she would give her life.

[Illustration: SCENE FROM THE SECOND ACT OF "ANTIGONE"]

Again, the utter absence of conventional scenery was a benefit rather
than a disadvantage. When _Creon_ entered upon the upper plane, attended
by his gorgeous guard, and at the same moment the entrance of the chorus
filled the lower plane with colour less brilliant but not less strong,
the stage was full, not of things, but of people, and was wholly
alive. The eye was not distracted by painted scenery--in the ordinary
theatre a mechanical necessity, and partly excusable because it also
supp