commitments within this apparently harmonious ethical life: Creon is
associated with man-made law (i.e. human rather than divineandmale
rather than female), warfare and the affairs of thepolis; Antigone is asso-
ciated with the Greek conception of femininity, divine law and duties of
the family–and the codes of practice relating to the burial of family
members, which, of course, powerfully combine these latter two. The
circumstances arising from the plot reveal that the ethical commitments
of Creon and Antigone, far from being harmonious currents within a
unified Greek society, can turn ferociously antagonistic. Both Creon and
Antigone are acting ethically by the standards of their community and
yet both are ultimately shown to be in the wrong. On Hegel’s historical
account, it is Creon’s codes of ethics which (temporarily) prevail over
those of Antigone, as the Greek form of life progresses towards a Roman
emphasis on a man-made (and male) legal order at the heart of society.
There is a great deal more to Hegel’s account and to the interpretative
challenges associated with it. As to the former, he has an argument to the
effect that the sister–brother relationship is uniquely placed to draw out
the conflict in Greek life, especially from the sister’s point of view; as to
the latter, some interpreters prefer to see Hegel not as giving a historical
analysis of the Greeks as they in fact were, but rather of the idealised
Greeks imagined by Hegel’s contemporaries.^29 But we do not have to
investigate Hegel’s reading too closely to acknowledge that the dramatic
collision between Creon and Antigone is more than just an argument
about the individual preferences of two people. However we interpret
their conflict, we can acknowledge that Antigone and other plays can
explore collisions between ideas, ways of life and ethical codes by staging
them in conflicts between individual characters. The extra step, suggested
by Hegel and reflected in Lukács, is that plays likeAntigonedisplay with
clarity the breakdown and transition of one form of life to another.
Lukács’second claim is that historical dramas typically put the principal
or most important historicalfigures on stage as the main characters. Here
(as elsewhere), Lukács is comparing theatre with the novel. In a historical
novel, he claims, the most important historicalfigures appear as minor
characters, whereas the main characters in the historical novel are very
oftenfictional.^30 So, for example,War and Peacefeatures Napoleon and
the Tsar asfleeting, minor characters, whereas Pierre and Prince Andrei
are major (fictional) characters. Thus, althoughWar and Peaceis a histor-
ical novel, a play ofWar and Peacewouldn’t be a history play. Therefore,
we would be surprised tofind someone readingWar and Peaceand asking:
‘Did it happen like that?’The historical novel uses historical events, or
simply a certain historical context, as the backdrop to thefictional story it
wants to tell.^31 Julius Caesar, of course, is not the story of Caesar and
Brutus set against the backdrop of turbulent times in the history of
History in the making 83