Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Plumptre 1878).djvu/85

Rh their earlier stage, to the unexpected kindliness of Creon; in their latter, to the noble, chivalrous sympathy and generosity of Theseus, and the filial devotion of Antigone. Without the sufferings of Philoctetes, we should not have had the touching picture of the half-unwilling fraud, and the hearty, full repentance of Neoptolemos. Even the madness and death of Aias bring out the loyal love of his brother, and for a moment melt into pity even the crafty and hard temper of Odysseus; and the devotion of a son to a father could not have been painted as it has been in the character of Hyllos, if it had not been for the agonising death of Heracles. Out of the fratricidal strife of Eteocles and Polyneikes, there rises, in Antigone, the noblest heroism of womanhood that the poets of Greece or Rome have represented.

The thought of this "Divinity that shapes our ends," and works out a reconciliation of the Divine justice with the miseries and perplexities of life that seem to contradict it, is brought out with varying degrees of clearness. In "Œdipus the King," the prevailing impression at the close is simply that of horror; but when we pass to what must have been intended (divided from it, though it was, by an