ANTIGONE.
Would’st thou do more than slay thy prisoner?
CREON.
Not I, thy life is mine, and that’s enough.
ANTIGONE.
Why dally then? To me no word of thine
Is pleasant: God forbid it e’er should please;
Nor am I more acceptable to thee.
And yet how otherwise had I achieved
A name so glorious as by burying
A brother? so my townsmen all would say,
Where they not gagged by terror, Manifold
A king’s prerogatives, and not the least
That all his acts and all his words are law.
CREON.
Of all these Thebans none so deems but thou.
ANTIGONE.
These think as I, but bate their breath to thee.
CREON.
Hast thou no shame to differ from all these?
ANTIGONE.
To reverence kith and kin can bring no shame.
CREON.
Was his dead foeman not thy kinsman too?
ANTIGONE.
One mother bare them and the self-same sire.
CREON.
Why cast a slur on one by honoring one?