Antigone was originally produced in Paris in 1942, when France was part of Hitler s Europe and dictators and stormtroops were the background of everyday life. Based on the Antigone of Sophocles, which was first performed in Athens in the 5th century B.C., its theme was nevertheless topical, for in Antigone s reiterated No! to Creon the French audience saw its own resistance to the German occupation; and the Germans allowed the play to be performed presumably because they found Creon s arguments for dictatorship convincing.Antigone is one of the masterpieces of the modern French theatre.