ON Antigone how does the playwright order the incidents of theplay

Greek theatre – of time, place and action. That is to say, the events of the play all take place in what is now called “real time” – there are no jumps, transitions, intermissions or breaks. Those events also take place in the same location – there are no scene changes. Adherence to this unity is one reason why characters like the Messenger and the Guard were essential – rather than taking the audience to the scene of bloodshed (which the Classical Greeks wanted to avoid seeing anyway, on principle), the playwright brought the scene to the audience, in the words and experiences of Messengers. The additional benefit to this theatrical practice was to allow room for audiences to fill in the details, emotional or physical, of the event with their own imagination (it being a long standing truth that nothing is more frightening, fulfilling, or evocative than what an individual can conjure up in his or her mind). The third unity is of action – that is, events of a plot follow a single line of rising action, event triggering event, from beginning to end, exposition to climax and denouement.