Take “Antigone,” written in Athens in the fifth century B.C.E. The play opens with the title character mourning the death of ...

Polynices has entered to speak to his father ... Oedipus, blinded by his own hands, has been walking the land with his daughter, Antigone. He is searching for his place to die.

Antigone’s defiance of King Creon’s edict that her brother Polynices’ body must lie unburied might be a spur to French resistance. In writing the play, Anouilh was plainly walking on eggs.