What is the element of comedy in 'Antigone'?

Answer 1

An image of drunken dancing is the only element of comedy in "Antigone" by Sophocles (495 B.C.E. - 405 B.C.E.).

Specifically, the play is a serious tragedy about the misfortunes of Theban Princess Antigone and of the disloyal Theban dead such as her brother Polyneices. Antigone is presented with the unenviable choice of witnessing, or doing something about, her brother's body desecrated and dismembered by birds and dogs. She therefore must choose between letting his disfigured, incomplete body seek entrance into the Underworld of the afterlife or burying him and being herself sentenced to death in the process. Nothing comical therefore touches such a tragic subject other than the chorus' reference to Thebans drunkenly shaking the land with their dances celebrating the end of the civil war over the Theban royal succession.