The Bacchae
EN302: European Theatre
Euripides (c.480-406 BC)
• Wrote 92 plays, of which
19 survive
• Often revisionist
• Political and religious
scepticism
• Rarely won first prize
• Prosecuted
(unsuccessfully) for
impiety
• Fled Athens towards the
end of his life
The Bacchae
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First performed 405 BC (posthumously)
Uneasy combination of tragic and comic elements
Peloponnesian War: Athens under siege (until 404 BC)
Euripides had used drama to critique war (Women of Troy)
Athens’ defeat in 404 BC brought the ‘golden age’ of tragedy
(and democracy) to an end
Dionysos
• Dionysos’ birth (twice
born)
• Zeus’ ‘male womb’
• Half human (‘My daughter
had a son who’s now a
god’, p. 377)
• Ambiguous identity:
• both foreign and Greek
• androgynous
• deceptive
• Representation of
wildness, irrationality,
impulse?
Dionysos
• God of wine
• Wine and theatre:
• Tiresias says it ‘stops
grief’: ‘How else could we
ease the ache of living?’
(p. 381)
• The thyrsos:
• Fennel/pine/ivy
• Symbol of fertility and
abundance
Images of Dionysos
Images of Dionysos
Images of Dionysos
Images of Dionysos
Dionysos worship
• Oreibasia (nighttime mountain dancing,
drinking)
• Sparagmos (tearing apart of animal)
• Omophagia (eating of raw flesh)
• Surrender of self: ekstasis (‘standing outside of
ourselves’)
• ‘I’ll run them / wild with ecstasy!’ (p. 372)
• ‘Participation mystique’?
• Coined by French ethnologist Lucien Lévy-Bruhl and
made famous by Jung, this term describes a state of
mind in which no differentiation is made between the
self and things outside the self.
Dionysos worship in The Bacchae
• Never seen, only described
• By Dionysos, pp. 370-2:
• ‘barbarian joy’, ‘battle’, ‘suffer’, revenge
• By Chorus, pp. 375-6:
• ‘sweet’, ‘joy’, ecstasy
• By Pentheus (imagined throughout):
• ‘lewd’, ‘lusty’ (p. 379 – though Tiresias refutes this)
• By Herdsman, pp. 397-401:
• ‘so strange, so horrible’, ‘great holy cry’, ‘eerie’,
monstrous, miraculous, graphic violence
• sexual undercurrent?
Dionysos worship in The Bacchae
• The thyrsos in The Bacchae:
• ‘armed them all with my green fennel wand – in battle it’s an
ivied spear’ (p. 370)
• ‘Guard the violence in your green wand, / respect its holy power’
(p. 374)
• At one point, all on stage hold it (Chorus, Tiresias, Kadmos) –
Pentheus is the only one without.
• He grabs Dionysos’ own thyrsos later…
The Apollonian and the Dionysian
• From Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
(1872)
• Apollonian: form, structure, control, rational thought,
reason, beauty, protection from the Dionysian
• Dionysian: wildness, irrationality, intoxication, loss of
self, animalism, sexuality, lust, cruelty
• Nietzsche describes Euripides as ‘a poet who
fought throughout his long life against Dionysus
with heroic force – only to conclude his life with
a glorification of his opponent…’
The Apollonian and the Dionysian
• City vs. mountain
• Pentheus and the repressed Dionysian:
• Pentheus’ descriptions of Dionysos: ‘the stranger with the girlish
body’ (p. 383);
• cutting of Dionysos’ curls;
• Dionysos’ tucking back of Pentheus’ curls later
• Pentheus draws attention to choice between order and
chaos: ‘When I come out, I’ll either be fighting, or I’ll put
myself in your hands.’ (p. 405)
• Chorus: ‘A reckless mouth and a mad / defiant mind /
ruin a man – / but restraint and good sense / protect
him’ (p. 384)
• Tiresias shows appropriate balance of Apollonian and
Dionysian? He is Apollo’s prophet, but worships Dionysos
equally…
The Bacchae and the feminine
• Bacchae as representatives of unrestrained femininity
(compare Furies/Clytemnestra)?
• Only women induced to madness in the play
• ‘We are humiliated / when we let women act like this’ (p. 4012)
• Think about male-dominated audience
Music and the Dionysian
• Music is the most Dionysian of the arts, according to Nietzsche
• Choral odes
• Chorus equate dancing with music, wine and joy / ekstasis
• Ritual element to repetition
• Suggestion that chorus are drumming (p. 391)
Dionysos and the theatre
• Theatre of Dionysos
• Tiresias on Dionysos: ‘his future power throughout
Greece will be vast’ (p. 381)
• Chorus as Dionysos-worshippers, calling audience to join
in:
• they bless those who ‘give body and soul to Bacchus’ (p. 373)
• they condemn Pentheus
• Voice of Dionysos calling (probably singing) from within
stage building:
• Supernatural frisson?
• Literal invocation?
• Special effects?
• Acting as ritual / transubstantiation
Communitas
• From the work of anthropologist Victor Turner (1920-83)
• Intense feelings of solidarity and togetherness amongst
members of a group of people: ‘a direct, immediate and
total confrontation of human identities’ (1969: 132)
• ‘Spontaneous communitas has something “magical”
about it. Subjectively there is in it the feeling of endless
power. … It is almost everywhere held to be sacred or
“holy,” possibly because it transgresses or dissolves the
norms that govern structured and institutionalised
relationships and is accompanied by experiences of
unprecedented potency.’ (1969: 128-39)
Turner, V. W. (1969) The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, New York:
Aldine.
Communitas, ritual and
performance
• Three phases in a rite of passage: separation,
transition (‘limen’), and incorporation
(‘reaggregation’)
• In liminality, argues Turner, ‘people “play” with the
elements of the familiar and defamiliarise them’
(1982: 27), and where it is ‘socially positive’,
• ‘it presents, directly or by implication, a model of human
society as a homogenous, unstructured communitas, whose
boundaries are ideally coterminous with those of the
human species. When even two people believe they
experience unity, all people are felt by those two, even if
only for a flash, to be one.’ (1982: 47)
Turner, V. W. (1982) From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play, New
York: PAJ.
A sceptical undercurrent?
• Dangers of loss of self / ekstasis?
• Second messenger describes ‘One hand / made of thousands’
contributing to Pentheus’ death (p. 416);
• Agave is ‘empty’ and ‘senseless’, ‘totally possessed by Bakkhos’
(p. 417)
• Cynical presentation of worship?
• Tiresias (in Bacchic garb): ‘You won’t hear me asking which gods
exist / or cross-examining their actions. … The wisest man living,
though he brings / to bear his keenest logic, / will never break
their grip on our lives.’ (p. 378)
• Kadmos’s advice to Pentheus to lie: ‘Suppose it’s true / that
Bakkhos is no real god – / proclaim him one. It’s a fine
distinguished lie!’ (p. 382)
• Messenger: ‘The best wisdom is knowing what the gods want’ (p.
418) – how easy is this?
Audience’s sympathies?
• Is the chorus’ viewpoint a model for ours?
• Do we approve of their bloodlust?
• Do we share their rejoicing in the revelation of Pentheus’ death?
• Appearance of Agave late in the play:
• Chorus express pity for her (‘poor woman’, p. 420) and for
Kadmos (p. 427)
• Pentheus’ hamartia, Agave’s anagnorisis?
• Agave ends by rejecting Dionysos
Dionysos: a capricious god?
• Chorus’ presentation of Dionysos as peace-loving: a god who
‘makes men rich / and saves the young men’s lives’ (p. 386).
• He says he’s there to teach: ‘this town must learn to
perfection / all my mysteries have to teach’ (p. 371)
• Does Dionysos manipulate Pentheus into committing
blasphemy?
• Dionysos’ evident enjoyment of irony:
• ‘it could be your face to which the blood will come’
• ‘You’ll make me go all to pieces!’ ‘I’d have it no other way’ (p.
410)
• Smiling mask throughout play
• Cruel?
• Terrifying?
• Unknowable?
• Kadmos recognises Dionysos: ‘You are / Vengeance – without
feeling or limit’ (p. 429).