The Bacchae by Euripides

The first thing I’m going to say is that The Bacchae is said to be Euripides’s greatest play. The second thing is that it’s a play that requires multiple readings and I haven’t got an adequate grasp of the play. 

But I’m going to write a blog post about it anyway. 

1/ This is a gruesome play. Ancient Greek tragedies are often bleak: son kills father and marries mother, wife kills husband then gets killed by their children, mother kills children, stepmother fancies stepson and falsely accuses him of rape and causes his death, husband lets wife die instead of him, etc. All disturbing stuff (what’s wrong with the Greeks?). And yet The Bacchae is still more horrible and horrifying.

Part of it is the plot itself: the god Dionysus, son of Zeus and Semele, goes to Thebes to prove his power and punish the city, including his own aunts and his cousin Pentheus, for denying his divinity. All the women of the city run around in a frenzy caused by Dionysus, destroying all and ripping animals to shreds. 

“MESSENGER […] Great uddered kine then hadst thou seen 

Bellowing in sword-like hands that cleave and tear, 

A live steer riven asunder, and the air 

Tossed with rent ribs or limbs of cloven tread. 

And flesh upon the branches, and a red

Rain from the deep green pines. Yea, bulls of pride, 

Horns swift to rage, were fronted and aside 

Flung stumbling, by those multitudinous hands

Dragged pitilessly…” 

(translated by Gilbert Murray) 

Together with other crazed women, Agave tears apart the limbs of her own son Pentheus and holds his head as a trophy.

“CADMUS Thou bearest in thine arms an head—what head?

AGAVE (beginning to tremble, and not looking at what she carries) 

A lion’s—so they all said in the chase. 

CADMUS Turn to it now—’tis no longer toil—and gaze.

AGAVE Ah! What is this? What am I carrying here? 

CADMUS Look upon it full, till all be clear! 

AGAVE I see… most deadly pain! Oh, woe is me!” 

It is an unbearable scene. 

But The Bacchae is particularly gruesome and horrible because it makes us ask: what’s the point of all this? What are we to make of all this cruelty and violence? 

Kenneth McLeish for example says in A Guide to Greek Theatre and Drama: 

“How do mortals come to terms with the presence of God in their lives—particularly when God is, or seems to them to be, capricious, dangerous and uncompromising? In this play Dionysos demands submission in exchange for unimaginable ecstasy. But his cult, at least in human terms, is blood-crazed and outlandish.”

It is especially bizarre and disturbing when we consider that all these Greek plays were performed at the Dionysian Festival. 

2/ In a way, the play is about the war between two tyrants, but what can a mortal do against the power of a god? 

3/ Himadri pointed out: 

“Dionysus goes further, and persuades Pentheus – who had, at his first appearance, been so full of macho swagger – to dress as a woman, so he could blend in with the other members of the Dionysian cult. The reference here is clearly to Aristophanes’ play Women of Thesmophoria (a play in which Euripides himself appears as a character), in which a man dresses as a woman in order to infiltrate an all-female society; but where the effect there had been comic, here, it is grotesque. It is quite common for comedies to appropriate elements of tragic drama, and then to parody the tragic by depicting these borrowed elements in an absurd manner; but here, Euripides reverses the process: he borrows from a comedy to add to his tragedy an extra layer of horror. Pentheus, dressed absurdly as a woman, follows his own prurient inclinations towards his own grisly death. Dionysus merely helped facilitate the process.”

I didn’t know this, obviously, as I haven’t read Aristophanes. 

Both Tom (Wuthering Expectations blog) and Himadri (Argumentative Old Git blog) wrote about the meta-theatre aspect of the play. I can’t help noticing the parallels and contrasts between The Tempest, believed to be the last play Shakespeare wrote alone, and The Bacchae, Euripides’s last play and performed shortly after his death: Prospero and Dionysus start with a long speech explaining the past and their intentions; they are both akin to a playwright/ theatre director, moving things around, orchestrating the plot; but The Tempest is about reconciliation and seen as a farewell to the stage whereas The Bacchae is about the god of drama causing gruesome violence, in a cool, sociopathic way. 

“DIONYSUS Yet cravest thou such 

A sight as would much grieve thee?”

The same line, in John Davie’s translation, is “Would you really like to see what gives you pain?”. 

That’s an interesting question, is it not? Why do we watch awful things onstage (or onscreen)? 

I can’t say I understand Euripides’s play, but it’s gripping, powerful, and disturbing.