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The Bacchae ( / Bakchai; also known as The Bacchantes) is an ancient Greek
Classical Greece

Classical Greece was a culture that was highly advanced and which heavilly influenced the cultures of Ancient Rome and much of the Western World....
 tragedy
Tragedy

Tragedy is a form of The arts based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific Poetic tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western culture....
 by the Athenian
Classical Athens

The city of Athens during classical antiquity was a notable polis of Attica, Ancient Greece, leading the Delian League in the Peloponnesian War against Sparta and the Peloponnesian League....
 playwright
Playwright

A playwright, also known as a dramatist, is a person who writes dramatic literature or drama. These works may be written specifically to be performed by actors or they may be closet dramas or literary works written using dramatic forms but not meant for performance....
 Euripides
Euripides

Euripides was the last of the three great tragedy of classical Athens . Ancient scholars thought that Euripides had written ninety-five plays, although four of those were probably written by Critias....
. It premiered posthumously at the Theatre of Dionysus
Theatre of Dionysus

The Theatre of Dionysus was a major Theatre of ancient Greece in ancient Greece, built at the foot of the Athens Acropolis, Athens and forming part of the temenos of "Dionysus Eleuthereus" ....
 in 405 BCE as part of a tetralogy
Tetralogy

A tetralogy is a compound work that is made up of four distinct works. Compare to a trilogy; made up of three works.The name comes from the Attica theater, where tetralogies were meant to be played in one sitting at the Dionysia....
 that also included Iphigeneia at Aulis
Iphigeneia at Aulis

Iphigenia at Aulis is the last extant work of the playwright Euripides. Written between 408, after the Orestes, and 406 BC, the date of Euripides' death, the play was first produced the following year by his son or nephew, Euripides the Younger, and won the first place at the Athenian city Dionysia....
, and which Euripides' son or nephew probably directed. It won first prize in the City Dionysia festival competition
Dionysia

The Dionysia was a large religious festival in ancient Athens in honor of the god Dionysus, the central event of which was the performance of tragedy and, since 487 BC, Greek comedy....
.

The tragedy is based on the mythological
Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
 story of King Pentheus
Pentheus

In Greek mythology, Pentheus was a king of Thebes, Greece, son of the strongest of the Spartes, Echion, and of Agave , daughter of Cadmus, the founder of Thebes, and the goddess Harmonia....
 of Thebes and his mother Agavë
Agave (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Agave was the daughter of Cadmus, the king and founder of the city of Thebes, Greece, and of the goddess Harmonia . Her sisters were Autono?, Ino and Semele....
, and their punishment by the god Dionysus
Dionysus

In classical mythology, Dionysus or Dionysos , is the God of wine, the inspirer of ritual madness and ecstasy, and a major figure of Greek mythology, and one of the twelve Olympians, among whom Greek mythology treated Dionysus as a late arrival....
 (who is Pentheus' cousin) for refusing to worship him.

Dionysus
Dionysus

In classical mythology, Dionysus or Dionysos , is the God of wine, the inspirer of ritual madness and ecstasy, and a major figure of Greek mythology, and one of the twelve Olympians, among whom Greek mythology treated Dionysus as a late arrival....
 in Euripides' tale is a young god, angry that his mortal family, the royal house of Cadmus
Cadmus

Cadmus or Kadmos , in Greek mythology mythology, was a Phoenician prince, the son of Agenor and the brother of Phoenix , Cilix and Europa ....
, has denied him a place of honor as a deity.






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The Bacchae ( / Bakchai; also known as The Bacchantes) is an ancient Greek
Classical Greece

Classical Greece was a culture that was highly advanced and which heavilly influenced the cultures of Ancient Rome and much of the Western World....
 tragedy
Tragedy

Tragedy is a form of The arts based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific Poetic tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western culture....
 by the Athenian
Classical Athens

The city of Athens during classical antiquity was a notable polis of Attica, Ancient Greece, leading the Delian League in the Peloponnesian War against Sparta and the Peloponnesian League....
 playwright
Playwright

A playwright, also known as a dramatist, is a person who writes dramatic literature or drama. These works may be written specifically to be performed by actors or they may be closet dramas or literary works written using dramatic forms but not meant for performance....
 Euripides
Euripides

Euripides was the last of the three great tragedy of classical Athens . Ancient scholars thought that Euripides had written ninety-five plays, although four of those were probably written by Critias....
. It premiered posthumously at the Theatre of Dionysus
Theatre of Dionysus

The Theatre of Dionysus was a major Theatre of ancient Greece in ancient Greece, built at the foot of the Athens Acropolis, Athens and forming part of the temenos of "Dionysus Eleuthereus" ....
 in 405 BCE as part of a tetralogy
Tetralogy

A tetralogy is a compound work that is made up of four distinct works. Compare to a trilogy; made up of three works.The name comes from the Attica theater, where tetralogies were meant to be played in one sitting at the Dionysia....
 that also included Iphigeneia at Aulis
Iphigeneia at Aulis

Iphigenia at Aulis is the last extant work of the playwright Euripides. Written between 408, after the Orestes, and 406 BC, the date of Euripides' death, the play was first produced the following year by his son or nephew, Euripides the Younger, and won the first place at the Athenian city Dionysia....
, and which Euripides' son or nephew probably directed. It won first prize in the City Dionysia festival competition
Dionysia

The Dionysia was a large religious festival in ancient Athens in honor of the god Dionysus, the central event of which was the performance of tragedy and, since 487 BC, Greek comedy....
.

The tragedy is based on the mythological
Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
 story of King Pentheus
Pentheus

In Greek mythology, Pentheus was a king of Thebes, Greece, son of the strongest of the Spartes, Echion, and of Agave , daughter of Cadmus, the founder of Thebes, and the goddess Harmonia....
 of Thebes and his mother Agavë
Agave (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Agave was the daughter of Cadmus, the king and founder of the city of Thebes, Greece, and of the goddess Harmonia . Her sisters were Autono?, Ino and Semele....
, and their punishment by the god Dionysus
Dionysus

In classical mythology, Dionysus or Dionysos , is the God of wine, the inspirer of ritual madness and ecstasy, and a major figure of Greek mythology, and one of the twelve Olympians, among whom Greek mythology treated Dionysus as a late arrival....
 (who is Pentheus' cousin) for refusing to worship him.

Background

The Dionysus
Dionysus

In classical mythology, Dionysus or Dionysos , is the God of wine, the inspirer of ritual madness and ecstasy, and a major figure of Greek mythology, and one of the twelve Olympians, among whom Greek mythology treated Dionysus as a late arrival....
 in Euripides' tale is a young god, angry that his mortal family, the royal house of Cadmus
Cadmus

Cadmus or Kadmos , in Greek mythology mythology, was a Phoenician prince, the son of Agenor and the brother of Phoenix , Cilix and Europa ....
, has denied him a place of honor as a deity. His mother, Semele
Semele

File:Gustave Moreau 004.jpgIn Greek mythology, Semele, daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia , was the mortal mother of Dionysus by Zeus in one of his many origin myths....
, was a mistress of Zeus
Zeus

Zeus in Greek mythology is the king of the gods, the ruler of Mount Olympus and the god of the sky father and List of thunder gods. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull , and oak....
, and while pregnant, she was killed because she looked upon Zeus in his divine form. Most of Semele's family, however, including her sister Agave
Agave (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Agave was the daughter of Cadmus, the king and founder of the city of Thebes, Greece, and of the goddess Harmonia . Her sisters were Autono?, Ino and Semele....
, refuse to believe that Dionysus is the son of Zeus, and the young god is spurned in his home. He has traveled throughout Asia
Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent. It covers 8.6% of the Earth's total surface area and, with over 4 billion people, it contains more than 60% of the world's current human population....
 and other foreign lands, gathering a cult of female worshippers (Bacchantes), and at the start of the play has returned to take revenge on the house of Cadmus, disguised as a blond stranger. He has driven the women of Thebes, including his aunts, into an ecstatic frenzy, sending them dancing and hunting on Mount Cithaeron, much to the horror of their families. Complicating matters, his cousin, the young king Pentheus
Pentheus

In Greek mythology, Pentheus was a king of Thebes, Greece, son of the strongest of the Spartes, Echion, and of Agave , daughter of Cadmus, the founder of Thebes, and the goddess Harmonia....
, has declared a ban on the worship of Dionysus throughout Thebes.

Plot

Dionysus first comes on stage to tell the audience who he is and why he decided to come to Thebes. He explains the story of his birth, how his mother Semele had enamoured the god Zeus, who had come down from Mount Olympus to lie with her. She becomes pregnant with a divine son; however none of her family believe her, thinking the illicit pregnancy of the more usual sort. Hera
Hera

In the Twelve Olympians of classical Greek Mythology, Hera or Here was the wife and older sister of Zeus. Her chief function was as goddess of women and marriage....
, angry at her husband Zeus' betrayal, convinces Semele to ask Zeus to appear to her in his true form. Zeus appears to Semele as a lightning bolt and kills her instantly. At the moment of her death however, Hermes
Hermes

Hermes is the messenger of the gods in Greek mythology. An Twelve Olympians, he is also the patron of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, of thieves and road travelers, of orators and wit, of literature and poets, of athletics, of weights and measures, of invention, of general commerce, and of the cunni...
 swoops down and saves the unborn Dionysus. To hide the baby from Hera, Zeus has the fetus sewn up in his thigh until the baby is grown. However, Semele's family—her sisters Agave, Autonoe
Autonoe

In Greek mythology, Autono? was a daughter of Cadmus, founder of Thebes, Greece, and the goddess Harmonia . She was the wife of Aristaeus and mother of Actaeon and possibly Macris....
, and Ino
Ino (Greek mythology)

In Greek mythology Ino was a mortal queen of Thebes , the second wife of Athamas, the mother of Learches and Melicertes, daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia and stepmother of Phrixus and Helle ....
, and her father, Cadmus—still believe that Semele blasphemously lied about the identity of the baby's father and that she died as a result. Dionysus comes to Thebes to vindicate his mother Semele.

The old men Cadmus and Tiresias
Tiresias

In Greek mythology, Tiresias was a blind prophet of Thebes , famous for being transformed into a woman for seven years. He was the son of the shepherd Everes and the nymph Chariclo; Tiresias participated in fully seven generations at Thebes, beginning as advisor to Cadmus himself....
, though not under the same spell as the Theban women (who include Cadmus' daughters Ino, Autonoe and Agave, Pentheus' mother), have become enamored of the Bacchic rituals and are about to go out celebrating when Pentheus returns to the city and finds them dressed in festive garb. He scolds them harshly and orders his soldiers to arrest anyone else engaging in Dionysian worship.

The guards return with Dionysus himself, disguised as his priest and the leader of the Asian maenads. Pentheus questions him, still not believing that Dionysus is a god. However, his questions reveal that he is deeply interested in the Dionysiac rites, which the stranger refuses to reveal fully to him. This greatly angers Pentheus, who has Dionysus locked up. However, being a god, he is quickly able to break free and creates more havoc, razing the palace of Pentheus to the ground in a giant earthquake and fire. Word arrives via a herdsman that the Bacchae on Cithaeron are behaving especially strangely and performing incredible feats, putting snakes in their hair in reverie of their god, suckling wild wolves and gazelle, and making wine, milk, honey and water spring up from the ground. He tells that when they tried to capture the women, the women descended on a herd of cows, ripping them to shreds with their bare hands (Sparagmos
Sparagmos

Sparagmos refers to an ancient Dionysian ritual in which a living animal, or sometimes even a human being, would be sacrificed by being dismembered, by the tearing apart of limbs from the body....
). Those guards who attacked the women were unable to harm them with their weapons, while the women could defeat them with only sticks. Dionysus wishes to punish Pentheus for not worshipping him or paying him libations. He uses Pentheus' clear desire to see the ecstatic women to convince the king to dress as a female Maenad to avoid detection and go to the rites, as is shown in the dialogue:
Stranger: Ah! Would you like to see them in their gatherings upon the mountain?
Pentheus: Very much. Ay, and pay uncounted gold for the pleasure.
Stranger: Why have you conceived so strong a desire?
Pentheus: Though it would pain me to see them drunk with wine-
Stranger: Yet you would like to see them, pain and all.


Dionysus dresses Pentheus as a woman and gives him a thyrsus
Thyrsus

In Greek mythology, a thyrsus was a staff of ferula covered with ivy vines and leaves, sometimes wound with taeniae and always topped with a pine conifer cone....
 and fawn skins, then leads him out of the house. Pentheus begins to see double, perceiving two Thebes and two bulls (Dionysus often took the form of a bull) leading him.

The god's vengeance soon turns from mere humiliation to murder. A messenger arrives at the palace to report that once they reached Cithaeron, Pentheus wanted to climb up an evergreen tree to get a better view of the Bacchants. The blonde stranger used his divine power to bend the tall tree and place the king at its highest branches. However, once he was safely at the top, Dionysus called out to his followers and showed the man sitting atop the tree. This, of course, drove the Bacchants wild, and they tore the trapped Pentheus down and ripped his body apart piece by piece.

After the messenger has relayed this news, Pentheus' mother, Agave, arrives carrying the head of her son which she herself had pulled off. In her possessed state she believed it was the head of a mountain lion; she proudly displays it to her father, eager to show off her successful hunt, and how brave she had been. She is confused when Cadmus does not delight in her trophy, his face contorting in horror. By that time, however, Dionysus' possession is beginning to wear off, and as Cadmus reels from the horror of his grandson's death, Agave slowly realizes what she has done. The family is destroyed, with Agave and her sisters sent into exile. Dionysus, in a final act of revenge, returns briefly to excoriate his family one more time for their impiety. Cadmus and his wife Harmonia
Harmonia (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Harmonia is the immortal goddess of harmony and concord. Her Rome counterpart is Concordia , and her Greek opposite is Eris , whose Roman counterpart is Discordia....
 are turned into snakes. Tiresias, the old, blind Theban prophet, is the only one not to suffer.

Modern interpretations

Binary divisions of the Self and the Other: In the Bacchae, Dionysus is the protagonist; furthermore, he embodies aspects of both, the Self( for example, part Greek god and Male) and the Other (of Asian descent and effeminate characteristics). When Petheus unknowingly talks of Dionysus, he describes him as ‘some Asian foreigner, masquerading as a priest…too womanish to be a proper man’. So he insults his ethnicity, appearance, manliness and even his higher godly status.

The Bacchae can be said to enact a clash between two opposing ethnic groups; Greek and Asian. Cadmus tries to dissuade Pentheus from his quest into the unknown, urging him to stray within the safe sanctuary that is home: ‘Dwell within the temple of our beliefs, not in the wilderness that lies beyond’. Pentheus is adamant on hunting the imposter, who is actually Dionysis in disguise, declaring: ‘He’ll soon regret the day he brought his filthy foreign practices to our city in the West’. He later interrogates Dionysus: ‘Where are you from?’; ‘Why then bring your practises to my home?’ These foreign practises are especially threatening as they stand to corrupt all the women folk, sending them into frenzied worship practises; Pentheus: ‘…this foreigner who dares infect our women’s minds and bodies and our beds’. Bacchae is an occasion when some women revolted against male authority and broke the bonds tying them to their clearly (narrowly) defined domestic sphere within a patriarchal society.

The Theatre as the Other: To be gazed upon by the mask of Dionysus is to cross the threshold between sanity and madness, between the real and unreal. When an actor put on his mask at the festival of Dionysus he marked an eruption into the heart of public life of a real of being totally alien to the everyday world of the city. In Bacchai, an actor must assume the mask of Dionysus himself; as the god himself is the protagonist. Both actors and audiences must put their fate with Dionysus and allow themselves to be taken into the imaginative world of ‘the other’ in theatrical illusion. When Dionysus goes against such accepted polarisations, he is questioning human perceptions of reality and what we see in the world; namely, a fundamentally empirical method is a weak tool, when compared to the unlimited illusion of the theatre. He subverts these binaries and turns hierarchy on its head –he allows women to question the supremacy of men, but then punishes them by sending them mad-he contradicts himself, as he himself is contradictory in his nature (he is symbolised by giant phalluses but his masculinity is compromised by his long hair, delicate beauty and decorative clothing; he is worshiped in the wild hillside but is central to an important and organised cult in the heart of the city; he blurs the division between comedy and tragedy).

Dramatic versions


Joe Orton
Joe Orton

Joe Orton , born John Kingsley Orton, was an England playwright.In a short but prolific career lasting from 1964 until his death, he shocked, outraged and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedy....
's play The Erpingham Camp (television broadcast 27 June 1966; opened at the Royal Court Theatre
Royal Court Theatre

The Royal Court Theatre is a West End Theatre#London's non-commercial theatres theatre on Sloane Square, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea....
 on 6 June 1967) relocates The Bacchae to a British Butlin's
Butlins

Butlin's Holiday Camps, presently known by the trademark Butlins, were founded by Billy Butlin to provide economical holidays in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland....
-style holiday camp
Holiday camp

Holiday camp, in United Kingdom, generally refers to a resort with a boundary that includes lodging, entertainment and other facilities.As distinct from camping, accommodation typically consisted of chalets - rather like small flats/apartments arranged in blocks of three or four storeys, and terraces of ten to twenty long....
. An author's note at the beginning of the text of the play states that: "[n]o attempt must be made to reproduce the various locales in a naturalistic
Naturalism (theatre)

Naturalism is a Literary movement in European drama and theatre that developed in the Nineteenth-century theatre and Twentieth-century theatre centuries....
 manner. A small, permanent set of Erpingham's office is set on a high level. The rest of the stage is an unlocalised area. Changes of scene are suggested by lighting and banners after the manner of the Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Company

The Royal Shakespeare Company is a British theatre company. Located primarily at Stratford-upon-Avon, with bases also in London and Theatre Royal, Newcastle, it is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly-funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal National Theatre....
's productions of Shakespeare
William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English people poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's preeminent dramatist....
's histories
Shakespearean history

Traditionally, the Play of William Shakespeare have been grouped into three categories: Shakespearean tragedy, Shakespearean comedies, and histories....
."

In 1970 Brian de Palma
Brian De Palma

Brian De Palma is an US film director. In a career spanning over forty years, he is probably best known for his suspense and thriller films, including such box office successes as Carrie , Dressed to Kill , Scarface , The Untouchables , and Mission: Impossible ....
 filmed Richard Schechner
Richard Schechner

Richard Schechner is a University Professor/Professor of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, editor of TDR: The Drama Review, and artistic director of East Coast Artists....
's dramatic re-envisioning of the work, Dionysus in '69, in a converted garage.

Wole Soyinka
Wole Soyinka

Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Soyinka is a Nigerian writer, poet and playwright. Some consider him Africa's most distinguished playwright, as he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986, the first African to be so honoured....
 adapted the play as The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite with the British National Theatre
Royal National Theatre

The Royal National Theatre, London, England, is generally known as the National Theatre and commonly as The National. It is located on the The South Bank in the London Borough of Lambeth, England, immediately east of the southern end of Waterloo Bridge....
 in London in 1972, incorporating a second chorus of slaves to mirror the civil unrest in his native Nigeria
Nigeria

Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federation constitutional republic comprising States of Nigeria and one Federal Capital Territory, Nigeria....
.

Caryl Churchill
Caryl Churchill

Caryl Churchill is an England dramatist known for her use of non-Naturalism techniques and feminist themes. She is acknowledged as a major playwright in the English language and a leading female writer....
 and David Lan
David Lan

David Lan is an England playwright, filmmaker, theatre director and social anthropologist. Born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1952, he emigrated to London in 1972....
 used the play as the basis of their 1986 dance-theatre hybrid A Mouthful of Birds
A Mouthful of Birds

A Mouthful of Birds is a 1986 in literature#New_drama play with dance by Caryl Churchill and David Lan, with choreography by Ian Spink. Drawing its themes from The Bacchae of Euripides, it is a meditation on Spiritual possession, madness and female violence....
.

Brad Mays directed his own adaptation of the play at the Complex in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles

Los ?ngeles is the Capital of the Biob?o Province, in the municipality of the same name, in Regions of Chile VIII , in the center-south of Chile....
 in 1997, where it broke all box office records and was nominated for three LA Weekly Theater Award
LA Weekly Theater Award

LA Weekly Theater Award is an annual critics' award established in 1979, given by the LA Weekly for outstanding achievements in small theatre productions in Southern California....
s : for Best Direction, Best Musical Score and Best Production Design. Because the production featured several scenes with levels of violence and nudity rare for even the most experimental of theatre pieces, it was widely discussed in print, and even videotaped for the Lincoln Center's Billy Rose Collection in NYC. The production was eventually fashioned into an independent feature film
Feature film

In the film industry, a feature film is a film made for initial Film distributor in Movie theater and being the "main attraction" of the screening ....
  which, interestingly, featured Will Shepherd of Richard Schechner
Richard Schechner

Richard Schechner is a University Professor/Professor of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, editor of TDR: The Drama Review, and artistic director of East Coast Artists....
's Dionysus in '69 in the role of Cadmus.

The Bacchae 2.1, a theatrical adaptation set in modern times, was written by Charles Mee
Charles L. Mee

Charles L. Mee is an United States playwright and author. He was born in Barrington, Illinois in 1938. He was stricken with polio in 1953, which he details in his 1999 memoir A Nearly Normal Life....
 and first performed in 1993.

In 2007 David Greig
David Greig (dramatist)

David Greig is a Scottish people playwright and theatre director.Greig was born in Edinburgh in 1969 and was brought up in Nigeria. He studied drama at Bristol University....
 wrote an adaptation of The Bacchae for the National Theatre of Scotland
National Theatre of Scotland

The National Theatre of Scotland was set up in 2004 and launched in February 2006. The creation of a national theatre for Scotland was one of the commitments of the Scottish Executive's National Cultural Strategy....
 starring Alan Cumming
Alan Cumming

Alan Cumming is a Scottish film and stage actor, perhaps best known for his supporting roles as Boris Grishenko in the James Bond film series film GoldenEye, Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler in X2: X-Men United, in Spy Kids as Fegan Floop and on the stage with his Tony Award-winning lead performance as the Emcee in the highly successfu...
 as Dionysus
Dionysus

In classical mythology, Dionysus or Dionysos , is the God of wine, the inspirer of ritual madness and ecstasy, and a major figure of Greek mythology, and one of the twelve Olympians, among whom Greek mythology treated Dionysus as a late arrival....
, with ten soul-singing followers in place of the traditional greek chorus
Greek chorus

The Greek chorus is a group of twelve or fifteen minor actors in tragedy and twenty-four in Ancient Greek comedy plays of classical Athens....
. A critically-praised run at New York
New York

The State of New York is a U.S. state in the Mid-Atlantic States and Northeastern United States regions of the United States and is the nation's List of U.S....
's Lincoln Center Rose Theater followed the show's premiere in Scotland
Scotland

conventional_long_name = ScotlandAlba|common_name= Scotland|image_flag = Flag of Scotland.svg|flag_width = 130px...
.

Luigi Lo Cascio
Luigi Lo Cascio

Luigi Lo Cascio is an Italy actor born 20 October 1967 in Palermo.He won David di Donatello for Best actor for his starring role in I cento passi....
 's multimedial adaptation La Caccia (The Hunt) won the Biglietto d' Oro del Teatro prize in 2008. The free adaptation combines live theatre with animations by Nicola Console and Desideria Rayner's video projections. A revised 2009 version is currently on tour and features original music by Andrea Rocca
Andrea Rocca

Andrea Rocca is an Italy musician and film composer. He first began scoring feature-length films in 1995, with Kaprice Kea's The Hurting ....
 .

Operatic versions


Harry Partch
Harry Partch

File:Harry Partch Institute-6.jpgHarry Partch was an United Statesn composer and musical instrument creator. He was one of the first twentieth-century composers to work extensively and systematically with microtonality scale s, writing much of his music for custom-made instruments that he built himself, tuned in 11-limit just intonation....
 composed an opera based on The Bacchae titled Revelation in the Courthouse Park. It was first performed in 1960, and a recording was released in 1987.

Another opera based on The Bacchae, called The Bassarids
The Bassarids

The Bassarids is an opera in one act and an intermezzo, with music Hans Werner Henze to an English language libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, after Euripides's The Bacchae....
, was composed in 1965 by Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze

Hans Werner Henze is a German composing well known for his left-wing political convictions. He left Germany for Italy in 1953 because of a perceived intolerance towards his politics and homosexuality....
. The libretto was by W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden

Wystan Hugh Auden who signed his works W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet, regarded by many as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century....
 and Chester Kallman
Chester Kallman

Chester Simon Kallman was an United States poet, librettist, and translator, best known for his collaborations with W. H. Auden and Igor Stravinsky....
.

Musical versions


Peter Mills created the musical "The Rockae" using the "The Bacchae" as its foundation. Dionysus, a glamorous rock star in every sense of the word, seeks revenge on those who denied him as a babe. The performance is complete with a swarm of groupie dancers dancing wildly to the electric guitar numbers.

Significant quotations

Dionysus: "It's a wise man's part to practise a smooth-tempered self-control."
Dionysus: "Your [Pentheus'] name points to calamity. It fits you well." (The name "Pentheus" derives from p?????, pénthos, grief)
Messenger: "Dionysus' powers are manifold; he gave to men the vine to cure their sorrows."
Dionysus: "Can you, a mortal, measure your strength against a god?"


Dramatic Structure


In a play that follows a climatic plot construction, Dionysus the Protagonist, instigates the unfolding action by simultaneously emulating the plays author, costume designer, choreographer and artistic director. Helen P. Foley wrote of the links between the importance of Dionysus as the central character and his affect on the plays structure, she writes: "the poet uses the ritual crisis to explore simultaneously god, man, society, and his own tragic art. In this protodrama Dionysus, the god of the theatre, stage-directs the play." At the start of the play, Dionysus gives us the exposition and from which we can highlight the plays central conflict; the invasion of Greece by an Asian religion.

Critical Review

Up until the late nineteenth century The Bacchae's themes were considered far too gruesome to be studied and appreciated. It was Nietzsche's "Birth of Tragedy" in 1872 that reposed the question of Dionysus's relation with the theatre that elevated interest in The Bacchae. In the twentieth century performances of The Bacchae had become quite fashionable, particularly so in the opera due to the dramatic choruses found throughout The Bacchae's story. R.P Winnington-Ingrams review in 1948 praises the work of Euripides, he writes: "On its poetical and dramatic beauties he writes with charm and insight; on more complex themes he shows equal mastery."

Translations

  • Theodore Alois Buckley
    Theodore Alois Buckley

    Theodore Alois William Buckley was a translator of Homer and other classical works.Son of William Richard Buckley of Paddington, London, Great Britain....
    , 1850: prose:
  • Henry Hart Milman
    Henry Hart Milman

    The Very Reverend Henry Hart Milman was an England historian and ecclesiastic.He was born in London, the third son of Sir Francis Milman, 1st Baronet, physician to King George III of Great Britain ....
    , 1865: verse
  • Edward P. Coleridge, 1891: prose:
  • Gilbert Murray
    Gilbert Murray

    George Gilbert Aim? Murray was a United Kingdom classical scholar and public intellectual, with connections in many spheres. He was an outstanding scholar of the language and culture of Ancient Greece, perhaps the leading authority in the first half of the twentieth century....
    , 1911: verse:
  • Arthur S. Way
    Arthur S. Way

    Arthur Sanders Way was an English people classical scholar and poet, born at Dorking. He was educated at Kingswood School, Bath, Somerset, and at Queen's College , Melbourne, where he was afterward fellow....
    , 1912: verse
  • D. W. Lucas, 1930: prose
  • Philip Vellacott, 1954: prose and verse
  • Henry Birkhead, 1957: verse
  • William Arrowsmith
    William Arrowsmith

    William Ayers Arrowsmith was an American classicist. This man of letters was educated at Princeton and Oxford, and was awarded ten honorary degrees....
    , 1958: verse
  • Moses Hadas
    Moses Hadas

    Moses Hadas was an American teacher, one of the leading classics scholars of the twentieth century, and a translator of numerous works.Raised in Atlanta, Georgia in a Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Judaism household, his early studies included rabbinical training; he graduated from Jewish Theological Seminary of America and took his doctorate...
     and John McLean
    John McLean (disambiguation)

    John McLean was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.John McLean may also refer to:* John McLean , Illinois politician and U.S....
    , 1960: prose
  • Geoffrey Kirk
    Geoffrey Kirk

    Geoffrey Stephen Kirk was a British classical scholar. He is known for his books on Ancient Greek literature and mythology.He was educated at Rossall School and Clare College, Cambridge....
    , 1970: prose and verse
  • Robert Bagg
    Robert Bagg

    Robert Bagg is an American poet and translator. He has published several volumes of poetry and has authored critical studies of Sappho and Catallus....
    , 1978: verse (as The Bakkhai)
  • Michael Cacoyannis
    Michael Cacoyannis

    Michael Cacoyannis is a prominent cinema of Greece best-known for his 1964 film Zorba the Greek . Much of his work is rooted in classical texts, especially those of the Tragedy#Greek tragedy Euripides....
    , 1982: verse
  • Matt Neuberg, 1988: verse:
  • Daniel Mark Epstein
    Daniel Mark Epstein

    Daniel Mark Epstein is an American poet, dramatist and biographer.Epstein earned his B.A. from Kenyon College. He has been awarded an NEA Poetry Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Prix de Rome , the Robert Frost Prize, the Emily Clark Balch Prize from The Virginia Quarterly, and an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and...
    , 1998;verse
  • Reginald Gibbons, 2000: verse ISBN=0195125983
  • Ian Johnston, 2003: verse:
  • Colin Teevan
    Colin Teevan

    Colin Teevan is an Ireland playwright, radio dramatist, translator and academic.Teevan has premiered works in the National Theatres of Ireland, Scotland and the Royal National Theatre in London, He has been a regular collaborator of directors Hideki Noda, Peter Hall , and actors Greg Hicks, Clare Higgins and Kathryn Hunter....
    , 2003,: verse (as "Bacchai")
  • George Theodoridis, 2005: prose, full text:
  • Michael Valerie, 2005: verse:
  • Michael Scanlan
    Michael Scanlan

    Father Michael Scanlan is a Roman Catholic Church priest, author, and Chancellor of the Franciscan University of Steubenville.Michael Scanlan was born in Far Rockaway, New York to Vincent M....
    , 2006: verse (La Salle Academy: Providence, RI)


See also

  • Apollonian and Dionysian
    Apollonian and Dionysian

    The Apollonian and Dionysian is a philosophical and literary concept, or dichotomy, based on certain features of ancient Greek mythology. Several Western culture philosophical and literary figures have invoked this dichotomy in critical and creative works, including Plutarch, Carl Jung, Friedrich Nietzsche, Robert A....