About the work
The Bacchae (Die Bakchen) is one of the last and most haunting tragedies by the Greek poet Euripides, written around 405 BC and premiered posthumously after his death. The work is considered a high point of ancient theatre and depicts the arrival of the god Dionysus in Thebes. With tremendous force, Euripides explores the tension between intoxicating ecstasy and civic order, between divine power and human reason. To this day the play remains among the most performed and most interpreted tragedies in world literature.
Plot
The god Dionysus returns, disguised as a stranger, to his birthplace Thebes to establish his cult and avenge the denial of his divinity. The young king Pentheus opposes the ecstatic revels of the Bacchae – the frenzied female followers of the god – and has Dionysus arrested. But the god ensnares him, awakens his curiosity and lures him, dressed as a woman, into the mountains to spy on the maenads. There Pentheus is mistaken for a wild animal by the frenzied women, led by his own mother Agave, and torn apart. Only too late does Agave realise that she holds her own son's head in her hands.
Cultural significance
The Bacchae is a key work about the destructive yet liberating power of ecstasy and the consequences of hubris towards the divine. For more than two millennia the tragedy has fascinated theatre-makers, philosophers and psychologists and is staged anew again and again into the present day. As a reflection on instinct, power, gender and collective ecstasy, it possesses a timeless relevance and belongs to the core repertoire of world theatre.