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Euripides' Bacchae The God in the Play: Euripides’ Bacchae HEATHER SEBO (the Democratic Assembly) didn’t meet, legal proceedings were halted, and prisoners were released from prison. Even though Dionysos is the god of drama and all the dramatic festivals in Attica were held Students need to be aware of the intensity and in his honour, the Bacchae is the only surviv- spectacle of the City Dionysia, its powerful ing play about the god himself, his birth, his religious and civic ritual meanings and the story, his music, the nature of his divinity. It is lavishness of the theatrical productions; the true that he appears onstage as a character in rich costuming, the crafting of masks, the Aristophanes’ Frogs. But Frogs is about drama long period of rehearsals and preparation for and dramatic poetry rather than about the god plays that were usually given only a single himself. And although the gods often change performance. They need to be aware of the their form and appear as mortals in the Ho- magnificent dawn procession that escorted meric poems – think of Athene in the Odyssey – the god’s statue along with the omnipresent the Bacchae is the only extant play where a god phalloi to the theatre and opened the city to the takes on the appearance/guise of a mortal, as power of the god. They should know that the he says in the play’s opening lines, ‘I am here, dramatic performances were been preceded a god in mortal form’ (4-5). In the Bacchae, the by a display of tribute from Athens’ allies, the god of theatre appears at his own festival in honouring of distinguished citizens and a kind costume and in character. of passing out parade of boys whose fathers had died fighting for Athens. Finally, before He is primarily a fertility god, the raw force the competitions began, a pig was sacrificed, of life in the world, the creative force that, as its corpse carried around the performance Dylan Thomas put it, ‘through the green fuse space and libations of wine were poured for drives the flower’.1 But Dionysos is also the de- the god. So, in this heightened atmosphere, structive power of nature, of instinct, savagery, with the heavy smell of wine and slaughter in pain, and death. He is a complicated, danger- the air, seated under the brilliant Athenian ous figure, an outsider to the Olympians, the sky, with a view all the way to Piraeus, the last to be accepted as one of the twelve and he audience would have waited for the actors to breaks all the rules because he has a mortal enter and begin speaking. The trilogy, with the mother. His association with the nature, the Bacchae as the final play following Iphigenia at vine, wine and with theatre are manifestations Aulis and the lost Alcmaeon in Corinth, won first of his persona as a god of altered, alternative prize in 405 BCE, a year before Athens fell to states of consciousness and ekstasis (standing Sparta. outside yourself). In Shakespeare’s As You Like It, the character Attic festivals honouring Dionysos began in Jacques compares the world to a stage and deep winter and the culmination of the cycle human beings to actors who must play their was the great drama festival, the City Dionysia allotted parts and then are gone. From this in the month of Elaphebolion (‘Deer Hunt’) in perspective, we are condemned to live the early Spring (late March early April), a time script of the particular performance in which when sailing was good and visitors could come we find ourselves: to Athens from all over the Greek world. All the world’s a stage, The City Dionysia ran for seven days (two days And all the men and women merely of preliminaries); during this time, the Ekklesia players. Act-II, Scene-VII. 1 Dylan Thomas’ poem by this name was published in his first book,18 Poems, in 1934. 28 29 Iris | Journal of the Classical Association of Victoria | New Series | Volume 28 | 2015 In Euripides’ Bacchae the comparison works thyrsus (a fennel stalk wound with ivy with a in the opposite way. In the Bacchae, the stage pine cone fixed to the end). Unlike the chorus is like life, the stage shows us the world more of Bacchantes that have followed Dionysos clearly, more truthfully, stripped to essentials. across Asia, the daughters of Cadmus and the The means by which theatre communicates: women of Thebes have chosen neither their illusion, poetry, disguise, transformation, costume nor their role. It is obvious right from shifting identities, and its representation of the the beginning of the play that to refuse the world in terms of irreconcilable contradictions, god inevitably leads to madness. Sometimes are a true expression of the nature of things. madness comes simply from proximity to the In the Bacchae, the stage is nothing less than god. Even though they have committed no the vehicle of divine epiphany, the medium offence, Dionysos has included the womenfolk by which a god reveals himself.2 Dionysos of Thebes in the madness inflicted on Semele’s is principle actor, subject and director of sisters. the whole performance. He determines all the elements of costume, music, poetry, Dionysos also has his cousin Pentheus to deal dance, speech, and plot. He is omnipresent. with. Pentheus is a novice who has recently Characters are free to choose their fate, but been made king of Thebes by his grandfather the framework for their choice, the reality of Cadmus’ abdication. As yet untried, Pentheus the world in which they must choose, and the is out to prove himself. He has taken upon consequences of that choice, are determined himself the role of tragic tyrant and has by the god. outlawed Dionysos’ worship. So now we know the plot, the script, and have some idea of The gods are always involved in fate and destiny what the outcome will be, if not its extremity but never so directly or so instrumentally or of horror. The city of Thebes will experience so autocratically as Dionysos in the Bacchae. initiation into Dionysian ‘otherness’, into a Everything that happens in the play’s present realm of metamorphosis, illusion, shifting action is a direct result of Dionysos’ intevention identities, creativity, compulsions and the and direction. unconscious. He is also Dionysos the liberator. In the prologue, Dionysos explains to the Dionysos stage-manages every detail of the audience that he is a god in disguise. He has performance. He dresses his characters in assumed human form for his own purposes in costumes that blend, blur and bend all the order to vindicate his mother Semele and, in categories of gender, age, species and culture: an interesting paradox, to reveal his divinity. god with mortal, man with woman, age with The audience must understand that he is a god, youth, human with animal, Asiatic with Greek. but a man for those paticipating in the drama. The Theban women and Semele’s sisters are This in itself calls attention to the illusory dressed in animal skins, the old men Cadmus nature of theatre. The audience will be seeing and Tiresias in the clothes of young female a theatrical illusion, but it will also be a vehicle maenads. At a crucial moment, Dionysos of divine epiphany. Dionysos explains that his literally assumes the role of wardrobe master aunts have denied his divinity by insisting that as he dresses Pentheus in female costume, Semele lied about Zeus being her lover. As a arranges his hair and coaches him in the consequence, he has stung, not only his aunts deportment of a bacchante, the daughters of Cadmus, but all the women of Thebes, with ecstatic madness. The women, I will dress you myself … but only the women, wander on Mt. Kithairon On your head I shall set a wig with dressed in fawn skins, armed with his ritual long curls… a robe to your feet and a hair band for your head (827, 830, 831). 2 Foley (1980),108. 30 Iris | Journal of the Classical Association of Victoria | New Series | Volume 28 | 2015 The God in the Play: Euripides’ Bacchae You must lift [your thyrsus] in your Do not be so sure that force has right hand to keep time with your mastery over men; do not mistake right foot. (926-33, 943). for wisdom the fantasies of your sick mind. Welcome the god, offer him Dionysos gets the play underway by instructing libations; crown your head and join his followers how to perform the parodos. They the Bacchic rites. must begin drumming (on the primal drum passed down from the Cretan Korybantes to Despite the emphatic denial from everyone in Rhea, 59, 120-28) and surround the palace a position to know, Pentheus persists in the idée so that the whole of Thebes can see and hear fixe that the women are drunkenly lascivious.3 them. From now on, this choral drumming Right from his first entrance, Pentheus is in in various metres and at various levels of the grip of an obsession that leads him into audibility and intrusiveness, will accompany escalating violence in his desire to control, the action. Pentheus obviously finds them stamp out and eradicate what he sees as an disturbing but is unable to silence them infection and pollution. In effect, Pentheus’ (515). The parodos reproduces the form and illness inevitably entails a denial of, and modality of a traditional hymn, it tells about opposition to, the god. Even before he has the birth of the god, it invites the Thebans to met him, Pentheus regards the newly arrived join in his worship and celebrates his power to teacher of Dionysiac mysteries as criminal and bring liberation and ecstasy: the claim that Dionysos is a god as a personal affront to himself: ‘Whoever he is, do not these O Thebes who nourished Semele! insults deserve a terrible death by hanging?’ Garland your hair with ivy, with red berries and bryony, Pentheus tells us that he has already imprisoned with sprigs of oak and fir.
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