For those audience members requiring further priming to recognise the metatheatrical invitation issued by the prologue, a further prompt soon emerges as Dionysus directs the chorus of Lydian maenads (female followers of Dionysus) on how to perform their parodos (choreographed entry song). Euripides could depend on the audience’s experience of previous performances that had established this trope, ensuring that they were alert to the cue (see, for example, Dicaeopolis in Aristophanes’ Acharnians). the characters in the playworld), Dionysus invites the external audience (in the theatre) to reflect on the nature of acting. By ‘playing the part’ of the priest for the internal audience (i.e.

Dionysus delivers the prologue and explicitly references his use of disguise. The metatheatrical signals are prominent from the play’s opening.

It is now well established in scholarship that Euripides presents Dionysus as god of drama directing a ‘play-within-a-play’ in the Bacchae ending with Pentheus’ demise. Pentheus’ undoing is carefully construed to offer a display of this particular god’s power. Yet this ending does not simply present the demonstration of divine power in general. 430-420 BC, red-figure ceramic - Princeton University Art Museum (Wikimedia Commons) Stamnos with maenads and totem of Dionysos, attributed to the Dinos Painter, Attic, c. While there are textual difficulties to the end of the play (the surviving manuscript suffers from a significant lacuna (gap) before Dionysus’ final epiphany), it is nevertheless clear from this ending that the tragedy’s dramatic force comes from Pentheus’ complete destruction and its accompanying display of divine power. Dionysus responds by coolly announcing that his father Zeus had agreed to this long ago. Appearing triumphantly on the mechane (stage crane), he shows no remorse when his grandfather, Cadmus, chastises him for being like a mortal in his rage. He informs the audience of this intention in the prologue and by the end the god has accomplished his plan in spectacular fashion. Enraged by this, Dionysus sets out to punish Thebes.

Pentheus, Dionysus’ cousin, has denied his kinsman’s divinity and outspokenly rejected his worship. The cause of all this is Dionysus, god of wine and theatre. At the outset he is the powerful ruler of Thebes but by the end his dismembered body parts are being carried onto stage. First produced in fifth-century Athens, most likely in 405 BC, this tragedy shows its protagonist Pentheus experience a complete peripeteia (reversal of fortune). Rosie Wyles on a late masterpiece by Euripides.Įuripides’ Bacchae offers a devastating dramatization of the power of the gods.

The bacchae