Bacchae: Euripides Paperback – 4 Feb. 2016

A few months ago I read Robin Robertson’s translation of Euripides’ Medea. That inspired me to read his translation of the equally brilliant Bacchae. This was Euripides’ last play, produced posthumously by his presumed son in 405BCE. It won first prize at that year’s City Dionysia.This edition has a useful introduction that explains how the play would have been produced and explores the mythological background and the themes of the play.The blurb on the back says that this translation is “ripe for theatrical delivery” but I’m not aware of any production in my part of the world (London) for years, and I suspect that poor old Euripides would be no-platformed these days. Why? Well a plot summary reads: man dresses up in women’s clothes, invades a women-only space and gets torn to pieces by his mother and her sisters. His mother then comes onstage with her son’s head on the end of a stick.This is a complex play that has defied simple interpretations for nearly two and a half thousand years. It has patriarchy, feminism, xenophobia, gender fluidity and much much more. Pentheus, the man who dresses up as a woman, starts out as the macho, traditionalist king of Thebes who finds himself beguiled by an annoyingly attractive man/god, Dionysus, who happens to be his cousin. Dionysus, with his company of “Asian women” (the Chorus), plans to introduce his cult into Pentheus’ kingdom. Pentheus’ mother, Agave, and her two sisters are the first converts. They lure the women of Thebes away from their looms and up into the mountains where they drink vast quantities of wine, dance and indulge in frenzied orgies in honour of Dionysus. When Pentheus decides to get the women back under manners he first calls for his armour. It is Dionysus who persuades him that he would be better off wearing a dress. Pentheus then goes the whole hog and puts on a wig and a headdress to boot. He then parades through the city before going for a hike up the mountain….and that’s where the tragedy unfolds……Agave marching onstage with her son’s head on a stick is fantastic theatre. There’s nothing like it in Shakespeare. What does it mean? The overthrow of male tyranny? Matriarchy gone mad? The triumph of liberalism over traditional values? You decide.

I firmly believe that Bacchae has a lot to teach us, as we might be going through a period not too dissimilar from that which Athens underwent after its defeat in the Peloponnesian War. It was in the decadent period that followed that Dionysus makes his appearance once again, and it was only through the horrors of the World Wars (European Civil Wars perhaps?) that he returned, with his drug-infused madness during the 60s. Is our destiny similar to that of Thebes?I really love the package of this Vintage Classis. The snake was one of Dionysus symbols, and the introduction is adequate to kick start the story.

Great read.

Good quality and arrived in time.