The Bacchae Tone

Comic, Tragic

The Bacchae is amazing in that for all tragic woe it presents, it's still got tons of laughs. Old Cadmus and Tiresias doing a clumsy jig, the beguiled King Pentheus prancing around in women's clothes – all this in a play with ritual dismemberment and a mother parading through town with her own son's head in her hand. The blending of comic and tragic is an amazing innovation by Euripides. He really was a true dramatic pioneer.