Pentheus dressed

The priest steps to the door and calls. O eye that craves sights you must not see, O heart athirst for what cannot slake — Pentheus, come forth and be seen. The king walks out. He is in the costume the priest described — long linen robe falling to the feet, dappled fawn-skin over it, wig of long curls beneath a snood, wand in his hand. He is also, visibly, no longer in his right mind. The sun, he says, shines double in the sky, and Thebes double, and the seven-gated wall. And is that a wild bull waiting in front of him; there are horns on the priest's brow.

The dressing scene is staged with strange domestic care. Pentheus asks how he looks: do I stand like Ino, like my mother Agave. The priest, gently — when I look at you it seems I see their very selves — leans in to fix a lock of hair that has come loose, smooths the sash, corrects the way the gown is falling. Pentheus boasts that he could lift Cithaeron on his shoulders; the priest agrees. Pentheus thinks of bringing down the temples of Pan, then catches himself — force is not the right thing for women. He will lie hidden in the pine-thickets.

Pentheus is now eager. He wants to be borne home in triumph and his mother's hands to share in carrying him. He goes off toward the mountain, led by the priest. Alone for a moment, Dionysus drops the priest's voice. Fell, fell are you, he says, and to a doom so fell you walk that your name from south to north shall shine, a sign forever. He calls on Agave and her sisters to meet this proud prince at his ordeal. Then he follows Pentheus offstage.