Scene 1
The god alone
Dionysus enters alone before the palace of Thebes, in mortal disguise as the priest of his own cult. He names himself: son of Zeus and the dead princess Semele, born from his father's thigh after his mother was struck by lightning. His aunts denied his divine birth; his cousin Pentheus, the young king, has banned his rites. He has driven the women of Thebes — Agave, Ino, Autonoe, every wife and daughter — onto Mount Cithaeron in frenzy. He will deal with Pentheus next. He summons his chorus of eastern women, names what is coming, and walks off to join the rites already happening on the mountain above the city.
Scene 2
The chorus arrives
The Chorus of eastern women, alone on stage, sing the entrance song of Dionysus. They tell the story of his birth from Zeus's thigh, the rites Cybele the Mother first gave their people, the joy of the women on the mountain — milk and wine springing from the rock, the wreath of ivy, the dance that does not stop. They call on Thebes to crown its towers with ivy and join them. They close with one of the most ecstatic lyrics in Greek tragedy: the maenad like a colt running by a river. The song ends with the entrance of the old prophet Tiresias, in fawn-skin, leaning on his staff.
Scene 3
The two old men and the young king
Tiresias calls Cadmus out, dressed for the rites. The two old men — the prophet and the founder — are going to the mountain on foot. Pentheus enters in a fury: he has heard the rumour, the women are loose on Cithaeron, an effeminate stranger from Lydia is leading them. He sees his grandfather and the prophet in fawn-skins and is horrified. Tiresias delivers the long defence — Dionysus is the wet that completes Demeter the dry, the god of release that no city can exclude. Pentheus does not hear a word. He orders Tiresias's shrine destroyed and sends his guards to find the foreign priest and bring him in chains.
Scene 4
The chorus on holiness
The chorus sing the first stasimon. They begin with horror at Pentheus's blasphemy and ask the goddess of holiness whether she can hear the king. They turn from him to the joy of the god — his place in the dancing and the prayer, the music and the laughter, the vanishing of care, the slumber after the feast. They warn against scorning what cannot be seen. They long, at the end, for a quieter land — Cyprus, Olympus, the dell of the Muses — where the heart's desire is found. The song ends with the guards returning from the city, leading the foreign priest between them in chains, walking calmly.
Scene 5
The god in chains
The guards bring in the priest in chains. The captain reports, troubled, that the prisoner came without resistance, smiled while being bound, and that the women previously arrested have all walked free of their cells. Pentheus interrogates the priest. The priest is Dionysus, in disguise. He answers calmly. He says he is from Lydia. He says the rites are best held by night, that they are not for the unworthy to see, that his god stands close by and sees all. Pentheus mocks him, cuts off a curl of his hair, takes his wand, and orders him chained in the stables. Dionysus warns him: the god will free him when he chooses.
Scene 6
The prison undone
The chorus sing of Dirce the river and call on the god who is now in the palace dungeon. From within the palace comes the voice of Dionysus, calling them. The Earthquake shakes the columns; fire leaps up on Semele's tomb; the chorus fall to the ground in worship. Dionysus walks out of the palace unbound. He tells the chorus what happened: Pentheus tried to chain him and chained a bull instead, then thought he saw his prisoner and stabbed empty air, then ran from a fire he could not put out. The god allowed it all, and walked out at his own time. Pentheus is on his way out of the palace.
Scene 7
The hinge
Pentheus comes out raging. The priest is calmly there. While they argue, a herdsman runs in from the mountain and delivers the first long messenger speech: the women asleep in chastity, milk and wine springing from the rock, wolf-cubs at their breasts, then the rampage — cattle torn apart, villages broken, armed men routed by women carrying nothing but wands. Pentheus orders his army to march. Dionysus warns him; Pentheus refuses. Then the priest asks one quiet question — would you like to see them at their prayers? — and Pentheus, without thinking, says yes. The hinge of the play. He agrees to dress as a woman. He goes inside.
Scene 8
The chorus on wisdom
The chorus sing the third stasimon — the most quoted ode of the play. They long for the long dances on the mountain, for feet of a fawn fleeing through grass and loveliness, beyond the snares and the deadly press. They ask: what else is wisdom? — and answer themselves: to stand free of fear, to breathe and wait, to hold a hand uplifted over hate, to love loveliness forever. They sing of the slow, certain reach of the gods against those who scorn them, and of the simple happiness of being alive. The king is being dressed in women's clothes inside the palace as they sing. The song is the contrast.
Scene 9
The dressing
Dionysus calls Pentheus out. The king emerges already half-mad — he sees double suns, double Thebes, the priest as a horned bull. He is in a long linen robe, a wig falling to his shoulders, fawn-skin, wand. Dionysus arranges the costume gently — the lock of hair under the coif, the sash, the fall of the gown — while Pentheus watches himself and asks whether he stands as Ino or as his mother does. He boasts of strength. He decides not to wreck the rocks of Pan but to lie hidden in the pines. He goes off toward the mountain, led by the priest. Alone, Dionysus says: fell, fell are you, and to a doom so fell you walk.
Scene 10
The chorus on the spy
The chorus sing the fourth stasimon. The composure of the earlier odes is gone. They invoke the hounds of the maddened mind to drive the women to find Pentheus. They imagine the moment of discovery — whose eye will catch him first, will it be his mother. They cry out for Justice to come with her sword and strike the throat. They call on Dionysus — appear, appear, whatever your shape or your name, mountain bull, snake of the hundred heads, lion of burning flame — to laugh aloud and drag the spy to his death. The song ends with a messenger running in pale and distraught from the mountain road, gasping, with news for the city.
Scene 11
Agave with the head
The second messenger reports the killing. Dionysus bent a pine to the ground, set Pentheus in its top, and let it spring back; from the sky he called the women to see their spy. They tore the pine up by the roots; Pentheus, lucid at the last, pleaded with his mother to recognise him. She did not. They tore him apart. Agave enters carrying his head on a thyrsus, calling it a lion's. Cadmus arrives with the gathered body and walks her back, question by question, to the truth in real time. Dionysus appears above the house in his divine form, pronounces exile on Cadmus and Agave, and ends the play.