You are here

All Site ContentMidsummer Night's DreamAct 5Scene 1
Back to the Play
"the tipsy bacchanals"
Mythological Reference
Act 5,
Scene 1
Lines 40-52

An explanation of Philostrate’s reference to bacchanals in Act 5, Scene 1 of myShakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Theseus

Say, what abridgement have you for this evening?
What masque, what music? How shall we beguile
The lazy time if not with some delight?

Philostrate

There is a brief how many sports are ripe.
Make choice of which your highness will see first.
[Reads] “The battle with the Centaurs, to be sung
By an Athenian eunuch to the harp.”

Theseus

We'll none of that. That have I told my love
In glory of my kinsman Hercules.

Philostrate

“The riot of the tipsy bacchanals 
Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage.”

Theseus

That is an old device, and it was played
When I from Thebes came last a conqueror.

A bacchanal is a cult follower of the god Bacchus, who was associated with wine, partying, and sex. Legend has it that one night a group of drunk female bacchanals tore apart Orpheus, a famous poet from Thrace, because they thought he wasn’t paying Bacchus the proper amount of respect.

(Death of Orpheus by Émile Lévy, 1866)