Dionysus has been taken
prisoner; he is led on to the stage, with his hands bound, but still
holding the thyrsus. Unresisting he had submitted himself to his
captors; his colour had not changed; with a smile he had bidden them
do their will, so that even they are touched with awe, and are almost
ready to admit his divinity. Marvellously white and red, he stands
there; and now, unwilling to be revealed to the unworthy, and
requiring a fitness in the receiver, he represents himself, in answer
to the inquiries of Pentheus, not as Dionysus, but simply as the
god's prophet, [69] in full trust in whom he desires to hear his
sentence. Then the long hair falls to the ground under the shears;
the mystic wand is torn from his hand, and he is led away to be tied
up, like some dangerous wild animal, in a dark place near the king's
stables.
Up to this point in the play, there has been a noticeable ambiguity
as to the person of Dionysus, the main figure of the piece; he is in
part Dionysus, indeed; but in part, only his messenger, or minister
preparing his way; a certain harshness of effect in the actual
appearance of a god upon the stage being in this way relieved, or
made easy, as by a gradual revelation in two steps.
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