Carnival and Bakhtin: The Balcony, The Bacchae, and Shakespeare’s Plays

This article examines the carnivalesque “Other-World” not as a romanticized realm, but as a liminal space of excess, violence, and revelry. Applying Bakhtin’s theory of the carnivalesque, the article explores its manifestation in Euripides’ The Bacchae, Jean Genet’s The Balcony, and four of Shakespeare’s plays. In The Bacchae, Dionysus enacts divine retribution through ritualistic madness. Carnivalesque revelry in the whorehouse while the revolution protests are happening on street outside in The Balcony. Twelfth Night exemplifies heteroglossia over classical form, embedding subversion within aristocratic celebration. Henry VIII dramatizes the carnivalesque spectacle and dialogic instability of history and power, and the performance of Henry VIII with a misfired theatrical cannon used for special effects set the building’s thatched roof on fire, causing the destruction of the Globe Theatre in 1613. Across these works, theatre emerges as inherently carnivalesque—both entertaining and didactic, reinforcing, and undermining authority—most vividly embodied in grotesque figures like Falstaff in Henry IV and Malvolio in yellow-stockings in Twelfth Night, and King Lear’s madness. Using Bakhtin’s theory of “carnivalesque” in interpreting the aspects of theatrical carnival in these cases can offer insights, highlighting heteroglossia and the grotesque body to argue carnival as resistance and rebellion.