Frank Wedekind’s play Die Büchse der Pandora is usually translated into English as Pandora’s Box. It is the second part of Wedekind’s Lulu drama, following Erdgeist, commonly translated as Earth Spirit.
The play centers on Lulu, a provocative and destructive figure whose relationships expose the tensions of bourgeois society. Wedekind’s drama is not a literal retelling of Hesiod’s story, but its title invokes the mythological image of a container whose opening unleashes disaster.
Wedekind wrote the Lulu plays in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their frank treatment of sexuality, social hypocrisy, and gender roles made them controversial, and performances were subject to censorship in some settings.
The title also gave G. W. Pabst’s 1929 film its name. Because the same title appears in mythology, drama, and cinema, identifying the specific work and date is important when discussing “Pandora’s Box” in cultural history.