Frank Wedekind’s play Die Büchse der Pandora is known in English as Pandora’s Box.
Wedekind wrote the play as the second part of his Lulu cycle. The first part is Erdgeist, usually translated as Earth Spirit. Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s 1929 film combines material from both Lulu plays, which is why the film’s title matches the second play rather than representing a direct adaptation of only one text.
The play and the ancient myth share the Pandora image as a metaphor for dangerous desire, social repression, and consequences that cannot easily be contained. Wedekind’s Lulu, however, is a modern theatrical character and not the Pandora of Hesiod’s Greek mythology.
The title is also translated as The Pandora’s Box or Pandora’s Box in English-language references. The German phrase literally means “the box of Pandora,” and it became the title most strongly associated with the second Lulu play.