Panic is a 1935 verse play by Archibald MacLeish. A tragedy that is one of the author's least-known works, it was written during the sixth year of the Great Depression. The drama is set during the bank panic of 1933 and concerns the fall of the world's richest man, a banker named McGafferty. First presented March 14–16, 1935, at the Imperial Theatre in Manhattan, the production featured Orson Welles's first leading performance on the American stage. Panic was produced by John Houseman and Nathan Zatkin as the first project of their new Phoenix Theatre. Sets and lighting were designed by Jo Mielziner; Martha Graham directed the movements of the chorus.

Archibald MacLeish was an American poet and writer, who was associated with the modernist school of poetry. MacLeish studied English at Yale University and law at Harvard University. He enlisted in and saw action during the First World War and lived in Paris in the 1920s. On returning to the United States, he contributed to Henry Luce's magazine Fortune from 1929 to 1938. For five years, MacLeish was the ninth Librarian of Congress, a post he accepted at the urging of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. From 1949 to 1962, he was Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard. He was awarded three Pulitzer Prizes for his work.