''Dido, Queen of Carthage'' (full title: ''The Tragedie of Dido Queene of Carthage'') is a short play written by the English playwright

Christopher Marlowe Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe (; baptised 26 February 156430 May 1593), was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe is among the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights. Based upon t ...

, with possible contributions by

Thomas Nashe Thomas Nashe (baptised November 1567 – c. 1601; also Nash) was an Elizabethan playwright, poet, satirist and a significant pamphleteer. He is known for his novel ''The Unfortunate Traveller'', his pamphlets including ''Pierce Penniless,'' ...

. It was probably written between 1587 and 1593, and was first published in 1594. The story focuses on the classical figure of Dido, the

Queen Queen or QUEEN may refer to: Monarchy * Queen regnant, a female monarch of a Kingdom ** List of queens regnant * Queen consort, the wife of a reigning king * Queen dowager, the widow of a king * Queen mother, a queen dowager who is the mother ...

Carthage Carthage was the capital city of Ancient Carthage, on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is now Tunisia. Carthage was one of the most important trading hubs of the Ancient Mediterranean and one of the most affluent cities of the classi ...

. It tells an intense dramatic tale of Dido and her fanatical love for

Aeneas In Greco-Roman mythology, Aeneas (, ; from ) was a Trojan hero, the son of the Trojan prince Anchises and the Greek goddess Aphrodite (equivalent to the Roman Venus). His father was a first cousin of King Priam of Troy (both being grandsons ...

(induced by

Cupid In classical mythology, Cupid (Latin Cupīdō , meaning "passionate desire") is the god of desire, lust, erotic love, attraction and affection. He is often portrayed as the son of the love goddess Venus (mythology), Venus and the god of war Mar ...

), Aeneas' betrayal of her and her eventual suicide on his departure for Italy. The playwrights relied on Books 1, 2, and 4 of

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: th ...

's ''

Aeneid The ''Aeneid'' ( ; la, Aenē̆is or ) is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who fled the fall of Troy and travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of ...

'' as primary source.

Characters

* Dido – Queen of

– a

Trojan Trojan or Trojans may refer to: * Of or from the ancient city of Troy * Trojan language, the language of the historical Trojans Arts and entertainment Music * ''Les Troyens'' ('The Trojans'), an opera by Berlioz, premiered part 1863, part 189 ...

royal hero, son of

Anchises Anchises (; grc-gre, Ἀγχίσης, Ankhísēs) was a member of the royal family of Troy in Greek and Roman legend. He was said to have been the son of King Capys of Dardania and Themiste, daughter of Ilus, who was son of Tros. He is mos ...

and the goddess

Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never f ...

Ascanius Ascanius (; Ancient Greek: Ἀσκάνιος) (said to have reigned 1176-1138 BC) was a legendary king of Alba Longa and is the son of the Trojan hero Aeneas and Creusa, daughter of Priam. He is a character in Roman mythology, and has a divine ...

– son of Aeneas * Iarbas – King of

Gaetulia Gaetuli was the Romanised name of an ancient Berber tribe inhabiting ''Getulia''. The latter district covered the large desert region south of the Atlas Mountains, bordering the Sahara. Other documents place Gaetulia in pre-Roman times along the ...

who is in love with Dido *

Achates In Greek and Roman mythology, Achates (Ancient Greek: Ἀχάτης) may refer to the following personages: * Achates, a companion of the exiled Aeneas. * Achates, a Sicilian who came to Aristaeus in order to join Dionysus in his Indian campaign ...

– friend of Aeneas * Ilioneus – Greek Slave * Cloanthus * Sergestus – Commander of the Five armies *Anna – Dido's sister *

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but slightly less than one-thousand ...

* Ganymede *

* Mercury *

* Juno *A Lord *A Nurse – Dido's widowed elderly nurse *other Trojans and Carthaginians *servants and attendants

Sources

''Dido'' is based on books 1, 2 and 4 of The ''Aeneid,'' but the author makes several deviations from this material. Pigman draws attention to how imitators 'exploit... the historical distance between a text and its model', leading to 'crucial departures from, sometimes criticisms of, the model'. Stump suggests that these changes in ''Dido, Queen of Carthage'' make a mockery of Aeneas. They notably include: * Dido steals Aeneas's oars, preventing him from leaving. * Aeneas dresses like a beggar, and is unrecognisable when he first arrives. * Aeneas reacts violently to recollections of Troy, and is mad with grief over its loss. * Aeneas is forced to beg Iarbus for help to space. * Anna and Iarbus commit suicide.

Plot

Jupiter is fondling Ganymede, who says that Jupiter's wife Juno has been mistreating him because of her jealousy. Venus enters, and complains that Jupiter is neglecting her son Aeneas, who has left Troy with survivors of the defeated city. Aeneas was on his way to Italy, but is now lost in a storm. Jupiter tells her not to worry; he will quiet the storm. Venus travels to Libya, where she disguises herself as a mortal and meets Aeneas, who has arrived, lost, on the coast. He and a few followers have become separated from their comrades. He recognises her, but she denies her identity. She helps him meet up with Illioneus, Sergestus and Cloanthes, other surviving Trojans who have already received generous hospitality from the local ruler Dido, Queen of Carthage. Dido meets Aeneas and promises to supply his ships. She asks him to give her the true story of the fall of Troy, which he does in detail, describing the death of Priam, the loss of his own wife and his escape with his son Ascanius and other survivors. Dido's suitor, Iarbas, presses her to agree to marry him. She seems to favour him, but Venus has other plans. She disguises Cupid as Aeneas's son Ascanius, so that he can get close to Dido and touch her with his arrow. He does so; Dido immediately falls in love with Aeneas and rejects Iarbas out of hand, to his horror and confusion. Dido's sister Anna, who is in love with Iarbas, encourages Dido to pursue Aeneas. Dido and Aeneas meet at a cave, where Dido declares her love. They enter the cave to make love. Iarbas swears he will get revenge. Venus and Juno appear, arguing over Aeneas. Venus believes that Juno wants to harm her son, but Juno denies it, saying she has important plans for him. Aeneas's followers say they must leave Libya, to fulfil their destiny in Italy. Aeneas seems to agree, and prepares to depart. Dido sends Anna to find out what is happening. She brings Aeneas back, who denies he intended to leave. Dido forgives him, but as a precaution removes all the sails and tackle from his ships. She also places Ascanius in the custody of the Nurse, believing that Aeneas will not leave without him. However, "Ascanius" is really the disguised Cupid. Dido says that Aeneas will be king of Carthage and anyone who objects will be executed. Aeneas agrees and plans to build a new city to rival Troy and strike back at the Greeks. Mercury appears with the real Ascanius (a.k.a. Cupid) and informs Aeneas that his destiny is in Italy and that he must leave on the orders of Jupiter. Aeneas reluctantly accepts the divine command. Iarbas sees the opportunity to be rid of his rival and agrees to supply Aeneas with the missing tackle. Aeneas tells Dido he must leave. She pleads with him to ignore Jupiter's command, but he refuses to do so. He departs, leaving Dido in despair. The Nurse says that "Ascanius" has disappeared. Dido orders her to be imprisoned. She tells Iarbas and Anna that she intends to make a funeral pyre on which she will burn everything that reminds her of Aeneas. After cursing Aeneas' progeny, she throws herself into the fire. Iarbas, horrified, kills himself too. Anna, seeing Iarbas dead, kills herself.

Publication

The play was first published in 1594, a year after Marlowe's untimely death in

Deptford Deptford is an area on the south bank of the River Thames in southeast London, within the London Borough of Lewisham. It is named after a Ford (crossing), ford of the River Ravensbourne. From the mid 16th century to the late 19th it was home ...

, by the widow Orwin for the bookseller Thomas Woodcock, in Paul's Churchyard. The title page attributes the play to Marlowe and Nashe, and also states that the play was acted by the

Children of the Chapel The Children of the Chapel are the boys with unbroken voices, choristers, who form part of the Chapel Royal, the body of singers and priests serving the spiritual needs of their sovereign wherever they were called upon to do so. They were overseen ...

. That company of boy actors stopped regular dramatic performance in 1584, but appears to have engaged in at least sporadic performances in the late 1580s and early 1590s, so that scholars give a range of 1587–93 for the first performance of ''Dido''.

Authorship

The nineteenth-century scholar

Frederick Gard Fleay Frederick Gard Fleay (5 September 1831 – 10 March 1909) was an influential and prolific nineteenth-century Shakespeare scholar. Life Fleay, the son of a linen draper, graduated from King's College London (1849) and Trinity College, Cambr ...

attempted to delineate the collaborators' respective shares in the text, and assigned to Nashe these portions – Act I, scene i (second part, after line 122); Act III, scenes i, ii, and iv; Act IV, scenes i, ii, and v; — and the rest to Marlowe. However, subsequent critics have not concurred in this assessment, most notably the investigations of Knutowski, R.B. McKerrow, and Tucker Brooke found very little that they felt could be credited to Nashe. While Frederick S. Boas admitted a few details had parallels in Nashe's published works and some words or meanings are found in Nashe's works but not otherwise used by Marlowe, "the scenes in which these passages and phrases appear have, as a whole, the stamp of Marlowe." Some critics have virtually ignored the participation of Nashe — yet the presence of a collaborator may help to explain the play's divergences from Marlowe's standard dramaturgy. No other play by Marlowe has such a strong female lead character, and in no other "is heteroerotic passion the centripetal force of the drama's momentum." However, more recent studies conducted independently by Darren Freebury-Jones and Marcus Dahl, and Ruth Lunney and Hugh Craig, have failed to uncover evidence for Nashe's participation.

Adaptations

The 18th-century English composer

Stephen Storace Stephen John Seymour Storace (4 April 1762 – 19 March 1796) was an English composer of the Classical era, known primarily for his operas. His sister was the famous opera singer Nancy Storace. He was born in London in the Parish of St Maryleb ...

wrote an opera titled ''Dido, Queen of Carthage'' (1794) — alleged, by his sister Anna (Nancy) Storace, for whom the title role was written, to have been his greatest work – which largely set Marlowe's play to music. It was also the only one of Storace's works to have been completely sung throughout, with no spoken dialogue. However, the work was never published, as Storace's impresario

Richard Brinsley Sheridan Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan (30 October 17517 July 1816) was an Irish satirist, a politician, a playwright, poet, and long-term owner of the London Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. He is known for his plays such as '' The Rivals'', ''The ...

wished to retain control over productions of it. A single copy was kept at the

Drury Lane Theatre The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, commonly known as Drury Lane, is a West End theatre and Grade I listed building in Covent Garden, London, England. The building faces Catherine Street (earlier named Bridges or Brydges Street) and backs onto Dr ...

, to prevent pirated versions appearing elsewhere – and the opera is presumed to have been lost in the 1809 Drury Lane Theatre fire, since nothing of it has survived. An adaptation of the play was broadcast on

BBC Radio 3 BBC Radio 3 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It replaced the BBC Third Programme in 1967 and broadcasts classical music and opera, with jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also featuring. The sta ...

on 30 May 1993, the 400th anniversary of Marlowe's death, along with ''

The Massacre at Paris ''The Massacre at Paris'' is an Elizabethan play by the English dramatist Christopher Marlowe (1593) and a Restoration drama by Nathaniel Lee (1689), the latter chiefly remembered for a song by Henry Purcell. Both concern the Saint Bartholomew ...

'', directed by

Allen Drury Allen Stuart Drury (September 2, 1918 – September 2, 1998) was an American novelist. During World War II, he was a reporter in the Senate, closely observing Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, among others. He would convert th ...

and Michael Earley and featuring Sally Dexter as Dido, Timothy Walker as Aeneas, Jeremy Blake as Iarbas, Ben Thomas as Achates, Teresa Gallagher as Anna/Juno and Andrew Wincott as Cupid.

Notes

References

* Chambers, E. K. ''The Elizabethan Stage.'' 4 Volumes, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923. * Cheney, Patrick Gerard, ed. ''The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe.'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. * Logan, Terence P., and Denzell S. Smith, eds. ''The Predecessors of Shakespeare: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama.'' Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1973.

External links

*
''Dido Queen of Carthage''

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dido, Queen Of Carthage 1580s plays 1590s plays Plays by Christopher Marlowe Plays by Thomas Nashe English Renaissance plays Plays based on classical literature Works based on the Aeneid Works by Thomas Nashe Cultural depictions of Dido Tragedy plays Plays adapted into operas Plays based on classical mythology