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25-04-2008, 08:40 PM
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Dido
The Tragic Heroine
When we first meet Dido, she is busy leading her people to build a great city. She is a strong leader and is loved by her fellow citizens. Through the eyes of Aeneas, we see that she is beautiful, intelligent and not afraid of hard work. Last but not least, Dido is loyal, loyal to her people and to the memory of her deceased husband. All of these traits add up to describe a woman that I admire and would strive to be. Imagine my surprise when Dido becomes mad and commits suicide for, of all things, a man. How does she go from this strong, loyal, intelligent and heroic woman to a crazed lovesick person that takes her own life in the name of love? In this paper I will try to answer this question and better understand this drastic action as we take a look at the life of Queen Dido.
To better understand Dido, one must know two things; of her life before she met Aeneas and an understanding of what Virgil was trying to accomplish by including this character. Virgil was tasked with writing a piece that brought back pride to Roman citizens. By creating the character of Dido, Virgil makes an �emphatic statement of the sacrifice which the Roman ideal of duty demands.�(The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, pg. 471) Most of us could h
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She recalled the threats of her brother Pygmalion, and those of King Iarbas. Dido finally transpires as a heroine of her time but a tragedy of ours. Here we are able to see Dido�s wit as she cuts the hide into tiny strips and surrounds a large area of land. 515], and she tried begging: "I beg you, by these tears, by your own right hand,� [Virgil, The Aeneid pg. Dido characterizes such timeless issues as the scorned woman, the heroic leader, and the jilted lover. When she discovers that Aeneas is leaving, she is furious. Although she probably identified with everything Aeneas had gone through, the strongest instrument of their love is the interference of both Venus and Juno. In that area Dido and company founded what came to be known as Carthage. The Queen must think herself a fool for having given herself to Aeneas and even looking upon their relationship with all the security that marriage brings. ave never left the one we love as much as Aeneas loves Dido. She becomes completely consumed, and when Anna points out that there could also be benefits to a union with Aeneas, including military support for their new city, Dido decides to allow the love she had denied herself for so many years, to grow. It was his duty and obligation to leave her, no matter the personal cost.
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Aeneid Analysis
The definition of an epic hero is : a figure of imposing stature, of national or international importance, and of great historical orlegendary significance. Aeneas fits this definition perfectly. Aeneas fits this definition perfectly. Aeneas' character is one of great importance. Known far and wide for his many achievements and adventures, Aeneas receives, appropriately, an incredible amount of respect and admiration from many significant characters throughout this book. As far as history and legend goes, Aeneas plays a huge role in both of these. Aeneas influences history through his adventures which are eventually excepted as Rome's national epic, teaching generations to come. Also, Aeneas holds an enormous stake in legends. As a part of legendary literature, Aeneas' adventures come to life, contributing greatly to the legends of today. Aeneas' life is strongly influenced by the many, and often opposing, gods. Throughout his journeys, Aeneas is affected, both positively and negatively, by the gods. Venus, the goddess of love and mother of Aeneas and Cupid, is one of these influences. As a concerned mother, Venus desperately longs for her son's safety and goes to extreme lengths to aid him and
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Dido has a strong
hold of love for the hero, making his decision very difficult. This leads the audience to their distaste for the harsh character. The reason that these conflicts occur is because of the battle between love and fate. Turnus has a very physical conflict with Aeneas. Aeneas' sudden love for Dido does keep him in Carthage for some time and takes his thoughts away from his fate and upon his new love. There are some major conflicts in the poem. This explains her angry curse she places upon Aeneas in her fit of rage. Although both were heroes in their own right, their heroic qualities were viewed quite differently. Linked with this love
is the first theme that was explored, fate and destiny. Therefore, he wants to fufill his destiny.
If the story had not been about Aeneas and if the war had been seen from Turnus' side, Turnus would have been the hero. Conflict arises in Aeneas because of Dido and Jupiter. This is instrumental in understanding Aeneas' decisions and actions. Both men fight each other in order to defend their own purpose.
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Carthage
Carthage is an ancient city in the Mediterranean that was under Roman Rule and Christianity was spreading past; it had a vast history and many wars with Rome. It is located on the north shore of Africa at the tip of a peninsula near the city that is now known as Tunis, Tunisia. Phoenician seamen as a trade and shipping outpost founded Carthage. Its harbor location in the Mediterranean Sea gave it advantages for both defense and trade. The city, whose name means "new city," thrived on commerce and its people engaged in trade throughout the region. At the peak of its power around mid- 200 B.C., the city controlled a large commercial empire along the Mediterranean coast. Eventually, the city�s conflict with Rome over control of the Mediterranean Sea led to its destruction and it was subsequently taken over by the Roman Empire. (Moulton 113)
There are about 1,200 inscriptions that have been found in Northern Africa employing the Libyan language. The writing was consonantal and it reflected the dialects of the period. Many ancient classical authors, including Homer, provided information relative to the origin of the Phoenician people who founded Carthage. The writings talk of the Phoenicians� maritime adventures, their
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When it gained its independence, Carthage brought Phoenician settlements in North Africa under its control and conquered the native peoples of the region. , however, the Romans under leadership Publius destroyed the city of Carthage. Hannibal was defeated, however, it resulted in the loss of Spain and various islands that were possessions of Carthage. They were the world wars of the third to second centuries B. The city of Carthage survived the first two Punic wars and remained strong. It consisted of two ruling officials who were elected annually, a powerful senate whose members held office for life, and a group of elected judges who monitored the actions of other officials. The Romans constructed large public buildings, including an amphitheater, a forum with a large hall called a basilica, and lavish baths that were modeled after those in Rome. 439, the Vandals, conquerors of Germanic origin, seized Carthage and made it the capitol of the kingdom they had established in North Africa. Carthage had a very large army of mercenaries, who help to defend the city and the territories around it. The city was known to its Punic or Phoenician inhabitants as the "new city," probably to distinguish it from Utica, which was the "old city.
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Characters
Dido - Queen of Carthage
Aeneas - a Trojan hero and the son of King Priam and the goddess Venus
Ascanius - son of Aeneas
Iarbas - King of Gaetulia who is in love with Dido
Achates - friend of Aeneas
Ilioneus
Cloanthus
Sergestus
Anna - Dido's sister in Roman mythology
Jupiter
Ganymede
Cupid
Mercury
Venus
Juno
A Lord
A Nurse
various attendants
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dido,_Queen_of_Carthage
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Dido’s Story
Over centuries the ancient Greek Dido had been demoted from her earliest form in myths as a minor goddess to a mere princess in later stories - the daughter of the King of Tyre1. In this new form, the stories told that, with the ancient world’s irreverence for familial relationships, she married her uncle, Sychaeüs. The marriage didn't last long, however, as she was widowed by her newly crowned brother, who murdered Sychaeüs for his money (clearly sharing his sister’s cavalier disregard for family ties). Sychaeüs’ ghost warned Dido to leave Tyre and she fled with her loyal followers across the sea to the Libyan coast. There, she established the city-state Carthage which prospered and grew under her rule. Being a tricky woman, she had struck a deal with the natives to buy as much land as could be encompassed by a bull’s hide. But before laying down the hide, she cunningly cut it into extremely thin strips, which when tied end to end encircled a much larger area than the natives had in mind. Naturally, they were not best pleased.
In early versions of the story, the Libyan king became alarmed at the growth of Carthage and of Dido’s power. He forced her to agree to marry him, but before the ceremony could be carried out Dido ordered a funeral pyre to be built, and threw herself upon it rather than submit. Centuries later, the Roman author Virgil transplanted Dido into the opening book of his epic poem The Aeneid, as a distraction to his hero, Aeneas. Dido’s fate, however, remained unchanged, and when Aeneas abandons her to resume his quest 2, Dido commits suicide by throwing herself onto a funeral pyre and her lover’s abandoned sword. Roman poets were never ones to go for overkill on a death scene.
Marlowe’s Dido
Marlowe’s version of the Dido story is a tale of temptations. The opening scene (which is almost entirely of Marlowe’s invention) sees Jupiter wooing Ganymede with promises and precious gifts, before being reminded of his duty to ensure Aeneas fulfils his fate by an irate Venus. This sets a divine example that all the plot strands in the rest of the play follow. Dido woos Aeneas and showers him with presents, before an irate Hermes reminds Aeneas of his destiny. Dido further tempts Aeneas’ loyal right-hand man, Achates, with more riches, if he will sail off without his leader - thus leaving with Dido her lover. A disguised Venus tempts away Aeneas’ son, Ascanius (her own grandson) with sweets and toys, and tries to tempt her rival, Juno to join forces with her in return for a share in Venus’ divine gift of desire.
Even the old nurse, in an early example of that great Shakespearean tradition which uses such characters for comic relief, tries to lure away a disguised Cupid with promises of treats. The dialogue that she has with herself, when the mischievous love-god stirs up long dead desire, encapsulates the themes of the play: the war of the self between duty and desire, between self-denial and self-indulgence. As in the best of Shakespeare, the pathos in her speech undercuts the humour with a streak of bitter melancholy.
Dido, Warrior Queen
In many ways, Dido is a prototype for the strong modern woman. Marlowe’s only female protagonist, she is a powerful and wealthy queen with hordes of rejected kingly suitors. It is Dido who initiates the romance with Aeneas, and acts as his benefactor and provider throughout. She is possibly Marlowe’s most fully realised female character - passionate and intensely sympathetic in her anguish over Aeneas’ desertion, but with that characteristically Marlovian hint of ruthlessness and cruelty in her determination to see Aeneas accepted by the people of Carthage:
Those that dislike what Dido gives in charge,
Command my guard to slay for their offence.
Shall vulgar peasants storm at what I do?
Dido - Act IV, scene iv, 71-73
Shakespeare’s Cleopatra (or Marlowe's Tamburlaine) could not have put it better. This ruthlessness does not detract from her tragic stature in the play, and she is (as in Virgil’s version) a much nobler figure than Aeneas at this point in his career. Indeed, it is often difficult to say what it is that tempts Aeneas more - the promise of Dido herself, or the wealth and power she offers him:
Each word she says will then contain a crown,
And every speech be ended with a kiss.
Aeneas - Act IV, scene iii, 53-54
When Dido catches Aeneas in the act of abandoning her, he lies and pretends that he was merely wishing his friends farewell. When Hermes warns Aeneas that he must leave Carthage immediately or risk Jupiter’s wrath, Aeneas has to rely on Iarbas (a rival for Dido’s affections) to replace the sails and oars Dido had confiscated from his ships. In fact, Aeneas’ only heroic exploits in the play are those that he recounts in his description of the fall of Troy to Dido’s court, which perhaps accounts for Marlowe’s need to explain Dido’s infatuation by means of Cupid’s arrows and the machinations of the gods. Aeneas repeatedly blames his desertion of Dido on the will of the gods, rather than his own desire, but Dido claims that:
The gods weigh not what lovers do:
It is Aeneas calls Aeneas hence.
Dido - Act V, scene i, 131-132
This certainly appears to be true for some of the gods (Venus and Juno both seem content that Aeneas should remain at Carthage), but the will of Jupiter is unalterable; and though he is too busy frolicking with Ganymede to make any further appearances in the play himself, Hermes sternly reminds Aeneas of his duty. When the Trojans have departed, however, the gods also make themselves scarce. Dido on her own holds no interest for them, and they abandon her as soon as Aeneas sails away. Unlike Virgil, whose ending for Dido sees Juno, moved by her suffering, helping Dido to an easier death, Marlowe’s queen dies alone and calling for vengeance from absent gods.
Scholars are in disagreement as to when Marlowe wrote his version of the tale and how much of a contribution, if any, his credited co-writer Thomas Nashe made. It seems likely that it was a fairly early play, perhaps even written and performed whilst Marlowe was still at college. The play was certainly well known - Shakespeare parodied3 Aeneas’ description of the death of Priam, King of Troy, in the speech that Hamlet requests from the Player-King. Marlowe himself re-used verbatim one of Dido’s lines in Doctor Faustus :
If He forsake me not, I never die;
For in his looks I see eternity,
And he’ll make me immortal with a kiss.
Dido - Act IV, scene V, 121-123
Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Faustus - Act V, scene ii, 97-99
While Dido is seldom counted as one of Marlowe’s greatest works, it has a poetic lyricism in its lines, and an emotional heart in its female protagonist, that endure to this day.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A876945
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parkle
26-04-2008, 12:35 AM
السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته
هاي
Dido, Queen of Carthage is a short play written by the English playwright Christopher Marlowe, with possible contributions by Thomas Nashe.
The play was first published in 1594 by the bookseller Thomas Woodcock. The title page attributes the play to Marlowe and Nashe, and also states that the play was acted by the Children of the Chapel. 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.[1]
The nineteenth-century scholar Frederick Gard Fleay attempted to delineate the collaborators' respective shares in the text, and assigned these portions of the play to Nashe:
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. Yet few other critics have agreed with this assessment, and Nashe's share remains an open question.[2] 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."[3]
The story of the play focuses on the classical figure of Dido, the Queen of Carthage. It tells an intense dramatic tale of Dido and her fanatical love for Aeneas (induced by Cupid), Aeneas' betrayal of her and her eventual suicide on his departure for Italy. The playwrights depended upon Books 1, 2, and 4 of the Aeneid of Virgil as their main source.
The English composer Stephen Storace 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 jealous suspicions of Storace's impresario Richard Brinsley Sheridan led to the opera being kept in a single copy at the Drury Lane Theatre, 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. هلا hope
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