Marlowe's Travesty of Virgil: Dido and Elizabethan Dreams of Empire

Marlowe's Travesty ofVirgil: Dido and Elizabethan Dreams ofEmpire Donald Stump Several recentstudies1 ofChristopherMarlowe's TragedyofDido, Queen ofCarthage, have focused on its relation to the development of English imperialism. Since the play represents a female ruler from North Africa who is brought down by her love for a male voyager intent on founding an imperial dynasty, the play invites studies of the politics of gender, nationality, and race. Lurking in the background, however, is also a political agenda of a more specific sort. As William Godshalk has suggested , Queen Elizabeth's abortive marriage negotiations with the Duke of Anjou in the years 1579-81 seem to have been on the playwright's mind, though their precise relation to the details of the play has never beenworked out.2Itseems to methat recognizingallusionsto the French Marriage is crucial in understanding Marlowe's position on the expansionist sentiment that was gathering strength in England in his day. The Queen's courtship of Anjou was a major turning point in Elizabethan foreign policy, one that set in motion England's sustained and ultimately successful attempt to project military power against Spain in the Low Countries, the NewWorld, and beyond. For that reason, iffor no other, the negotiations deserve more attention in studies ofthe play than they have so far received. 79 80Comparative Drama I In considering possible connections between Dido and the French Marriage, it is helpful to begin with the literary context in which the play was written. As founder ofan empire that rivaled that ofancient Rome, Dido was a convenient analogue for Elizabeth in her challenge to the sixteenth-century Roman Imperium controlled bythe Pope and his powerful allies in France and Spain. Interest in the myth at the English court appears as early as 1564, when Edward Halliwell staged a Latin play entitled Dido (now lost) before the Queen at Cambridge.3 The myth attracted later writers of Elizabethan panegyric for various reasons, the most important of which are made plain in William Gager's Latin play ofthe same name,which was performed at Oxford during a royal visit in 1583. In the Epilogue,where the author attempts to "reckon up"the good to be derived from his work, he stresses three parallels between the two queens, saying,"Dido,onewoman surpasses you byfar: our virgin queen. In her piety, how many reversals has she endured! What kingdoms has she founded! To what foreigners has she plighted her trust!" 4 The lines call to mind Dido's sufferings at the hands of her brother Pygmalion, who forced her and her followers to flee from Tyre and settle in Libya; her subsequent achievement in founding the kingdom ofCarthage; and her peaceable dealings with surrounding peoples. The Epilogue also mentions her "trust and aid to the wretched," evidently an allusion to the assistance that she gaveAeneas and his storm-tossed men.As Gager's Epilogue suggests, Elizabeth's life followed a similar pattern, beginning with her "piety" amid sufferings caused by her sister Mary, proceeding through "reversals" inflicted by her Catholic enemies, and ending with the"founding ofher kingdom"as the trusted ally ofProtestant "foreigners " on the Continent. Other works of the period also compare Elizabeth with Dido because of her generosity toward the needy, her piety in the face of adversity , and her attainments as the founder ofan empire,though other qualities such as courage and love ofher people are also important. In a passage in James Aske's 1588 poem "Elizabeth Triumphans," which was written to celebrate the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the author exalts the English queen as "the only Empress that on earth hath lived." He Donald Stump81 calls her a "Goddesse" who accompanies her troops into battle, a "Generali" who promises "the meanest man" and the greatest an equal share of honor and reward.5 Comparisons between Elizabeth and Dido were,however, not always so favorable. In the period 1579-81,when Protestants rose up in opposition to the Queen's marriage negotiations with Anjou, writers and artists placed more stress on the self-destructive desires that led to Dido's fall. Though largely favorable to Elizabeth, the Epilogue to Gager's play touches on this element ofthe...