The ＂Tragedy＂ of Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage and an Afterthought on Current Literary Historicism
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The story of Dido and Aeneas offers a handy plot for a love tragedy: a man torn between love and duty, a woman abandoned immolating herself for love, a heartrending tale of unrequited love. Christopher Marlowe's play, Dido, Queen of Carthage resists such amorous expectation, weaving its erotic thread with the discourse of gender, race and politics. In the past two decades, Elizabethan politics has been the most important key to the understanding of the play and the period that produced it. However, it yields little understanding for the present and ourselves. This essay is a search for the juncture where the historicity of Marlowe's text intersects with ours. The first half locates the play in the moment of its production in the milieu of Elizabethan empire. Refuting some critics's opinion of Aeneas as incompetent coward, I argue that Marlowe presents Aeneas as real-politic manipulative prince and Dido as barbarous queen that adores Troy. Thus, to the Elizabethan audience, Dido stages the importance of Troy, participating in the imperialist discourse of the Troy legend. In the latter half of the essay I reverse the Elizabethan reading of the play from Dido's position of inferior race and gender, which is often obscured by the current historicist fad. Thus, I argue that the play is about a wronged woman, her disillusionment and belated recognition of her racial identity. Marlowe makes the play Dido's tragedy not so much as of unrequited love as of identity crisis. I also relate Dido's failure to my position as Third-world academic in relation to historicism, and urge for the need of "local" reading.
Abstract
The story of Dido and Aeneas offers a handy plot for a love tragedy: a man torn between love and duty, a woman abandoned immolating herself for love, a heartrending tale of unrequited love. Christopher Marlowe's play, Dido, Queen of Carthage resists such amorous expectation, weaving its erotic thread with the discourse of gender, race and politics. In the past two decades, Elizabethan politics has been the most important key to the understanding of the play and the period that produced it. However, it yields little understanding for the present and ourselves. This essay is a search for the juncture where the historicity of Marlowe's text intersects with ours. The first half locates the play in the moment of its production in the milieu of Elizabethan empire. Refuting some critics's opinion of Aeneas as incompetent coward, I argue that Marlowe presents Aeneas as real-politic manipulative prince and Dido as barbarous queen that adores Troy. Thus, to the Elizabethan audience, Dido stages the importance of Troy, participating in the imperialist discourse of the Troy legend. In the latter half of the essay I reverse the Elizabethan reading of the play from Dido's position of inferior race and gender, which is often obscured by the current historicist fad. Thus, I argue that the play is about a wronged woman, her disillusionment and belated recognition of her racial identity. Marlowe makes the play Dido's tragedy not so much as of unrequited love as of identity crisis. I also relate Dido's failure to my position as Third-world academic in relation to historicism, and urge for the need of "local" reading.
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