The Complete Plays (76 page)

I die, Navarre, come bear me to my sepulchre.

Salute the Queen of England in my name,

And tell her, Henry dies her faithful friend.

He dies.

NAVARRE

Come, lords, take up the body of the king,

That we may see it honourably interred.

And then I vow for to revenge his death

As Rome
and all those popish prelates there

110    Shall curse the time that e'er Navarre was king,

And ruled in France by Henry's fatal death!

They march out, with the body of the
KING
lying on

four men's shoulders, with a dead march
,

drawing weapons on the ground.

    
Enter A souldier w
^th
a Muskett

Now ser to you y
^t
dares make a dvke a Cuckolde

and vse a Counterfeyt key to his privye Chamber

SOULDIER

thoughe you take out none but yo
^r
owne treasure

yett you putt in y
^t
displeases him / And fill vp his rome y
^t

he shold occupie. Herein ser you forestalle the markett

and sett vpe yo
^r
standinge where you shold not: But you will

saye you leave him rome enoughe besides: thats no answere

hes to have the Choyce of his owne freeland / yf it be

not to free theres the questione / now ser where he is

your landlorde. you take vpon you to be his / and will needs

enter by defaulte / whatt thoughe you were once in possession

yett Comminge vpon you once vnawares he frayde you

out againe. therefore your entrye is mere Intrvsione

this is againste the lawe ser: And thoughe I Come not

to keep possessione as I wold I mighte yet I come to

keepe you out ser. yow are wellcome ser have at you

    
Enter minion

    
He Kills him

MINION

Trayterouse guise ah thow hast mvrthered me

    
Enter guise

GUISE

Hold thee tale soldier take the this and flye

      
Exit

thus fall Imperfett exhalatione

w
^ch
our great sonn of fraunce Cold not effecte

a fyery meteor in the fermament

lye there the Kinges delyght and guises scorne

revenge it henry yf thow liste or darst

I did it onely in dispight of thee

fondlie hast thow in Censte the guises sowle

y
^t
of it self was hote enoughe to worke

GUISE

thy lust degestione wt extreamest shame

the armye I have gathered now shall ayme

more at thie end then exterpatione

and when thow thinkst I have foregotten this

and y
^t
thow most reposest one my faythe

then will I wake thee from thie folishe dreame

and lett thee see thie self my prysoner

     
Exeunt

ABBREVIATIONS

A A-text (
Doctor Faustus
, 1604)

A2, second quarto (
Doctor Faustus
, 1609)

B B-text (
Doctor Faustus
, 1616)

G Glossary

N List of Mythological, Historical and Geographical Names

O octavo

OED Oxford English Dictionary

Q quarto

Q2 second quarto (
Edward the Second
, 1598)

SD stage direction

SP speech prefix

Tilley M. P. Tilley,
A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
(Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1950)

Biblical references are to the Geneva Bible (1560), except when the Latin text of the Vulgate is cited. Translations are by Frank Romany unless otherwise stated. Bibliographic references are by author/date where full details are given in the Further Reading.

DIDO, QUEEN OF CARTHAGE

Usually dated 1585–6,
Dido
was first published in a quarto of 1594 which provides the copy-text for this edition. Its title-page tells us the play was performed by the Children of the Chapel, and its style and dramaturgy match the conventions of other plays for boys' companies: sophisticated, ironic and faintly scandalous. Staging, too, probably
reflected the style of the private theatres: scholars have conjectured that different locales were indicated by ‘houses' or even full sets, between which, for instance, Venus walks as she descends from Olympus to the shores of Carthage in the first scene. The play requires a ‘discovery-space', whose curtains open at the beginning of the action, and elaborate props, including a statue of Priam (2.1). More problematically, the title-page also claims that the play was co-written with Thomas Nashe. Some traces of Nashe's vocabulary have been found in the play (though there are more of Marlowe's), but no one has yet succeeded in dividing the text between them.

Dido
is closely modelled on Virgil's
Aeneid
, Acts 1 and 2 deriving, respectively, from Books I and II of the poem, Acts 3–5 from Book IV. But Marlowe's imitation of Virgil is a curiously irreverent act of cultural piety. Although the famous incidents of the epic recur in the play, they are transformed by Marlowe's compressions, transpositions and additions. In Virgil, the love of Dido and Aeneas is a tragic episode in tension with the larger narrative of the founding of Rome – one which importantly qualifies the poem's celebration of Aeneas. It is the origin of the long enmity of Rome and Carthage. Events are numinous, presided over by gods who are the agents of a complex historical fate. Marlowe's ironic love-tragedy is more narrowly focused, and its gods, from the first, invented scene between Jupiter and Ganymede, are debased, spiteful and petty. Marlowe's Jupiter is more interested in Ganymede than in the fate of the Trojan exiles; Juno's jealousy is manifested in clouting Ganymede round the head and plotting to murder another child, the sleeping Ascanius, later in the play. The most important god is Cupid. In Virgil, he is substituted for Ascanius for one night; Marlowe leaves him in Carthage, where his continued presence suggests the dependence of human fates on irresponsible, childlike divinities.

With Love thus literally at the centre of the action, it is appropriate that there are more lovers: Marlowe expands the role of Iarbas to make him a sometimes comic rival to Aeneas, and has Anna hopelessly in love with him. The infatuated nurse is also invented. Marlowe shows much more of the principals' interaction than does Virgil. Dido veers between giving operatically excessive expression to her passion and being tonguetied. Aeneas is at first dumbly insensitive, later perfidious and unreliable (perhaps a reflection of the medieval tradition of Aeneas' treachery). Unlike Virgil's, Marlowe's Aeneas swears to stay with Dido, and then changes his mind. (Marlowe delays the
appearance
of Mercury so that Aeneas' decision to abandon Dido looks more sudden and vacillating.) When she catches him out, he lies to her, but is quickly won over by her ever-more extravagant gifts. Just to be sure, Dido takes the supposed
Ascanius hostage and disables Aeneas' fleet by reclaiming the luxury ship's fittings she has given him. After Mercury's embassy (it takes two visitations to drive Marlowe's Aeneas away), the lovers' parting is shifted more climactically towards the end of the action, and Aeneas skulks away from her in silence. In Virgil, Dido dies by the sword on the burnt reminders, including the bed, of their affair; Marlowe has her burn to death on a pyre of love-tokens – uttering, nonetheless, her most solemn Virgilian lines as she does so – and has larbas and Anna commit suicide with perhaps comically indecent haste.

The prominence of the bonfire of love-tokens is in keeping with the rest of the play. Itself a luxury object, encrusted with verbal riches,
Dido
is also full of expensive material objects, many of them love-gifts: Juno's jewellery given to Ganymede, the robes, sails and crown Dido showers on Aeneas. No doubt this reflects the high production values of the Chapel Children. But it also bespeaks an imaginative materialism in the play. In Virgil, when Venus appears to Aeneas, she is suddenly
there
; in Marlowe, she steps out of a bush. When his companions fail at first to notice Virgil's Aeneas, it is because he is invisible, not, as here, because he is too wretchedly dressed to be recognized. In these moments, and in the play as a whole, staging the supernatural epic exposes it to laughter.

ACT 1

Scene
1

0.1   SD
the curtains draw
: The curtains belong either to a concealed discovery-space at the back of the stage or (if the staging followed the conventions of court performance) to one of the ‘mansions' or ‘houses' constructed on the stage. See Smith 1977.

0.2   SD
dandling
: Bouncing a child up and down on one's knee, but with connotations of erotic play.

        SD
MERCURY
: (N) The messenger-god is sometimes given his Greek name, Hermes.

5–8  
Today… mine ears
: Ganymede supplanted Hebe, the daughter of Juno, as Jupiter's cup-bearer.

6      
pleasance
: (i) Fine linen, (ii) joy, pleasure.

10    
By Saturn's soul
: Jupiter swears by his father's soul (N), and by his own
hair
(amended from Q's
aire
, in the light of line 11: see Ovid,
Metamorphoses
1, 179–80).

13–14  
To hang her… cords
: Cf. the punishment of Hera (the Greek Juno) in
Iliad
XV.

17     
Helen's brother
: Like Ganymede, Castor and Pollux were originally mortals, to whom the gods granted an immortality which alternated
between them. The association of one of them here with their sister, Helen of Troy, perhaps adds to the frivolity of Ganymede's laughter.

20     
walled-in… wings
: Ganymede was taken to Mount Olympus by Jupiter's eagle, or by the god himself in that guise.

23     
wag
: A term of endearment (normally applied to a mischievous boy).

25     
exhaled
: Inflamed. Ganymede's look acts on Jupiter like the sun turning a substance to a fiery vapour or ‘exhalation', such as a meteor. There is a pun on ‘haled' (27) = dragged.

26     
driven back… night
: Perhaps the ‘meteoric' Jupiter has lit up the night. The phrasing recalls Ovid,
Amores
I.xiii.40 (
lente currite noctis equi
), which famously reappears in
Doctor Faustus
14.71.

28     
thy content
: Whatever you please.

32     
Vulcan
: He was lame.

33     
nine daughters
: The Muses.

34     
Juno's bird
: The peacock.

50–108  
Ay, this is it… attempts
: Closely modelled on
Aeneid
I, 223–301. Oliver 1968 notes, however, that ‘Marlowe's Venus addresses Jupiter in a tone of greater scorn and anger than Virgil considered appropriate'.

54–61  
Juno… all his train
: See (N). Juno asks the god of the winds (Aeolus) for a storm.

63     
Aeolia
: Aeolus' floating island home.

64–73  
Poor Troy… Astraeus' tents
: See (N). The storm at sea replicates the destruction of Troy.

65     
envious
: Malicious.

66–7   
Epeus' horse… walls
: The rocks of Mount Etna threaten to smash the ships' hulls, taking the place of the wooden horse constructed by Epeus which was used to broach the walls of Troy.

68     
sounds
: Commands (like a trumpet sounding an order).

70–73  
See how… Astraeus' tents
: See (N). The night overtakes the day like Ulysses capturing the Trojan spy Dolon. (Having learned the password from his captive, Ulysses entered the Trojan camp and stole away the horses of Rhesus in order to avert a prophecy which said that Troy would not fall if the horses fed or drank in Trojan territory.) The stars appear suddenly, like the horses, as though snatched from the tent of their father Astraeus.

75     
our crystal world
: I.e. the bright (crystalline) heavens, now menaced by the waves below.

85     
fair walls
: The walls of Aeneas' future city.

86     
in blood… bud
: Blood can be used as a fertilizer.

87    
Turnus' town
: Ardea. Turnus (N) led his people, the Italian race of the Rutuli (‘Rutiles', line 89), against the Trojan exiles in Latium until Aeneas killed him.

88     
her
: I.e. Fortune.

96–103  
bright Ascanius… fame
: Ascanius will reign in heaven, even having his name engraved on its gates.

104   
Hector's race
: The Trojan royal line.

106   
princess-priest
: I.e. Rhea Silvia (also called Ilia), the Vestal Virgin and daughter of Numitor, king of Alba Longa, who became pregnant by Mars, bearing Romulus and Remus, the twin founders of Rome.

108   
eternise… attempts
: Preserve the eternal fame of Troy by their exploits.

111–12  
Phoebus… Tyrrhene main
: In the stormy dark, the sun seems to be avoiding the Mediterranean as it avoids the waters of the underworld (‘Stygian pools').