'"What Gods Be Those That Seek My Death?" The Divine Framework of Dido, Queen of Carthage'

Abstract

This essay examines the role played by the gods in Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage. Beginning from the premises that the gods are both important and markedly different both from their counterparts in the Aeneid and from those in other early modern plays and literary works, the essay posits that Dido functions inter alia as a critique of the pagan worldview, at least insofar as such a worldview appears and plays itself out in (this version of) the story of Dido and Aeneas. The essay argues that Marlowe's education, particularly the style of oral examination used at Cambridge in which students debated various (sometimes even outlandish) propositions, can account for the presence of such a critique in this work, which recent scholarship has argued as having been written 1584–5, shortly after the playwright's graduation from his Bachelor's degree. The essay then considers the implications of Marlowe's idiosyncratic treatment of the gods by looking at various scenes in which they appear. The second part of the essay focuses on the importance to the play of the idea of Fate, along with the question of how the mortal characters relate to such a concept as well as to the gods with whom they are obliged to live. The essay finds that, through his characterisation of mortals, of Fate, and of the gods, Marlowe finally invites reader and audience to consider and to critique the distinctive and peculiar cosmos which Dido presents.