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Titles

English title: Dido and Aeneas
Date written: sometime between 1613 and 1616
First publication date: 1625
Keywords: morality > honour, family > marriage, family > duty, power > war, love > desire, love > lust, violence > suicide, violence > murder
Genre and type: tragedy

Pitch

The timeless story of Dido, the passionate Queen of Carthage and her lover, Aeneas the Trojan hero, is adapted in this tragic play to the form of the Spanish comedia. After the sexually-charged affair between the two, Aeneas is bound by duty to leave for Italy, and the play ends with the horrific suicide of the Queen. Influenced by several sources of the story made famous by Virgil’s Aeneid, this play dramatises the classic tale of love, duty and betrayal.

Synopsis

The play opens and closes with Hiarbas, King of Libya, the hopeful but unsuccessful suitor of Dido, the Queen of Carthage. Hiarbas allows Dido to rebuild her city on his land after the death of her husband (Siqueo) at the hands of her brother (Pygmalion), under the condition that her people will be his vassals. Troy falls; Eneas escapes with his father (Anquises) and his son (Ascanio) but his wife, Creusa, is lost, and comes back as a ghost to give him permission to remarry. Eneas and his people are shipwrecked on Dido’s coast. Venus, his mother, visits him in disguise and tells him to marry Dido and then go on to reign as King of Italy. Hiarbas sends a messenger offering marriage to Dido, which she rejects out of loyalty to her recently deceased husband. Dido enforces her law that no widows shall remarry; she sentences Celeusia, a widow caught with a lover by her brother, to be burned alive. In act 2, Dido and Eneas are feasting together and beginning to fall in love. Hiarbas hears of this and declares war on Carthage. Dido and Eneas go hunting together, and Eneas kills a lion in Dido’s defence. A storm approaches, they take shelter in a cave and that is the start of their passionate love affair. In act 3, time has passed and Eneas’s men are restless; they are dawdling in Carthage when they should be moving on to Italy. Lulled to sleep by music, Dido awakens, hearing the sounds of war and the voice of her dead husband telling her to flee, while Eneas is visited by his father in a dream to tell him that the gods are angry with him and he must now attend to the business of Italy. Eneas decides to pack up and leave, but in secret. Dido finds out and begs for more time, and when he won’t relent she swears revenge. She threatens him, so he offers her his sword, but Dido’s own men stop her. Eneas leaves, and Dido agrees to marry Hiarbas to save her people from war. Seeing Hiarbas’s approaching army Eneas comes back to defend Dido, but Dido kills herself with Eneas’s sword, avenged with his name on her lips. Hiarbas and Eneas are rather awkwardly introduced to one another; Hiarbas stays to lament her death, while Eneas goes off to sea. (less)

The play opens and closes with Hiarbas, King of Libya, the hopeful but unsuccessful suitor of Dido, the Queen of Carthage. Hiarbas allows Dido to rebuild her city on his land after the ... (Read more...)

Sources

A very loose adaptation and comedia treatment of the action-packed parts of the sequences in Book Four of the Aeneid which feature Aeneas and Dido.  Yet some of the events come from earlier versions of the story of Dido, which accounts for the variance in the story from Virgil’s account. Castro takes a great deal of licence in reordering events, lessening the direct appearance of the gods, and adding some stage effects (such as the bloody sword) that are only indirectly referred to in the epic poem. (less)

A very loose adaptation and comedia treatment of the action-packed parts of the sequences in Book Four of the Aeneid which feature Aeneas and Dido. Yet some of the events come from ear... (Read more...)

Critical response

Another Valencian playwright, Virués, also wrote a play based on an alternative story which tells the story of Dido and Siqueus,  but Castro chose to move the love affair between Dido and Aeneas to the forefront of the story, rather than depicting the traditional ‘chaste Dido’ (McKendrick 1989: 128 and Thacker 2007: 75). Although this play has been neglected by critics, and the play has not been edited since 1925, Rubiera calls the play ‘one of the best tragedies from the Golden Age’ (2003: 850). In a rare essay devoted to Dido y Eneas, DiPuccio argues that ‘[...] the play casts the tension between the imaginary and symbolic registers as a conflict between personal and social identities’ (1998: 120-1). Rubiera praises the play for its lyrical beauty, unique psychological portrayal of its famous characters, and the spectacular aspects of the piece, which is incredibly visual in its representation of Eneas’s final goodbye to his wife as Troy falls. Lope de Vega recognised the achievement of Castro’s Dido y Eneas in his dedication to Las almenas de Toro.

• DiPuccio, Denise M. 1998. ‘The Heroic Coupling(s) of Dido y Eneas’. In Communicating Myths of the Golden Age Comedia, pp. 120-30. London, Associated University Presses

• McKendrick, Melveena. 1989. ‘Gil Vicente (1465?-1536?)’. In Theatre in Spain 1490-1700, pp. 19-26. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

• Rubiera, Javier. 2003. ‘Dido y Eneas’. In Historia del teatro español, ed. Javier Huerta Calvo, pp. 850-853. Madrid, Gredos (in Spanish)

• Thacker, Jonathan. 2007. ‘The Emergence of the Comedia nueva’. In A Companion to Golden Age Theatre, pp. 1-22. Woodbridge, Tamesis

(less)

Another Valencian playwright, Virués, also wrote a play based on an alternative story which tells the story of Dido and Siqueus, but Castro chose to move the love affair between Dido a... (Read more...)

Editions

• Castro, Guillén de. 1625. Dido y Eneas. In Segunda Parte de las comedias de Don Guillén de Castro, Valencia, Miguel Sorolla

  This is the first printing of this play.

• Castro, Guillén de. 1925. Dido y Eneas. In Obras de Gullén de Castro y Bellvís, ed. Eduardo Juliá Martínez, vol. 1, pp. 165-205. Madrid, Real Academia Española, Imprenta de la Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos

(less)

• Castro, Guillén de. 1625. Dido y Eneas. In Segunda Parte de las comedias de Don Guillén de Castro, Valencia, Miguel Sorolla

  This is the first printing of this play.

• Castro, Guillén de.... (Read more...)

Information about the editions

There are plenty of other adaptations of this ancient story; for example, the opera by Henry Purcell. (It was staged recently by Opera Warwick; see http://www.didoandaeneas.co.uk/)

It has also been adapted into a dance; Sasha Waltz’s production in 2007 at Sadler’s Wells, and several others in recent years; see http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/onegin-royal-opera-house-br-dido-and-aeneas-sadlers-wells-london-441055.html (less)

There are plenty of other adaptations of this ancient story; for example, the opera by Henry Purcell. (It was staged recently by Opera Warwick; see http://www.didoandaeneas.co.uk/)

It h... (Read more...)

Useful readings and websites

• Barrett, L. L. 1939. ‘The Omen in Guillén de Castro's Drama’, Hispania, 22, 1, 73-78

• Bruerton, Courtney. 1944. ‘The Chronology of the Comedias of Guillén de Castro’, Hispanic Review, 12, 89-151

  This is a wonderful resource which deals with this play on p. 123. Bruerton dates La fuerza de la costumbre ‘1610?-20? (1610?-15?)’ p. 150, and says it is an authentic play by Castro.

• DiPuccio, Denise M. 1998. ‘The Heroic Coupling(s) of Dido y Eneas’. In Communicating Myths of the Golden Age Comedia, pp. 120-30. London, Associated University Presses

• García Lorenzo, Luciano. 1976. ‘Temas míticos’, ‘Dido y Ecneas’. In El teatro de Guillén de Castro, pp. 182–92. Barcelona, Planeta (in Spanish)

• Lida de Malkiel, María Rosa. 1974. Dido en la literatura española: su retrato y defensa, London, Tamesis (in Spanish)

• McKendrick, Melveena. 1989. ‘Gil Vicente (1465?-1536?)’. In Theatre in Spain 1490-1700, pp. 19-26. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

  For La fuerza de la costumbre and Dido y Eneas see pp. 127-129.

• Rubiera, Javier. 2003. ‘Dido y Eneas’. In Historia del teatro español, ed. Javier Huerta Calvo, pp. 850-853. Madrid, Gredos (in Spanish)

• Thacker, Jonathan. 2007. ‘Cervantes, Tirso de Molina, and The First Generation’. In A Companion to Golden Age Theatre, pp. 56-91. Woodbridge, Tamesis

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Entry written by Kathleen Jeffs. Last updated on 4 October 2010.

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