Abstract
Nahum
Tate and Henry Purcell’s early modern opera Dido and Aeneas has been
popular since the early nineteenth century. Librettist Nahum Tate inherited and
adapted topoi representing fate, destiny, love, death, grief and piety
among others from Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, Elizabethan and
seventeenth-century literary sources. This article reconsiders Dido’s
traditional representation as a heroic victim reappraising her legacy. It
argues that rather than simple reproducing the meeting between Dido and Aeneas
in Virgil, Tate combined Ovid’s heroine, Tertullian’s ‘monument to chastity’
and other characterisations in Virgil’s Aeneid
(29–19 BCE); Ovid’s Heroides (c. 5
BCE–8 CE); Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women (14--); Douglas’ Eneados (1513); Howard’s Virgiles
Æneis (1557); Phaer and Twynne’s AEneidos
(1573); Stanyhurst’s Aeneis (1582); Marlowe’s The Tragedie of Dido,
Queene of Carthage (1594); Tertullian’s
Ad Nationes (published 1625) and Dryden’s Aeneis (1697)
transmogrifying Dido’s portrayal. The list itself demonstrates
the transmission of Dido’s story from antiquity to the Early Modern era. ‘When I am laid in earth’ is part of Britain’s national
consciousness performed in an arrangement for brass band on Remembrance Sunday
every year since the 1930s. Why does this piece of music still have so much
significance? The article calls for Dido’s re-evaluation as a phoenix rising
again every year on the second Sunday in November — today’s erstwhile symbol of
remembrance.
-Today
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831 |
 -Yesterday |
1023 |
 -This Month |
30387 |
 -Last Month |
47090 |
 -All Days |
405378 |
IJAHSS by IPRPD is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.