Page 291 - Hamlet: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

i84 NOTES 2.2.

upon the purpose of the episode that follows nor whether
Sh. himself approved of the Pyrrhus speech. Two titles
of a dramatic rendering of the Dido story have come
down to us from that period: the extant Dido, Qyeen of
Carthage, printed 1594, ascribed on the title-page to
Marlowe and Nashe, and Dido and Aeneas, of which
we know nothing except that it was acted on Jan. 8,1598
by the Admiral's men, and prob. acquired by them from
the Pembroke men, for whom Nashe wrote (v. Cham-
bers, Eliz. Stage, ii. 132). The former contains a
Pyrrhus speech; but Sh.'s speech is better poetry, tells
a different story, and draws from Vergil in other ways
than Marlowe's, to which, apart from one striking
parallel (v. note 2. 2. 476-78), it seems to owe nothing
at all. Fleay (v. Furness) and H. D. Gray (M.L.R. xv.
217 ff.) contend that Sh. is quoting from an old play of
his own, written in rivalry to Marlowe's. The materials
are too scanty to admit of dogmatism; but I tentatively
suggest as an alternative that the two Dido plays were
really two stages of the same play-book, the play per-
formed in 1598 being a revision, perhaps by Chapman
or Drayton, of the 1594 text (v. notes 11. 487-91,
506, 521, 580-83), and that Sh., who had admired this
performance with reservations, set out to show that he
could better its style and criticise it at the same time.
I have no doubt at all that the speech is Sh.'s (cf. notes
11. 487-91, 499-501). It should be noted that Alleyn
appears to have been absent from the Admiral's men in
Jan. 1598; if so he did not play Aeneas (v. Chambers,
Eliz. Stage, ii. 157; Greg, Alcazar and Orlando,
p. 92).
454. like th'Hyrcanian beast Cf. Aen. iv. 367
'Hyrcanaeque admorunt ubera tigres'—a phrase used
by Dido to 'perfidious' Aeneas, v. G. 'Hyrcanian.'
456-67. The rugged Pyrrhus.. .hellish Pyrrhus
There seems no basis either in Vergil or Marlowe for
this description. The nearest to 11. 459-63 we have is