'Sound this Angrie Message in Thine Eares': Sympathy and the Translations of the Aeneid in Marlowe's Dido Queene of Carthage

This article proposes that Marlowe’s Dido Queene of Carthage engages with both the English tradition of Virgil translation and the Renaissance commentaries on the Aeneid. Instead of looking at the divergences from Virgil, the focus is on Marlowe’s direct translations of the Aeneid. These translations are shown to be carefully selected and structured: they focus on speeches that were associated with Virgil’s formidable rhetorical power in Renaissance commentaries. In particular, Marlowe highlights the oratorical strength in the speeches of Virgil’s gods as they impose their wills upon humanity. Where Marlowe differs from previous translators and adapters of the Aeneid, however, is that he presents these divine imperatives without the sympathetic narrative that usually softens their violence. In doing so, he composes the one truly pessimistic response to the Aeneid in the English Renaissance.