Thoughts on Marlowe's Dido and Uninformed Western Literature. Lite Version

The Tragedy of Dido Queene of Carthage by Christopher Marlowe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Sorta fun. Kinda.

This play isn't very long, and reads pretty easy, especially if you get an annotated version. The mythological references would fly over my head without help, and probably most people--they aren't the easy ones, I mean--but the action is straightforward and comprehensible. Some of the joy is checking off another bit of classical literature that I was pretty sure I would never get to. Proved ya wrong.

Reading blank verse doesn't make an impression on me the way it should; it doesn't really sound like anything in my head, though I do suspect I'd enjoy it more performed, as intended. And yet I always find Marlowe's language sparkling and inventive, whether spoken aloud or read silently, and I recommend his writing at least for that reason.

Not for verisimilitude. Not much of that around here. To be fair, I didn't see it staged 400 years ago; the sets and props and costumes might have been awesome. I doubt it, though.

Like pretty much all British literature of the Renaissance and afterwards (plays and operas in particular, I mean), every nation on earth looks like England; every fighting man is a knight in armor; every court reads like Henry VIII's or Elizabeth I's; every love story is western. All culture is flattened to Elizabethan culture, as if nothing ever changes, language isn't a thing, and distance makes no difference.

It's a little like Star Trek TOS--they speak English everywhere, on every planet, and everything looks pretty familiar.

Imagine, though, if this play had been written by a Punic-speaking Carthaginian. Imagine how different the setting would have appeared. Instead of an Englishman's conception of a Roman's conception of a Phoenician colony, we would see the actual place; we'd hear the voices of the people; we'd experience their actual culture and norms; we'd experience 8th Century BCE Carthage. Or even if, say, a 3rd Century BCE Carthaginian could write about these events that made up his or her heritage from 500 years before we would still be miles better than what we have here.

Virgil got (just about) everything wrong in the Aeneid, and Marlowe didn't make the slightest effort (as far as I can see) to give any historical accuracy to his account. Carthage seems like Sussex, not North Africa. But, of course, it's a play, for fun, and it's written for an English audience that knew less than Marlowe about an ancient city called Carthage. They wouldn't have cared about historical accuracy. Or if they did care, they couldn't do anything about it. *Just watch the play, man! We can argue about his cultural appropriation at the pub! Watch. Scantily clad women. Poetry. Pageantry. Shhh!

So, here's the thing: for them to have any account of Carthage at all, it had to come from Marlowe, as ill-equipped as he was. Nobody else was gonna do it.

In fact, generally speaking, for an English audience of that time to enjoy a story taking place almost anywhere in the world, it needed another Englishman to write it, whether or not the author knew what he was talking about. Yes, a reader could get other European literature in the original, and some in translation, but almost nothing from anywhere else. Asia? Africa? The New World? Some religious literature, and a fair amount of literature (history, philosophy, science) from the Arab world, but little of any of that was popularly available. (I'm making sweeping generalizations to make a point. Hang with me.)

It is no longer that way. We don't have to have an uninformed Westerner's version of stories set in exotic locales. We live in a time when we can read literature from all over the world. You want an idea of life in North Africa now? There are novels in English and French and Arabic and other languages that will give you an excellent idea. Not my idea, or Marlowe's, or Virgil's. These are novels coming straight from someone who has lived there or grew up in that tradition.

English language fantasy set in Ancient China or India or West Africa? There are bunches of fantasy writers from those nations, and from the diaspora of those nations, writing in English (and other languages, of course) who can supply satisfying stories with much greater accuracy, stories that make an effort to capture the true flavor of a place. We learn about the people and culture and norms and quirks and fascinating details from writers who have lived in those societies, writers who grew up learning about those traditions, from sources who can write with authority about settings and cultures that a Western audience can only guess at or acquire through loooong study.

I'm not talking about the ethical or moral implications of writing in a culture not your own; I'm not judging or excluding or making a case one way or another. Different conversation, one I'm not good at. I'm just saying that we're lucky to have a chance in this century to enjoy the charm and the beauty of well written stories taking place in settings all over the world, written by people who know about those places. People who can do the things that Renaissance writers were really bad at. (Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors takes in the Greek city of Ephesus in Turkey. If you read or watch that play, do you feel like you've learned anything about historical Ephesus at all? I doubt it. It's just meant to be a funny play. Set it in Vancouver--same story.)

In 2019, Marlowe is no longer the right person to write about the queen of a North African city founded by a Semitic people. Not only is he not good at it, he would offend a bunch of people. In the 16th Century, he was the only choice. He was as good as it was going to get.

We're fortunate to have better options.

*Would Marlowe be amused by my anachronisms? Would he see the irony? :)

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