Diamonds, Maidens, Widow Dido, and Cock-a-diddle-dow

Abstract

References to Dido, lover of Aeneas, in the second act of Tempest have garnered much interpretation and speculation by readers and playgoers. Studieed the extensive use of images and themes from the Aeneid in the play and have shown especially how the love of Ferdinand and Miranda is partly parallel to, and partly reversal of, the ancient love story of Aeneas and the queen of Carthage, there may be another motive for Didos inclusion, motive related to system of wordplay involving shuffled repetitions of the sounds of letters and syllables. (2) As Russ McDonald has remarked in Shakespeare's Late Style, The notorious mystery surrounding Gonzalo's 'Widow Dido' has been examined in almost every conceivable context except, I think, that of aural identity, simple rhyme. (3) Although venturing bit beyond rhyme, this essay focuses on the name of as sound, and as alphabetical letters, situating the name within set of wordplay practices extending across the genres of drama, prose fiction, poetry, and folk ballad. It explores, therefore, an overlooked linguistic facet of Dido's multifaceted legacy. My argument begins with anagrammatical wordplay involved in commonplace associations between desirable women and jewels, and Dido's participation within that complex. I then consider as an emblem of love-induced madness and explore link between her name and the nonsense words in bawdy ballads. Finally, I maintain that utterances of widow Dido in Tempest echo the refrain to Come unto these yellow sands and therefore participate in Ariel's music, which is both alluring and cautionary. I. Diamonds Diamonds were hardly common material objects in late medieval and early modern England, yet in language and literature they gathered about them an array of cultural implications. Everyday speakers linked them, of course, with wealth and treasure, but also with innocence and virginity, and the writers of romances used them to symbolize the idealized, unalloyed beauty of the chaste females who were the objects of their heroes' quests. Players on the London stage in the time of Shakespeare invoked them to mark the role of the eminently desirable woman. following lines, spoken by Savourwit in Thomas Middleton's No Wit/Help Like Woman's, exemplify the figure: Do not wise men and great often bestow Ten thousand pound in jewels that lie by 'em? If so, what can lie by man More than virgin? If none more precious, Why should the pillow of fool be graced With that brave spirits which dearness have embraced?--And then perhaps, ere the third spring come on, Sends home your cracked, the beauty gone, And--more to know her, 'cause you shall not doubt her--A number of poor sparks twinkling about her. (1.219-28) (4) He tells us that virgin is treasure so that she should be reserved for great men, who, presumably, will appreciate her, not for fools who will debase her and eventually abandon her to overuse among the common multitude (poor sparks), her own light and value greatly diminished. phrase cracked transfers the reference from the young woman herself to her maidenhead. In the sexual innuendo of the period, diamond jewel, or precious stone might refer to either female or male sexual parts. (5) Yet leading lady did not have to be maiden to be pure and radiant, and valued as diamond. In Middleton's Women, Beware Women the most matchless jewel Bianca, the sixteen-year-old wife of Leantio, must be cased up from all men's eyes (1.1.162, 170). When the lust-filled Duke of Florence sends messenger to invite Bianca to banquet, her husband tells her to withdraw, because she is a gem no stranger's eye must see, / Howe'er thou please now to look dull on me (3.1.175-76). (6) Looking and seeing are intimately linked with the diamond-like woman, not only because she is beautiful, but because sight is linked with fire through popular optical theory, and in keeping with such theory, both fire and chaste women, like diamonds, are light-giving or radiant. …