is
again changes to the wailing of sorrow as he turns and leaves her. Anna
is sent after him to beseech his stay.

_Dido._ Call him not wicked, sister: speak him fair,
And look upon him with a mermaid's eye....
Request him gently, Anna, to return:
I crave but this--he stay a tide or two,
That I may learn to bear it patiently;
If he depart thus suddenly, I die.
Run, Anna, run; stay not to answer me.

Anna returns alone. Frantic schemes of pursuit, dangerously near to
madness, at length crystallize into the last fatal resolve. The pile is
made ready. Her attendants are all dismissed. One by one the articles
left behind by Aeneas are devoted to the flames.

Here lie the sword that in the darksome cave
He drew, and swore by, to be true to me:
Thou shalt burn first; thy crime is worse than his.
Here lie the garment which I clothed him in
When first he came on shore: perish thou too.
These letters, lines, and perjured papers, all
Shall burn to cinders in this precious flame.

When all have been consumed she leaps into the fire and so perishes.

The character of the Queen of Carthage sufficiently demonstrates that
Marlowe could paint a faithful and impressive likeness of a woman when
he chose. Possibly his fiery spirit would have proved less sympathetic
to a gentler type. Yet there are touches in the slighter portraits of
Abigail and Queen Isabella which reveal flashes of true insight into the
tender emotions of a woman's heart. Had Marlowe died before writing
_Edward the Second_ we should have said that he was incapable of
portraying any type of man but the abnormal and Napoleonic. He showed
himself to be a daring and brilliantly successful voyager into untried
seas. In the face of what he has left behind him it would be a bold
critic indeed who named with confidence any aspect of tragedy as outside
the empire of his genius.

The verse of _Dido, Queen of Carthage_ shows no signs of retrogression
from the steady advance to a more natural and perfect style which we
have traced in the progress from _Tamburlaine_ to _Edward the Second_.
An exception to this improvement will be found in certain portions of
Aeneas's long speech in the second act, of which it is probably not
unjust to surmise that Nash was the author. There are in Dido's own
speeches elements of wild extravagance, but they are natural to the
intensity of her passion. Does not Shakespeare's Cleopatra