On Playing Mercury

While we were workshopping The Ballad of Dido, the American Shakespeare Center was performing Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage, one of our writer and director Tony Tambasco’s source materials. Being exposed to Marlowe’s play was a treat, and I found it fascinating to learn which elements Tony was specifically deviating from and which he was borrowing. 

Tony and Marlowe’s treatment of gods is markedly different. Having seen Marlowe’s play, I found myself appreciating more how Tony was using gods and mortals in his story-telling. In Marlowe’s play, the gods control the story. Jupiter, Venus, Juno, Cupid, and Mercury appear and re-appear throughout the play. Dido, and her love, are clearly under the control of Cupid. The power of the gods is undeniable. 

In The Ballad of Dido, the mortal characters are given greater agency: though many gods are talked about frequently, Mercury is the only divine figure that appears. The manner in which he does so further places the burden of their own actions on the humans. Mercury appears to Aeneas in a dream. Aeneas clearly believes the visitation is a true one, but Dido argues that “dreams are false shades of the gods’ will.” The script doesn’t give any other reasons to doubt Mercury’s appearance, but it also doesn’t present the visit as concrete reality.

We were able to find further opportunities to confuse the matter, due to the fact that I, a short redheaded female, was playing Lord Mercury. One day in rehearsal I said, “I’m going to try something crazy with this scene,” and proceeded to play Lord Mercury as though he were a twelve-year-old girl.

I can’t fully describe where this idea came from. Partially it was because the text made me think that Mercury was akin to Sportin’ Life and I thought it was a bad idea for me to attempt to play that. Thus I needed to find a different way into the role that would contain no flavor of that. Partially it was due to the fact that I was playing three male roles and was looking for a way to keep them separate and interesting. 

Tony approved the choice, feeling that it worked because Mercury was the only god and would therefore be the most successful by existing as far outside the time and place of the story as possible. After playing the scene I could clearly see in my mind what Mercury’s costume should be. Tony saw the same image.

I think there is something to be said about the fact that misogynistic lines such as “varium et mutabile semper femina” (a woman is always a variable and changeable thing - thanks Vergil) were being delivered by a character embodying a sexual trope - the older female dressed as a Catholic school girl. Because our society fetishizes the Catholic school girl, Mercury’s characterization enters of the world of fantasy. The two main results are that the audience is then able to question the reality of the scene, and the responsibility for Aeneas’ actions rests solely with Aeneas. 

Is it Mercury or is it Aeneas’ subconscious that appears in the dream? I’ll never tell.

That One Song

One of my decidedly modern inspirations for The Ballad of Dido was The Threepenny Opera. I've always been a fan of that show, and was fortunate enough to have been able to direct a production of it with Clarkson in 2004, but what's I'm talking about is Brecht and Weill's original process. They didn't set out to create a new musical; the original plan was for a fairly straight forward German translation of John Gay's Beggar's Opera, which evolved into a German adaptation with some original music, and by the time they were done, only one of Gay's songs remained. 

I was initially planning on The Ballad of Dido existing as a rather more straightforward cut of Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage, interspersed with relevant early modern and roots ballads. Now that we're finished, only a few direct fragments of Marlowe, Vergil, and a little Shakespeare still exist in the script, and all of the songs are original, except one: "Don't This Road Look Rough and Rocky."

"Don't this road" (or "Don't that road") is one of those songs you've almost certainly heard before. It's been covered by just about everyone who plays roots music, and appears in a couple instruction books in the genre, and as it is, it seemed a great fit for the moment when Aeneas tells Dido he's going to leave her. Well... with some minor adjustments to the lyrics. 

To a certain degree, leaving the song in the show was its own logic. I have previously talked a little bit about why I find American roots and classical epics to be a perfect fit, but the genre of music itself didn't feel like enough of an anchor when characters talk about places named Carthage, Troy, and Ilium (although the show would be right at home in my native Upstate NY, where those, along with Rome, Vergil, Homer, and Ithaca are modern cities). Having a (mostly) intact version of a traditional song at such a crucial moment in the story helps serve as an anchor for audience's ear. 

So just like Brecht and Weill before me, Rachel and I have that one song that made it through to the final cut. I know it might sound a bit arrogant to be drawing such a lofty comparison, but it makes me feel better knowing that our new musical follows in the footsteps of giants in some way. 

Other Early Modern Inspirations

I think I've mentioned once or twice before that the Romans almost completely destroyed everything we know about early Carthage, and now that rehearsals are under way, the cast has plied their questions about how ancient Carthaginians and Trojans would have done things. The best I can do in these cases is tell them that I don't know, but Vergil's appropriation of Troy for Roman propaganda gives us a little more freedom to treat the Trojans as archetypes of Romans, and we know quite a bit about Rome.

For inspiration of how political, military, and mercantile affairs may have worked in the ancient world, apart from just plain guessing, I've been looking to the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.  Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage was first printed in 1594, and probably performed sometime in 1593, right around the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign, and while probably not a direct representation of Elizabeth's court affairs, I can't help but think that an early-modern Londoner would have seen the parallel between their own sitting queen, and one of the first queens in recorded history.

So I have felt free to draw on Elizabeth's reign, her relationship with parliament, and in some cases even documents of record from the period for how to portray the Dido and Carthage in a modern play. Fortunately, I studied Tudor-Stuart history with Mary Hill Cole, so I kind of have an advantage here. 

That said, I've had other places to turn. It bears mentioning that the story of Dido and Aeneas was the stuff of popular entertainment in Renaissance London, and probably prior. "Queen Dido" or "The Wandering Prince of Troy" was an often reprinted ballad in early modern London, and Chaucer wrote "The Legend of Dido" as a part of his Legend of Good Women (this one is a modern English translation) sometime around the 1380s. A little bit before the early-modern period, but I'll take it.

As I continue making the transition from writer to director, I will be eager to see how much of a useful dramaturgical function all the research I've done that is not directly reflected in the text will be. Generally speaking, I like to know as much as possible about everything related to a play text before I direct it, even if for the sake of my own confidence, so I can't imagine that it will be useless. I just need to keep it from getting in the way.