But now begins th’ extremity of heat
To pinch me with intolerable pangs:
Die, life! fly, soul! tongue, curse thy fill, and die!
It is something which Shakespeare could not do, and which he could not have understood.
Dido appears to be a hurried play, perhaps done to order with the Æneid in front of him. But even here there is progress. The account of the sack of Troy is in this newer style of Marlowe’s, this style which secures its emphasis by always hesitating on the edge of caricature at the right moment:
The Grecian soldiers, tir’d with ten years war,
Began to cry, “Let us unto our ships,
Troy is invincible, why stay we here?”...
By this, the camp was come unto the walls,
And through the breach did march into the streets,