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All Site ContentHamletAct 2Scene 2
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"Aeneas' tale to Dido"
Allusion
Act 2,
Scene 2
Lines 436-456

An explanation of the allusion to the Aeneid in Act 2, Scene 2 of myShakespeare’s Hamlet.

Hamlet

but called it an honest method. One speech in it I
chiefly loved: 'twas Aeneas' tale to Dido, 
 and thereabout of it especially where he
speaks of Priam's slaughter. If it live in your memory, 
begin at this line — ‘let me see, let me see.’
The rugged Pyrrhus, like th' Hyrcanian beast — 
‘It is not so; it begins with Pyrrhus — 
The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms,
Black as his purpose, did the night resemble
When he lay couched in the ominous horse,
Has now this dread and black complexion smeared
With heraldry more dismal. Head to foot,
Now is he total gules, horridly tricked
With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,
Baked and empasted with the parching streets
That lend a tyrannous and damnèd light
To their vile murders. Roasted in wrath and fire,
And thus o'ersizèd with coagulate gore,
With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Phyrrhus
Old grandsire Priam seeks.’
So, proceed you.

Hamlet and the actor recite a speech from a fictitious play based on the Aeneid, the Roman writer Virgil’s epic poem about the Trojan war. In the Aeneid, Aeneas tells Dido, the Queen of Carthage, the story of the fall of Troy. A party of Greek soldiers, led by Pyrrhus, constructed a giant wooden horse and hid themselves inside. When the Greeks placed the horse outside the gates of Troy, the unsuspecting Trojans brought it inside their city. That night, the Greeks soldiers emerged, killed King Priam, and sacked the city of Troy.