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Priamus:
For a later literary manifestation of Aeneas' speech to Dido concerning
Troy and Priamus, see Shakespeare's Hamlet in which Hamlet
greets the players prior to their performance of Hamlet's The
Mousetrap. (Act II, Scene II, ln 445-448):
One speech in't I chiefly lov'd, twas Aeneas' [tale] to Dido, and
thereabout of it especially when he speaks of Priam's slaughter.
(The Riverside Shakespeare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
1974. p. 1157.)
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hors:
The medieval association of the horse with unbridled passion was a strong
verbal and visual icon. V.A. Kolve (Chaucer and the Imagery of
Narrative: The First Five Canterbury Tales. Stanford, Cal.:
Stanford
UP, 1984.) cites the "Porphyrian tradition in which the horse stands for
all that is not rational or spiritual in man's nature" (239). St. Gregory
used the imagery of the horse to convey the metaphor of controlling the
flesh: "Indeed the horse is the body of any soul, which it knows how to
restrain from illicit action with the bridle of continence and to release
in the exercise of good works with the spur of chastity" (as qtd by Kolve
241). Analogs of the representation of horses as metaphoric flesh exist in
numerous texts and manuscripts. In one fifteenth-century illumination, Prudence (shown as a man) "holds a
horse by its bridle to indicate that prudence likewise requires control
over one's carnal nature" (Kolve 243). The image of Dido and Eneas on
horseback immediately call these associations to mind, especially the
"stertlynge," unrestrained, movements of Eneas's horse.
For another horse analog, the Prioress in the Canterbury Tales also rides
a palfrey, considered the suitable mount for noblewomen.
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