Hyrcanian Beast
6th April 2024
Photo Credit: Tom Brakefield (Photo Images), CANVA
QUOTATION
‘Twas Aeneas’ tale to Dido, and thereabout of it especially when 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 the Hyrcanian beast - ‘tis not so; it begins with Pyrrhus:
The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms,
Black as his purpose, did the night resemble
HAMLET: Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2
HYRCANIAN BEAST (Caspian Tiger: Panthera tigris)
In the quotation above Hamlet compares the mythical warrior Pyrrhus with the Hyrcanian Beast, a pitiless, merciless killer. The Hyrcanian Beast was known to Shakespeare and some of his contemporaries through the works of classical authors such as Virgil. In Book 4 of the Aeneid, Dido Queen of Carthage, tells Aeneas that he is heartless to abandon her, “hewn from harden’d entrails of a rock, and rough Hyrcanian tigers gave thee suck”.
The Hyrcanian Tiger lived in the areas around the Caspian Sea and was feared from antiquity for its speed and ability to kill. It is very unlikely that Shakespeare or any of his audience would have seen a live tiger. They were notoriously difficult to capture and then to keep alive if kept in captivity. Tigers were frequently seen in book illustrations from the medieval period onwards.
The Caspian Tiger was a real animal which was hunted to extinction in the late 1960s or early 1970s. For the first audiences of Hamlet the creature was unreal, in the sense that they had never seen a live tiger, and for modern audiences the Caspian Tiger, the Hyrcanian Beast, is also only alive in the imagination.
More Information
Folger Shakespeare Library: Search Shakespeare’s Works
Perseus Digital Library: Virgil, Aeneid, Book 4
WWF: Returning Tigers to Kazakhstan
