[citation needed] Dido is based on books 1, 2 and 4 of The Aeneid, but the author makes several deviations from this material.

Venus enters, and complains that Jupiter is neglecting her son Aeneas, who has left Troy with survivors of the defeated city.

She helps him meet up with Illioneus, Sergestus and Cloanthes, other surviving Trojans who have already received generous hospitality from the local ruler Dido, Queen of Carthage.

She asks him to give her the true story of the fall of Troy, which he does in detail, describing the death of Priam, the loss of his own wife and his escape with his son Ascanius and other survivors.

Iarbas sees the opportunity to be rid of his rival and agrees to supply Aeneas with the missing tackle.

She tells Iarbas and Anna that she intends to make a funeral pyre on which she will burn everything that reminds her of Aeneas.

The play was first published in 1594, a year after Marlowe's untimely death in Deptford, by the widow Orwin for the bookseller Thomas Woodcock, in Paul's Churchyard.

"[5] Some critics have virtually ignored the participation of Nashe – yet the presence of a collaborator may help to explain the play's divergences from Marlowe's standard dramaturgy.

No other play by Marlowe has such a strong female lead character, and in no other "is heteroerotic passion the centripetal force of the drama's momentum.

"[6] However, more recent studies conducted independently by Darren Freebury-Jones and Marcus Dahl,[7] and Ruth Lunney and Hugh Craig,[8] have failed to uncover evidence for Nashe's participation.

The 18th-century English composer Stephen Storace wrote an opera titled Dido, Queen of Carthage (1794) – alleged, by his sister Anna (Nancy) Storace, for whom the title role was written, to have been his greatest work – which largely set Marlowe's play to music.

However, the work was never published, as Storace's impresario Richard Brinsley Sheridan wished to retain control over productions of it.

An adaptation of the play was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 30 May 1993, the 400th anniversary of Marlowe's death, along with The Massacre at Paris, directed by Allen Drury and Michael Earley and featuring Sally Dexter as Dido, Timothy Walker as Aeneas, Jeremy Blake as Iarbas, Ben Thomas as Achates, Teresa Gallagher as Anna/Juno and Andrew Wincott as Cupid.