Shakespeare and Ovid

The collection of essays edited by Roger Rees on Ted Hughes and the Classics published last year demonstrated that the Classics continued to be a useful pool of source material and inspiration for literature throughout the 20^th century. However, we should not forget that stories from Greek and Latin literature have been retold for centuries in a variety of different forms.

One of the most famous examples of all being Shakespeare, who along with many other writers of the Renaissance felt no shame dabbling in a spot of borrowing from pre-existing narratives every now and then. Like Hughes, Shakespeare recognised the brilliance of Ovid's Metamorphoses (written between 1- 8 A.D.), and used many of the two hundred and fifty stories told in the epic in his own poetry and plays. These stories focus on the Greek myths, where anything is possible, and where changes of shape and form seem strangely natural.

What better text could Shakespeare have found to help inspire his comedy A Midsummer's Night Dream(1595)? A play which is a plethora of magical metamorphoses. In A Midsummer's Night Dream, Shakespeare echoes Ovid's tragic tale 'Pyramus and Thisbe', in which two lovers whose marriage is forbidden run away into the forest and where a tragic encounter with a lion leads to their suicides. Consequently, the gods turn mulberries dark purple in their memory. However, the playwright takes a more playful approach to the myth and it becomes 'very tragical mirth'.

Whilst Shakespeare mirrors the plot of 'Pyramus and Thisbe' in the unfortunate plight of the lovers Hermia and Lysander, the heroine and hero of the piece, a series of complex subplots involving a lovers-tiff over a changeling between the King and Queen of the faeries, a mix-up in love potion and the rehersals of a play version within A Midsummer's Night Dream of 'Pyramus and Thisbe' make it clear that the audience ought not to take this story too seriously. The greatest threat to the lovers in this retelling being mischeivious faeries rather than Ovid's savage lion.

It is quite likely that Shakespeare knew Ovid's Metamorphoses in the Latin, but there was an English translation by Arthur Golding in 1567. As many academics have pointed out, there are a number of striking similarities between Shakespeare's play version of 'Pyramus and Thisbe' and Goldings somewhat exaggerated dramatic language in the translation. Thus the story we find in A Midsummer's Night Dream has not only been retold from the Latin text, but also from an English translation. The very nature of this type of literary recycling creating a metamorphosis of the text itself.

The use of Ovid's Metamorphoses in Shakespeare is a great example of how the Classics are retold, reinterpreted and recycled in literature. The reception of the Classics within poerty, plays and novels is extremely wide and varied. We may read the epic Metamorphoses ourselves through a variety of translations or retellings, such as Hughes' Tales from Ovid, without ever needing to know any Latin, which to many is a daunting and archaic language.

Ovid's Metamorphoses is but one example of the Classics in literature. Both Shakespeare and Hughes used many more, and with such a wealth of stories to inspire, there is little doubt that that writers will continue to borrow from the great library of Greek and Latin literature that we know as the Classics.

If you are curious about the classics please come to our classics afternoon on Sunday 27th June at The Lot. All events free and there's a bar! http://westportbookfestival.org/programme/27-june

Shakespeare and Ovid

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