The Influence of Ovid’s Metamorphoses on Shakespeare’s Plays

William Shakespeare drew inspiration from a wide range of sources in order to weave together the stories in his plays. One of his largest influences comes from the 1st century BC Roman author Publius Ovidius Naso, known as Ovid. The influence of Ovid on Shakespeare is particularly evident through his epic Metamorphoses and the collection of poems called Heroides. In this essay, we will start by exploring Shakespeare’s education and familiarity with Ovid through Arthur Golding’s translation of the Metamorphoses. We will also examine Elizabethan England’s relationship with Ovid to understand how Shakespeare’s audience understood these stories. Lastly, we will look at scenes from three of Shakespeare’s plays: The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and analyze them in order to show how Ovid directly influenced Shakespeare’s writing. As we look at the relationship between William Shakespeare and Ovid, we will also explore not only the more direct borrowings but also the subtle influences that underscore Shakespeare’s style and storytelling techniques.

Shakespeare’s familiarity with Ovid’s Metamorphoses was not in passing but was rather a formative influence that came through his grammar-school training and through practicing his Latin in reading, translating, and performing parts of Arthur Golding’s 1567 translation of the epic poem. Jonathan Bate clarifies this connection, noting, “From his grammar-school training and his reading of Golding’s translation, Shakespeare grew to know the fables extremely well. All fifteen books of the Metamorphoses make themselves felt in his works in the form of mythological allusions and borrowings of phrase” (Shakespeare and Ovid, Ch1.II). This training laid the foundation for Shakespeare to incorporate Ovidian elements into A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a collection of many mythological stories woven together, became a major source of inspiration for Shakespeare, as can be seen in the myriad allusions to the many stories in the Metamorphoses scattered throughout his plays. Bate notes that within Shakespeare’s plays, there are countless mythological references that are hard to pin down to one specific source, however, “the great majority of them — approximately 90 percent — could come from Ovid, and would usually have been thought of by mythologically literate playgoers as Ovidian” (Shakespeare and Ovid, Ch. 1 Page 23). This speaks not only to the influence of Ovid on Shakespeare but also to the profound imprint that Ovid’s stories left on the collective consciousness of his contemporary Elizabethan audience, who according to Bate would mostly be able to understand these Ovidian allusions.

Shakespeare lived and wrote during a time of tumult and change in England. Subsequently, his engagement, translation, and understanding of Ovid occurred during a period where the interpretation of Ovid’s works was undergoing change as well. Regarding the translation of Ovid, Bate further observes that a “newly unapologetic delight in the poetic and erotic qualities of the Metamorphoses came to compete with the predominant medieval practice of moralizing and even Christianizing them” (Bate 25). This shift in attitude towards Ovid is critical to understanding Shakespeare’s interpretation. Bate goes on to describe how the medieval tradition of moralizing and allegorizing Ovid’s stories served as a way to allow Ovid to remain relevant in a time when education and culture in England were dominated by Christian dogma. These medieval methods allowed the Metamorphoses’ erotic narratives to coexist and find an alternate meaning within a strict Christian framework.

At the very end of The Tempest, the wizard Prospero gives a speech, declaring the greatness of his magical abilities, before he relinquishes his magic for good. This speech is remarkably similar to one given by Medea in Book VII of Metamorphoses. In fact, the opening line of Prospero’s speech, when he says: “You elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves” (V.1), is almost word for word from Golding’s translation. However, this connection goes far beyond the opening line. Medea and Prospero both reference their ability to control various aspects of nature, whether it is calming the waves of the sea or creating a storm, moving mountains and causing earthquakes, waking the dead and bringing them out of their graves, and essentially causing a solar eclipse by blocking out the sun. When comparing the two texts side by side, it is remarkable how similar they are and how much Shakespeare drew from Ovid. These two passages are so similar when read side by side, that I believe Shakespeare wanted some of his audience members to make this connection to Medea. In a more cynical interpretation, perhaps he wanted to show off to his audience and let them know that he had a deep knowledge of Ovid’s writing.

At the end of The Winter’s Tale, Hermione, posing as a statue, comes back to life at the sound of music playing. This scene is clearly inspired by the story of Pygmalion and the ivory statue, as told by Ovid in Book X of the Metamorphoses. Just like Leontes after Hermione’s “death,” Pygmalion lives alone without a wife. Sixteen years afterward, a statue is revealed to Leontes of his wife Hermione, and he remarks on how incredibly life-like the statue is. Just as in Ovid’s story of Pygmalion, Leontes is so captivated by the realness of the statue that he desires to kiss it. He says, “Let no man mock me, for I will kiss her” (V.3.98–99). Similarly, Golding’s translation of Ovid states: “He often toucht it, feeling if the woork that he had made / Were verie flesh or Ivorye still. Yit could he not perswade / Himself too think it Ivory. For he oftentymes it kist. / And thought it kissed him ageine” (Golding X.273–275). From here, one can see how Shakespeare was inspired to include this scene of a statue so lifelike that Leontes believes it to be real. Of course, we know that in The Winter’s Tale, the “statue” is Hermione herself, hidden away for 16 years, while in Metamorphoses, it is at first a statue that Pygmalion has convinced himself is real. However, Shakespeare doesn’t get this idea of a statue coming to life from nothing: at the end of the story of Pygmalion, he prays to Venus to bring his statue to life, and Venus accepts his prayer and does so. As he gets home and touches his statue, he finds that her body begins to become warm, and he realizes that she is coming to life (Golding, line 306). Similarly in The Winter’s Tale, Leontes says “O, she’s warm! / If this be magic, let it be an art / Lawful as eating” (136–137). In this scene, we also see how Shakespeare pushes back against Christian doctrine and moves towards an admiration of the pagan gods and the world of magic. Jonathan Bate comments on how “Hermione is reawakened under the aegis of Apollo’s oracle and the influence of Ovid’s Pygmalion through the agency of what Leontes calls Paulina’s “magic,” something that was regarded as the antithesis of “lawful” Christian faith (How the Classics Made Shakespeare 4). Despite the suppression of this sort of language on stage by the Puritans, Shakespeare seems to be fascinated by the Classical world, and desires to include these themes in his plays.

Lastly, let us look at A Midsummer Night’s Dream to see how Shakespeare was inspired by Metamorphoses. This play is perhaps, out of all of Shakespeare’s plays, most influenced by the Metamorphoses. Bate notes how in this play, we “find all the marks of true Ovidianism: a philosophy of love and of change, the operation of the gods, animal transformation, and symbolic vegetation. It is the translation of these elements out of the play-within and into the play itself that transforms A Midsummer Night’s Dream into Shakespeare’s most luminous imitatio of Ovid” (Shakespeare and Ovid, Ch. 4, 132).

This play is filled with characters that come from Roman mythology, or whose situations reference those that can be found in the Metamorphoses. First, we have the character of Bottom, the mechanical who in the play is transformed into a donkey, echoing the countless transformations (or metamorphoses) that lie at the heart of Ovid’s epic poem. Most scholars note the Roman author Apuleius’ Latin novel The Golden Ass as the main source for Bottom’s transformation into a donkey in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. While this is likely the case, another inspiration for Bottom’s transformation may come from Book XI of Metamorphoses, where Midas is given ‘Asses eares’ as a punishment by Apollo (qtd. in Forey 322). We also have the character of Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, a fairy, or trickster god, that comes from Celtic mythology. Including this character in the play is another example of Shakespeare’s fascination with the pagan world. However, in creating the character, Shakespeare drew from both Celtic and Classical mythology and folklore to create this trickster character with elements of the Roman god Mercury.

Next, we have the characters of Theseus and Hippolyta, who feature prominently in the play. Theseus is a hero whose story is told in the Metamorphoses, perhaps most famously because of his abandonment of Ariadne after she helps him escape the Labyrinth and defeat the Minotaur, with the theme of love and abandonment being another major theme in the Metamorphoses. Furthermore, many members of Shakespeare’s audience would likely be familiar with Theseus. In this play, Theseus takes on the role of the duke of Athens, and serves as the leader of the civilized portions of the play, as opposed to those that take place in the forest, away from Athens. In the forest, we have the characters Oberon and Titania, the fairy king and queen, who rule the forest world within the play and serve as counterparts to Theseus and Hippolyta. Another potential inspiration from Ovid comes in the form of Hippolyta’s changeling boy, who may have been inspired by the character of Ganymede, a Tronjan boy who was kidnapped by the gods and is mentioned in Metamorphoses. Just as Ganymede becomes a cup-bearer for the gods, Oberon desires the changeling boy to be his own personal attendant and cup-bearer as well. Lastly, we have the comical play within a play at the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where the mechanicals perform the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, told in Book IV of the Metamorphoses. This is perhaps the most overt reference to the Metamorphoses as a story from the poem is reenacted on stage. Most Elizabethans’ would understand this as a deeply tragic and moving story, and perhaps Shakespeare is subverting expectations here by having the story performed poorly and comically.

In this essay, I hope to have shown how Ovid, through his epic poem the Metamorphoses, profoundly influenced Shakespeare’s writings. We began by looking at Shakespeare’s education, emphasizing the formative influence of his grammar-school training and his exposure to Arthur Golding’s translation of Metamorphoses. This grammar-school training laid the groundwork for Shakespeare to incorporate countless mythological references into his plays, 90 percent of which can be considered Ovidian, as we have seen. As England underwent a period of changing interpretations of Ovid’s works, Shakespeare engaged with these evolving attitudes, transitioning from medieval moralizing and allegorizing to an embrace of the cruel and erotic qualities inherent in the Metamorphoses. After this, we looked at three plays: The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and looked at examples of how Shakespeare incorporated Ovidian elements into his writing. In The Tempest, we saw how Prospero’s speech and declaration of his magical abilities mirrored Medea’s own speech in Book VII. The Winter’s Tale further displayed Shakespeare’s fascination with Ovid, as Hermione’s revival was strongly reminiscent of Pygmalion’s ivory statue coming to life in Book X of Metamorphoses. The essay culminated in an analysis of the many Ovidian elements in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Shakespeare took characters directly from Classical mythology and Ovid’s writing such as Theseus and Hippolyta and Pyramus and Thisbe, while including scenes and themes strongly reminiscent of the Metamorphoses such as the mention of the changeling boy. Lastly, we see how Shakespeare was fascinated with pagan mythology through characters such as Robin Goodfellow. Through these comparisons of Shakespeare and Ovid, I hope to have shown how Ovid pervades Shakespeare’s writing, and inspired him from grammar-school to The Tempest, as the poet neared the end of his career.

Bibliography

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