SOURCE: Taylor, Anthony Brian. “Golding's Ovid, Shakespeare's ‘Small Latin,’ and the Real Object of Mockery in ‘Pyramus and Thisbe.’” Shakespeare Survey 42 (1990): 53-64.

In the following essay, Taylor argues that although Shakespeare made use of Golding's translation of Ovid, his “Pyramus and Thisbe” in A Midsummer Night's Dream is not a parody of Golding's poetry, but rather a kind of self-mockery poking fun at Shakespeare's own limited facility with Latin.

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In an influential article some years ago on Shakespeare's method in ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’, Kenneth Muir claimed it was the playwright's purpose to mock earlier Elizabethan writers who had treated the story awkwardly and clumsily.¹ Muir saw Thomas Mouffet as Shakespeare's main quarry, but prominent among the other writers to whom he referred was Arthur Golding. Since Muir wrote, editors of A Midsummer Night's Dream, sceptical about Mouffet's part in the proceedings, have increasingly tended to read the...