SOURCE: Brown, Sarah Annes. “Ovid, Golding, and The Tempest.” Translation and Literature¹ 3 (1994): 3-29.

In the following essay, Brown discusses how Golding's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, particularly its strong use of contemporary English idiom, served to make the work more useable and accessible for Shakespeare. Focusing on The Tempest, Brown demonstrates the importance of Golding's Metamorphosis to Shakespeare's understanding and adaptation of Ovid's stories.

Although the importance of Ovid for Shakespeare has always been recognized, attention has focused until recently on the influence of the Metamorphoses upon early works such as Venus and Adonis.² Within the last few years, however, the strong Ovidian presence in Shakespeare's Late Plays, in which overt allusions to Ovidian stories give way to a more subtle engagement with the Metamorphoses, has been increasingly acknowledged.³ David Armitage suggests that by this point in Shakespeare's career, ‘myth has become more integral to the poetic fabric of...