SOURCE: “Shakespeare Rewriting Ovid: Olivia's Interview with Viola and the Narcissus Myth,” in Shakespeare Survey, Vol. 50, 1997, pp. 81-89.

In the following essay, Taylor details Shakespeare's reshaping of the Narcissus myth from Ovid's Metamorphoses in the Olivia-Viola-Orsino relationship of Twelfth Night.

The writer is always a rewriter, the problem then being to differentiate and authenticate the rewriting. This is executed not by the addition of something wholly new, but by the dismembering and reconstruction of what has already been written.

(Terence Cave on creative imitation of the classics in the sixteenth century)¹

When Orsino sends her to Olivia with his latest message of love, Viola sees little hope of success for,

If she be so abandoned to her sorrow As it is spoke, she never will admit me. 

(1.4.19-20)

Still grief stricken after nearly a year, the young Countess has only recently announced her intention to continue in mournful...