Shakespeare's Ovid, Being Arthur Golding's Translation of the Metamorphoses

William Shakespeare

Read by Thomas A. Copeland

Ovid represents his work as a celebration of mutability in the form of a history of the world's notable transformations. It is a compendium of Greek and Roman mythology, valuable not only as a guide to the study of ancient literature and religion but also as an aid to understanding and appreciating later literature since it has been studied and often alluded to by educated Western writers.

Mutability is not only the subject of the poem but the essence of Ovid’s narrative technique. The subject matter permits the poet to alternate between exciting action scenes and detailed psychological portraits in the form of interior monologues, especially of women tortured by indecision. The pace of the narrative varies greatly as he lingers here, rushes there, some stories occupying five pages, others five lines. The tone too varies greatly, for the characters have unique voices that alter according to emotion and audience, and the narrative voice itself also changes unpredictably. One story of violence, like the death of Hercules, may be treated with great dignity throughout, while free-for-all battles defiling places better suited to celebration crescendo from one bizarre death to one yet more bizarre until we find ourselves laughing at carnage. One such episode is followed incongruously by a recital performed by the nine Muses to a bored divine audience.

Tone can undergo drastic changes even within a single tale. For example, a lengthy adventure demonstrating that the gods as well as humans have hearts ends cynically (blasphemously?) when Jupiter, discarding the role of wise king who must make hard decisions, casually rapes the nymph Callisto during a routine perimeter check and then, business done, immediately rises into the bliss of heaven.

Ovid follows a roughly chronological organization, but inclusion is more important to him than continuity. If between tales he can cram in a compressed tale or two, he does so, with a semblance of transitions, but when it comes to narrative connections between episodes of a single story, even to explain motivation or character development—that of Medea is a prime example—he simply does not take the trouble; he just tacks them together like the tail on a kite.

He could afford to assume that readers of his day would know most of the major stories already as well as the names of all of the gods, so brief allusions to them would suffice. Arthur Golding, the translator, assumes, like Ovid, that readers will be familiar with the stories and the characters' names. Therefore he uses trimmed versions (Persey for Perseus) or aliases or titles (Athena or Pallas for Minerva) to suit his metrical needs.

Comparing the opening of a book with the conclusion often reveals dimensions of the poem one had not suspected. Sometimes he ties up motifs; sometimes the passages clash, as when the exalted paean to Achilles' enduring fame at the end of Book 12 is taken along with that book's opening description of the house of fame. Such experiences teach readers to be sensitive to subtle ironies. The Emperor Augustus must surely have been aware of how the final book's promise of Rome's everlastingness is undercut by so many prior examples of the inexorable triumph of mutability, not to mention the scarcely veiled cynicism with which Julius Caesar's deification is described. Of course, all this is spoken in the voice of a notorious vegetarian fanatic (Pythagoras!), who winds up the poem's theme with recollections of his own past lives, but Augustus knew very well the sly tricks of writers who want to avoid censorship. No wonder the poet was exiled to the ends of the earth! And no wonder he staged a public burning of his manuscript (secure in the knowledge that copies were safe in the hands of friends). (Summary by Thomas A. Copeland) (19 hr 18 min)

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