We actually feel that we are there, one of the spectators, experiencing the story along with Procne and Philomela. Titus lacks these specificities and cultural details.
Similarities, however, may be found in other elements. The imagery in both narratives is rich. Both Ovid and Shakespeare have a penchant for enlivening the passages with verbal imagery, particularly in the forms of simile and metaphor. Tamora's praise of the forest alludes to the speaker's adulterous sensuality. The scene (as it is in Metamorphosis) is alive with allusion to predators of the animal kingdom -- most often wasps, flies, snakes and adders -- no doubt correlation to the human predators who fill the tale, and descriptive images of landscape are often sexualized; there is the "unhallowed and bloodstained hole" and "the swallowing womb" for instance. Similarly in Ovid too, there is the design that Philomelus weaves: " threads of deep purple on a white background" -- does that allude to the ruination of her spotless virginity? And Tereus's being compared to "Jove's great bird of prey" that grips the hare in "his talons, and the prey and captor both now there is no escape." Later on, the severed tongue is described as falling to the "black" earth "trembling and murmuring / and twitching as it flings itself about, / just as a serpent's severed tail will do" (800). Presumably, this alludes to the desires of the tongue to retell its misfortunes. And then there is Tereus' transformation into a 'stiffly crested bird'; the threatening and once powerful warrior, Tereus, is now impotent to act.
Ovid also carries portents of events to come. Tereus and Procne are wedded with omens occurring, and their son is, likewise, born under these conditions. One of them is the "evil owl [that is] perched and brooded on the roof of their bedchamber." (620). King Pandion, too, has a 'grim foreboding troubling his mind' when he bids farewell to his daughter. Portents too frequent Titus as when, for instance, Lavinia uses an actual copy of Ovid's Philomel story to articulate the details of the rape.
Ovid's form is more direct whereas Shakespeare multiplies the structural parallels and other forms of replication in 'Titus'. Retribution, for instance, is one such theme that replicates itself in varying forms: Tamora avenges herself for the death of her offspring, by having Titus' own offspring despoiled; Titus, in turn, replicates her crime by murdering her two remaining sons. Both individuals are drawn by fate to kill their own offspring; Tamora by unconsciously eating the minced flesh of her sons in a pie, Titus by consciously killing his own daughter.
Other parallels appear in the case of the two brothers Saturnius and Bassianus who appear in the first act disputing over the throne and possession of Lavinia, whilst Chiron and Demetrius appear in the second act quarrelling over sexual possession of Lavinia. Again two brothers Quintus and Martius are decapacitated in Act Three, whilst two brothers, Marcus and Titus, console each other throughout.
Finally, Shakespeare's style differs in that the pentameter is regular; most lines are free of the metrical variations such as eleven-syllable lines that would come to characterize the later Shakespeare, and there is confluence between the semantic and poetic units, in other words the end of the line coheres with the end of the clause (McDonald, xi). An illustration here is the phrase; "Noble patricians, patrons of my right, / defend the justice of my cause without arms" (I.1.1-2). The subtleties, later visible in Hamlet or Lear, where rhythmic variety, hesitation, and creation of momentum or shifts in tempo characterization (Dowden, 1967) are non-existent here. Perhaps, another commonality existent in the style of their verse is that both are "straightforward, blunt, and forceful" (McDonald, xli).
Most famously, Shakespeare differs from Ovid with his quintessential witticisms as, for instance, in the following passage:
Demetrius: Villain, what hast thou done?
Aaron: That which thou cannot undo.
Chiron: Thou hast undone our mother.
Aaron: Villain, I have done thy mother. (IV. 2.73-76).
Shakespeare's love for imbuing text with ambiguous and multiple levels of meaning (Dowden, 1967) is also evident in a later portion. Recounting his crimes, Aaron declaims:
Aaron: They cut thy sister's tongue, and ravished her,
And cut her hands and trimmed her as thou sawst.
Lucius: O. detestable villain! Calls't thou that trimming?
Aaron: why, she was washed and cut and trimmed, and 'twas
Trim sport for them which had the doing of it. (V.1.92-96)
Observe here the play of meaning with the word 'trim', and the similarity of 'sawest' with that word.
'Goths' is often intermingled with 'goats' and allusion, no doubt to their barbarity, and in another...
In literature, for example, we find this myth in the tragedy of Dr. Faustus, where the protagonist's fall is compared to the ambition of Icarus. In the visual arts this theme and myth is evident in famous paintings, such as, "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" (1558), by Peter Brueghel. Critics have noted that Breughel used many of the detail from Ovid's story in his painting -- thus proving
Though he achieves great comic effect with this, Ovid could also be underlining the importance of the following poem by his inclusion of such a large portion of the Roman pantheon. There is also explicit evidence that Ovid is not merely -- or at least not solely -- talking about lust in the poem, at one point addressing the reader as, "You...who search for the essence of lasting love"
Mercury tells the story of Pan (whose flutes represent water) and Syrinx, another river daughter. In the second book, Ovid focuses on fire and air. He writes about the Palace of the Sun, where both air and fire are represented. The story of Phaethon is also associated with fire and air, and the sisters of Phaethon turn into trees which weep amber which is solid fire. Cygnus, Phaethon's cousin, becomes
If one doubts this, consider Ovid's most overly scathing prose is served for Caesar and contemporary politics. Even better than at plays, one can pick up women witnessing spectacles and triumphs: "When, lately, Caesar, in mock naval battle, / exhibited the Greek and Persian fleets, / surely young men and girls came from either coast, / and all the peoples of the world were in the City? / Who did
This is also accomplished by "sliding" from a story centered around one character to that of a friend or relative (Epaphus and Phaethon, end of Book 1). These different links, or disjointed continuations, reaffirm the superficiality with which Ovid demands the reader to operate. Ovid uses the conformities of the epic throughout the Metamorphoses, but the height of this usage is achieved in the Ajax-Odyssey debate. Ovid's use of the
But Ovid's "Metamorphosis" complete disconnects morality from human fate, even more radically than in either Hesiod or Plato. In Ovid, almost every person is transformed into one thing or another, regardless of how good or bad they might be in moral terms. But the sorts of suffering in these tales still have shadings of moral difference, even if bad actions does not cause one's bad fate, as meted out by
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