Ovid's Metamorphoses and Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus
This paper examines the relationship between Ovid's Metamorphoses (Book Six) and Shakespeare's early tragedy Titus Andronicus, arguing that Shakespeare drew heavily on the myth of Tereus, Procne, and Philomela. The paper traces the shared motifs — rape, the silencing of the victim, her creative revelation of the crime, and cannibalistic revenge — before turning to the substantial differences in narrative structure, tone, imagery, and stylistic technique. It considers how Ovid's omniscient narration, cultural detail, and psychological depth contrast with Shakespeare's dialogue-driven, unrelentingly grim dramatic form, and reflects on the critical reception of Titus as one of Shakespeare's least polished works.
- Overview of the Philomela Myth in Ovid's Metamorphoses: Ovid's Tereus, Procne, and Philomela story summarized
- Plot Parallels Between Ovid and Titus Andronicus: Shakespeare's plot mapped against Ovidian source
- Core Thematic Similarities: Shared motifs of rape, silence, and cannibalistic revenge
- Structural and Stylistic Differences: Narrative versus dramatic form; tonal contrasts
- Imagery, Tone, and Cultural Detail: Simile, metaphor, and Ovid's richer cultural texture
- Shakespeare's Wordplay and Dramatic Technique: Puns, ambiguity, structural parallels in Titus
- Critical Assessment and Shakespeare's Omissions: Reception history and what Shakespeare left out
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper grounds its comparative analysis in direct textual quotation from both Ovid and Shakespeare, allowing readers to evaluate the claims about style and tone firsthand.
- It moves systematically from plot-level comparison to deeper layers of analysis — structure, tone, imagery, wordplay, and critical reception — building a layered argument rather than a simple summary of similarities.
- The use of secondary critical voices (Anderson, McDonald, Dowden, Reese) gives the argument scholarly context and prevents the analysis from feeling merely impressionistic.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates sustained comparative close reading: it identifies a source text (Ovid's Metamorphoses Book Six), maps its elements onto the target text (Titus Andronicus), and then interrogates the gaps and divergences rather than simply cataloguing resemblances. This technique — acknowledging both debt and departure — is central to source-influence scholarship in literary studies.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens by summarizing the Ovidian myth, then reconstructs the Shakespearean plot, identifies the shared thematic core, and pivots to a series of contrast sections covering narrative mode, tone, cultural detail, imagery, and verbal wit. It closes with a critical-reception coda that contextualizes the play's weaknesses relative to Shakespeare's later mature works. This funnel structure — from summary to synthesis to evaluation — is well suited to a comparative literary essay at the undergraduate level.
Overview of the Philomela Myth in Ovid's Metamorphoses
Titus Andronicus was Shakespeare's first play, and it is evident that the fledgling author was deeply influenced by the story of Tereus, Procne, and Philomela in Ovid's Metamorphoses (Book Six), since he replicates the theme almost exactly.
In Book Six of the Metamorphoses, Ovid tells the tale of the married Tereus lusting after Philomela, his wife's sister. On the pretext of transporting her to meet her sister, he rapes her in a hideout, tears out her tongue, and keeps her secluded on a Thracian isle. Constrained to communicate her suffering by creative means, Philomela weaves her tale into cloth — "deep purple on a white background" (830) — and sends it via her slave to her sister Procne. Overcome with sisterly love, Procne kills and cooks her own son, then serves him in broth to Tereus. When Tereus asks to see the boy Itys, Procne, "unable to hide her savage joy, and eager now to be the bearer of misfortune" (950), cries, "the one that you are seeking is within." When Tereus finally comprehends what he has done, he chases Procne and Philomela in an attempt to kill them, but the gods transform all three into birds.
Plot Parallels Between Ovid and Titus Andronicus
The key narrative of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus is similar in content. Titus, a triumphant Roman general, has sacrificed the son of one of his captives — Tamora, a Goth queen — as an offering to the gods. This act makes Tamora determined to avenge her family. The story begins with a conflict over Lavinia: her father forces her to marry his chosen king, Saturninus, against her wishes to remain with Bassianus; Demetrius and Chiron, Tamora's two sons, conspire to rape Lavinia; and Aaron the Moor, Tamora's consort, assists them by arranging the murder of Bassianus. With Tamora's full consent, her sons carry out their plan, then mutilate Lavinia by cutting off her hands and removing her tongue.
At this point the story diverges from Ovid's in a spiral of revenge and deception. Aaron frames Titus's sons for the murder of Bassianus; Martius and Quintus are consequently executed by the Emperor; Marcus, Titus's brother, discovers and liberates Lavinia; Aaron, under false pretences, persuades Titus to cut off his own hand in exchange for what he believes will be his sons' freedom; and when Titus learns of their deaths he raises an army to fight Rome.
The narrative then rejoins the Tereus saga — with its own divergences of savagery and murder — when Lavinia finds a creative way to reveal the names of her attackers. Titus exacts his revenge by killing Chiron and Demetrius and, with Lavinia's aid (just as Philomela helped her sister), cooks them in a pie for their mother, Tamora. Titus then kills his own daughter, reveals the entire plot to the Emperor, is killed by the Emperor in turn, and the story again diverges from Ovid's: rather than being saved by divine transformation, the key protagonists meet violent deaths at the hands of various characters. Lucius, Titus's surviving son, is the only one who endures.
Core Thematic Similarities
Essentially, the core similarities between the two stories are as follows: the rape of the maiden; the cutting out of her tongue (and in Lavinia's case her hands as well); the girl's creative and ultimately successful effort to reveal her story; the consequent revenge taken by a sister in Philomela's case and by a father in Lavinia's; and, in both cases, revenge that takes a strikingly similar form — the sons of the violator (or, in Tamora's case, the abettor of violation) are cooked and fed to the wrongdoer.
Even though the central motif is similar, the compositional style in which each story is told is undeniably different in structural and stylistic content.
Structural and Stylistic Differences
Ovid's structural style takes the form of omniscient narration. As a transcendent and apparently objective narrator, he reports how Tereus first saw Philomela and "caught fire as instantly as ripe grain or dry leaves" (650). Using a rhetorical device, he then penetrates Tereus's mind and renders his dilemma vividly:
"What track to take here? Bribe her attendants? / Make his way to her through her faithful nurse? / Seduce the girl with rare and precious gifts, / even at the cost of his whole kingdom? / Or seize her and defend his theft with warfare?" (660–670).
The narrator goes on to describe how Philomela herself inadvertently made this task easier for Tereus through her gestures. By sometimes entering a character's mind and at other times assessing actions from an omniscient vantage point, the narrator produces a compelling account of the story's key events. So compelling is this account that Anderson (1997) opined that Metamorphoses has "direct, obvious and powerful affinities with contemporary reality" (xxx) and described its subject matter thus:
"[Its images] offer a mythical key to most of the more extreme forms of human behavior and suffering, especially ones we think of as particularly modern: holocaust, plague, sexual harassment, rape, incest, seduction, pollution, sex-change, suicide, hetero- and homosexual love, torture, war, child-battering, depression and intoxication form the bulk of themes." (Anderson, 1997, 18).
Unlike Shakespeare — who employed a chorus with an omniscient slant in some of his later writings, but not in Titus — Ovid does not refrain from passing judgment on his subject. He describes Tereus's deeds as an "outrage," calls him a "tyrant," and elsewhere labels him a "barbarian." The author's sympathies are unmistakable: Tereus is condemned. Procne, however, despite the savagery and unnaturalness of her deed — killing her own son and serving him as stew to his father — is portrayed with considerably more empathy. The narrator enters her mind and deliberates on her emotions and on the cruelty and complexity of her situation:
"Her anger broke / and her unwilling eyes were suddenly full of hot tears that she could not control; / but as she felt her sense of purpose falter / out of an excess of maternal love, / she turned to look upon her sister's face, / and then turned back and forth between them wildly." (900–910).
Ovid then describes her internal turmoil and ultimate resolve:
"And why does this one babble pleasantries, / while that one's silent? What has got her tongue? / How can it be that this one calls me mother, / while that one cannot call me sister? Look! / Your husband is the answer to this riddle, / unworthy daughter of royal Pandion! / The only crime against a man like this / is to behave with natural affection!" (910–920).
Shakespeare's structural style is fundamentally different. Rather than narration, he has his characters drive the story forward through successive dialogue, and he refrains from stepping outside the plot to comment — though there are occasions when he may do so indirectly, such as by alluding to the Goths as goats. The structural forms of Ovid's saga and Shakespeare's, though similar in motif, are wholly distinct.
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