No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Translating Ovid's Metamorphoses in Tudor Balladry
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2019
Abstract
This article provides the first sustained overview and analysis of the reception of Ovid's “Metamorphoses” in sixteenth-century English ballad culture. It highlights a significant tradition of translating materials from this ancient Roman source into the stuff of vernacular song—a phenomenon that can be traced back as far as 1552. Positing that popular music must have played a crucial role in shaping Tudor ideas about the “Metamorphoses,” this study draws attention to the textual, visual, aural, and kinetic dimensions of the Ovidiana that was regularly read, seen, heard, sung, and even danced to by early modern consumers of mythological ballads.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2019
Footnotes
A preliminary version of this study was presented at the “Ovid across Europe” conference organized by Marta Balzi and Gemma Pellissa Prades at the University of Bristol in 2017. I am grateful to Renaissance Quarterly’s anonymous readers for their valuable commentary. English translations of Ovid's Latin throughout this essay are drawn from the Loeb editions.
References
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Andreoli, Ilaria. “Ovid's ‘Meta-morphosis’: Book Illustration and the Circulation of Erotic Iconographical Patterns.” In Shakespeare's Erotic Mythology and Ovidian Renaissance Culture (2013), 19–39.Google Scholar
Arber, Edward, ed. A Transcript of the Register of the Company of Stationers of London, 1554–1640 A.D. 5 vols. London, 1875–94.Google Scholar
Baker, Herschel C. “Classical Material in Broadside Ballads, 1550–1625.” PMLA 54.4 (1939): 981–89.Google Scholar
Baldwin, T. W. William Shakspere's Small Latine and Lesse Greeke. 2 vols. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1944.Google Scholar
Baldwin, William. A lyttle treatyse called the image of idlenesse. STC 25196. London, 1555.Google Scholar
Beaumont, Francis, and Fletcher, John. The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon. Ed. Bowers, Fredson. 10 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Belsey, Catherine. “Invocation of the Visual Image: Ekphrasis in Lucrece and Beyond.” Shakespeare Quarterly 63.2 (2012): 175–98.Google Scholar
Bownd, Nicholas. The doctrine of the sabbath plainely layde forth. STC 3436. London, 1595.Google Scholar
Brown, Sarah Annes. “Cephalus and Procris: The Transmission of a Myth in Early Modern England.” In The Circulation of Knowledge in Early Modern English Literature, ed. Chiari, Sophie, 161–74. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015.Google Scholar
Brown, Sarah Annes, and Taylor, Andrew, eds. Ovid in English, 1480–1625, Part 1: “Metamorphoses.” London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2013.Google Scholar
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Riverside Chaucer. Ed. Larry D. Benson. 3rd ed. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.Google Scholar
Churchyard, Thomas, Camell, Thomas, Hedley, Thomas, et al. The contention betwyxte Churchyeard and Camell vpon Dauid Dycers dreame. STC 5225. London, 1560.Google Scholar
Clegg, Roger. “‘A Ballad Intituled a Pleasant Newe Jigge’: The Relationship between the Broadside Ballad and the Dramatic Jig.” Huntington Library Quarterly 79.2 (2016): 301–22.Google Scholar
Collington, Philip D. “A ‘Pennyworth’ of Marital Advice: Bachelors and Ballad Culture in Much Ado About Nothing.” In Shakespeare's Comedies of Love: Essays in Honour of Alexander Leggatt, ed. Bamford, Karen and Knowles, Ric, 30–54. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Davies, John. Epigrammes. In Epigrammes and elegies by I.D. and C.M. STC 6350.5. Middleborough [London?], ca. 1599.Google Scholar
Doughtie, Edward, ed. Lyrics from English Airs, 1596–1622. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Elderton, William. “The panges of loue and louers f[i]ttes.” Huntington Library, Britwell 18292. EBBA ID 32224. London, 1559.Google Scholar
English Broadside Ballad Archive [EBBA]. Ed. Fumerton, Patricia. University of California, Santa Barbara: http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu.Google Scholar
Enterline, Lynn. The Rhetoric of the Body from Ovid to Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
“The fair maid of Dunsmores lamentation.” British Library, Roxburghe 2.170–71. EBBA ID 30646. London, ca. 1681–84.Google Scholar
“The fantasies of a troubled mannes head.” STC 4555. London, 1566.Google Scholar
Flachmann, Michael. “The First English Epistolary Novel: The Image of Idleness (1555): Text, Introduction, and Notes.” Studies in Philology 87.1 (1990): 1–74.Google Scholar
Fleming, Juliet. Graffiti and the Writing Arts of Early Modern England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Frye, Susan. Pens and Needles: Women's Textualities in Early Modern England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Fumerton, Patricia. “Not Home: Alehouses, Ballads, and the Vagrant Husband in Early Modern England.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 32.3 (2002): 493–518.Google Scholar
Fumerton, Patricia. “Digging into ‘Veritable Dunghills’: Re-Appreciating Renaissance Broadside Ballads.” In A Companion to Renaissance Poetry, ed. Bates, Catherine, 414–31. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2018.Google Scholar
Fumerton, Patricia, and Guerrini, Anita. “Introduction: Straws in the Wind.” In Ballads and Broadsides in Britain, 1500–1800, ed. Fumerton, Patricia, Guerrini, Anita, and McAbee, Kris, 1–9. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010.Google Scholar
Golding, Arthur, trans. Ovid's Metamorphoses: The Arthur Golding Translation. Ed. Nims, John Frederick. Philadelphia, PA: Paul Dry Books, 2000.Google Scholar
Gower, John. Confessio Amantis. Ed. Peck, Russell A.. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Greg, W. W., and Boswell, E., eds. Records of the Court of the Stationers’ Company, 1576 to 1602, from Register B. London: Bibliographical Society, 1930.Google Scholar
Hale, David G. “Thomas Colwell: Elizabethan Printer.” The Library, 5th ser., 19 (1964): 223–26.Google Scholar
Hall, John. The Court of Virtue. Ed. Fraser, Russell A.. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1961.Google Scholar
“The happy lovers pastime.” Magdalene College, Pepys 4.4. EBBA ID 21671. London, ca. 1678–80.Google Scholar
Hardie, Philip, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Ovid. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Hedley, Thomas. “Of such as on fantesye decree & discus, on other me[n]s works, lo Ouids tale thus.” STC 18969.5. London, 1552.Google Scholar
Heywood, Thomas. A Woman Killed with Kindness. In Women on the Early Modern Stage, ed. Dolan, Frances E., 1–93. London: Meuthen, 2014.Google Scholar
Hopkins, David, and Martindale, Charles, eds. The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature. 5 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012–16.Google Scholar
“An inconstant female with a reward of her disdaine in equalitie.” British Library, Roxburghe 1.455. EBBA ID 30306. London, ca. 1619–29.Google Scholar
Jackson, Matthew D. Review of Political Broadside Ballads of Seventeenth-Century England: A Critical Bibliography, by Angela J. McShane. Cultural and Social History 11.1 (2014): 131–32.Google Scholar
Jenkinson, Hilary. “English Wall-Paper of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.” The Antiquaries Journal 5.3 (1925): 237–53.Google Scholar
“The Kentish frolick.” Magdalene College, Pepys 3.242. EBBA ID 21256. London, ca. 1695–1703.Google Scholar
Lafont, Agnès. “Political Uses of Erotic Power in an Elizabethan Mythological Programme: Dangerous Interactions with Diana in Hardwick Hall.” In Shakespeare's Erotic Mythology and Ovidian Renaissance Culture (2013), 41–57.Google Scholar
Lerer, Seth. “Cultivation and Inhumation: Some Thoughts on the Cultural Impact of Songes and Sonettes.” In Tottel's “Songes and Sonettes” in Context (2013), 147–62.Google Scholar
Lerer, Seth, and Williams, Deanne. “What Chaucer Did to Shakespeare: Books and Bodkins in Hamlet and The Tempest.” Shakespeare 8.4 (2012): 398–410.Google Scholar
Livingston, Carole Rose. British Broadside Ballads of the Sixteenth Century: A Catalogue of Extant Sheets and an Essay. London: Garland, 1991.Google Scholar
“A louer forsaken of his best beloued.” British Library, Roxburghe 1.224. EBBA ID 30159. London, ca. 1619–29.Google Scholar
“A louers desire for his best beloued.” British Library, Roxburghe 1.200–01. EBBA ID 30138. London, ca. 1619–29.Google Scholar
“Loves lamentable tragedy.” Magdalene College, Pepys 3.352. EBBA ID 21367. London, ca. 1671–1702.Google Scholar
“The loyal forrister.” University of Glasgow Library, Euing 156. EBBA ID 31870. London, ca. 1683–1716.Google Scholar
MacFaul, Tom. “Songes and Sonettes and Shakespeare's Poetry.” In Tottel's “Songes and Sonettes” in Context (2013), 131–46.Google Scholar
Marsh, Christopher. “The Sound of Print in Early Modern England: The Broadside Ballad as Song.” In The Uses of Script and Print, 1300–1700, ed. Crick, Julia and Walsham, Alexandra, 171–90. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Marsh, Christopher. Music and Society in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Marsh, Christopher. “‘The Blazing Torch’: New Light on English Balladry as a Multi-Media Matrix.” The Seventeenth Century 30.1 (2015): 95–116.Google Scholar
Marsh, Christopher. “A Woodcut and Its Wanderings in Seventeenth-Century England.” Huntington Library Quarterly 79.2 (2016): 245–62.Google Scholar
Martindale, Charles, ed. Ovid Renewed: Ovidian Influences on Literature and Art from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Maslen, R. W. “William Baldwin and the Politics of Pseudo-Philosophy in Tudor Prose Fiction.” Studies in Philology 97.1 (2000): 29–60.Google Scholar
Maslen, R. W. “William Baldwin and the Tudor Imagination.” In The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Literature (2009), 291–306.Google Scholar
May, Steven W. “Popularizing Courtly Poetry: Tottel's Miscellany and Its Progeny.” In The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Literature (2009), 418–33.Google Scholar
Maynard, Winifred. Elizabethan Lyric Poetry and Its Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986.Google Scholar
McShane, Angela. “Broadsides and Ballads.” In The Oxford History of Popular Print, vol. 1. Ed. Raymond, Joad. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Melnikoff, Kirk. “Jones's Pen and Marlowe's Socks: Richard Jones, Print Culture, and the Beginnings of English Dramatic Literature.” Studies in Philology 102.2 (2005): 184–209.Google Scholar
“A mery dema[nde and answere therunto] betwene Vu[lcan and Venus].” STC 6572.3. London, n.d., ca. 1562–63Google Scholar
Miller, John F., and Newlands, Carole Elizabeth, eds. The Handbook to the Reception of Ovid. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014.Google Scholar
Nebeker, Eric. “Broadside Ballads, Miscellanies, and the Lyric in Print.” ELH 76.4 (2009): 989–1013.Google Scholar
“A new sonnet shewing how the goddess Diana transformed Acteon into the shape of a hart.” British Library, Roxburghe 1.386–87. EBBA ID 30258. London, ca. 1686–93.Google Scholar
“A new sonnet shewing how the goddess Diana transformed Acteon into the shape of a hart.” Magdalene College, Pepys 1.480–81. EBBA ID 20225. London, ca. 1684–86.Google Scholar
Oakley-Brown, Liz. “Translating the Subject: Ovid's Metamorphoses in England, 1560–7.” In Translation and Nation: Towards a Cultural Politics of Englishness, ed. Ellis, Roger and Oakley-Brown, Liz, 48–84. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2001.Google Scholar
Oakley-Brown, Liz. Ovid and the Cultural Politics of Translation in Early Modern England. Farnham: Ashgate, 2006.Google Scholar
Ovid, . Metamorphoses, Books IX–XV. Loeb Classical Library. Trans. Miller, Frank Justus. Rev. Goold, G. P.. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Ovid, . Heroides; Amores. Loeb Classical Library. Trans. Showerman, Grant. Rev. Goold, G. P.. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002a.Google Scholar
Ovid, . Tristia; Ex Ponto. Loeb Classical Library. Trans. Wheeler, Arthur Leslie. Rev. Goold, G. P.. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002b.Google Scholar
Ovid, . Metamorphoses, Books I–VIII. Loeb Classical Library. Trans. Miller, Frank Justus. Rev. Goold, G. P.. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Literature, 1485–1603. Ed. Pincombe, Mike and Shrank, Cathy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
“Parthenia's complaint.” National Library of Scotland, Crawford 1223. EBBA ID 34034. London, ca. 1672–96.Google Scholar
Payne, Ian. The Almain in Britain, c. 1549–1675: A Dance Manual from Manuscript Sources. Farnham: Ashgate, 2003.Google Scholar
“A pleasant new ballad of Daphne.” British Library, Roxburghe 1.388. EBBA ID 30261. London, ca. 1619–29.Google Scholar
Poulton, Diana. “The Blackletter Broadside Ballad and Its Music.” Early Music 9.1 (1981): 427–37.Google Scholar
Powell, Jason. “The Network Behind ‘Tottel's’ Miscellany.” English Literary Renaissance 46.2 (2016): 193–224.Google Scholar
Pursglove, Glyn. “‘As Shafalus to Procrus, I to You’: An Ovidian Married Couple amongst the Elizabethan and Victorian Poets.” In Ovid's “Metamorphoses” in English Poetry, ed. Coelsch-Foisner, Sabine and Görtschacher, Wolfgang, 105–27. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2009.Google Scholar
“Pyramus and Thisbe: or love's master-piece.” Magdalene College, Pepys 3.346. EBBA ID 21361. London, ca. 1678–88.Google Scholar
R. B., Apius and Virginia. In Tudor Interludes, ed. Happé, Peter, 271–317. Hammondsworth: Penguin, 1972.Google Scholar
Reid, Lindsay Ann. Shakespeare's Ovid and the Spectre of the Medieval. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2018.Google Scholar
The Return from Parnassus; Or, the Scourge of Simony. Ed. Smeaton, Oliphant. London: J. M. Dent, 1905.Google Scholar
“Robin Hood's progress to Nottingham.” National Library of Scotland, Crawford 1031. EBBA ID 33734. London, ca. 1684–95.Google Scholar
Rollins, Hyder E. “The Date, Authors, and Contents of A Handfull of Pleasant Delights.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 18.1 (1919b): 43–59.Google Scholar
Rollins, Hyder E. “William Elderton: Elizabethan Actor and Ballad-Writer.” Studies in Philology 17.2 (1920): 199–245.Google Scholar
Rollins, Hyder E. “An Analytical Index to the Ballad-Entries in the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London.” Studies in Philology 21.1 (1924): 1–324.Google Scholar
Rollins, Hyder E. “A ‘Recovered’ Elizabethan Ballad.” Review of English Studies 3.11 (1927): 335–37.Google Scholar
Rollins, Hyder E. “An Elizabethan Ballad of Malmerophus and Sillera.” Modern Language Notes 49.8 (1934): 498–500.Google Scholar
Rollins, Hyder E., ed. A Handful of Pleasant Delights (1584) by Clement Robinson and Divers Others. New York: Dover, 1965a.Google Scholar
Rollins, Hyder E., ed. Tottel's Miscellany (1557–1587). 2 vols. Rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965b.Google Scholar
Sanders, Norman, Southern, Richard, Craik, T. W., and Potter, Lois. The Revels History of Drama in English, 1500–1576. London: Meuthen, 1980.Google Scholar
Shakespeare, William. The Norton Shakespeare: The Early Plays and Poems. Ed. Greenblatt, Stephen. Rev. ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 2008.Google Scholar
Shakespeare's Erotic Mythology and Ovidian Renaissance Culture. Ed. Lafont, Agnès. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.Google Scholar
“The shepheards delight.” British Library, Roxburghe 1.388. EBBA ID 30260. London, ca. 1619–29.Google Scholar
Sidgwick, F. “Recovery of a Lost Ballad and Tune.” The Gentleman's Magazine 301 (1906): 179–81.Google Scholar
Simpson, Claude M. The British Broadside Ballad and Its Music. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1966.Google Scholar
Smith, Bruce R. The Acoustic World of Early Modern England: Attending to the O-Factor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Smith, Bruce R. “Putting the ‘Ball’ Back in Ballads.” Huntington Library Quarterly 79.2 (2016): 323–38.Google Scholar
“The swimming lady.” Magdalene College, Pepys 4.20. EBBA ID 21687. London, ca. 1681–84.Google Scholar
Tottel's “Songes and Sonettes” in Context. Ed. Hamrick, Stephen. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.Google Scholar
Ward, John M. “Music for A Handefull of Pleasant Delites.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 10.3 (1957): 151–80.Google Scholar
Ward, John M. “Apropos The British Broadside Ballad and Its Music.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 20.1 (1967): 28–86.Google Scholar
Watt, Tessa. Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Wells-Cole, Anthony. Art and Decoration in Elizabethan and Jacobean England: The Influence of Continental Prints, 1558–1625. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Wiggins, Martin, and Richardson, Catherine. British Drama, 1533–1642: A Catalogue. 9 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011–18.Google Scholar
Williams, Sarah F. Damnable Practises: Witches, Dangerous Women, and Music in Seventeenth-Century English Broadside Ballads. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015.Google Scholar
Woodcock, Matthew. Thomas Churchyard: Pen, Sword, and Ego. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Würzbach, Natascha. The Rise of the English Street Ballad, 1550–1650. Trans. Walls, Gayna. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.Google Scholar