Yes, the assumption has long been that he used a combination of Golding and
the experience of grammar-school Ovid. Thinking of Shakespeare and literary
pillage, there is , is there not, that anecdote about Bacon, the Queen and a
performance of Richard the IInd? That the author deserved hanging, but not
for treason, but for larceny, for stealing off Cornelius Tacitus.
( good to see Robin still exists, people have been asking. On another
irrelevance, but yet again an ancient text, considering I was fulminating
against Beowulf, I've found myself, in spare moments these last few days,
reading it and being moved.)
best
dave
2009/4/13 Robin Hamilton <[log in to unmask]>
> <<
> Does anybody here - short of a google search - know the version of Ovid
> from which Shakespeare would have been familiar, joyfully robbing it from
> the core, as it were! Can I assume he was reading from the original
> Latin(??), a Renaissance reproduction of such, or a translation?
>
> Stephen
>
>>
>>>
> I think he used a mix of Arthur Golding's version, and the original Latin.
>
> Golding's version should be online. Also republished a few years ago in a
> plush edition by Penguin. The Perseus site is good for classical texts in
> the original and (some) translations.
>
> Robin
>
--
David Bircumshaw
Website and A Chide's Alphabet
http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
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