How As You Like It drew on Metamorphoses
A documented line of influence: William Shakespeare demonstrably engaged Ovid’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Metamorphoses
Ovid · 8
Ancient RomeThe influenced
As You Like It
William Shakespeare · c. 1599
ShakespeareRelevance
6/10
On As You Like It’s page
- Touchstone names Ovid by name, and the joke only works if you know the Metamorphoses standing behind it
- Shakespeare's most-quarried classical source supplies the play's deep theme: love that transforms whoever it touches
- Read Ovid first and Arden reveals itself as his golden world transplanted to an English forest
On Metamorphoses’s page
- Ovid is the most-alluded classical text in all of Shakespeare, and Arden is his golden world
- Touchstone names him outright — "the most capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths" — a wink straight to the Metamorphoses
- Love-as-transformation, the engine of the whole poem, hums under every change of heart in the forest