How Love's Labour's Lost 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
Love's Labour's Lost
William Shakespeare · c. 1594
ShakespeareRelevance
5/10
On Love's Labour's Lost’s page
- The classical name Love's Labour's Lost drops on purpose — Ovid is invoked by name, not just borrowed
- Holofernes praises 'Ovidius Naso' as the model for 'the jerks of invention,' so the play's own pedant tells you where its verbal extravagance comes from
- Knowing the Metamorphoses sharpens the joke: this is Shakespeare nodding to his grammar-school master while gently sending him up
On Metamorphoses’s page
- Shakespeare's most word-drunk comedy keeps a shrine to Ovid at its center
- In Act 4 the schoolmaster Holofernes hails Ovidius Naso as the master of invention — 'smelling out the odoriferous flowers of fancy, the jerks of invention'
- Love's Labour's Lost names its source out loud, half in homage, half in parody, to the Ovid every Elizabethan schoolboy absorbed