How The Tempest 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
The Tempest
William Shakespeare · c. 1611
ShakespeareRelevance
8/10
On The Tempest’s page
- Prospero's great renunciation speech isn't Shakespeare's invention — it's Ovid's
- "Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves" (5.1) is lifted, line by line, from Medea's invocation in Metamorphoses Book 7
- Read Ovid first and the magician's farewell turns uncanny: the most humane wizard in the canon borrows his power from a sorceress who used it for murder
On Metamorphoses’s page
- Ovid's most-borrowed gift to Shakespeare — Medea's invocation in Book 7 becomes Prospero's farewell to magic
- Prospero's "Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves" is a line-by-line adaptation of Medea's spell, the single most-cited Ovid borrowing in all of Shakespeare
- Shakespeare worked from both the Latin and Arthur Golding's 1567 English — when Prospero renounces his art in The Tempest, he speaks Ovid's words