The Influence of Thomas Watson on Elizabethan Ovidian Poetry

Abstract

The phrase ‘Ovidian poetry’ or sometimes ‘mythological poetry’ is commonly used to denote a group of English poems written in the manner of Ovid during the 1590s and thereafter. Most importandy the group includes Lodge's Glaucus and Scilla (1589), Marlowe's Hero and Leander (1593), Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis (1593), T. H.'s Œnone and Paris (1594), Drayton's Endimion and Phoebe (1595), Thomas Edwards’ Cephalus and Procris and Narcissus (1595). All the poems recast, or rather amplify, myths from Ovid and other classical writers; all treat a love story, usually with that precious combination of sensuality and sentiment for which Ovid is famous; all are highly ornate, employing rhetorically worked up love arguments, rich descriptions of clothing, buildings, tapestries, and the like, and minor embellishing myths like that of Neptune trying to embrace Leander in Marlowe's poem.

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