20 pages • 40 minutes read
Pyramus and Thisbe
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Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
“Ceyx and Alcyone” by Ovid in Book 10 of The Metamorphoses (8 AD)
“Ceyx and Alcyone” is another example in the Metamorphoses of a positive romantic relationship between human lovers. Like “Pyramus and Thisbe,” their story ends in tragedy—Ceyx tragically drowns in a shipwreck—but their relationship is deeply loving and devoted. Again, as he did with the simile of the broken pipe, Ovid may have inserted jarringly humorous elements into Ceyx’s death scene.
"Amores 1.6" by Ovid (16 BCE)
Pyramus and Thisbe’s desperate pleas to the wall are a play on a common stock element in elegiac poetry, paraklausithyron. In these scenes, a lover pleads for entrance at the closed door of his mistress. Like Pyramus and Thisbe, Ovid’s narrator in Amores 1.6 directly addresses an inanimate obstacle; like Thisbe, Love (in the form of Cupid) has made him bold (Lines 11-12).
"Pyramus and Thisbe" by Ted Hughes in Tales of Ovid (1997)
The English poet and translator Ted Hughes (1930-1998) is widely considered to be one of the 20th-century’s greatest writers. Hughes concluded his 1997 treatment of Ovid’s Metamorphoses with the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, signaling both the significance he placed on the story as a capstone of Ovid’s magnum opus and his own poetic prioritization of passionate emotion. Hughes’s version of “Pyramus and Thisbe” is more poetic rendition than faithful translation, but it vividly approximates in English the spirit of Ovid’s Latin text.
Further Literary Resources
"Pyramus and Thisbe in Shakespeare and Ovid" by Niall Rudd (1979)
Niall Rudd explores the eastern origins of the Pyramus and Thisbe myth. He also gives a nuanced commentary on various controversial aspects of Ovid’s story in classical scholarship. Finally, he explores Ovid’s influence on Pyramus and Thisbe’s more famous literary recreation: the mechanicals’ performance of the story in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Ovid by Gian Biagio Conte in Latin Literature: A History (1994)
With this 1994 volume, the Italian classicist Gian Biagio Conte produced a magisterial survey of Latin literature from the origins of Latin as a written language to its use as a lingua franca in the Middle Ages. His chapter on Ovid is an excellent primer for the poet’s life and works; the section on the Metamorphoses is particularly useful for “Pyramus and Thisbe.”
"Red and White in Ovid's Metamorphoses: The Mulberry Tree in the Tale of Pyramus and Thisbe" by Catherine Campbell Rhorer (2014)
Catherine Campbell Rhorer delves into Ovid’s symbolic use of color in the Metamorphoses. She zeroes in specifically on his use of red and white as erotic signifiers, exploring these colors’ elegiac connotations and linking Pyramus and Thisbe’s mulberry bush to other love narratives in the Metamorphoses.
Listen to Poem
A formal reading of the Latin text of “Pyramus and Thisbe,” this video recreates how a Roman audience would have consumed (and enjoyed) Ovid’s works. The narrator pays special attention to accurate pronunciation of the Latin and adherence to Ovid’s epic meter, dactylic hexameter, which is also visually parsed for the viewer to follow along. Even for those with no background in Latin, this reading is a useful resource for hearing the musical quality of Ovid’s verse and seeing the playful variation in his use of dactyls and spondees.
While this video is not a reading of Ovid’s poem proper, Shakespeare’s adaptation of “Pyramus and Thisbe” in his 1595 play A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of the poem’s most important reception events. This famous performance of the scene by the Beatles—starring Paul McCartney as Pyramus and John Lennon as Thisbe—conveys the slapstick, absurd comedy of Shakespeare’s (and Ovid’s) tale.
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By Ovid
