Few episodes of Ovid's Metamorphoses have had such a powerful resonance with the public as the story of Book VI “Tereus, Procne and Philomela”. From the time of the publication of Metamorphoses to the present day, the dying myth has been retold, modified, and elaborated in many creative mediums encompassing both high and low art forms. Some of these works only focus on a single story element; Matthew Arnold's "Philomela", for example, expresses the plight of the story's transformed victim by reimagining her as a nightingale well after the fact, while Tereus's consumption of Itys at Procne's feast is reimagined in the South Park episode " Scott Tenorman Must Die", when Tenorman unknowingly has his parents feed him a bowl of chili by a vengeful Eric Cartman; but Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus is one of the rare retellings that manages to encapsulate almost all the different textures woven into Ovid's tale. Although Titus Andronicus is in dialogue with the entire Metamorphoses and other works of classical antiquity, he is primarily concerned with transforming the story of "Tereus, Procne and Philomela" into a more complex revenge tragedy, while maintaining and reconfiguring most of Ovid's original themes. and plot details. Just as Metamorphoses is a self-reflexive narrative that continually reuses and develops elements of its own stories, Titus Andronicus is able to do the same with Ovid's text and present it to an Elizabethan audience who had embraced revenge tragedy after Ovid's predecessor Shakespeare, Thomas Kyd, had revived the genre (Eisaman Maus 399). We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Since "Tereus, Procne, and Philomela" appears in Book VI of the Metamorphoses, he is able to revisit themes that have been expressed previously in the poem while also introducing some of his own. Tereus is directly echoed in the "Pyrenees" of Book VI by its titular character, another Thracian king. Pyreneus, like Tereus after his victory in Athens, is a war hero who conquered the territory of Daulis and Phocis. He develops a lustful passion for the Muses by crossing paths with them and also shows that he is capable of the same kind of persuasiveness with which Tereus speaks when “Love makes him eloquent” (Ovid 196) in his speech towards Pandion and Philomela. But above all Tereus is linked to his royal predecessor by the “dark fire that burns in the souls of the Thracians” (Ovid 195). This is demonstrated in the way Tereus brutally rapes and mutilates Philomela and in Pyreneus' attempted rape of the muses which ends with him being thrown from his fortress in a fit of rage-induced madness. Beyond the circumstances of the well-documented Thracian aggression, rape is a very important theme elsewhere in Metamorphoses. In particular, the rapes of Philomela and Io have much in common. Io's story in Book I begins with her recognizing her father Inachus, who becomes very concerned when he cannot locate his daughter. Although Pandion has nothing to cry about until Philomela is violated, he and Inachus have a parallel as anxious fathers who care deeply for their daughters. The perpetrators of both stories also take similar measures in the way they carry out their heinous actions. Jupiter speaks to his victim with the same kind of cunning dialogue that Tereus is able to arrange when he needs Philomela to come with him, saying to Io: "O virgin, you would indeed deserve Jupiter and will make whatever man you marry, whoever he may be ... very happy. But now it's time for you to seek the shadeof these deep woods” (Ovid 26). Not only does Jupiter use words to his advantage as Tereus does, but he then proceeds to lead Io away from the stream and into the woods - which he hides with his divine powers - and commits his crime in the same place as his Book VI counterpart. . When Juno, Jupiter's wife, finds herself controlled after the rape, she transforms Io into a heifer and invents a cover story as Tereus did with his wife Procne. Comparisons between these two stories are numerous, but their strongest point of connection is how the two victims manage to adapt when they lose the ability to communicate verbally. In Book VI, Ovid writes: “But despair can indeed invent; in poverty the mind is sharp” (200). Both women, stripped of their innocence, find the courage to speak without the luxury of having a voice. Philomela's woven tapestry and the words that Io carves into the ground with her hooves represent the great potential of human faculties and, in a self-reflexive sense considering the Metamorphoses themselves, the value of writing and poetry. The gods are omnipresent in Metamorphoses, and one of their recurring patterns is the role they play in the dissolution of families. At the beginning of Book VI, before “Tereus, Procne, and Philomela,” “Niobe” explores the devastating effect the Gods will have on mortal families when they are wronged by human actions. Niobe's defiance of the gods at the prospect of worshiping Latona is reason enough for them to sequentially get rid of her entire family. In the case of the second story, the absence of Juno, Hymen, and the Graces at Tereus and Procne's wedding leaves the couple without the blessing of the gods and sets the story up for a tragic ending. The inevitability of this situation allows Ovid to occasionally narrate in a style that hints at coming disastrous events; comments such as "what she thinks is a victory for both her sister and herself will be a sad defeat" (196) highlight the poet's use of free, indirect speech and dramatic irony. A more strident theme in Metamorphoses than the Gods causing the destruction of families is the parents themselves doing it. In "Tereus, Procne and Philomela", Itys is one of many Ovidian children to die at the hands of their parents. Unlike Pentheus, who is mistaken by his mother Agave for a boar and killed by her involuntarily, the closest parallel to Itys' death is that of the newborn children of Medea and Jason. Returning to Corinth on a dragon, Medea discovers that Jason has remarried and proceeds to kill his new wife along with the children from their first marriage. The anger that Medea feels towards her ex-husband is also felt by Procne when she discovers what her husband did to her sister: “There is no need for tears here; it's time for steel, or if you know something even harder, then give it to me. I am now ready to kill in any way, even criminally”” (Ovid 201). The most striking similarity, however, is that both women feel compelled to kill their children as part of punishment for their fathers' transgressions. Itys's strong resemblance to Tereus fuels the vengeful fire within Procne, and she uses her brazen anger to arrange the punishment that she and Philomela deliver to Tereus. These murders stand out as some of the most shocking acts in Metamorphoses because of how unnatural it is to see a child die before his parents, and that's before the intentional aspect of these deaths is taken into consideration. They serve to highlight that revenge can sometimes become a transformative force that alters not only an accidental target or victim, but also the person seeking revenge. In Titus Andronicus these types of vengeful acts quickly become established as the norm, perpetuating avicious circle of justice of the talion which sees, in addition to the characters of the work undergoing transformations in response to mass revenge, the city of Rome transforming from a declining city into a disorder that fully contradicts the years of order that preceded the events of the 'work. Tito's decision to adhere to Roman tradition and sacrifice Tamora Alarbo's son in the opening scene is the first domino to fall, triggering great retaliations in the rest of the work: the murder of Bassiano, the rape of Lavinia, innocent deaths of Martius and Quintus, the cutting off of Titus' hand under false pretenses, the killing of Tamora's nurse, the feeding of Demetrius and Chiron to Tamora and Saturninus, and the final sequence of murders. Although Shakespeare undeniably used “Tereus, Procne, and Philomela” to characterize Titus Andronicus, he mixes up many of the parallels he establishes, not wanting to shackle his characters and plots to the constraints of Ovid's plot. Such an exercise of artistic freedom is a reminder that Shakespeare's retelling of the Book VI myth - much like the way "Tereus, Procne and Philomela" comments on stories like "Io and Jove", "Pyreneus" and "Niobe" - is intended to transform the story into something new, while remaining faithful to the original model. Shakespeare's character parallels between Ovid's work and his own are almost always paired with a separate parallel with another Ovidian character or represent a doubling of two characters from Titus Andronicus into a single character from the Metamorphoses. The bond between Lavinia and Philomela, the most stable and evident in the work, is not immune to this reconfiguration either. Lavinia's rape occurs between Act II, Scene III and Act II, Scene IV of the opera, at the hands of Tamora's sons, Demetrius and Chiron. As in the rapes of Philomela and Io, Lavinia is defiled in the woods and begs immediately before the act occurs, begging for death like her classical counterparts: “with your own hands kill me in this place; Because it's not the life I've been begging for so long; Poor man I was killed when Bassianus died" (2,3, 169-171). An interesting distinction between this scene and Metamorphosis, however, is that Lavinia is not pleading with the two men who are about to rape her; is pleading with Tamora, who stands in the forest with Aaron as her opponent's daughter is dragged away to a terrible fate. “O Tamora, you have a woman's face,” (2.3, 136) says Lavinia, full of shock. The passage implies that Lavinia is not necessarily surprised that men choose to attack her, but she feels betrayed on a gender level that Tamora is doing nothing to stop her children from carrying out the act. Tamora's desire for revenge far surpasses her sense of feminine empathy, prompting Lavinia's final words of the play: "No grace, no femininity - ah, bestial creature, The stain and foe of our general name, Confusion fall -" (2.3, 182 -183). Although the circumstances are quite different, Tamora's stance towards rape directly contradicts how Procne responded after receiving Philomela's twisted words. Not only is Procne stunned and horrified by the rape, but it turns her into a more vindictive person than the situation warranted. Procne's solidarity with her rape-victim sister is so deep that she kills her son for no practical reason. Tamora, on the other hand, is not even determined to bargain with her children to try to reduce the damage they will cause, or simply to respect Lavinia's request to kill her. In addition to what he shares with Philomela, Shakespeare in his retelling also establishes an unlikely parallel with Itys for Lavinia. The son of Procne and Tereus is ruthlessly murdered by his mother and aunt andhe becomes part of the banquet they prepare for his father. Lavinia is not part of the dishes that Tito cooks for Saturninus and Tamora, but her father in that scene kills her suddenly and without warning. This act establishes a second parallel, that between Titus and Procne. Like Procne, Titus is under no obligation to commit the murder, but he does so anyway, citing an ancient Roman story as the reason for his motivation: "My lord the emperor, solve this for me: the reckless Virginus was right to kill ?" his daughter with his own right hand because she was forced, stained and deflowered? (5.3, 35-38) As the play progresses, it is suggested, but never confirmed, that Titus has progressively become more and more mad, and this act of profanation seems to remove any doubt in the audience that Titus has been overcome at least since a certain degree of madness. Just as Procne is drawn into the cycle of revenge and transforms into a cold-blooded killer with little regard for the moral consequences of what she does, Titus has reached much the same level of impulsive and incoherent rage, transforming from someone who is felt guilty for ending the life of a fly (4.1, 54-58) in someone who feels comfortable killing his daughter as part of a strange path towards what he believes is justice for all that is happened. Despite sharing this vengeful anger with Procne, Lavinia's murder is something he would never forgive, and thus sets them apart, likely aligning Titus with the other perpetrators, even though he presumably acts in a fit of madness. Procne is too loyal to Philomela's cause to kill her, even though a Roman legend inferred that it would have been for the best. Titus also embodies elements of other characters in Ovid's myth. Before killing Lavinia, he is similar to Pandion and Inachus in the role of the grieving father. When Lavinia is first brought to him by Marcus, he responds with the words of a completely broken man, crying: “My pain was at its height before you came, and now like Nilus he disdains limits. Give me a sword and I will cut off your hands too, because they fought for Rome, and all in vain; And they nourished this pain by nourishing life” (3.1, 70-74). In this passage he not only describes his pain, but also alludes to his war exploits, which he shares with Tereus. Tereus enacts the events of the Book VI myth by coming to the aid of the Athenians and winning Procne from Pandion as a reward; Titus also does the same when he returns from the victorious battle against the Goths and asks that the tradition be maintained and Alarbo killed. The variation of Titus' comparative roles and characters over the course of the play is evidence of him as a transforming figure, whose descent into madness mirrors the sad descent of the once great Roman Empire. Titus's adherence to order and piety is admirable in Act I, Scene I, when he invokes tradition to assign the next emperor and decide whether or not there should be a sacrifice, but essentially descends into a parody of himself in the final scene of the opera. when his desire to maintain some small shred of tradition by mimicking the story of Virginus and killing his violated daughter is actually an indication of how completely and irreversibly wrong everything has gone. Despite Tereus's lesser resemblance to Titus, Aaron the Moor best represents the king of Thrace in Titus Andronicus. While the other characters in the play are thrust into the cycle of revenge, Aaron freely admits, “Oh, how this wickedness fattens me with the mere thought of it! Let fools do good and honest men cry out for grace: Aaron's soul will be as black as his face" (3.1, 201-204), implying that he would commit evil acts regardless of the circumstances. This kind ofattitude echoes the hyper-aggressiveness of the Thracians shown by Pyreneus and Tereus in the Metamorphoses. Demetrius and Chiron rape Lavinia only for Aaron to spy on them discussing their mutual lust for her in the forest and impart his words of unholy wisdom to them: "It is a policy and a stratagem that you must do what you influence and so you must resolve what you do not you can how". you would get. You must necessarily achieve what you can. Take this from me: Lucrezia was no more chaste than this Lavinia, Bassianus' love” (2.1, 109-110). While Tereus is able to produce the desire and plan of action necessary to rape Philomela, Tamora's two sons only have the desire until Aaron convinces them to actually carry out the crime. For all his wickedness, Aaron can actually lay claim to being the best of all the parents of Titus Andronicus and "Tereus, Procne and Philomela". Unlike Tamora, Titus, and Procne, Aaron immediately rejects the idea, killing his son when Tamora's nurse presents him to him. It's incredibly ironic, but it demonstrates how unexpectedly prominent the idea is in the two works combined, and it also forces us to reevaluate characters who would seem to be "good" or "bad" archetypes; as Ovid demonstrates in his works, it is always possible to transform or represent multiple elements - apparently contradictory - at the same time, as he does for example with Hermaphrodite in Book IV of the Metamorphoses. The Andronicus clan finally discovers the truth about Lavinia's rape in Act IV, Scene I, when they manage to bring everyone's attention to a copy of Metamorphoses before proceeding to write the names of its authors in the sand with a stick in their mouths . This important moment in the play is just one of many in which Shakespeare references or mirrors classical antiquity. It is understood that "all the characters in the play are keenly aware of the glorious Roman past as it is enshrined in fiction" (Eisaman Maus 402), meaning that Shakespeare hopes to include the audience in the dialogue he has with these plays. Characters will make comments like, “Or is it Dian, dressed like her, who has abandoned her sacred groves to see the general hunt in this forest?” (425) and “He would have dropped the knife and fallen asleep, like Cerberus at the feet of the Thracian poet” (3.1, 53). In Act IV, Scene I, Titus and his sons shoot arrows into the sky with letters addressed to Jupiter, Apollo, Pallas, Mercury, and others at Titus' direction. These references to the many parts of the Metamorphoses and to classical antiquity in general show that Shakespeare's work is in no way limited only to the story of "Tereus, Procne and Philomela". However, it is the most significant of all these references and complementary works. In the scene where Lavinia reveals her secret, Shakespeare subtly recalls the aforementioned quote about desperation's ability to inspire inventiveness. Demetrius and Chiron are familiar with the story of Book VI and think they have outsmarted Philomela by cutting off her hands and tongue, but she ultimately manages to defeat them, partly by using that same literary work as her means of communication. It serves as a metaphor for how Shakespeare approached Titus Andronicus as a whole: he wants Ovid's work to be at the forefront of his audience's minds, but also to show them that he is building on the Roman poet's work , not simply revisiting it. in a real way. At the end of Titus Andronicus, Lucius Andronicus is crowned the new emperor of Rome, and after ordering Aaron's execution, the vicious cycle of revenge is suspended at least for the immediate future and the city is given the opportunity to restore itself. In the final lines of the work Lucio comments on Tamora's death: 2014.