All Ovids Elegies
All Ovids Elegies is Christopher Marlowe’s translation of Ovid’s Amores, a collection of love poetry. It renders the three books of the Roman work from Latin into English verse.[1]
The poems
Marlowe uses rhyming pairs of lines. In the opening elegy, a poet sets out to write about war, but Cupid disrupts his chosen metre and turns him towards love. This playful encounter introduces the speaker’s changed poetic purpose.[1]
Early editions
The early printed editions were undated. A selection of ten poems, called Certaine of Ovid’s Elegies, preceded the complete three-book translation. The complete edition’s title page identifies Marlowe by the initials C. M. and also advertises epigrams by I. D., meaning John Davies: these are separate works, not evidence that Davies translated Ovid with Marlowe.[1]
In a study of Marlowe’s publication history, Lukas Erne dates the complete edition to after 1602. He argues that the emphasis on “All” in its title advertised completeness in contrast with the earlier selection. The undated editions make a single, unqualified first-publication year misleading.[2]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 A. H. Bullen, ed., The Works of Christopher Marlowe, vol. 3 (London: John C. Nimmo, 1885), editorial note to “Ovid’s Elegies” and Book I, Elegy I; digital edition, pp. 65–66.
- ↑ Lukas Erne, “Disintegrating Marlowe”, submitted manuscript, p. 34, deposited in the University of Geneva repository; article published in Studies in Philology 119, no. 2 (2022), pp. 272–297, doi:10.1353/sip.2021.0036. The linked manuscript precedes peer review.