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'Arethusa'

A front-cover to my illustration project 'Arethusa.' A poem from Ovid's Metamorphoses.
The image was a lino cut done early this year and has been slightly modified in photoshop. It is a rough version.


   A few points on Ovid's metamorphic influence on William Shakespeare:

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is influenced by the story of Pyramus and Thisbe (Metamorphoses Book 4).

Shakespeare's early erotic poem Venus and Adonis expands on the myth in Book 10.

In Titus Andronicus, the story of Lavinia's rape is drawn from Tereus' rape of Philomela, and the text of
Metamorphoses is used within the play to enable Titus to interpret his daughter's story.

Yet, most tellingly, Shakespeare adapts, with minor changes, a passage from Book 7 of the Golding translation into an important speech in Act V of The Tempest.

This is Alpheus and Arethusa. Alpheus is a river God who, upon spying the nakedly swimming Atrhusa, falls in lust and pursues her 'over crags and cliffs.' She cries in desperation to her Goddess Diana to save her from the clutches of Alpheus, and her cry is met by Diana, hiding her in a thick mist...

This drawing depicts the beginnings of Alpheus' pursuit:

'Where, while I play'd my swimming gambols o'er,

I heard a murm'ring voice, and frighted sprung to shore.

Oh! whither, Arethusa, dost thou fly?

From the brook's bottom did Alpheus cry; '

Don't know if I want to use the lino-cut image (which has actually been inverted on computer.) I like the print look and want to do more prints, possible try woodcuts, but this initial effort maybe isn't quite up to the standard I'm aiming for.. I think there is room for a 'chasing scene' but the the two characters aren't quite right here, although I like the almost animation effect from the previous blog's painting - as if he has suddenly sprang into action to grasp her, and she to fleeing.

These could be the inside jacket of the poem - Including the opening stanza:

'Still were the purling waters, and the maid 

From the smooth surface rais'd her beauteous head, 

Wipes off the drops that from her tresses ran, 

And thus to tell Alpheus' loves began.'