ABSTRACT
Date and publication. First printed 1700 in Fables Ancient and Modern (see headnote to ‘Dedication and Preface to Fables’ for further details).
Context. For D.’s account of the composition of this poem in relation to that of the other contributions to Fables, see ‘Preface to Fables’ ll. 24-8. The poem offers a model of conjugal affection from the ancient world, paralleling at a higher social level that of Baucis and Philemon (see Reverand 86-9). It also displays an interest in the foreboding power of dreams which links it with ‘The Cock and the Fox’. Despite his strictures on Ovid’s ‘wit out of season’ in the ‘Preface’ (see ll. 316-51), D. seems to have been particularly concerned in this translation to mimic the verbal wit of Ovid’s original (see David Hopkins in Ovid Renewed, edited by Charles Martindale (1988) 167-90, 276-9).
