ABSTRACT
T. W. Baldwin in his great study of Elizabethan education, William Shaksperes Small Latine and Lesse Greeke, demonstrates in detail how the Ovid of the classroom saturates the work of one distinguished pupil but he also emphasizes that the position of Ovid in the field of poetry was peerless. Ovid, especially in the Metamorphoses, is a very pictorial writer; the school of thought to whom poetry was a speaking picture and painting, silent poetry, found Ovid a prime example and he became the painters bible. The most classical of the Elizabethan playwrights, Ben Jonson, provides a surprising exception to the rule of all-pervading Ovidian influence. Ovids influence on English literature, from the pure translation to the greatest literary artists best work, is demonstrably powerful and widespread. The only picture of the period where Ovids influence is manifest, significantly demonstrates only the Tudor myths supremacy over the Ovidian.
