Iphis And Ianthe From Ovid's Metamorphoses And Galatea Analysis

Just like the common themes found in Iphis and Ianthe from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Galatea, there are some common themes from Galatea found in William Shakespeare’s play As You Like It. This common theme is the idea of a woman dressing up as a man and falling in love with another person. Even with these commonalities, there are many differences between these two plays in both plot and what each play says about gender, love, and marriage. Using this, the end of the play Galatea can be better analyzed. Before comparing the two plays, I wanted to go over some of the similarities and the actual meaning of the end of both plays. To do this, I would first give a synopsis of As You Like It for my peers who have not read the play. This summary would mainly focus on Rosalind, how she ended up dressed as a man, her interaction with her love, and the marriage at the end. This will then lead into talking about the epilogue. For both epilogues, the focus will mainly be on …show more content…
After looking at the all three endings, who is more similar to who? I think they are all similar in their own way, but depending on the interpretation of the end of Ovid’s piece, one could argue for one being more similar then the other. Doing this can possibly highlight some of the differences and similarities between Ovid’s story and Lyly’s story. Ovid’s play only hints at the fact that a union between two women is unnatural. In Galatea, the gods claim that such a union is unnatural. In As You Like It, Shakespeare manages to avoid such a situation at the end because no actual gender change is necessary. In Ovid’s story, Ianthe does not find out about Iphis’ gender, but in Galatea, the two girls know each other’s gender and still want to be together. While what I have provided does not show the gender reveal in As You Like It, adding that part could farther the