Arachne in Marlowe’s ‘Ad amicam corruptam’ (Amores 2.5)

Abstract

When, at the close of the sixteenth century, Christopher Marlowe’s rendition of Amores 2.5 posthumously appeared in All Ovids Elegies (the earliest vernacular translation of this work to have been published in Europe and a text that was destined, as M. L. Stapleton observes, to remain ‘the standard English Amores until the Glorious Revolution’), it was given the title ‘Ad amicam corruptam’ [to his unfaithful mistress].1 This pithy summation of the poem’s supposed genesis is, perhaps, apt, given the central dramatic situation recounted in this Ovidian elegy. Amores 2.5 depicts the frustrated poet-lover’s involvement in a love triangle of sorts: he has drunkenly caught his mistress Corinna sharing ‘inproba … oscula’ [shameful kisses] with another man (2.5.23).2