eing these youngsters
engaging in child-like rather than erotic play, command Cupid to shoot
his arrows at them "As nought but death, their love-dart may remove"
(Stanza 8). There is no counterpart to this opening scene in Golding's
Ovid.

Similarly Barksted departs at length from Ovid in the beginning of his
tale, where the Renaissance poet undertakes to explain why Mirrha is
cursed with love for her father. While she listens to the sweet, sad
songs of Orpheus, Cupid,[15] falling in love with her, courts her and
is rejected; his parting kiss "did inspire/her brest with an infernall
and unnam'd desire" (p. 123). Golding's Ovid, specifically denying
that Cupid had anything to do with Mirrha's unnatural love, suggests
that Cinyras' daughter must have been blasted by one of the
Furies.[16] Other inventions of Barksted include a picture of her
father with which Mirrha converses (pp. 126-127), pictures of her
suitors (p. 128), a picture of her mother, over which she throws a
veil (p. 128) and a description of Mirrha herself (pp. 131-132). Later
in the story Mirrha meets a satyr named Poplar (unknown to Ovid), who
makes free with her (pp. 148-155). As punishment for such goings on in
Diana's sacred grove, he is to be metamorphosed into the tree that now
bears his name (even as Mirrha is subsequently transformed into the
tree that produces myrrh).

=The Scourge of Venus=, though following Ovid's story more closely than
=Mirrha=, expands Golding by more than 600 lines, to a little more than
the average length of the Elizabethan minor epic. In the process,
Mirrha is assigned lustful dreams not found in Ovid (p. 246), and is
impelled to write a long letter to her father (pp. 247-250). Shortly
thereafter, the author introduces an emphatically Christian digression
on the horror of Mirrha's "fowle incestious lust" and on the
importance of reading ="Gods holy Bible"= as a salve for sin (p. 253),
and invents the Nurse's prolix arguments against such "filthy" love as
Mirrha desires (pp. 258-261).[17] The fact that the author follows
Ovid's story as closely as he does should be taken as a commentary on
his limited powers of invention rather than on his devotion to the art
of translation.

Bandello, I, 27, Belleforest, 18, Whetstone's =Rocke of Regard=, 2,
Fenton's =Tragicall Discourses=, 13, and Painter's =Palace of Pleasure=,
II, 29[18] have all been listed as possible sources for =Dom Diego and
Ginevra=.[19] Grosart regarded Fento