Analyze how an author alludes to and transforms source material: Ovid's Pyramus and Thisbe in Shakespeare and a modern retelling

Learning goal: Analyze how an author alludes to and transforms source material in a specific work, for example how Shakespeare treats a theme or topic from Ovid or the Bible, or how a later author draws on a play by Shakespeare. The source here is the story of Pyramus and Thisbe from Book IV of Ovid's Metamorphoses (public-domain prose translation by Henry T. Riley). The later works are the comic play-within-a-play in Act 5 of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (public domain) and an original modern story written for this lesson.

Allusion and transformation. An allusion is a reference, direct or indirect, to a known person, event or text, which the author expects readers to recognize. Transformation is what the later author does with the borrowed material: keeping some elements, changing others, shifting the genre, tone, setting or outcome, and so making new meaning. Analysis of RL.9-10.9 has three parts: identify what the later work borrows; identify exactly what it changes; explain what those changes accomplish. A list of similarities is only the first step.

The source: Ovid. Pyramus and Thisbe live in adjoining houses in Babylon. Their fathers forbid them to marry, so they talk through a crack in the party-wall between the houses. In Riley's translation, they complain: "Envious wall, why dost thou stand in the way of lovers?" They agree to meet at night at the tomb of Ninus, under a mulberry tree "very full of snow-white fruit." Thisbe arrives first, flees from a lioness whose jaws are bloody from a recent kill, and drops her veil, which the lioness tears with its bloody mouth. Pyramus arrives, sees the tracks and the bloodied veil, concludes she is dead, blames himself, and kills himself with his sword. His blood darkens the mulberries. Thisbe returns, finds him dying, and kills herself with the same sword, asking that the tree bear dark fruit forever as a memorial. Ovid's story is a tragedy of timing and misreading, and also an origin story explaining why mulberries are dark.

Shakespeare's transformation: tragedy into comedy. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, a group of Athenian craftsmen stage the story for a duke's wedding. Their title, as Peter Quince announces it in Act 1, scene 2, states the contradiction: "The most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe." When Duke Theseus reads the description, "A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus / And his love Thisbe; very tragical mirth," he asks, "Merry and tragical? Tedious and brief? / That is hot ice and wondrous strange snow." Shakespeare keeps Ovid's plot almost step by step: the wall, the chink, the night meeting, the lion, the bloody garment (a mantle in the play), the double suicide. He leaves out Ovid's origin story: in the craftsmen's play the mulberry is only the "mulberry shade" where Thisbe waits, and no fruit changes color. What he transforms is the treatment. The wall is played by an actor who holds up his fingers to make the chink. The tomb of Ninus becomes "Ninny's tomb," a mispronunciation that turns a royal tomb into a joke about a fool. Pyramus's speeches become absurd overstatement: "O grim-look'd night! O night with hue so black!" and, at his death, "Now die, die, die, die, die." The aristocratic audience mocks the performance aloud.

What Shakespeare's changes accomplish. Why turn Ovid's tragedy into farce inside a comedy? First, the play's own young lovers, Hermia and Lysander, also face a forbidding father and also flee at night; many readers see the Pyramus story as a shadow of what could have happened to them. Staging it as comedy at their wedding lets the audience laugh at a tragedy the main plot has escaped. Second, the performance raises questions about theater itself: how much an audience must imagine, and how clumsy staging can break or strengthen belief. The transformation of genre changes the story's function, from a lament about fate into a reflection on love, imagination and luck.

Original story — The Wall Between 4B and 4C

Written for this lesson as a modern transformation of Ovid's Pyramus and Thisbe. Characters and building are invented.

The feud between the Osei family in 4B and the Marchetti family in 4C began with a drum set and escalated to a noise complaint, two letters from the building manager, and a hallway argument that everyone on the fourth floor could quote. By June, Kwame Osei and Lina Marchetti had been forbidden to speak to each other, which was inconvenient, since they had been talking every night for a month.

They talked through the heating vent. It ran between Kwame's closet and Lina's, and the metal carried a whisper perfectly if you put your face close to the grille. "This vent," Lina said once, "is the only thing in this building that's on our side." Kwame said it was also the only thing in the building that smelled like dust and old socks, and she laughed so hard she had to put a pillow over her face.

On Friday they made a plan. Saturday, nine o'clock, the park across the avenue, the big mulberry tree by the old water fountain that did not work. They would walk. They would talk without a wall. That was all.

Lina got there first. The mulberries were falling that week, and the ground under the tree was stained dark purple. A man with an enormous, happy, off-leash dog came along the path, and the dog saw Lina's striped scarf trailing from her bag and decided it was a toy. Lina did not wait to argue. She ran for the lit gas station on the corner, and the dog, delighted, shook the scarf and dropped it under the tree.

Kwame arrived at 9:06. He found the scarf in the dark, wet and streaked with something dark, and paw prints everywhere, and for a long moment he could not breathe. He had read the old story in ninth-grade English. He knew exactly how it ended.

Then he did what Pyramus could not. He took out his phone and called her.

She answered on the first ring. "Don't," she said, out of breath. "Don't even. It's a golden retriever. I'm at the gas station. I'm buying you a lemonade."

He sat down under the tree, laughing, with purple juice soaking into his jeans, and looked at the stain on the scarf, and understood that it was only berries. The berries had been dark long before either of them arrived. The story they had both read was hanging over the evening like a warning, and it had not come true, and he thought that was probably what old stories were for.

The modern transformation. "The Wall Between 4B and 4C" alludes to the same source openly: Kwame "had read the old story in ninth-grade English." It keeps the forbidden lovers, the parents who forbid them, the wall that carries voices (a heating vent), the night meeting at a mulberry tree, the animal, the dropped garment and the dark stain. It transforms the reason for the ban: Ovid says only that the fathers forbade the marriage and gives no cause, while the retelling invents a specific, comic neighbors' quarrel that began with a drum set. It also transforms the animal (a happy golden retriever), and above all the meaning of the stain. In Ovid, blood darkens the berries; here, berries stain the scarf and are mistaken for blood. The decisive change is one action: "Then he did what Pyramus could not. He took out his phone and called her." The tragedy turns on a failure of communication; the retelling solves it with communication. Its last sentence states the transformed theme: old stories are warnings, and knowing them can change how we act.

The misconception: transformation means "changing the details." Setting a story in an apartment is a change, but it becomes analysis only when you explain what the change does. The vent, for example, keeps Ovid's image of a barrier that also connects, while making it ordinary and slightly comic ("dust and old socks"), which prepares for a lighter ending.

Worked example 1 (borrowed / changed / effect in Shakespeare): Borrowed: the wall and its chink. Changed: in Ovid the wall is an object the lovers address ("Envious wall"); in Shakespeare an actor plays Wall and holds up his fingers as the chink. Effect: what was a poignant image of separation becomes physical comedy, and the audience's jokes expose how much theater depends on imagination. The change shifts the story's tone from grief to mirth while keeping its plot.

Worked example 2 (the title as a thesis): "The most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe" joins tragedy ("lamentable," "cruel death") with "comedy" in one phrase. Theseus notices the contradiction ("hot ice and wondrous strange snow"). Analysis: Shakespeare signals in the title that he is transforming Ovid's tragedy, and the contradiction describes the performance exactly: a cruel story played so badly that it becomes funny. The borrowed plot is intact; the genre is inverted.

Worked example 3 (the modern retelling's key reversal): Borrowed: the dropped garment and the dark stain. Changed: Ovid's bloody veil becomes a scarf streaked with mulberry juice, and the berries are dark before the lovers arrive ("The berries had been dark long before either of them arrived"). Effect: Ovid's origin story (blood makes the berries dark) is reversed (the berries make the scarf look bloody), which relocates the danger in misreading evidence. When Kwame checks instead of concluding, the story argues that knowing the source can help a later reader avoid its ending.

Transformation table (representation task): Make a table with four columns: element (wall, meeting place, animal, garment, stain, lovers' deaths, audience or narrator's attitude); Ovid; Shakespeare's Act 5 play-within-a-play; the modern retelling. In each cell record what happens, with a short quotation where possible. Circle the two changes you judge most important in each later work and write one sentence on what each accomplishes.

Independent performance: Write a 600-800-word analysis of how one later work alludes to and transforms Ovid's Pyramus and Thisbe. Choose Shakespeare's Act 5 or the modern retelling, or, with your teacher, another work that draws on the story or on a Shakespeare play. Success criteria: (1) identify at least three borrowed elements with evidence from both the source and the later work; (2) analyze at least three transformations, explaining what each accomplishes (tone, genre, theme, character, audience); (3) include at least one quotation of no more than a few lines from each work; (4) name the overall purpose of the transformation in a thesis; (5) avoid treating a list of differences as analysis.

Discussion: Many readers connect Pyramus and Thisbe with Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. After reading or viewing that play with your teacher, discuss which elements it shares with Ovid and how its ending transforms the source's meaning.