Written by a leading Shakespeare scholar, this book is the first comprehensive account of the relationship between Shakespeare and his favorite poet, Ovid. Bate examines the full range of Shakespeare's works, identifying Ovid's presence not only in the narrative poems and pastoral comedies, but also in the Sonnets and mature tragedies. Demonstrating how profoundly creative Ovid's influence was, especially in his representations of myth, metamorphosis, and sexuality, this original and elegantly written study reveals Shakespeare as an extraordinarily sophisticated reader of Ovidian myth and as a metamorphic artist as fluid and nimble as his classical original.