The Amores consist of 49 love elegies in which Ovid, as an uninvolved observer, describes the adventures of a man and his lover Corinna.
Virgil had a great influence in medieval culture, making it difficult for Ovid to assert himself against him. Ovid’s importance grew with the rise of vagabond poetry. Despite this, he was often viewed through a moral lens, deeply impacting the Renaissance. Arthur Golding’s translation of Metamorphoses, the first part of which appeared in 1565, was imbued with a Puritan spirit, interpreting Ovid allegorically to justify him to a Christian audience.1 Marlowe was the first Western author to translate Amores.2
Neither the exact time of writing, assumed to be during Marlowe’s period of study, nor the date of the first printing are known. In the six surviving editions of Ovid’s Elegies, likely produced between 1600 and 1640, Marlowe’s translation was always printed with the epigrams of John Davis, distinguishing between the two authors, who had no connection whatsoever. There must have been an earlier printing, as John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop of London, ordered the destruction of several works in June 1599, including Davies' epigrams and Marlowe’s elegies. Whitgift’s wrath was directed more against Davies than Marlowe. Until an anonymous translation appeared in 1683, followed by John Dryden’s work in 1719, Marlowe’s version of the Amores remained the only one in English.3
