• Full Text
• Page by Page as in the original edition (1602)
• Concordance to the Poem
• Concordance to the Commendatory Verses and Title page
• Note on the Concordances

1. Salmacis and Hermaphroditus belongs to a class of poetry, sometimes known as epyllia, that was popular in the late Elizabethan period. The most famous examples of this genre are Marlowe's Hero and Leander and Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis. The term epyllia (s. epyllion) is used to describe narrative poems which resemble epic poetry in style or manner but are of shorter extent. Most Elizabethan poems in the genre are based upon adaptations of stories found in Ovid's Metamorphoses. In the case of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus it is the story from Book IV which tells of the sexual and physical merging of the youth Hermaphroditus with the nymph Salmacis.
   
   
2. The poem was first published in 1602 by John Hodgets and bears no reference to Francis Beaumont as the author, however, Beaumont's authorship of the poem has never been seriously challenged.
   

Beaumont, Francis. "Salmacis and Hermaphroditus." Elizabethan Minor Epics. Ed. Elizabeth Story Donno. New York: Columbia University Press; London: Routledge, 1963. 281-304.  Contains many other epyllia including Marlowe's Hero and Leander, Chapman's extension of the same, and Heywood's Oenone and Paris, as well as a brief introduction.

Golding, Arthur. Shakespeare's Ovid. Gen. Ed. J. M. Cohen. Carbondale, Illinois:
Southern Illinois UP, 1961.

Keach, William. Elizabethan Erotic Narratives. Hassocks, Sussex: The Harvester Press, 977.

Krier, Theresa M. "Sappho's Apples: The Allusiveness of Blushes in Ovid and Beaumont." Comparative Literature Studies 25 (1988): 1-21.

Ovid. Metamorphoses. Any translation. Or click here to view the on-line edition at The Perseus Project.

Smith, Bruce R. Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare's England: A Cultural Politics. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991.

Additional Interesting Reading in the Genre

Bate, Jonathon. Shakespeare and Ovid. Oxford: Claredon Press, 1994.

Bullough, Geoffrey Ed. Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare. Vol. 1. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957.

Campbell, Marion. "`Desunt Nonnulla': The Construction of Marlowe's `Hero and Leander' as an Unfinished Poem." ELH 51 (1984): 241-268.

Ovid. "Elegies." Trans. Christopher Marlowe. The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe. Ed. Roma Gill. Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987. 13-84; or Christopher Marlowe: The Complete Poems and Translations. Ed. Stephen Orgel. London: Penguin Books, 1971; or the online edition available here from The Perseus Project.

---. Heroides and Amores. Any translation. Or view the on-line edition at The Perseus Project (preform a search for "Ovid").

Royston, Pamela L. "`Hero and Leander' and the Eavesdropping Reader." John Donne Journal. 2 (1983): 31-53.

Voch, James J. "The Eye of Venus: Shakespeare's Erotic Landscape." Studies in
English Literature 20 (1980): 59-71.