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Lyly's Midas As An Allegory Of Tyranny, Stephen S. Hilliard

Department of English: Faculty Publications

John Lyly's Midas is structured in terms of traditional allegorizations of the Ovidian myth that represent Midas as an avaricious and ignorant tyrant. Lyly is thus concerned with a theme popular in the public theater, but he treats it in allegorical manner distinctive in its focus on theme rather than character or action. The play first portrays Midas's mistaken choice of a private end, the accumulation of wealth for its own sake and as a means of financing lechery and aggression, then suggests the difficulties this causes in the governing of his kingdom. The episode in which Midas judges the …