Hero and Leander

For the Christopher Marlowe poem, see Hero and Leander (poem). For the Leigh Hunt poem, see Hero and Leander (1819 poem).
The Last Watch of Hero by Frederic Leighton, depicting Hero anxiously waiting for Leander during the storm.

Hero and Leander is the Greek myth relating the story of Hero (Ancient Greek: Ἡρώ, Hērṓ; pron. like "hero" in English), a priestess of Aphrodite who dwelt in a tower in Sestos on the European side of the Hellespont (today's Dardanelles), and Leander (Ancient Greek: Λέανδρος, Léandros), a young man from Abydos on the opposite side of the strait. Leander fell in love with Hero and would swim every night across the Hellespont to be with her. Hero would light a lamp at the top of her tower to guide his way.

Succumbing to Leander's soft words and to his argument that Aphrodite, as the goddess of love, would scorn the worship of a virgin, Hero allowed him to make love to her. These trysts lasted through the warm summer. But one stormy winter night, the waves tossed Leander in the sea and the breezes blew out Hero's light; Leander lost his way and was drowned. When Hero saw his dead body, she threw herself over the edge of the tower to her death to be with him.

Cultural references

The myth of Hero and Leander has been used extensively in literature and the arts:

Hero laments the dead Leander by Jan van den Hoecke
VALENTINE: And on a love-book pray for my success?
PROTEUS: Upon some book I love I'll pray for thee.
VALENTINE: That's on some shallow story of deep love: How young Leander cross'd the Hellespont.
PROTEUS: That's a deep story of a deeper love: For he was more than over shoes in love.
VALENTINE: 'Tis true; for you are over boots in love, And yet you never swum the Hellespont.
Hero and Leander are again mentioned in Two Gentlemen of Verona in Act III Scene I when Valentine is tutoring the Duke of Milan on how to woo the lady from Milan.

Shakespeare also alludes to the story in Much Ado About Nothing, both when Benedick states that Leander was "never so truly turned over and over as my poor self in love" and in the name of the character Hero, who, despite accusations to the contrary, remains chaste before her marriage; and in A Midsummer Night's Dream in the form of a malapropism accidentally using the names Helen and Limander in the place of Hero and Leander, as well as in Edward III (Act II, Scene II), Othello (Act III, Scene III), and Romeo and Juliet (Act II, Scene IV).

The most famous Shakespearean allusion is the debunking one by Rosalind, in Act IV scene I of As You Like It:

"Leander, he would have lived many a fair year, though Hero had turned nun, if it had not been for a hot midsummer night; for, good youth, he went but forth to wash him in the Hellespont and being taken with the cramp was drowned and the foolish coroners of that age found it was 'Hero of Sestos.' But these are all lies: men have died from time to time and worms have eaten them, but not for love."

Both robbed of air, we both lie in one ground,
Both whom one fire had burnt, one water drowned.

Hero mourns the dead Leander by Gillis Backereel

References

  1. Hearn, Lafcadio (1903). In Ghostly Japan. Little, Brown and Company.
  2. Marchand, Leslie (1957), Byron: A Biography, I, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, pp. 238ff.
  3. Housman, A.E. "More Poems". |chapter= ignored (help)
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