This
episode—I’m pretty sure—was not in the version of the Midas story I first read
back in early elementary school. King
Midas and the Golden Touch was one of the books in the Little Golden Books
series, many of which we owned. And I remember being both fascinated and
horrified by it: Good news—Everything he touches turns to gold. Bad news—Everything he touches turns to gold.
Good news: very good. Bad news: very bad.
It’s likely
that Mary Shelley had first heard the story from her father, William Godwin,
who (as we’ve seen) made a venture into writing and publishing for children in
1805 when Mary was only about eight years old. That year, Godwin (writing as
Edward Baldwin) published The Pantheon;
or Ancient History of the Gods of Greece and Rome. There’s a little more
after the title: For the Use of Schools
and Young Persons of Both Sexes.
In that
volume, Godwin included both the stories of Proserpine and King Midas (the
subjects for Mary’s two brief plays). In the latter, Godwin writes: [Apollo] took his leave, but in parting
caused two ass’s ears to grow upon the sides of his majesty’s head: Midas was
ashamed of this ornament [!], and contrived to have his locks arranged, and his
crown put on so, as to conceal his misfortune: he could not however conceal it
from his barber ….[1]
Well, the
barber, under Midas’ strict instructions to keep his mouth shut, goes out into
the countryside, to the marshes, where, seeing no one around, and laughing, stooped his head to the ground, and
whispered to the reeds, “King Midas has the ears of an ass.” The reeds seem
to have liked the sound of that sentence, relates Godwin, because ever after, when moved by the least wind, [the
reeds] were found to repeat the intelligence of the barber, “King Midas has the
ears of an ass.”[2]
Godwin, we
know, liked to have Mary read his children's stories before he published them—and to offer
advice. So since girlhood she had known the tales of both Proserpine and Midas.
In her own version of the Midas story, as we’ve seen, she included the
ears-of-an-ass tale about the king. And at the end of these ear-events,
Bacchus arrives to reward Midas for finding Silenius, whom Bacchus has been
desperately seeking. When he asks Midas what he wants, the king’s reply is
quick: “Let all I touch be gold, most
glorious gold!” Bacchus does not hesitate to grant the request. But in the
final speech of Act I, Bacchus says: “Yes,
thoughtless man! / And much I fear if you have not the ears / You have the
judgement of an ass.”[3]
As we will
see in Act II.
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