Note to As You Like It, 3.2.147: "Atalanta's better part"


Return
to
As You Like It,
Act 3, Scene 2, line 147.
Atalanta's better part: —"Atalanta's better part" is her best characteristic, but there is no scholarly consensus about what that characteristic is, although bravery seems to run a braided theme through her classical Greek adventures as a virgin huntress unwilling to marry the hero Meleager: her bravery is apparent in the Calydonian Boar incident. Atalanta first looses the Calydonian Boar on the countryside where it devastates crops, then horns in on the Calydonian Boar hunting party, and though fellow male hunters are killed by the boar during the hunt, Atalanta is the first one to wound the boar, and Meleager, who is on love with her, makes the fatal strike.


Portrayed by the Rubens Studio during the 1600s:


Meleager, assisted by Cupid, presents Atalanta
with the head of the Calydonian Boar