The title is a play on the ancient Greek epic poem by Ovid, ???The Metamorphosis of Ajax.??? The ???stale subject??? of Harington???s title is, however, the privy or toilet, known in Elizabethan England as ???a jakes,??? while the name of the fictional author, Misacmos, is Greek for ???hater of filth.??? The satirical, bawdy, and irreverent text offers a solution to a common problem within sixteen