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- VENUS AND ADONIS 31
Shakespeare’s poem, which was introduced into the novel of *Perimedes the Blacke-Smith (1588)*, opens thus:—
In Cypres sat fayre Venus by a Fount
Wanton Adonis toying on her knee:
She kist the wag, her darling of accompt,
The Boie gan blush, which when his lover see,
She smild and told him loue might challenge debt
And he was young and might be wanton yet.
Greene’s second lyric on the theme which figured in his tract called *Never too late (1590)* is a pathetic appeal on the part of Venus to the disdainful boy:—
Sweet Adon, darest not glance thine eye?
N’oserez-vous, mon bel ami?
Upon thy Venus that must die?
Je vous en prie, pity me;
N’oserez-vous, mon bel, mon bel,
N’oserez-vous, mon bel ami?
It is more interesting to note that Marlowe, in his *Marlowe*, translation of the *Hero and Leander* of Musaeus, went out of his obvious path in order to bring Adonis’ coldness into signal relief. In that translation Marlowe mentions Adonis more than once. In one place he gives the youth the epithet ‘rose-cheek’d’, which is not warranted by the Greek text. That word is borrowed by Shakespeare when he first introduces Adonis to his reader in the third line of his own poem—a plain acknowledgement of obligation. In another place of *Hero and Leander* Marlowe interpolated three original lines, of which the Greek is quite innocent. These describe the grove where
Venus in her naked glory strove
To please the careless and disdainful eyes
Of proud Adonis, that before her lies.
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