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VENUS AND ADONIS
story of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus at second-hand—that he appropriated it from an original poetic adaptation by an English contemporary, Thomas Lodge.¹ It is beyond reasonable doubt, however, that Shakespeare’s eye caught direct Ovid’s description of the Calydonian boar, which figures in the eighth book of his *Metamorphoses*. Golding thus renders Ovid’s description of the brute of Calydon (*Metamorphoses*, viii. 284–6):—
His *eies did glister* blud and fire: right dreadfull was to see His *brawned necke*, right dredfull was his *heare* which grew as thicke
With pricking *points* as one of them could well by other sticke. And like a front of armed Pikes set close *in battall ray*, The sturdie *bristles* on his *back* stoode staring up alway.
In Shakespeare’s *Venus and Adonis* the boar is pictured thus (619–21, 625–7):—
On his *bow-back* he hath a *battle set*
Of *bristly pikes*, that ever threat his foes;
His *eyes*, like glow-worms, shine when he doth fret; . . .
His *brawny sides*, with *hairy bristles* arm’d,
Are better proof than thy spear’s *point* can enter;
His short thick *neck* cannot be easily harm’d.
By way of acknowledging a large indebtedness to Ovid, Shakespeare selected a somewhat self-complacent quotation from him as the motto of his poem. On the title-page are the two lines from Ovid’s *Amores* (I. Elegy xv. 35–6):—
Vilia miretur vulgus: mihi flavus Apollo
Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua.²
¹ See pp. 32 sq. infra.
² Ovid’s *Amores*, translated by Marlowe about 1589, was first printed about 1597. That translation was probably accessible to Shakespeare in manuscript. Marlowe rendered the cited lines thus:—
Let base conceited wits admire vile things,
Fair Phoebus lead me to the Muscs’ springs.
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