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- 18 VENUS AND ADONIS
Ovid’s narrative.
From Greek literature the story spread to Roman. Ovid’s narrative of the fable in his *Metamorphoses* (x. 520–738) is a mere skeleton, and is awkwardly obscured by the interpolation of the independent story of Hippomenes’ footrace with Atalanta (ll. 560–707). But Ovid caught something of the temper of Theocritus and Bion, and added a few mythological details. It was through the Latin that the tale in the first instance reached the poets of Western Europe. Dante’s slight allusion to Venus’ infatuation (*Purgatorio*, xxviii. 64–6) and Chaucer’s apostrophe to Venus in *The Knight’s Tale* (2227–8)—
For thilke loue thou haddest to Adon,
Have pitee on my bitter teres smart,
are Ovidian reminiscences.
Shakespeare, too, gained his first knowledge of the myth from Ovid. He had opportunities of reading the Ovidian tale in both Latin and English from his school-days. Golding’s English verse translation of the *Metamorphoses*, of which the publication was completed in 1567, was constantly reprinted during Shakespeare’s lifetime, and the dramatist adapted many passages from it in plays of all periods of his career.
Ovid’s account of Venus’ infatuation for Adonis, of her warnings against the ferocity of the boar, of his love of the chase, of his death in the boar-hunt, of the goddess’ grief, and of her lover’s transformation into a purple flower, are the broad bases of Shakespeare’s poem. Apart from verbal coincidences, some of its leading characteristics—the free employment of pictorial imagery, and the frank appeal to the senses—indicate that Ovid, whether in the Latin original or in the English translation, was a primary source of inspiration. Shakespeare’s indebtedness to Ovid passed indeed beyond the bounds of the Latin poet’s brief version of the
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