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- VENUS AND ADONIS 19
simple story of Venus and Adonis. Shakespeare drew crucial hints for his superstructure from two independent episodes of the *Metamorphoses*, firstly from the wooing of the reluctant Hermaphroditus by the maiden Salmacis (bk. iv), and secondly from the hunting of the Calydonian boar (bk. viii). The coyness, which is the main characteristic of Shakespeare’s Adonis, does not distinguish Ovid’s Adonis, who is mildly responsive to Venus’ embraces; it is the characteristic of another of Ovid’s mythical heroes, Hermaphroditus. Such lines in Golding’s rendering of the tale of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus as
Leave off, (quoth he), or I am gone and leave thee at a becke
With all thy tricks,
and
Striue, struggle, wrest and writh (she sayd) thou froward boy thy fill,
Do what thou canst thou shalt not scape,
can be matched almost verbatim in Shakespeare’s poem. There is nothing faintly resembling them in Ovid’s tale of Venus and Adonis. The white figure of the boy Hermaphroditus, gleaming beneath the water as he bathes, is likened by Ovid to an image in *ivory* or a white *lily* encased in clear glass.¹ Adonis’ white hand is compared by Shakespeare to
A *lily* prison’d in a gaol of snow,
Or *ivory* in an alabaster band. (363-4).²
But it is possible that Shakespeare interwove this Ovidian
¹ In liquidis translucet aquis, ut eburnea siquis
Signa tegat claro, vel candida lilia, vitro (Ovid, *Met.* iv. 354-5).
² In *Love’s Labour’s Last*, ii. 1. 241-2, Shakespeare quotes as symbolic of extravagant wealth, *‘Fewels in crystal for some prince to buy . . . tend’ring their own worth, from where they were glass’d.’*
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