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- 20 SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE
gorgeous effect, assimilates several lines from the exultant outburst at the close of Ovid’s *Metamorphoses*. To that book, which Shakespeare often consulted, he had especial recourse when writing *Venus and Adonis*. Moreover, a second work of Ovid was also at Shakespeare’s hand, when his first narrative poem was in process of composition. The Latin couplet, which Shakespeare quoted on the title-page of *Venus and Adonis*, comes from that one of Ovid’s *Amores* (or ‘Elegies of Love’) in which the Latin poet with fiery vehemence expatiates on the eternizing faculty of verse.¹ Ovid’s vaunt in his ‘Elegies’ had clearly caught Shakespeare’s eye when he was engaged on *Venus and Adonis*, and the impression seems to be freshly reflected in Shakespeare’s treatment of the topic through the sonnets.²
No internal evidence as to the chronological relations of two compositions from the same poet’s pen is open to less dispute than that which is drawn from the tone and texture of the imagery and phraseology. The imagery and
¹ To the many instances I have adduced of the handling of this topic by Spenser and other Elizabethan poets, may be added this stanza from Roydon’s *Elegie* on Sir Philip Sidney, where he refers to the sonnets which Sidney, in the name of Astrophel, addressed to Lady Rich, in the name of Stella:
Then Astrophill hath honour’d thee [i.e. Stella];
For when thy body is extinct,
Thy graces shall eternall be,
And live by vertue of his inke;
For by his verses he doth give
To short-livde beautie aye to live.
* Cf. Mortale est, quod quaeris, opus; mihi fama perennis
Quaeritur, in toto semper ut orbe canar.
(Ovid’s ‘Amores’, i. xv. 7–8.)
The *Venus and Adonis* motto is immediately preceded in Ovid’s ‘Amores’ (i. xv. 35–6) by these lines:
Ergo cum silices, cum dens patientis aratri,
Depereant acvo, carmina morte carent.
Cedant carminibus reges regumque triumphi,
Cedat et auriferi ripa benigna Tagi. (31–4.)
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