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- 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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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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VENUS AND ADONIS 21
But had Shakespeare gone to Ovid alone, his *Venus and Adonis* would not have taken the shape which is familiar to us. The scholars of the Renaissance rediscovered in the sixteenth century the Greek pastoral poetry of Sicily, and many poets of the Renaissance, while they continued to pay much deference to Ovid, sought inspiration in Theocritus and Bion as well. Not Ovid’s *Metamorphoses* alone, but also Bion’s elegy was translated into all the vernacular tongues of Western Europe, and it was sometimes under the Greek influence, and sometimes under the Latin, and more often under the two influences combined, that there came to birth the massive corpus of poetry on the classical legend in Italian, French, Spanish, and English.
Through the Renaissance literature of Italy the story spread rapidly. At the end of the fifteenth and at the beginning of the sixteenth century it was a frequent theme in Italy of scholarly Latin verse¹, and early in the sixteenth century it found its way into the vernacular Italian poetry. The vogue of the story was greatly extended by an Italian rendering of Bion’s elegy (wrongly assigned to Theocritus under the title of *Epitafio di Adone di Teocrito*), which appeared in a collection of *Rime Toscane* in 1535.² A very
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