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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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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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VENUS AND ADONIS
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