file

02_venus_and_adonis_1905_facsimile_page_0021.jpg

01KG8B0SX3GZK4YMMVNWP319N4

Properties

cid
bafkreic5nccjlum6ndexu4fug2k4nmh7vab7u5x4c6unee6pjy3qgumime
content_type
image/jpeg
filename
02_venus_and_adonis_1905_facsimile_page_0021.jpg
height
2400
key
pdf-page-1769806521464-3oa54vby3pu
page_number
21
pdf_type
born_digital
size
545640
text
VENUS AND ADONIS j^ worked up some vitalizing conceptions which were derived from the Italian poets. Long before he wrote, foreign writers had elaborated the simple classic myth in narrative verse which closely anticipated his own in shape and sentiment. Most of the varied influences which moulded Shake- speare's poetic genius, indeed, find a first reflection in Venus and Adonis, In it, recent impressions of the country life of Warwickshire seem to be fused, not merely with schoolboy devotion to Ovid and youthful enthusiasm for the new birth of English poetry, but with genuine appreciation of the taste and feeling which the Renaissance had generated in all cultivated minds of Western Europe. On foundations ofFered by the novels of Italy and France— some of the most characteristic fruit of Renaissance literature- Shakespeare at the height of his powers reared many of his best-known plays. The same elements of literary sustenance, the same force of literary sympathy, which fed the stream' of Shakespeare's genius in its maturity, seem, in the eye ofthe careful student, to course in embryo through Venus ana Adonis^ < the first heir ' of his invention. II Critics of Venus and Adonis hardly seem conscious of the Distribution fact that the story of Venus and Adonis engaged the attention °^'^*' "°^- of poets in Italy, France, and Spain, as well as of England, both before and after Shakespeare approached the theme.' The extent to which Shakespeare was acquainted with the preceding foreign efforts may be difl5cult to appraise, but that ^ J. P. Collier strangely wrote o{ Venus and Adomssiyily years ago : <■ It was notHn'^'Tr •!' t'^ri ^'^"^ ^"^^'^ °° "° "^°^^1 either ancient or modern ; w^^p^uceVlft'^^^^^^^^^^ ^"^"^^^^^ ^^^^^^' ^"^ "°^^-^^ --P-^^e to it'
text_extracted_at
2026-01-30T20:55:21.464Z
text_extracted_by
pdf-processor
text_has_content
true
text_source
born_digital
uploaded
true
width
1632

Relationships