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- matter.
14
VENUS
AND
ADONIS
impressions
of
the
country-side,
—
impressions
which
lost
some-
thing of
their
concrete distinctness
and
filled
a
narrowerspace
in his
thought
in
adult
years,
amid
the
multifarious
distractions
of
the
town.
The
subject-
The
subjcct,
too,
savours of
the conditions of youth,
—
of what
Shakespeare
called
in
his
So?mets
(LXX.
9)
'
the
ambush
of
young
days '.
Shakespeare
chose
to
occupy
his
budding
fancy with
a
somewhat voluptuous
story
—
an
un-
substantial dream
of
passion
—
which
was
first
revealed
to
him
in
one of
his
classical
school-books,
and had
already
exercised the energies
of
famous
versifiers
of
his
own epoch
in
England
and
on the
continent
of
Europe.
As
in
the
case
of
most
youthful
essays
in
poetry, the
choice of
so
well-
worn
a
topic
as
Venus and Adonis shows Shakespeare
to
have
embarked
at
the
outset of
his
poetic
career
in a
con-
sciously imitative
efibrt,
even
if
the potency
of
his
indi-
viduality stamped
the
finished
product
with
its
own
hallmark.
Ovid
in
his
Metamorphoses
had
emulated
the
example
ofTheocritus and
Bion,
the
pastoral poets
of
Greece,
in
narratingthe
Greek
fable of
Venus
and
Adonis.
Ovid's
poem
filled
a
generous space in the
curriculum
of every Elizabethanschool,
and
at all
periods of
his career
Shakespeare
gavesigns of affectionate familiarity
with
its
contents.
But
Ovid
was
only
one of the
literary
companions
of
Shakespeare's youth, and
the
Latin poet
dealt
with
this tale
of
Venus and
Adonis
in bare outline.
In spite of his
deep
obligation
to
the great
Roman,
Shakespeare did not confine
his
early poetic studies to
him. There
are
ample
signs that
he
filled
out Ovid's
brief
and somewhat
colourless narrative
on
lines
suggested
by
elder
English contemporaries, Spenser
and Marlowe, Lodge and Greene. In
finally
manipulating
the
theme
there cannot be
much
doubt,
too, that
Shakespeare
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