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8
VENUS
AND
ADONIS
the theme gives small warrant for the degrading classification.
Shakespeare himself urged a juster view when he introduced
a charming reference to the airy aesthetic significance of
the fable in the Induction to The Taming of The Shrew
(Induction, Sc. 2, 11. fi-j): —
Dost thou love pictures? we will fetch thee straight
Adonis painted by a running brook,
And Cytherea all in sedges hid,
Which seem to move and wanton with her breath,
Even as the waving sedges play with wind.
Ont effect of Shakespeare's poems was to increase the
popularity of the topic among contemporary writers. The four
sonnets on Venus and Adonis by B. Griffin and other anonymous
hands which figure in The Passionate Pil^im of if 9 9 (the
poetic miscellany unwarrantably assigned by the publisher to
Shakespeare), and The Shepheard^s So72g by H[enry] C[onstable],
which first appeared in England? s Helicon (idoo), are para-
phrases ofShakespeare's verse, and they bring to no unworthy
close the roll of poetic adaptations of the classic story in the
literature of the English Renaissance.*
of light subjects ', which ladies ought to avoid : ' Venus and Adonis are unfitting
Consorts for a Ladies bosome ' (p. 139).
^ Two poems of the sixteenth century, which dealt with the story of
Adonis* incestuous birth as related in Ovid's Metamorphoses ^ Book x, should
doubtless be reckoned among the Shakespearean progeny. Mirrha, after an
incestuous union with her father Cinyras, was, according to the myth, changed
into a tree, which gave Adonis miraculous birth. The earlier poem on the
subject, Mirrha^ tke mother of Adonis j or Lustes Prodigies ^ was by the actor
William Barksted (160-/)', the other, entitled The Scourge of Venus ^ or The
Wanton Lady, with the rare birth of Ado7iis, was written by H. A. in the metre
of Shakespeare's Venus and Adojiis, and published in 16^13. Barksted's poem
ends with an eulogy on Shakespeare's effort :—
But stay, my Muse, in thine owne confines keepe.
And wage not warre with so deere lov'd a neighbor.
But, having sung thy day song, rest and sleepe
Preserve thy small fame and his greater favor :
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