27 pages • 54 minutes read
William ShakespeareVenus and Adonis
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1593A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Hunter and the Hunted
In Greek mythology, it was Artemis (whom the Romans identified as Diana) who was the huntress, while Aphrodite (Venus to the Romans) was the goddess of love. In Venus and Adonis, however, Venus shows herself to be a huntress, too. Her prey, though, is a human one, the young Adonis, who is himself a hunter. Hunting thus becomes a recurring motif.
Venus is a huntress from the beginning, and Adonis is her quarry. Her desire is to “smother thee [Adonis] with kisses” (Line 18). She “seizes his sweating palm” (Line 25) (in this instance, the perspiring hand is an indicator of youth rather than lust), and she is likened to a hungry eagle gorging itself on its prey:
Even as an empty eagle, sharp by fast,
Tires with her beak on feathers, flesh and bone,
Shaking her wings, devouring all in haste,
Till either gorge be stuff’d or prey be gone;
Even so she kiss’d his brow, his cheek, his chin,
And where she ends she doth anew begin (Lines 55-60).
Other allusions to hunting soon follow. After Venus pushes Adonis to the ground, he lies there catching his breath, while “She feedeth on the steam [his panting breath] as on a prey” (Line 63). Just four lines later, Adonis is presented as “a bird tangled in a net” (Line 67) while he lies unwillingly in her arms. As evening comes on, Adonis agrees to give Venus just one kiss, and as she gives him a lot more than he bargained for, he is again likened to a hunted animal: “Now quick desire hath caught the yielding prey” (Line 547). Adonis is further likened to “a wild bird being tam’d with too much handling, / Or as the fleet-foot roe that’s tired with chasing” (Line 561).
As for Adonis, he is a hunter of the more conventional sort. The very first stanza shows him going off at dawn to the hunt. He loves hunting, in fact, as the narrator states in Line 4. No doubt Adonis has shown some prowess at the sport that fueled his enthusiasm, but as Venus predicts, his luck runs out when he encounters the boar. She had done her best to warn him, advising him to hunt less dangerous creatures, such as foxes or hares. Shakespeare gives Venus five stanzas in which she tenderly evokes the plight of the hare, which “outruns the wind” (Line 681) to escape its pursuers and cleverly uses a number of different ruses, such as running with a herd of sheep, to confuse the hounds who are following its scent.
Adonis’s Horse
Adonis’s horse symbolizes everything that Adonis is and should be, at least from Venus’s point of view. Just like Adonis, the horse is an outstanding specimen. As when an artist paints a horse that is even more perfect than in real life, “So did this horse excel a common one, / In shape, in courage, color, pace, and bone” (Lines 293-94). Moreover (and this is what Adonis must learn), when his horse sees a mare that excites his natural desire, she is all the horse can think of: “He sees his love, and nothing else he sees” (Line 287). The horse then does what he has to do without hesitation. Neither the iron bit in his mouth, which he crushes between his teeth, “Controlling what he was controlled with” (Line 270), nor his master’s shouted commands, can stop him. He must enjoy the mare. A little later, when Adonis is complaining about losing his horse, Venus uses the incident to explain to Adonis what she thinks masculine behavior should be: “Thy palfrey, as he should / Welcomes the warm approach of sweet desire” (Lines 385-86). She interprets the horse’s actions as motivated by love, not merely animal instinct: “when he saw his love” (Line 393), he was inspired to break away from the tree branch to which he was tied. Venus thus urges Adonis to learn from the actions of his horse (Line 494).
Ripeness: To Pluck or Not to Pluck?
A recurring motif is that of plucking or not plucking flowers or fruit. When is the right time to pick? When is something ripe for picking? As early as the second stanza, Venus refers to Adonis as “The field’s chief flower, sweet above compare” (Line 8). This prepares the way for the central conflict in the poem and its associated imagery and similes. Venus knows very well that the flower that is Adonis is “unripe” (that is, youthful) but she adds, using imagery of a fruit, “mayst thou well be tasted” (Line 128). Adonis later begs to differ. Emphasizing his youth, he says to her, “Who plucks the bud before one leaf put forth?” (Line 416). He speaks of his “unripe years” (Line 524) and explains with another example drawn from nature: “The mellow plum doth fall, the green sticks fast, / Or being early pluck’d, is sour to taste” (Lines 527-28). The argument is that to pluck flower or fruit before it is ripe would be unnatural and self-defeating.
In the end, though, it is death that succeeds where Venus failed. Referring to the Destinies (three goddesses in ancient Greek mythology), Venus rails at Death, “They bid thee crop a weed, thou pluck’st a flower” (Line 946). Finally, Venus does get to pick a flower. This is the purple flower that springs from the blood-stained ground where Adonis fell. It is all she has of him now, so finally she can pluck it. Since it came directly from him, she regards it as his “sweet issue” (Line 1178), the child he never had, despite her urging. She vows to hold this flower close to her breast and kiss it at every moment.
Comic Undertone
The comedy of the situation between Venus and Adonis is a recurring motif. It consists of the contrast between the confident, bustling, overeager female and her smothering attempts to seduce the reluctant, young, innocent but sometimes boorish and rude male. Venus is always pursuing; Adonis is always trying to escape. She thinks only of love; he thinks only of hunting. She is full of words that are meant to persuade; he is taciturn and uses as few words as possible, most of them designed to deflect, dampen, and deny. Venus is profligate in everything from language, sensuality, and intellectual ingenuity to emotions and desires, while Adonis is tight-lipped, circumspect, self-contained, holding himself aloof, and looking on Venus with a kind of horrified puzzlement and disdain. They could not be contrasted more starkly, like a hopelessly mismatched couple in a TV situation comedy, and it is amusing.
There are many examples of comic undertones. After Venus’s long, 80-line speech about love (Lines 95-174), full of arguments and anecdotes designed to be persuasive, Adonis responds in just one and a half lines. He is more worried about getting sunburnt than anything else: “Fie, no more of love! / The sun doth burn my face, I must remove” (Lines 185-86). This imbalance forms the comic pattern of their interactions. Later, in two stanzas charged with erotic imagery and metaphors (Lines 229-40), Venus offers Adonis her body for his sexual enjoyment. His response is a wordless, pitiless no thank you: “Adonis smiles as in disdain” (Line 241). “Poor queen of love” (Line 251), the speaker then comments, with some cause. Then, after Adonis’s horse has run off with the mare, Venus tries to soothe Adonis, taking him by the hand and speaking about her wounded heart. His response is to demand his hand back. When she says she will do so if he cures her heart, he says “let go, and let me go” (Line 379), and then blames her for the loss of his horse. It is one incident after another as this unhappy, ill-matched twosome wrangle and struggle under a hot summer sun.
Another element in the comic tone is the fact that Venus is very likely bigger and stronger than Adonis. Beginning at Line 31, she pulls him off his horse, takes the reins of the horse over one arm, and under the other she secures “the tender boy” (Line 32). This must be a very strong goddess of love. Just nine lines later, after she has secured the horse, she turns her attentions to Adonis, and she “govern’d him in strength” (Line 42). Later, as she has her arms around him and he struggles to escape, “she locks her lily fingers one in one” (Line 228) to retain control of him. In Line 421, poor Adonis complains to Venus that “You hurt my hand with wringing.” The reversal of the expected gender attributes and roles—stronger male pursues reluctant female—provides some comic entertainment, especially if the reader can visualize the two characters as they interact.
The comic element, however, disappears about halfway through the poem, beginning with Venus’s premonition of Adonis’s death. As tragedy hooves into view, the time for comedy has passed.
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By William Shakespeare
