Venus and Adonis

Lines 1-174

The first stanza introduces and neatly characterizes the two characters. It is dawn, and Adonis is ready for the hunt, but “love he laugh’d to scorn” (Line 4), while lovesick Venus hastens on her way to him. This sets the pattern for the entire poem. Venus is the active one. She speaks in the next two stanzas (Lines 7-24), inviting Adonis to sit with her. She promises to “smother” (Line 18) him with kisses. She is so eager that she pulls him off his horse, ties the horse’s bridle to a tree branch, and pushes the unwilling, blushing Adonis down to the ground. She kisses him, while he protests that she is “immodest” (Line 53). In the first of many images and similes drawn from nature, she is likened to an eagle swooping on its prey (Lines 55-58). Adonis is angry but lies passively in her arms (Lines 67-73). Venus tries to get her way by offering him a deal: If he allows her to kiss him just once, she will ask no more of him. Adonis gives his timid assent, but when she goes to kiss him he closes his eyes and turns his lips away (Lines 84-90). This is one of many comic moments in the poem.

Venus reproaches him and then launches into a long speech that takes up 80 lines (Lines 95-174). It must seem to Adonis like a lecture that he is forced to listen to. In the first three stanzas (Lines 97-114), Venus tells the story of how Mars, the god of war, wooed her, but he ended up as her slave. Then she turns her attention back to Adonis and once more tries to persuade him to kiss. They are alone; no one will see (Lines 134-26). Time rushes on and beauty should not be wasted, as it does not last (Lines 129-32). She could understand his reluctance if she was old, ugly, and “churlish” (Line 134), but she is perfect in every way, so why does he “abhor” (Line 138) her? In the final two stanzas of her speech (Lines 163-74), she argues that beauty does not exist for a purpose other than itself; it must be passed on to a person’s offspring. It is therefore Adonis’s duty to father a child so that his beauty will be perpetuated. (This is the same argument that Shakespeare makes in the first 17 of his sonnets.)

Lines 175-450

Venus sweats in the midday heat (Lines 175-78), and Adonis finally gets a word in. It is the first time he speaks directly, nearly one-sixth into the poem. He says he does not want to hear any more of love; he is getting sunburnt, and he has to go (Lines 185-86). This prompts Venus to make another long (five-stanza) speech (Lines 187-216). She is not interested in his excuses; she will shield him from the sun; she appeals to him: is he “hard as steel” (Line 199)? Does he not know what love is? She promises that he will come to no harm from her and once again asks for just one kiss…and perhaps another, if he should return it. Then she gives way to frustration and speaks abusively to him, calling him a “Well-painted idol” (Line 212) and telling him, “Thou art no man” (Line 215). She pauses but then resumes, and in highly erotic language invites him to enjoy her body sexually (Lines 229-40).

Adonis, however, is still not interested. He “smiles in disdain” (Line 241), breaks away from her, and runs to his horse. There follows a long and symbolic episode (Lines 259-324) in which Adonis’s horse spies a “breeding jennet” (Line 260) (a small mare), breaks the reins that hold him to the tree, and makes chase, filled with desire. The mare resists him for a while but then gives in. The point of the story is that, according to the speaker of the poem, this is how males and females should behave. It is natural, unlike the way Venus has to woo Adonis, which is the wrong way round, and the fact that Adonis refuses her attentions.

Adonis has pursued his horse, hoping to get ahold of him, but both horses run off into the woods. Adonis is angry, even more so when he sees Venus approaching. She tries to be affectionate toward him, but “a war of looks” (Line 355) ensues, followed, for the first time in the poem, by a sustained dialogue between the two characters, one “willful” and the other “unwilling” (Line 365). They do not make much progress, however. She takes his hand; he tells her to let him go. In his longest speech up to this point (Lines 379-84), he is very blunt: His horse has gone, and it is Venus’s fault. She should just go away and leave him alone. All he can think about is how to get his horse back. She responds in four stanzas (Lines 385-408), in which she says that his horse was just following his natural desire. Adonis, she says, should learn from his horse’s example. Adonis responds with his second-longest speech in the poem, comprising three stanzas (Lines 409-26). He reiterates his position. He is not interested in love and has heard bad things about it. It produces both joy and sorrow simultaneously. Besides, he is not yet mature enough for love, and she must stop pursuing him. Venus responds by praising the five senses, which enable her to love him (Lines 433-50).

Lines 451-612

Adonis gives Venus a hostile look. As he opens his mouth, his “ruby-color’d portal” (Line 451), it is clear that he is about to say something harsh. Venus responds with cunning, deliberately falling to the ground. Adonis, the “silly boy” (Line 467), thinks she is dead, and he slaps her cheek, trying to revive her. He tries many other measures to bring her back to life, regretful of his former unkindness. He even kisses her, at which Venus, having observed the success of her stratagem, opens her eyes. She pretends to be grateful to him for bringing her back from death (“mine eyes . . . / But for thy piteous lips no more had seen” (Lines 503-04). That being so, their lips should continue to kiss; a thousand kisses from him, she says, will buy her heart.

Adonis replies with a softness of tone that he has not shown before, although his views have not changed. He claims that he is young and does not yet know himself, so she should not attempt to know him. To do otherwise would be unnatural, like trying to pluck fruit before it is ripe (Lines 523-28). He then points out that it is getting late, and that they should bid each other goodnight. He offers her a goodnight kiss, but one kiss is not enough for her. The next five stanzas (Lines 547-76) describe how she shamelessly gives way to her passion. She is presented as lustful and insatiable: “her face doth reek and smoke, her blood doth boil” (Line 555). Adonis finally stops resisting, “Like a wild bird being tam’d with too much handling” (Line 560)—another of the many images and similes in the poem that are drawn from nature and country life. Venus, however, does not get all that she desires.

Venus finally lets him go, but she wants them to meet again the following morning. He says no. He is going to hunt a boar with his friends. Again, the earnestness of Venus and the abrupt refusal of Adonis produces a rather comic effect. It does not matter what she says or does; he is simply not interested. However, Venus does not give up easily, and a comic incident is about to unfold. At the mention of the boar, Venus goes pale. She throws her arms around Adonis and they both fall to the ground, with her on her back and him on top of her. The next stanza (Lines 595-600) presents an extended metaphor of love as a medieval jousting tournament. But Venus is to be disappointed. Although “her champion is mounted for the hot encounter” (Line 596), “He will not manage her, though he mount her” (Line 598). This is in spite of the fact that she kisses him constantly. Adonis responds in characteristic plain fashion. In his interactions with Venus, he cannot be said to be a man of many words. He simply says she is crushing him and tells her to let him go (Line 611).

Lines 613-768

Venus responds with a long, uninterrupted speech consisting of 17 stanzas, just over 100 lines (Lines 613-714), in which she reveals why she reacted as she did when Adonis mentioned the boar. She had a premonition that the boar will kill him, which she now elaborates on in some detail. She describes how fierce and dangerous a boar is and urges him to avoid it (Lines 614-42). Because she loves him, she fears losing him. (She mentions “Jealousy” [Lines 649, 657] in this context, which here means a fear of loss.) In her mind’s eye, she sees Adonis covered in blood, and she prophesizes that if he encounters the boar the next day, he will die (Lines 672-73).

Venus then advises Adonis to pursue unthreatening prey, such as the hare, the fox, or the doe. In the following five stanzas (Lines 679-708) she describes with great sympathy and insight the many ways a hare—a “poor wretch” (Line 680)—tries to evade its pursuers. She understands all the hazards and miseries it faces and the resourcefulness it brings to its efforts to stay alive. This is one of the many passages and images in the poem that suggests more the Warwickshire countryside that Shakespeare knew very well rather than any mythological scenario.

Adonis is unimpressed with Venus’s argument, and he responds in typical laconic fashion, saying that it is dark and his friends are expecting him. He tells her to go away (Line 716). Venus, however, is in no mood to go. In Lines 720-68, she flatters him, reminds him he is subject to death, and urges him to scorn chastity and indulge in love so he can beget offspring, as nature intended him to do. In these six stanzas, Venus argues her point in a fanciful piece of mythology. She picks up on Adonis’s reference to darkness and says that Diana, goddess of the moon, is not shining tonight and will not do so until nature is “condemn’d of treason” (Line 729). Nature committed a crime when it created Adonis because his beauty belonged only in heaven not on earth. His beauty is so great that it outshines even the sun and moon. Cynthia (another name for Diana) then bribed the Destinies (three goddesses in ancient Greek mythology) “To mingle beauty with infirmities” (Line 735), making life subject to chance, misery, illness, and death.

Regarding the latter, Venus states that “one minute’s fight brings beauty under” (Line 746); she obviously has Adonis’s imminent encounter with the boar in mind. Given all that, she urges him to “Be prodigal” (Line 755) and beget children. That is the natural thing for him to do, and if he does not, the world will regard him with “disdain” (Line 761). A treasure hidden away simply goes to rust, but “gold that’s put to use more gold begets” (Line 768).

Lines 769-930

This goads Adonis into his longest speech in the entire poem, extending over seven stanzas (Lines 769-810). As usual, he speaks his mind bluntly. He is not pleased with Venus’s words, and he reproaches her: “Your treatise makes me like you worse and worse” (Line 774). (“Treatise” here means discourse.) This is, to put it mildly, not what Venus was expecting to hear, and it once more adds a comic undertone to what is otherwise a serious dramatic dialogue. Adonis goes on to accuse Venus of falsehood and deception, and he is resolutely opposed to her. She is motivated not by love but by something else: “Call it not love, for Love to heaven is fled, / Since sweating Lust on earth usurp’d his name” (Lines 793-94). He thus gives expression to one of the poem’s themes: love versus lust. He contrasts the two in the following lines: “Love comforteth like sunshine after rain, / But Lust’s effect is tempest after sun” (Lines 799-800). He says he is troubled and ashamed for having even listened to her words.

With that, he breaks away from her and returns home. Venus lies on the ground in dismay and begins a woeful song about love. The speaker, however, seems to have as little sympathy for her as Adonis does, since he declares, “Her song was tedious, and outwore the night” (Line 841).

Beginning at Line 853, morning comes, and Venus salutes the rising sun (Lines 859-64). In the following 11 stanzas (Lines 865-930), the narrator describes Venus’s actions and feelings. She hears the cries of the hounds and the sound of Adonis’s hunting horn, and she rushes in their direction. She realizes that the hounds have cornered their prey, and she knows from the way they are yelping, and the fact that they are staying in one place, that their prey is a large creature, either a boar, a bear, or a lion. She becomes agitated and fearful, and then she sees the hunted boar (Line 900), its mouth red with blood. Fearful, and without knowing where she is going, Venus runs. She encounters one of the dogs, which is wounded, and another one that is howling. Then she hears and sees more bleeding dogs.

Lines 931-1194

Guessing what may have happened, Venus rails against death in the first of four stanzas she now speaks (Lines 931-54). Addressing Death directly (in what is known as an apostrophe, in which an abstract entity or object is addressed as if it were a living being), she calls it an ugly tyrant. In bitter and anguished words, she berates Death because he has killed Adonis.

At this, she is overcome and weeps copiously. Then comes a change. She hears a huntsman’s cry and convinces herself that it is Adonis’s voice (Lines 973-78). Her spirits revived, she again addresses Death (Lines 997-1008), asking his pardon for speaking ill. She says that before, she spoke in jest, as she was fearful after her encounter with the boar.

She hears a hunting horn (Line 1025) and her heart leaps up, but as she rushes forward she comes upon the dead Adonis, his side pierced and bloodied by the boar’s tusk. At first, Venus cannot believe what she sees, but then the truth dawns. With that discovery, the poem moves quite swiftly to its conclusion. Venus’s grief is profound. Beginning at Line 1069 and continuing to Line 1120, she laments the death of the one she loved: “Alas, poor world, what treasure hast thou lost! / What face remains alive that’s worth the viewing?” (Lines 1075-76). Adonis was a delight to all of nature, she says, including wild animals and birds. She even includes the boar in this statement, saying the boar that killed Adonis was actually wanting to kiss him: “the loving swine / Sheath’d unaware the tusk in his soft groin” (Lines 1115-16).

Venus looks upon Adonis’s pale lips and takes his cold hand in hers. She then makes a prophecy (Lines 1135-64) about what will happen to love now that Adonis is dead. It will always be accompanied by sorrow. It will start well but end badly. The sorrow of love will outweigh the joy it gives: “It shall be fickle, false, and full of fraud” (Line 1141). Venus then links love to a series of opposite qualities: Love will make the strong weak and “the wise dumb” (Line 1146); it will make the young old and an old person like a child; it will be suspicious when there is no cause, but when there should be mistrust there will be none. It will also be the cause of war and other calamities.

When Venus’s speech ends, Adonis’s body vanishes like vapor, and from his blood on the ground a purple flower “check’red with white” (Line 1168) springs up. Venus picks the flower, holds it to her breast, and says that she will constantly kiss it in memory of Adonis, whom she calls the flower’s father. She then flies off in her chariot to Paphos, the city in Cyprus that has been associated with her since ancient times. In Greek mythology, Aphrodite (whom the Romans called Venus) was born in Paphos.