Venus and Adonis

Shakespeare’s main source for Venus and Adonis is Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Ovid (43 BC-AD 17/18) was a Roman poet who was popular with Elizabethan readers, including Shakespeare. Ovid tells the story of Venus and Adonis in Book X of the Metamorphoses, but Shakespeare also uses elements taken from the story of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus in Book IV and the story of Narcissus in Book III.

Ovid’s treatment of Venus and Adonis differs from that of Shakespeare. In Ovid, the two are constant companions. Venus is completely in love with Adonis, and he seems to have no objections. They roam the woods together, and Venus participates in the hunt, but only when it is safe to do so, like when the quarry are deer, hares, or stags. She avoids bears, boars, wolves, and lions and, as in Venus and Adonis, warns Adonis to beware of them. Adonis does not heed the warning and is killed by a boar. In her grief, Venus declares that every year the scene of his death will be reenacted, and his blood will be changed into a flower. Thus, in Ovid, the flower, which is identified as an anemone, is a symbol of rebirth. Venus sprinkles Adonis’s blood with nectar and, within an hour, a flower springs up. (In Ovid’s version, Venus has a more active role in the emergence of the flower than in Shakespeare’s poem, in which the passive voice is used, obscuring who or what actually caused the flower to appear: “A purple flow’r sprang up” [Line 1168]).

Ovid’s telling of the story of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus provides Shakespeare with much of the meat of his Venus and Adonis. Hermaphroditus is a youth who likes to travel. A nymph named Salmacis falls in love with him as soon as she sees him and wants to possess him. She tells Hermaphroditus that she wants to be his bride, at which he blushes (like Shakespeare’s Adonis) because he does not know what love is. Salmacis demands that he kiss her, and she tries to put her arms around him. Hermaphroditus cries out (again like Shakespeare’s Adonis), “Will you stop! . . . or I shall run away and leave this place and you” (Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book IV, translated by Mary Ann Innes, Penguin Classics, 1975, p. 103). This passage gave Shakespeare the basic dynamic of his poem. When Salmacis observes Hermaphroditus swimming in a pool, she is overwhelmed with passion and desire. She dives into the water, wraps herself around him, and kisses him while he struggles to escape. (The ending of the story, when the nymph and Hermaphroditus are fused into one being, Shakespeare passed over for his own poem.)

In Ovid’s telling of the Narcissus story, Narcissus, like Adonis, is a beautiful youth, and many fall in love with him, including boys and girls. Narcissus (again like Adonis) is used to the company of his own band of male friends, and he is startled when a nymph named Echo falls in love with him. When Echo emerges from a wood and tries to throw her arms around Narcissus, he reacts rather like Adonis and Hermaphroditus. He runs away, crying out, “Away with these embraces! I would die before I would have you touch me!” (Ovid, Book III, p. 84). Narcissus eventually learns what love is when he gazes into a pool and falls in love with his own image. Shakespeare uses the story as another example of a young man who refuses love, but additionally, in this case, the youth prefers self-love to any other, thus denying himself the mature development that would soon be expected of a boy of his age. The story of Narcissus thus suggests one way of looking at Shakespeare’s Adonis.