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Part I Greek 1 Venus And Adonis

Of all Shakespeare's writings, Venus and Adonis is the ical and traces farthest backward (if only diin with it

Earl of Southampton

"Venus and Adonis" bears a dedication:

To the Right Honourable Henry Wriothesley, Earl of South ampton, and Baron of Tichfield

-Dedication

Southampton was a well-educated youth of considerable wealth, as presented at the court of Queen Elizabeth I in 1590, while he was still a boy in his teens He quickly beca them

It is suggested that one of Shakespeare's early plays, Love's Labor's Lost (see page I-421) ritten for a pree of his friends and guests If so, the play e to Shakespeare extended (so at least one report goes) to the gift of a thousand pounds-an enormous sum in those days-for the completion of some purchase Perhaps it is no wonder, then, that Shakespeare made his dedication to Venus and Adonis florid, indeed

Nevertheless, considering that we know Shakespeare as a transcendent genius, and that Southa man as no more than twenty years old when Venus and Adonis was published, there is so unpleasantly sycophantic about the dedication Shakespeare pretends to worry, for instance-

- how the world will censurea prop to support so weak a burthen;

- Dedication

Can he really doubt his oer so, or overestiiously? Surely not Can he be indulging in sarcas in Shakespeare's career would lead us to suppose him a devil-may-care He was rather the reverse

Well then, is heup a patron with a fat money belt? Perhaps so It is easy to believe that this is the ordinary language of poets to patrons but it would still hurt us to suppose that Shakespeare would confor a custom

But, to be complete, it is also possible that there was a ho out of love This is possible Some think most of Shakespeare's 154 sonnets ritten in this period of his life;man, possibly (but not certainly) to Southampton [Shakespeare's sonnets, and a handful of other short poems attributed to him, are not taken up in this book They are primarily emotional and personal, with little or none of the type of background I a with here] The twentieth sonnet seeins:

A woman's face, with Nature's own hand painted, Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;

- lines 1-2

But it denies overt ho:

And for a woman wert thou first created,

Till Nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting

And by addition me of thee defeated

By adding one thing to

But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,

Mine be thy love, and thy love's use their treasure

- lines 9-14

In addition, there are a number of events in Shakespeare's plays that can be interpreted from a homosexual point of view, yet which Shakespeare presents most sympathetically There are the close male friendships, even to threatened death, as is Antonio's for Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice (see page I-501) There is Lucius' passion for Fidele in Cye II-72) and the scene in which Orlando woos Ganye I-571)

But too little is known of Shakespeare's life to go any further than this Any speculations as to his hoave in to the more than speculations

the first heir of my invention

Shakespeare goes on to say, in his dedication,

if the first heir of my invention prove deforodfather

- Dedication

Venus and Adonis was published about April 1593, at which time Shakespeare was just twenty-nine He had already established himself as a co of old plays; notably Henry VI, Part One (see page II-640) Henry VI, Part Two and Henry VI, Part Three were mostly or entirely his and it is possible he had already written two comedies: The Comedy of Errors and Love's Labor's Lost It is even possible that two more plays, Titus Andronicus and Richard III were in the process of production

These works, however, were meant to be played, not read, and it was to be years before they were actually published Venus and Adonis was the first piece of Shakespeare's writings that actually appeared in print, and it was in that sense only "the first heir of my invention"

Shakespeare seems, by the way, to have turned to narrative poetry only because of a siege of enforced idleness The London theaters were closed between htened incidence of plagues, and Shakespeare used the additional time on his hands to write Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece

Rose-cheek'd Adonis

The poe ready to hunt:

Even as the sun with purple-colour'd face Had ta'en his last leave of the weeping morn,

Rose-cheek'd Adonis hied hih'd to scorn

- lines 1-4

Adonis is the Greek version of a Sericulture, therethe faretation in the fall, there was a rebirth in the spring Rituals personifying this death-and-rebirth were invented and they e to Nature (or even as a hint to a possibly forgetful Nature), inducing her to continue The feeling would surely arise at last that only a thorough-going carrying through of the ritual each year would bring about a fertile growing season and a good harvest, and upon that, life through the barren winter would depend

In that sense, the type of myth of which the tale of Venus and Adonis is representative (though prettied-up froinations of the later classical poets), reflects the historic birth of agriculture It can be tied to the great event, some seven thousand years before the Trojan War, that saw the first deliberate cultivation and harvest of wild grain in the foothills of the Zagros Mountains in what is noestern Iran

The Suricultural cycle with a god, Dumu-zi, who died and was resurrected; a death-and-resurrection which was celebrated each year by the people of the land The myth and the ritual were adopted by the later Babylonians and Assyrians-the Semitic peoples who succeeded the Suris and Euphrates In the Seod became Tammuz

In the Taod descends into the underworld after his death and all vegetation dies with hioddess (variously described as his sister, es to rescue him In the most familiar form of the myth, the rescuer is Ishtar, his wife or love

The passionate rites for Taly attractive to wo and utter grief that syiastic joy that came when the priests raised the cry that he was reborn

The stern prophets of Israel had a hard job keeping the Israelite woan rite The tale of Jephthah's daughter was possibly an atte the rite into a patriotic coeneral Jephthah had beaten the ene thing that cahter, whooes on to explain: "And it was a custohters of Israel went yearly to lahter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year" (Judges 11:39-40)

If so, this pious wile did not work Ezekiel, at the time of the Judean exile in Babylon, enumerated the sins of the Jews of the time and said that in the very Te for Tammuz" (Ezekiel 8:14)

And in one way, Tammuz has remained in Jewish consciousness ever since The Babylonians naod and the exiled Jews, in adopting the Babylonian calendar, adopted the month too Even today, one of thein the latter half of June and the earlier half of July) is called Tammuz

The rites of a dead-and-resurrected God occur in the Greek myths too

There is the case of Dehter, Persephone, is abducted by Hades, the god of the underworld While Persephone is gone, all grain withers, but finally Dehter under conditions that allow herself and Hades to share her, each for part of the year The Eleusinian Mysteries, secret religious rites a the Greeks, seem to have involved the celebration of this death-and-resurrection, expanding it to include the resurrection of the human soul after the death of the human body

As the Greeks and the Seained e, the Tay directly Tammuz became Adonis

The naods are always a little difficult to handle in any culture that considers the name of an object to be almost the equivalent of the object itself To touch the naue and breath is a form of blasphe Tammuz, one says Lord (just as, in the Bible, Lord is used in place of Yahveh)

The Semitic term for "Lord" is "Adonai" and it was "Adonai," rather than "Tammuz," that was adopted by the Greeks They added the final s, which is an al it "Adonis"

Since Ishtar was the lover of Tammuz in the Babylonian myth, the equivalent of Ishtar would have to be the lover of Adonis in the Greek oddess of love and beauty

The GreekTheias of Assyria No such king existed in actual history, to be sure, but this is a hint of the Babylonian origin of the ht suppose, therefore, that the scene of the poeh Shakespeare never indicates any particular place-and perhaps gave the ht at all

Adonis' hter of Theias Myrrha had conceived an incestuous passion for her father and ed to sneak into his bed, with the result that she becanant by him When the shocked father discovered the truth, he would have killed her, but the pitying gods changed her into the myrrh tree

The myrrh tree yields a bitter resinous sap (myrrh), which oozes out when the bark is split (The word " "bitter") The sap is valued for its uses as incense and in cosht to the infant Jesus by the wise old, and frankincense, and myrrh," Matthew 2:11)

The sap on being exposed to air hardens into resinous drops called "tears," and these are supposed to represent the tears of Myrrha over the terrible thing she had done (Working backward, we can suppose that this part of the myth arose over the attempt to explain why a tree should seem to weep)

In the Greek ed split after nine ed Aphrodite (who had inspired Myrrha's fatal love in the first place) felt remorse at the event and rescued Adonis She placed hioddess of the underworld, for te the beauty of the child, refused to give hi him part of the time

Here again is the tale of whiter (Adonis with Persephone) and summer (Adonis with Aphrodite), enlivened, in the Greek way, by a story of forbidden love

This, at least, is the myth as told by Apollodorus, an Athenian poet who lived in the second century bc Shakespeare does not follow this He begins with Adonis as a grown ins, and concerns hi a version given by Ovid

Ovid, who seems to have been Shakespeare's favorite classical author, is the Roman poet whose name in full was Publius Ovidius Naso About ad 1 he riting his most famous work-a version, in Latin verse, of those Greek myths that involved the transfor into another

Ovid's book is therefore called Metamorphoses, and the myth of Adonis is included, since his mother had been turned into a myrrh tree

Sick-tkoughted Venus

In the final couplet of the first stanza, Shakespeare introduces the other member of the mythical duo:

Sick-thoughted Venus ins to woo him

- lines 5-6

This is not Aphrodite, notice, as it would be if Shakespeare were following the work of the Greek poet Apollodorus Shakespeare is using the naoddess instead, the name used by Ovid

The Romans in the early centuries of their history had a prioddesses of a rather arid nature ere not to be compared with the sophisticated deities of the much more cultivated Greeks From the third century bc onward, the Romans fell more and more under the spell of Greek culture and were iy They could not very well drop their own deities; instead they cohly corresponding gods of the Greeks and retold the Greekthe Roman names

Here is a list of the chief gods and goddesses in their Roman and Greek versions:

Roman Greek

Jupiter Zeus chief of the gods

Juno Hera his wife

Minerva Athena goddess of wisdom and practical arts

Diana Arteoddess of the moon and the hunt

Mercury Herods

Mars Ares god of war

Vulcan Hephaestus god of fire and the forge

Venus Aphrodite goddess of love and beauty

Neptune Poseidon god of the sea

Vesta Hestia goddess of the hearth and home

Dis Hades god of the underworld

Ceres Dericulture

Proserpina Persephone goddess of the underworld

One od had, apparently, no Roe, for he was the od of youth and the fine arts (and in later poetry, of the sun as well) The Romans used the Greek name, therefore They also used Hades or, its equivalent, Pluto, in preference to their own Dis, since Dis (a fearsoround deity) was not popular with the him

Two of the ends, and who play a proiven theest of all the Greek heroes was Heracles, but the Roain, the wiliest of the Greeks at the siege of Troy was Odysseus, whom the Romans called Ulysses