No poet of that Katholon, that is or that of every Shakespeare are closely united in form by a degree of lyrical excellence in their imagery and rhythm which severs them from kindred competitors: they are the first examples of the highest qualities in Elizabethan lyrical verse. day ever doubted that 'poesie dealeth with to say with the universall consideration,' language in Europe their own could best 'yeeld the sweet slyding fit for a verse.' But in these three you find the highest expression of this theory and this practice alike: a sense of the mystery of Beauty profound as Plato's, with such a golden cadence as no other singer has been able to sustain. 2 XII Venus and Adonis was published in 1593, the year of Marlowe's death, and was at once immensely popular, editions following one hard upon another, in 1594, 1596, 1599, 1600, and (two editions) 1602. Shakespeare dedicated his poem to Lord Southampton, and called it the first heir of his invention.' There is nothing remarkable in his choice of a metre -the 'staffe of sixe verses' (ab ab cc); for four years earlier Puttenham (?) had described it (The Arte of English Poesie, 1589) as not only most usual, but also very pleasant to th' eare.' We need not, then, suppose that Shakespeare borrowed it exclusively from Lodge. He may have been guided in his choice. For Lodge had interwoven a short allusion to Adonis' death into his Scylla's Metamorphosis, also published in 1589 and written in this staff of six. But Lodge's melody is not Shakespeare's : 'Her dainty hand addressed to claw her dear, Her roseal lip allied to his pale cheek, 1 Sidney, Apologie for Poetrie. 2 Ibid. Her sighs, and then her looks, and heavy cheer, As if the boy were then but now a-dying' :— and, indeed, Shakespeare's poem is, in all essentials, utterly unlike Lodge's Scylla, Marlowe's unfinished Hero and Leander, Drayton's Endymion and Phoebe, and Chapman's Ovid's Banquet of Sense. Still less does it resemble the earlier adaptations from Ovid's Metamorphosis, as Thomas Peend's Salmacis and Hermaphroditus' (1565): 'Dame Venus once by Mercurye It borrows from, or lends to, Henry Constable's Sheepheard's Song scarce a phrase,' and the same may be said still more emphatically of its relation to Spenser's five stanzas 2 on 'The Love of Venus and her Paramoure,' and to Golding's Ovid. Briefly, it has nothing to do either with studious imitations of the Classics or with the rhyme doggerel' that preceded them, for it throws back to the medieval poets' use of Ovid: to 1 The Sheepheard's Song of Venus and Adonis. First published in England's Helicon, 1600: it may have been written before Shakespeare's Adonis. The bare theme, which is not to be found in Ovid, of Venus's vain soliciting and of Adonis's reluctance, is alluded to in Marlowe's Hero and Leander : 'Where Venus in her naked glory strove To please the careless and disdainful eyes : and in Robert Greene's pamphlet, Never Too Late (1590) : 'Sweet Adon, dar'st not glance thine eye (N'oseres vous, mon bel amy ?) Je vous en prie, pitty me: N'oseres vous, mon bel, mon bel, 2 Faerie Queene, iii. 1, 34-38. Chrétien de Troyes, that is, the authors of the Roman de la Rose, and Chaucer, who first steeped themselves in the Metamorphosis, and then made beautiful poems of their own by the light of their genius in the manner of their day. Sometimes you may trace the extraction of an image in Shakespeare's verse back and up the medieval tradition. Thus (Sonnet cxIx.):'What potions have I drunke of syren teares Distill'd from lymbecks.' Thus Chaucer (Troilus, iv.): "This Troilus in tearës gan distill As licour out of allambick full fast.' And thus the Roman de la Rose (1. 6657) : 'Por quoi donc en tristor demores? But with greater frequency comes the evidence of Shakespeare's loving familiarity with Ovid whose effects he fuses: taking the reluctance of Adonis from Hermaphroditus (Metamorphosis, iv.); the description of the boar from Meleager's encounter in viii. ; and other features from the short version of Venus and Adonis which Ovid weaves on to the terrible and beautiful story of Myrrha (x.). In all Shakespeare's work of this period the same fusion of Ovid's stories and images is obvious. Tarquin and Myrrha are both delayed, but, not daunted, by lugubrious forebodings in the dark; and Titus Andronicus, played for the first time in the year which saw the publication of Venus and Adonis, is full of debts and allusions to Ovid. Ovid, with his power of telling a story and of eloquent discourse, his shining images, his cadences coloured with assonance and weighted with alliteration; 1 Cf. Le Roman de la Rose. Chap. cvii. follows the order of Ovid's Tenth Book, passing from Pygmalion to 'Mirra' and adding 11. 21992, 'Li biaus Adonis en fu nés.' Chaucer, with his sweet liquidity of diction, his dialogues and 'Corpora Cecropidum pennis pendere putares; Vertitur in volucrem, cui stant, in vertice cristae' :— His his gleaming metaphors, as of Hermaphroditus after his plunge : 'In liquidis translucet aquis; ut eburnea si quis Signa tegat claro, vel candida lilia, vitro': are the very counterpart of Shakespeare's manner in the Poems and the Play which he founded in part on his early love of the Metamorphosis. But in Titus Andronicus and in Venus and Adonis there are effects of the open air which hail, not from Ovid but, from Arden : 'The birds chant melody on every bush ; The snake lies rolled in the cheerful sun; The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind, And make a chequer'd shadow on the ground' : Thus the Play (ii. 3), and thus the Poem: 'Even as the wind is hush'd before it raineth . Like many clouds consulting for foul weather.' Indeed in the Poem, round and over the sharp portrayal of every word and gesture of the two who speak and move, you have brakes and trees, horses and hounds, and the silent 1 Mackail on 'Milton's Debt to Ovid.' (Latin Literature, 142.) Cf. Ker, Epic and Romance, 395. transformations of day and night from the first dawn till eve, and through darkness to the second dawn so immediately impressed, that, pausing at any of the cxcix. stanzas, you could almost name the hour. The same express observation of the day's changes may be observed in Romeo and Juliet. It is a note which has often been echoed by men who never look out of their windows, and critics, as narrowly immured, have denounced it for an affectation. Yet a month under canvas, or, better still, without a tent, will convince any one that to speak of the stars and the moon is as natural as to look at your watch or an almanack. In the Venus even the weather changes. The Poem opens soon after sunrise with the ceasing of a shower : 'Even as the sun with purple colour'd face, But by the 89th Stanza, after a burning noon, the clouds close in over the sunset. 'Look,' says Adonis : 'The world's comforter with weary gate The next dawn is cloudless after the night's rain : 'Lo here the gentle lark, weary of rest, From his moist cabinet mounts up on high, The sun ariseth in his majesty ; Who doth the world so gloriously behold, That cedar tops and hills seem burnisht gold.' Beneath these atmospheric effects everything is clearly seen and sharply delineated :— 'The studded bridle on a ragged bough Nimbly she fastens.' |