Venus and Adonis - “Love comforeth like sunshine after rain, But Lust's effect is tempest after sun…”

Venus and Adonis - “Love comforeth like sunshine after rain, But Lust's effect is tempest after sun…”

“Love comforeth like sunshine after rain,
But Lust's effect is tempest after sun.
Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain;
Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done.
Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies;
Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies.”

The plague hit London very badly late in 1592 and into 1593. The watchmen and death cart carriers had started to move through the streets around Bishopsgate where Shakespeare had recently moved. The bodies did not seem to even stop through the Winter and Spring and by May, with the temperatures increasing, the death cart’s appearance seemed to be a daily occurrence. Shakespeare had spent a considerable amount of money at the end of 1592 acquiring a one twelfth share in the Lord Strange’s Men (later to be known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men) and he had expected this would pay dividends in 1593, but with the closure of the playhouses, he knew that no plays would be performed that season. He may have done some provincial touring as an actor with the company during some months in 1593 or he may have started on ‘Edward III’ and the comedy ‘Love’s Labour Lost’ but with the playhouses indefinitely shut due to the plague, he had find another avenue for revenue and another outlet for his writing.

Shakespeare knew that writing poetry and dedicating it to a sponsor could be quite lucrative. He had probably started on his own poetic version of ‘Venus and Adonis’ late in 1592 based on the story and passages from Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’ as translated by Arthur Golding in 1567. He had heard that the family of Henry Wriothesley (Earl of Southampton) were keen for him to get married. Although he wasn’t a very rich patron, Southampton would probably accept (and pay for) being a “muse” for Shakespeare’s poetic offerings. Besides, the 1580’s trend of poets and the aristocracy reading and recreating Ovidian and erotic poetry had continued into the 1590’s. The form was full of lustful metaphors, aphorisms and parisons, ripe to flatter the young Southampton and elicit his excitement and his patronage.

The poem is long and difficult to follow at times. It is best read out aloud and there are some good audiobook readings. I went for the reading out aloud which takes about two hours with short breaks. So hear goes.

The poem opens with Adonis making fun of love and lovers. Venus arrives on the scene and she falls in love or lust with Adonis. She plucks him off his horse and pushes him to the ground and seduces him. Adonis is taken back by her forthright behaviour. Venus asks only for a simple kiss but when she approaches Adonis, he turns away. Venus, can see that Adonis is young but she will not accept his rejection and emphasises her beauty and the fact that many men have desired and wooed her including the God of War himself. It is midday and Venus is getting hot but Adonis thinks the only heat is the sun itself. She bursts into tears.

Venus’ offers continue:

“I’ll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer…

Stray lower where the pleasant fountains lie…

Just then Adonis tries to remount his horse but alas, his horse has found a mate. Venus persists. Her desire is boundless and she says that he should follow the example of his own horse. Adonis recalls that he has heard that love is a life in death but reinforces the only death he will embrace is killing boar.

Venus describes how she would love him even if she was bereft of her five senses. This doesn’t work so she pretends that she is dead and Adonis tries to revive her through kissing her. She opens her eyes and gives in to her lust but her desires cannot be met. Adonis seems to give into her, "Her lips are conquerors, his lips obey..." He once more becomes unresponsive and talks of when he will go boar hunting in the morning. Venus is disappointed:

“ She’s Love, she loves, and yet she is not lov’d.”

Prophesizing Adonis’ death in a hunt, Venus sees that the night and darkness means she must retreat. Adonis declares it is not love her hates but lust. He runs away and Venus holds her heart and howls.

As the sun rises on a new day, Venus hears the hounds of the hunt cornering an animal. She thinks that Adonis is dead and she has an imaginary conversation with Death and asks Death to forgive her for wishing Adonis dead. She sees the young Adonis dead and bloodied and she sheds tears until she has no more to shed. She curses the boar that killed him and them contemplates that perhaps the boar, like her was only trying to kiss him.

Venus laments, “… all love’s pleasure shall not match his woe…” as the body of Adonis melts into the earth and a purple flower splattered in white appears, she cries out:

“My throbbing heart shall rock thee day and night,

There shall not be one minute in an hour

Wherein I will not kiss my sweet love’s flower.”

Then, withdrawing from the world, Venus is whisked away by silver doves to Paphos.