In Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare takes a classic mythological tale and uses it to comment on the nature of love. The original story of Venus and Adonis, like many mythological tragedies, is filled with vivid images of human passions.
In Shakespeare's portrayal of powerful deities as possessing human emotions, they are humanized. This makes the interaction between gods/goddesses and mortals a lot more believable. Unlike other religions and mythologies, Greek and Roman myths portray the division between gods and mortals as being thin. While there is a hierarchy—like those found in the Abrahamic faiths—the deities and the mortals easily interact with each other, and on some occasions, they seem like equals.
In fact, there are many instances in the poem specifically, and in the mythology canon in general, where the mortals are more virtuous than the powerful gods and goddesses. In this poem, Shakespeare points out that deities can be as temperamental and as obsessed with worldly pleasures as the mortals—sometimes even more so.
The poem is also written in the style of a pastoral, and Shakespeare uses this type of poetic writing to make observations about nature. In the poem, nature is the realm in which both gods and demigods dwell. This is quite possibly William Shakespeare's first publication, and it was popular during his time to use ancient mythologies as poetry topics. The poem is essentially an interpretation of the Greek myth by Shakespeare, which is a technique he would later use as a playwright.
Like in some of his most famous plays, particularly Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare comments on the complexity of love and relationship dynamics in this poem. He shows the dark side of passion and the dangers of losing one's ability to think logically. However, like in the Greek tragedies that were written before Shakespeare's time, there is no logic to love in this poem.
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1045
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
In Shakespeare's version of Venus and Adonis, what is the poet stressing?
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