SOURCE: Roe, John. Introduction to The Poems: Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, The Phoenix and the Turtle, The Passionate Pilgrim, A Lover's Complaint, by William Shakespeare, edited by John Roe, pp. 1-73. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

In the following excerpt, Roe provides an introduction to Venus and Adonis, focusing on the poem’s ending, rhetoric, and tragic and comic elements. Additionally, Roe comments on Shakespeare's appeal to the Earl of Southampton in the dedication, studies the influence of Ovidian texts on Venus and Adonis, and compares the poem to Christopher Marlowe's Hero and Leander.

Venus and Adonis

The Poem

By virtue of its exuberant stylistic confidence, Venus and Adonis has always been recognized as a leading example of the erotic narrative tradition. It shares with Marlowe's Hero and Leander, with which it is often compared, a brilliance and accomplishment which other poems in the genre imitate...