SOURCE: Lake, James H. “Shakespeare's Venus: An Experiment in Tragedy.” Shakespeare Quarterly 25, no. 2 (spring 1974): 351-5.

In the following essay, Lake identifies the transition between comedy and tragedy in Venus and Adonis and traces Venus's evolution into a sincere, if not admirable, character.

When one considers the numerous contributions made yearly in Shakespeare criticism, it seems remarkable that the poet's first published work¹ should receive such scant recognition. With a few notable exceptions,² critics have tended either to deprecate Venus and Adonis as a cold, dull failure³ or to explain it away as a kind of mirthful poetic exercise geared to the tastes of the Earl of Southampton,⁴ while they have tended to ignore the observation made long ago by Coleridge, that in this poem “the great instinct, which impelled the poet to the drama, was secretly working within him.”⁵ Moreover, Shakespeare's unique treatment of a myth familiar to...