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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Besides being goddess of the moon and the hunt, what significant power was Cynthia believed to possess?

2. Why does Venus ask Adonis whether he saw her grow pale and tremble when he mentioned hunting boar?

3. What is the most logical definition of "tushes" in the context of line 617, "Whose tushes never sheath’d he whetteth still"?

4. What technique is used in line 1141, "It shall be fickle, false and full of fraud"?

5. What does Venus refer to as "ugly, meagre, lean"?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Venus say about death when she thinks that Adonis has died?

2. What is the meaning of Venus's comments about veils and bonnets after Adonis's death?

3. What criticism does the speaker make of lovers' stories?

4. How does Venus portray Adonis having sex as a kind of selfless action and his choosing chastity as selfishness?

5. What happens to Venus's eyes when she first sees Adonis's dead body?

6. How does the construction of line 832, "Passion on passion deeply is redoubled," mimic the sense of what is happening in this passage?

7. How does Adonis contrast love and lust?

8. What happens to Adonis's body at the end of the poem, and how does Venus respond?

9. How does Venus contrast the behavior of fish and birds with the behavior of the boar?

10. Explain the pun in lines 827 and 828, when after Adonis leaves, the speaker says of Venus, "Even so confounded in the dark she lay,/ Having lost the fair discovery of her way."

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Choose one element of the poem that seems to you to be particularly aimed at creating a broad appeal and might therefore have factored into the poem's commercial success. You might focus on the poem's humor, its relatability, its eroticism, or some other factor not yet discussed in this context--such as the Elizabethan interest in Ancient Greece and Rome, for instance. Write an essay that focuses on your chosen element: offer evidence from throughout Venus and Adonis to support your claim that this element is a notable feature of the poem, and then offer historical and literary evidence that demonstrates why this element was likely to have appealed to a wide audience. Support your arguments with both quoted and paraphrased evidence from throughout the poem, making sure to cite any quoted language and outside sources in MLA format.

Essay Topic 2

What is the theme of Venus and Adonis? What is the poem saying about lust, love, power, virtue, and mortality? Consider symbolism, the speaker's tone, the characterizations of both Venus and Adonis, the action of the poem, and the choices Shakespeare made in adapting the original story to his own uses as you craft your position on the meaning of this poem. Write an essay that makes and defends a claim about the theme of Venus and Adonis. Support your arguments with both quoted and paraphrased evidence drawn from throughout the poem, and be sure to cite any quoted language in MLA format.

Essay Topic 3

Does the portrait of Venus in Venus and Adonis tend more to support or undercut traditional Elizabethan gender norms? Write an essay in which you consider both the characterization of Venus and the outcomes of her choices as you make an argument about what this poem is saying about the proper behavior of women. Support your argument with evidence drawn from the poem's language and plot details, and be sure to cite any quoted evidence in MLA format. If you choose to support your argument with information drawn from outside sources, be sure to cite these in MLA format as well.

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