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Ovid’s “Oenone to Paris” and Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis present contrasting displays of unrequited love from a god and a nymph. The disparities in subsequent power cause the women to take two highly different courses of action with the same emotion at their core. These displays first differ in structure, as “Oenone to Paris” is formatted as a long-distance letter containing Oenone’s thoughts from the first-person point of view. At the same time, Venus and Adonis tell a story of events as they unfold from a third-person omniscient point of view. This difference creates a stark comparison that highlights our lack of knowledge of Paris and allows us to recognize that our feelings about his character are solely influenced by her portrayal. It also removes a significant element that affects our judgment of the women because while we can pass judgment on Venus’ persistent actions, we have no idea what Oenone would do if faced with her love. Additionally, we see a difference in histories between the pairs because while Venus and Adonis had only just met, Paris and Oenone have a shared past. This difference challenges the use of “love” in Venus and Adonis because, arguably, love is not an instantaneous feeling. The poem sympathizes with her curse to “love a cheek that smiles at thee in scorn” (line 252), but the comparison shows how ridiculous her grief is. Oenone and Paris were married, having consensually consummated their marriage in quite a few places, “beneath the sheltering trees on a couch that was made of mingled grasses and leaves” (5.18-9) and “the straw on the floor of a simple hut” (5.20-21), while Venus throws a hissy fit over a young man that never wanted anything to do with her in the first place. Another intriguing difference is in the power dynamic because, despite the gendered implication, Venus is a goddess with ultimate power over the boy Adonis. Oenone is a nymph with no control over Paris, the “son of Priam” (5.16). However, we can see a distant similarity here because Oenone believed that Paris was only a “simple shepherd boy” (5.14) when they wed. I wonder if because she was a nymph characterized as “the child of a mighty stream” (5.15), she would have had the upper hand or if it would have been negated by his place in society as a man. Regardless, the switch creates a complicated dynamic. Similar aspects between the two texts highlight specific details otherwise skimmed past. A major element of this is the examples of nature utilized in these excerpts. Both texts create visual imagery through descriptions of nature, which is particularly interesting in Oenone’s account as a letter on its own has no setting. In both versions, specific examples of nature are utilized for sexual connections in places where both women (attempted/accomplished) lay with their men. I mentioned the lines in Oenone’s prior, but Venus’ examples are not only sexual due to physical acts but in the language. “Round rising hillocks” (line 237), “lovely caves,” and “enchanting pits” (line 247) all harbor sexual connotations and are even personified to “swallow Venus’ liking” (line 248). Lastly, both excerpts mention deer and dogs, which initially encouraged me to compare these specific passages. In Venus and Adonis, the lines are “Then be my deer, since I am such a park. No dog shall rouse thee, though a thousand bark” (lines 239-240), and in "Oenone to Paris", “I showed you the places good for hunting or spreading the nets to entrap the deer,” (5.21-22) and “How often have I led dogs over the ridges?” (5.25). While Venus compares Adonis to a deer, I believe that Oenone is comparing Paris to a dog, creating a strong dichotomy between the dynamics. Venus offers her protection to the vulnerable Adonis (again bringing us back to power dynamics) against what I assume is a reference to his many suitors. In this, Venus insinuates herself to be a dog, which creates an interesting parallel with Paris. Morally, we find both Paris and Venus to be the ones at fault in these circumstances, and relating them to dogs in a modern context is like calling them poorly behaved boys. Wordplay! Both women utilize these animal comparisons to tear down their companions. Still, while Venus is trying to manipulate Adonis into accepting her advances, Oenone only wants to describe the betrayal she feels. Overall, complicated dynamics are highlighted when comparing these two passages, allowing us greater insight into complex cases of unrequited love.

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Napoleon’s Farewell to Josephine by Laslett John Pott (undated)

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Love sparks in many ways. Like a flame, it moves and changes, but what is it like to look at two candles? While one candle dances and burns bright with passion, the other candle may not have that same flame. Rather than embrace the heat of love, the candle refuses the match and smolders with the smoke of despair. Here we will look at two tales that display the flame-like fluidity and volatility of love. Both "Venus and Adonis", written by Shakespeare, and "Myth of Narcissus, written by Ovid, tell two stories that are both holding hands with one another and turning their backs. These stories are both about love and heartbreak but when put in conversation with each other they highlight the meaning of heartbreak and how one handles such a raw emotion.

At the beginning of Venus and Adonis, we see Venus, the goddess of love, yearn for the affection of a handsome man, Adonis. She spends her time following him and speaking of love, hoping to convince Adonis that they are meant to be together. Adonis rejects her advances time and time again but Venus refuses to give up. After much time of Venus chasing this man, she has fallen so madly in love with, he decides to go on a hunt for wild boar. She warns him not to go as she has had a premonition about his death on this hunt but, alas, he goes anyway and perishes. This crushes the goddess, causing her to leave this earth.

In “Myth of Narcissus”, we are told a similar tale of love and despair. We are introduced to another beautiful man, much like Adonis, named Narcissus, and a nymph named Echo. Echo is instantly smitten with Narcissus but he does not feel the same way. Echo can only repeat what has been spoken to her making her a creature with no voice. Shortly after the two characters meet, Narcissus not only denies her attempted courtship but blatantly insults her saying “Don’t cling to me! I’d sooner die than say I’m yours” (Ovid.3.92). This verbal abuse hurled at her from her love crushes the nymph. She cannot live knowing that the man she craves despises her causing her to lay down in the forest and whither to nothing. Narcissus eventually meets a similar fate as one day he sees his reflection in a pool and, transfixed by his own looks, remains there until he too withers away.

As sad as it may be, not every love story has a happy ending. Filled with love, rejection, and death, Shakespeare and Ovid’s’ stories, display the ugly underbelly of love through their inclusion of rejection and peril. The rejection of someone who you truly love is enough to bring even the strongest of people to their knees, “But now I died, and death was lively joy” (Shakespeare,498). When Venus says this, we can see the true despair caused by the death of a loved one and what it does to a person. In Ovid’s story, we see a similar theme as Echo perishes after her lovers' rejection. However, it is not just her in this story who dies. As Narcissus wastes away, lost in his own reflection, the reader understands that ego can be the killer of love and of life. Ovid writes “in sum, he is now struck with wonder by what’s wonderful in him” (94) emphasizing this point. Adonis and Narcissus share this highlighted fatal flaw as they both think that they are too perfect to have anything other than all that they desire.

With Echo and Venus, we see two women fall head over heels for these men but are both rejected by their newfound loves. When they are rejected, we see both similarities and differences that compliment each other. Both of these women are brought to their knees by this denial but Venus, unlike Echo, survives this hell she has been placed in. Venus eventually rises but Echo cannot do the same, "She cannot sleep; she wastes away. The sap fled her wrinkled, wretched flesh" (Ovid,3.93). This is when the stories truly complement each other as we see the two possible reactions to such a loss. There is the utter defeat of Echo who would rather die than live with the fact she will never be with her love, and then there is Venus who is able to survive this tragedy. Ovid and Shakespeare play off of each other in this way by showing the reader that they have a choice in situations of great pain which is why these stories are great in conversation.

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Criticism of the Heteronormative and Masculine

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Criticism of the Heteronormative and Masculine

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Both considered to be love stories, Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis and John Lyly’s Galatea bring very different perspectives of love from renaissance times. Written only about thirty years apart, both stories incorporate tragedy, adventure, drama and love, and yet one is a comedic love story while the other is a tragic one. The goddess of love is portrayed in both plays through Venus although her role is quite different in the two stories.

One of the most notable differences between the two plays is that of the subjects within. For Shakespeare, his story follows Venus and Adonis, a man and a woman, whereas John Lyly’s story follows Galatea and Phillida, two women. Shakespeare already begins to shake things up by having a goddess fall in love with a man, a story that is more commonly seen with Zeus or known through Disney’s adaptation of Hercules; however, Lyly spins things off in a completely different direction, giving his story a homosexual romance on multiple levels. In some sort of shift, I do believe that both Shakespeare and Lyly were critiquing masculinity and the heteronormativity of love. They approach it in entirely different ways; however, the endings of each play are crucial to understanding the criticism.

In Galatea, Lyly already begins with an unconventional approach of having two women dress up as men to be saved from sacrifice. Everything about the love between Galatea and Phillida is unconventional, as they fall in love with each other as they are disguised as men, believing the other to be a man as well, but having doubts and trouble keeping up with their lies. Even though they have deceived each other, when their identities are revealed, their feelings for one another remain.

“Galla. I will never loue any but Phillida : her loue is engrauen in my hart, with her eyes.

Phil. Nor I any but Gallathea, whose faith is imprinted in my thoughts by her words.”
(5.3.124-127)

The love between Galatea and Phillida is so strong that they are willing to die if they can not be with each other; however, they are willing only to sacrifice themselves for their love, not one another. Although the play wraps up with Venus offering to turn one of the two into a man so that they may be together, I believe that this was only done so to appease the crowds at the time. The love story was comedic, yet beliefs at the time could only see union between a man and a woman; however, Lyly’s deliberate removal of a wedding between the two after the transformation shows that the line regarding transformation was only to steer away from further scandal. Despite the fact that it was two renaissance women that fell in love, Lyly provided them with a happy ending, one where they were able to be with each other in life.

In Venus and Adonis, Adonis is portrayed as a very prideful hunter. Even with a warning and pleas from a goddess, he continues out on his hunt to prove his superiority. Ultimately, his arrogance is met with death. In knowing Shakespeare, this could have just been a decision that rings true for many of his plays, especially ones with major themes of tragedy; however, I think it was more of a critique on the recklessness of men and the desire to prove themselves.

“‘I know not love,’ quoth he, “Nor will not know it,

Unless it be a boar, and then I chase it.

‘Tis much to borrow, and I will not owe it.

My love to love, is love but to disgrace it,

For I have heard it is a life in death,

That laughs and weeps, and all but with a breath.” (409-414)

From early in the play, Adonis is quite clear that the only thing he loves is hunting and that he’ll make time for Venus if she is only the boar that he wishes to kill. Unlike Galatea and Phillida, who are willing to die for each other, Venus attempts to save the one she loves while Adonis is willing to die for what he loves. The key distinction is between loving someone versus loving something.

“She looks upon his lips, and they are pale;

She takes him by the hand, and that is cold;

She whispers in his ears a heavy tale,

As if they heard the woeful words she told;

She lifts the coffer-lids that close his eyes,

Where, lo, two lamps burnt out in darkness lies.” (1123-1128)

In examining Adonis’ death, it is clear that it negatively affects both parties. Venus has lost the one she loved, while Adonis lost to the thing he loved, once again touching on the distinction between a person and an object. It is arguable whether or not Adonis loved Venus; however, Shakespeare has made it clear that it was Adonis’ arrogance, his desire to constantly prove that he was the best and only had time for the hunt, that lead to his death, hurting all parties involved.

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Death as depicted in the Rider-Waite tarot deck. 

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Death is only as immaterial or sacred as we humans choose to make it, though it remains as inevitable as it has been for eternity. Regardless of the means by which we process it, death unfailingly serves to leave an impact on our lives, and thus we find ourselves with a plentiful array of artists present and past who have stepped up to its contemplative call. We’ve come to regard death as a merciless god who devours souls indiscriminately, as an eternal lover exhibiting patience for his mortal partner’s life to end, as a trickster who conceives endless means for mortals to pass into his realm. Death wears as many hats as humanity chooses to lend it, which makes for fascinating reading when it collides with our brief existence.

In the instance of Katherine Philips’s poem “Orinda upon Little Hector Philips” about her passed child, death becomes a transitory, one-way state through which the young and innocent are elevated to sacred, but untouchable regard. In contrast, Hester Pulter’s poem “The Circle” retains a cyclical perspective of death that places it in equal regard to the inevitability of life.

In the former, Philips is overwhelmed by grief as she eloquently but hauntingly mourns the death of her firstborn, who lived for only “forty days [until] he dropped away” (Line 3). Through the sorrow of Philip’s profound loss, we recognize a resignation in her: not once does she explicitly convey a demand for Hector to be returned to her. Too great is her suffering to entertain the possibility of miracles, for “tears are my Muse and sorrow all my art” (line 11). Instead of bargaining, Philips’s lamentations become consumptive, almost ravenous, unable to be satiated by all the world’s occupants though they have no relief to provide. This mournful demand thus takes on a deital level of appeasement, for which nothing can amount to a worthy sacrifice nor compare to the lengths by which Philip is so very immersed - almost creationary in her understanding of the craft of woe. In this regard, one could perceive death as begetting this power upon Philips, so masterful and extensive her grieving is.

At a great affront to Philips’s lamentation, the concision of Pulter’s “The Circle” suggests an assuredness in the cyclical nature of death that can’t be shaken by loss. Perhaps Pulter had not experienced death to the intimate extent Philips had, or viewing death as another turn in the passage of time and life is comforting in its inevitability. But Pulter doesn’t begin with these musings on cycles; rather, she admonishes the audience for being unwilling to die, to accept death, as being “a sign of huge impatiency” (line 3). Some would argue that humans are addicted to suffering, dependent on it though we have the choice to live absent of its harm upon us. Pulter views death, the final suffering, as demanding to be accepted of, for to not is to be immature and foolish. Thus, when we come to “dissolve”, whatever we may derive from life and explore will continue to prevail without being incumbent on our regard of it. Humans are not gods, not the center of the universe, not the favorited beings that the heavens smile upon; “this earthy transitory mound | in an eternal motion still runs round” (lines 7-8). The earth, even, is not mighty in the face of the cycle of life and death that performs upon its surface. Thus we are told to accept our joining of the mound as nothing more than contributing to the ebb and flow of time, to which death plays little more of a role than as a cog in the grand, universal cycle of conscious existence.

In pairing the two, one must acknowledge the intimate singling out that death performs in Philips’s poem that is absent as an active, assertive force in Pulter’s piece. Both acknowledge death as being beyond the grasp of human control and understanding, with inevitability being the greatest hurdle that each speaker must learn to overcome. In Philips’s poem, death becomes the entire world in which the speaker is left to muse, to mourn, to accept death as indiscriminate and unbending as life is in its fragility. What is left after death's harvest is the sorrow and unwillingness to accept the deceased by those who are left to continue wandering through mortal life, consumed by the thought of it, intimate in their fixation upon it. By comparison, Pulter makes such a process of lamentation feel as foolish as it would be to resist or reject acceptance of our deaths. We are not the center of the universe, the protagonist of some story of suffering, nor are we demanded to transcend beyond the pain of death; we are simply to die, to become one with the Earthen mound we spin ‘round and ‘round upon, and rotate “eternally” (line 7) through time and space. Such a detached notion of death clashes so horrifically with the sorrow that comes of the loss of a child, yet it represents two vastly differing yet valid means of women welcoming death as a digestible concept into our consciousness. Where one views death as all-consuming, as constituting every emotion one left to the living can experience, the other recognizes death as being inevitable as the sun’s birth and death upon a new day for the transitory mound circling its fiery body.

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My favorite readings that we have done so far in this course were John Lyly’s Galatea and Shakespeare’s poem, “Venus and Adonis.” Both writings were written around the same period, and are well known for getting a little bit spicy. In a time when scandalous media was rare to come by, it was mostly looked on poorly by the public. The only places you could really consume this kind of entertainment were through the theater or its close relative, poetry. People of all classes and genders can throw down with a bit of raunchy content, and they certainly did with these two works. I mean, “Venus and Adonis” became synonymous with anything that has to do with sexy taboo.

John Lyly’s Galatea is a story about two fair young ladies that live in a town that has been cursed by Neptune. Every year, the most beautiful virgin in the town must be sacrificed to a monster. In an effort to save their children, two fathers separately make the decision to dress their daughters, Galatea and Philida, up like men and sent them into the woods to avoid the harsh fate. Eventually, the two find each other and fall in love, even after they find out that they were both women. It’s at this point that we’re reaching some risky literary territory. The climax of the main characters’ relationship comes in Act 4, Scene 4. As the time for the sacrifice approaches, this small scene depicts a conversation between Galatea and Philida. Whilst still wearing her disguise, Philida states, “I marvel what virgin the people will present. It is happy that you are non, for then it would have fallen to your lot, because you are so fair.” Immediately returned by (a probably blushing) Galatea with, “If you had been a maiden too, I need not to have feared, because you are fairer.” (Lyly, 96). At this point in the story, the two characters have pretty obviously indicated some sort of affection for each other. These being of the later examples before they find out the truth. The sexual tension building between these two same-sex characters was something that was certainly not an accepted mainstream idea, but that didn’t mean people didn’t enjoy watching it. The scene gets even saucier: “[Philida]: …let us wander into these groves till the hour be past. [Galatea]: I am agreed, for then my fear will be past. [Philida]: Why, what dost thou fear? [Galatea]: Nothing, but that you love me not.” (98). The first straightforward admission of love between the two same-sex (no matter how you look at it) characters creates a dynamic never before seen in a popular play at the time. By the end of the play, one of the characters supposedly gets turned into a man so that they can “truly love” each other. But that does not change the fact that two women fell in love on stage and at the time, that was a feat in and of itself.

Shakespeare’s very popular poem, “Venus and Adonis” offered a sensual escape into the story of the unanswered love of a goddess and a striking young man. This man was based on Henry Wriothesley, a nobleman at the time, who seems to have been described as the hottest man that side of the pond. The whole reading was essentially Venus attempting to seduce Adonis in vain, as he made up his mind that he was not a fully developed man yet. The section that appealed to me the most was when Adonis finally decides to turn down Venus and hunt a boar.

'Love comforteth 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.

'More I could tell, but more I dare not say:

The text is old, the orator too green.

Therefore in sadness now I will away.

My face is full of shame, my heart of teen;

Mine ears, that to your wanton talk attended,

Do burn themselves for having so offended.'

With this he breaketh from the sweet embrace

Of those fair arms which bound him to her breast,

And homeward through the dark laund runs apace,

Leaves love upon her back, deeply distressed.

Look how a bright star shooteth from the sky;

So glides he in the night from Venus' eye, (800-815).

This poem simply bleeds sexual tension, without being strictly explicit. Shakespeare knew it, and so did everybody else. After all that Venus had said and the things she would have done for him, he still wanted nothing to do with her. With mixed feelings and emotions, he flies off into the night. In conclusion, these pieces from the Shakespearean era are stunning examples of artistic expression in ways that may have not been possible in other mediums.

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Saints Christina and Ottilia by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1506). Their shy regard to each other highlights the modesty that women were forced to perform.

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In Ovid’s Metamorphosis tale Iphis and Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, the role of women in romance had to be explored in an underhand way. Renaissance social rules would not allow for these concepts to be played out obviously in a mainstream text, so the authors disguised their message between language and events which appease society superficially.

Iphis is a girl who was raised as a boy by her mother because her father had ordered for his baby to be killed if it were a girl. Iphis falls in love with a girl to whom she is betrothed but is in turmoil over being married but unable to satisfy her love due to their genders. She says, “Aim to achieve what is right and love as a woman is bound to” (Ovid, 9.747). Iphis has had to act like a boy all of her life and has interacted with her betrothed, Ianthe, as a boy. So what does she mean by loving as a woman should?

We can look at Venus and Adonis for what loving as a woman might look like. Venus cries and takes Adonis’s hand, their hands together are described like this: “So white a friend engirts so white a foe” (Shakespare, 364). White is often used to symbolize innocence and sexual nature so in this context they are put as equals regardless of their gender. Shakespeare is starting to blur the implication of gender in romance. The fact that Venus’s hand is the friend and Adonis’s is the foe switches the dynamic that has been being built with Adonis as the victim of Venus’s unnatural pursuit. Going back to the question that Ovid’s tale raised, we might conclude that Venus’s courtship is a valid way that a woman can love. Although Venus does not get the man in the end, her courtship might not be inherently wrong.

Just as the tale starts to defend Venus’s attraction and actions, Shakespeare kind of takes it back in the next stanza. Venus says, “Would thou wert as I am, and I a man,/ My heart all whole as thine, thy heart my wound” (369-370). The first line Venus alludes to their genders being switched; that this would solve their problem. In the next line, Venus might be saying that if she was a man and Adonis was a woman then they could be together; that it is alright for a woman to be less affected than a man and in such a case a man can pursue her successfully. This reading is what would be most socially acceptable as it reinforces the stereotypes about women having a submissive receiving role in romance since Adonis's apathy would be alright. As the most obvious interpretation, Shakespeare may have used it to veil a more radical exploration of Venus’s love.

Similar to what Shakespeare alludes to, Iphis was transformed into a man at the end of Ovid’s tale. Interestingly the descriptions of what changed in Iphis were the following: “Longer strides [...] limbs grew stronger [...] features sharpened [...] hair seemed cut to a shorter length” (Ovid, 9.785-788). The descriptions are physical; Iphis’s love, which is what she questioned as inappropriate, did not change at all. Going back to the question earlier, this legitimizes Iphis’s (the girl) love for Ianthe. As a man Iphis only performed the act of marriage, and all other aspects leading up to it were performed by her as a girl. Again this is legitimizing that a woman can court and win a lover.

Renaissance people read Ovid’s tales as myths and treasured them as wild and titillating. We can use this understanding of Ovid’s assessment of female courtship to look back at Venus’s quote regarding her gender and the state of her heart and Adonis’s. When she says that her heart would remain whole and his would fall in love, this undoes the previous statement which pits gender as their main obstacle. As Ovid demonstrated, gender is merely an external ideal that society needs met. It would not in fact resolve the issue if their roles were switched, Adonis’s heart is what needs to be altered which is why Venus says that their hearts need to be switched. This means that Venus’s courtship is not unsuccessful because of her gender but because of how Adonis feels about her. This doesn’t solve the question exactly of what Venus and Adonis is saying about what female love can look like, but it does undermine the immediate portrayal of Venus’s courtship as unnatural and therefore incorrect.

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Virginity is Cool: Defining Sexuality and Loss in Renaissance Texts

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Virginity is Cool: Defining Sexuality and Loss in Renaissance Texts

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John Lylly’s 1588 comedy Galatea, without the figure of “The Virgin,” would hardly be possible. Arguably, the play is so preoccupied with virginity that Lylly not only relies on the concept to drive its plot, but to create moments of irony and inform emerging understandings of morality and queer desire as well. In fact, the word “virgin” alone is printed thirty-seven times in the 2012 edition of Galatea. The importance of a woman’s virginity is initially introduced in the play’s first scene when Tityrus, the father of the titular character, Galatea, reveals to her the reason why she must disguise herself as a man: according to Tityrus, the village where they live must hold a quinquennial virginal sacrifice to satisfy Neptune, the sea god. Opposing her father at first, Galatea defends the sacrifice by saying that she would rather have “virtue” than “grey hairs,” effectively endorsing the sanctity of “virginity” as a construction that limits a woman’s autonomy, and in this case, even how long she  lives (Lylly 1.1.84). The other leading female character in the play, named Phillida, undergoes a similar moral dilemma as she decides whether or not it is ethical to disguise herself as a young man, when in reality, she is a virgin. As the play begins it also ends, with virginity still in the forefront of conflict: both women ultimately fall in love with each other while disguised as men and must enlist the help of Venus’ supernatural powers to transform one of them into a real man so their love can be sanctified. In the end, no virgins are sacrificed, and because two maidens become one, only one virginity will be lost in the future.

Because virginity is so central to Lylly’s Galatea, I wanted to explore other Renaissance understandings of the concept and see if they could potentially illuminate its dramatized importance in the play. Also, since “virginity” is still a prevalent moral index and pop culture theme in the 21st century, I was wondering how the idea has transformed since the Renaissance era, especially given how interwoven virginity and sexuality are presently. England’s Parnassus, a thorough anthology of quotes on topics ranging from Death to Rainbows, was the perfect text to put in conversation with Galatea. Under the topic “Virginitie” (as it is printed in the original text), I was first struck by a quote from Christopher Marlowe, the author of Doctor Faustus, that goes:

“Is neither essence subject to the eye.

No nor to any one exterior sense,

Nor hath it any place of residence,

Nor i’st of earth or mould celestial,

Or capable of any form at all” (297).

Marlowe’s identification of virginity as something that cannot be materially represented is really compelling as it confuses the common assumption that virginity is something that can be lost. Interestingly, preceding that quote in the commonplace book is another quote from Marlowe that reads:

“Jewels, being lost, are again found, this never

Tis lost, but once, and once lost, lost forever” (296).

Here Marlowe suggests that much like a jewel, virginity has a value and that value is intrinsically tied to its materiality. Considering these quotes in tandem certainly complicates the idea of virginity, but it is this paradox of “losing” something that you don’t even really possess that informs different readings of Lylly’s play, especially in regards to driving plot of the search for and importance of a virgin to sacrifice to Neptune. The phenomenon of virginal sacrifice is really interesting to me because it complicates loss and what it means for the loss of “virginity,” this intangible state of not having “sex,” to be compared to the loss of human life. In the context of Galatea, which is saturated with undertones of queer desire, the definition of virginity as an untouched hymen (or for God’s children, an untouched womb) leaves a lot up to interpretation regarding Galatea and Phillida’s sexual purity. In Act 3, Scene 2, Galatea, with the ambiguous suggestion for her and Phillida to go into the grove and “make much of one another,” implies a sort of sexual advance that Lylly never explores more overtly or acknowledges as a “loss” or as a moral transgression (Lylly 3.2.64-65).

Between Galatea and England’s Parnassus it is clear how frequently and intensely people of the Renaissance period considered the sanctity of virginity, especially as it related to the moral stability of society as Lylly exaggerates with Galatea’s virginal sacrifice. Marlowe echoes a similar degree of melodrama in the latter quote from the Parnassus when he stresses that once virginity is lost, it is lost forever. Who would think that male Renaissance authors would be this obsessed with what is now a 21st century punchline?

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"Young Man among Roses" by Nicholas Hilliard, 1587. 

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The poems “Venus and Adonis” by Shakespeare and “Astrophil and Stella” by Sir Philip Sidney each illustrate a facet of love. One major difference between the two is the gender of the romance’s initiators. Adhering to traditional norms, it is the male in "Astrophil and Stella" that sets love into motion. Diversely, the woman initiates the relationship in "Venus and Adonis". In comparing the two works we can see the ways in which masculinity varies.

In “Venus and Adonis”, the goddess Venus pursues a romantic relationship with Adonis, a beautiful mortal man. Unlike traditional portrayals of women, Venus is very forward in her romantic endeavor. Shakespeare depicts her as a shameless erotic being. In a context that it vitally important to Adonis, a life-or-death hunt, he depict Venus as sexually stimulated: her [Venus’] spirit confounds/ For now she knows it is no gentle chase…Through which it enters to surprise her heart…Thus stands she in trembling ecstasy” (881-895). Venus is excited bodily by the difficulty of Adonis’ hunt of a boar and by her romantic conquest and of him. She is aroused by the chase of romance. While the poem exemplifies a sexually progressive female, it also displays men as vulnerable. Throughout the poem Adonis avoids Venus’ advances: “’Give me my heart’ saith she, ‘and thou shalt have it’…’For shame’ he cries, ‘let go and let me go…I pray you hence, and leave me here alone”’(379-382). Adonis heartly rejects Venus’ proposals. “Venus and Adonis” exposes a gentler side of masculinity. Defying traditional norms, the poem also eliminates the assumption that only men are outwardly sexual. Venus is blatantly flirts with Adonis. Having said that, Shakespeare avoids the humiliation of the male sex by having him reject Venus. Whether or not the relationship comes to fruition is at the male’s discretion. Male pride is hardly threatened.
Contrarily, Sir Philip Sidney gives the discretion of unsuccessful romance to the woman. In his work “Astrophil and Stella Sonnet 7”, he illustrates a woman’s rejection of love: “she, minding Love, should be/ Placed ever there, gave him this mourning weed/ To honor all their deaths who bleed for her” (12-14). The outcome of a romantic endeavor is a female is in control of the female. the poem explains that she, Stella, supplies a man with clothing to mourn her romantic denial. Being that the poem is written from the perspective of the male, “Astrophil and Stella” demonstrates a man’s unique comfortability with romantic rejection. The poem depicts a man’s longing and lamentation for love. Sidney ‘s poem presents a form of masculinity that is not afraid of failed amorous ventures. Rather it immerses itself in it. The poem is full of vivid adjectives which embody forsaken romance: “In color black…Would she in beamy black…make all beauties flow?” (2-11). Traditionally, black is the color of death and mourning. Sidney uses this color to highlight his feelings after a fruitless romance. “Astrophil and Stella” present a form of masculinity that is embraces failed romance, and furthermore it embraces feelings of male powerlessness. Man's inner workings are very vulnerable.

Though “Astrophil and Stella’” demonstrate an embrace of romantic powerlessness the poem is significant shorter than “Venus and Adonis”. Sir Philip Sidney’s poem is a 14-line sonnet, while “Venus and Adonis” is well over 1000 lines. The brevity of Sidney’s poem exemplifies an insecurity with male vulnerability. It is better to express the emotions from unsuccessful romances briefly. The contrast of the two poems demonstrate that it is much more socially acceptable to reject a female than be rejected by one.

Swapping the gender of the traditional initiators of romance challenges us to examine what constitutes each gender role. Shakespeare and Sir Philip Sidney paved a way for the acceptance of sensitive masculinity. Adonis exemplifies a man who displays asexuality while Astrophil exemplifies a man who is in touch with their feelings of rejection. A major differentiator between the two poems is the gender of initiator of each romance. Shakespeare portrays Venus as the instigator of romance in his poem while Sidney places Astrophil in that role. Though both end un unfruitful romance, the poems bring into question who is in control of the relationship. “Venus and Adonis” sheds light of sexually progressive females, but ultimately concludes with the man being in control of the relationships outcome. Sidney’s “Astrophil and Stella” opposes that portrayal of masculinity in that men instigate the romantic relationship, but the female is in control of the relationship’s outcome.

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Venus and Adonis ending paired with Orienda upon Little Hector Philips

These two pieces deal with loss. The first obvious difference between the two is that Venus and Adonis deal with romance and lovers, while Orienda upon Little Hector Philips deals with the loss of a child and father and son. We assume that these types of loss are dealt with in very different ways. For this assignment I was trying to see where the two overlap and where they might not. In Philip's poem, it is much more brief than Venus and Adonis. In their love story, it unfolds slowly, but for Philips he only got a brief period of time with his son until he died untimely: “Then had my vows crowned with a lovely boy, // And yet in forty days he dropped away,”(Philips lines 2-3). However I don’t think this changes the similarities between these two poems.

In both poems the authors use flowers as a way to symbolize their lost ones. In Venus and Adonis, Adonis is symbolized with a purple flower which is described as “A purple flower sprung up, chequered with white, // Resembling his pale cheeks, and the blood // Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood”(Shakespeare lines 1168-1170). In this case the white represents Adonis and the purple represents the blood that was spilled as he died. In Philip's poem he uses a rose as his son saying “I did but touch the rosebud and it fell,”(Philips line 6). The bud of a rose to me means something that just began, like his young son. Usually I would associate a rose with a romantic type of love, I would’ve expected to see this in Venus and Adonis. After looking it up purple can represent romantic love, and the darker the color (like red) can represent frustration or deep sadness. However red also indicates some type of passion. Passion and the loss of a child aren’t usually associated with each other. Out of the loss of Adonis a flower grew in his place, yet in the child loss poem a rosebud fell at his death. Something beautiful came out of Adonis’ death while something fell in the child's death. This might be because Venus had enough time to appreciate Adonis while the father is left with a sad future of memories he couldn’t have with his son. Venus then takes the flower into her chest to keep him close. However, despite their differences, flowers seem to represent love.

When death happens in the two poems it's described as a disappearance: In Shakespeare's piece he writes “By this boy that by her side lay killed // Was melted like a vapour from her sight”(Shakespeare lines 1165-1167). Or in Philip's work he writes “I did but see him and he disappeared”(Philip line 5). The word vaporized makes Adonis seem like some sort of an inhuman being, like a god. It's much more magical, and I think this really highlights how this didn’t really happen- it feels distant. Whereas in Philips the son disappears which is much more harsh and realistic. I think these words are almost meant to cushion the blow of the word death.

Both pieces mention a parent- In Venus and Adonis “‘Here was thy father’s bed, here in my breast // Thou art the next of blood and ’tis thy right”(Shakespeare lines 1178-1179). And in Orienda upon Little Hector Philips “Receive these gasping numbers to thy grave, // The last of thy unhappy mother’s verse”(Philips lines 19-20). These poems both seem to honor the other parent, and I think this shows the depth and spread of the pain of death. The pain of a parent losing a child is deeper than a lover might feel. I think this is one of the times that Venus isn’t as selfish and acknowledges other people who would be affected by Adonis’ death. It seems that the hope is that the dead find comfort in their parents' love.

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Death holding a woman in a soft embrace 

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In the play Galatea by John Lyly, two virgins are dressed as boys to protect them, and upon meeting each other they fall in love and wish to be together, even after finding out that each of them is a virgin and neither is a boy. This cannot be said about the same for Echo and Narcissus in Ovid’s Myth of Narcissus. Echo falls in love with Narcissus and when she shows herself to him, then he is repulsed by her ugliness and tells her that he will never be hers. Hurt and shamed, Echo hides in a cave and soon she wastes away until she is nothing but voice and bones. Narcissus, soon finds that he loves himself and he longs to have a lover who is not himself, and soon his own love is too much for him to bear and he wastes away. Both of these texts are about love, but one ends in happiness, and one in pain and suffering, but when read together, happiness is seen in the pain and pain is seen in the happiness.

Galatea and Phillida love each other so much that they would be willing to go against nature in order to be together. “GALATEA: Die, Galatea, if thy love be not so! PHILLIDA: Accursed be thou, Phillida, If the love be not so!” (5.3.148-149). Galatea and Phillida wanted to die or be cursed if they could not be together. That is how much they loved each other. As a solution, the Goddess Venus states that she will turn one of the two virgins into a man to appease nature. “VENUS: Then shall it be seen that I can turn one of them to be a man, and that I will” (5.3.151-152). Unfortunately, turning one of the two virgins into a man, initiates the death of the virgin. When one of the virgins is turned into a man, then the virgin will die, and a man will take their place.

Narcissus and Echo both die in the prose, but in this death is a happiness. A love almost as powerful and everlasting that Galatea and Phillida feel for one another. “Just as blond wax will melt near gentle fire, /or frost will melt beneath the sun, just so/was he undone by his love: its hidden flame” (96). Though this section is when Narcissus dies, there is also peach and happiness. “Near gentle fire” suggests, not a painful death, but almost as if the acceptance of his love of himself lets him enter a state of happiness that allows his pain to melt away.

Without the placement of Galatea next to Ovid’s Myth of Narcissus it is hard to see the peace and happiness of love in the prose. Also same for the other side. Without the placement of Ovid’s Myth of Narcissus next to Galatea it would be difficult to see the pain of death in the play, even though the two virgins are happy and so in love with one another. I think that seeing a text where both lovers die due to the lack of love or pain of not having the lover they desire, right next to a drama about how two lovers would go against nature to be together can really show the death in that drama.

Although there neither Galatea nor Phillida are actually going to die in the play, one must. To change who they are, sexually, will kill that part of them. One of them will no longer be able to do the duties of a woman. She will not be able to give birth, nurse a child, or other womanly duties. Instead, they will grow male extremities, and have to perform more masculine duties. Protect the family, be the moneymaker, and to lead the family to success. The woman side would die.

In the case of Narcissus and Echo, when neither could be with the lover and both of them wastes away into almost nothing. Echo wastes away because the lover that she wants (Narcissus) does not want her as she wants him, all because of the way she looks. Narcissus wastes away because he is in love with himself, and he is unable to find a physical lover because he can’t separate himself.

Happiness and peace both hold in each of the texts. Peace to be with the lover they want for the rest of their lives, like Galatea and Phillida, and peace in finally finding a lover to be with, even if that means in death, like Narcissus. Death also holds onto the texts as well. The death of the two lovers, Echo and Narcissus, but also the death of one of the virgins, Galatea or Phillida.

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What I think would have happened if Diana and Adonis had met each other in the woods after talking trash about love and obsessing over the hunt

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Diana and Adonis: Two Hunters, Both Alike in Chastity?

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Diana and Adonis: Two Hunters, Both Alike in Chastity?

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At first glance, it may seem like the Diana of Galatea and Adonis of Venus and Adonis have little in common. One is a goddess, the other a human boy. One is the leader of a very cool band of hunting women, the other just some guy in the woods who stumbles into a very unfortunate situation. But their common traits make them a good match. Both are hunters, pursuing a sport for glory and their love of the literal chase, but both disdain the metaphorical chase of love. For Adonis, when presented with the admiration of the goddess of love herself, “his eyes disdained the wooing” (line 359). In Diana’s eyes, “of all affections, love hath the greatest name and the least virtue” (act 3 scene 4). While they have very distinct circumstances and fates, it’s interesting to see how much these unrelated characters have in common in terms of worldview.

The reason that Adonis is so disinterested in Venus is up for interpretation; is it because he’s young and uninterested, because Venus isn’t his type, or just because he’s disinterested in sex altogether? I personally prefer to interpret it as the last option. Adonis isn’t just an aloof or generally listless guy, and he’s clearly passionate about something: hunting. In lines 409-410, he says to Venus that “‘I know not love,’…‘Nor will not know it, Unless it be a boar, and then I chase it.’” This can be read as an outright rejection, but it also reads a bit tongue-in-cheek, a way to point out that he does have things that he enjoys, but that love is not one of those things. Not only this, but he is asserting that he will not know it, meaning he doesn’t ever plan on loving in the future. In fact, he goes so far as to say, “My love to love, is love but to disgrace it” (line 412). This clarifies that it is specifically love that he dislikes, and he isn’t just generally uninterested in the joys of life. Additionally, it seems pertinent that he isn’t just feeling this way towards a random woman; Venus, being the goddess of love, is both a living being and a representation of the abstract concept of love. And Adonis is not the only one that feels this way. In Galatea, Diana mirrors Adonis’ sentiment that love is a pointless pursuit (unlike the pursuit of the hunt). When asked to trade Cupid for the lives and happiness of her nymphs, he professes, “I account not the choice hard, for, had I twenty Cupids, I would deliver them all to save one virgin, knowing love to be a thing of all the vainest, virginity to be a virtue of all the noblest” (act 5 scene 3). Her appraisal of love is much more direct and antagonistic than Adonis’ general disinterest; Diana actively dislikes romantic love and does not see the point in it. She scoffs at the ridiculousness of it all, and even describes the sentiment as “hollow thoughts” (act 3 scene 4). She is an active campaigner against romantic love, but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t care for other things; she very clearly loves the hunt and her nymphs. Her disinterest in romance and sex does not necessarily equate to a disinterest in other forms of love.

To Adonis and Diana, giving up or simply abstaining from sex in pursuit of something else has different meanings. For Diana and her nymphs, it’s seemingly a more acceptable practice, or at least one that has been legitimized by their mythical status and by Diana’s authority as a goddess. For Adonis, on the other hand, his rejection of Venus doesn’t really come across as a planned or premeditated decision. He’s just disinterested, as illustrated by the fact that he would turn down a woman who is presumably the most beautiful being in existence, the one who literally embodies love and desire. He is just as dedicated to his own goals and disinterest in love as Diana is, they only differ in the practice of said abstinence. Perhaps in a different time, in a different body, Adonis’ desire to stick to the hunt would have been accepted not as a rejection of Venus, but as an alternative path and way of living.

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John William Waterhouse's "Echo and Narcissus" (1903). The longing looks in different directions highlights the intensity of misplaced affections.

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When Love Feels Too Good to be True, it Probably Is

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When Love Feels Too Good to be True, it Probably Is

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Bringing Shakespeare’s poem, Venus and Adonis, together with Ovid’s Narcissus myth helps us understand how infatuation with someone and ignoring consent only hurts people and pushes them away. Throughout Venus and Adonis, Venus is constantly misinterpreting Adonis’s behavior, which causes a lot of distress to Adonis. She completely ignores his needs, which is to go and chase his only true love: the hunt. Venus’s behavior pushes Adonis to reject the idea of love completely: “’I know not love,' quoth he, 'Nor will not know it… My love to love, is love but to disgrace it,’” (Shakespeare, lines 409 and 412). The strength of her attachment to Adonis is what drives him away. She is obsessed with something she can never have. At the end of the poem, Adonis is dead, and Venus is so distraught that she essentially banishes herself to the edge of the world to mourn him: “Thus weary of the world, away she hies… immure herself and not be seen.” (Shakespeare, lines 1189 and 1194). Her obsession with what she can never have is her downfall.

Venus’s misplaced affection and subsequent demise recalls Ovid’s myth of Narcissus. Narcissus is a young man who becomes obsessed with his own image in a pool of water: “He is the seeker and the sought, the longed-for and the one who longs; he is the arsonist—and the scorched.” (Ovid, 94). Although the concept of the story feels nauseatingly egotistical, there is a real tragedy to Narcissus’s fate. After being rejected by Narcissus, the nymph, Echo, curses him to fall in love but “be denied the prize he craves” (Ovid, 93). After becoming entranced by his own reflection, Narcissus is doomed to a lonely eternity. He cannot even touch the reflection he sees, or the water ripples and the image fades away: “Why try to grip an image? He does not exist—the one you love and long for.” (Ovid, 94). Just like Venus, Narcissus’s attachment to himself is his ruin: “Just so was he undone by love: its hidden flame consumes Narcissus: now he wastes away.” (Ovid 96).

In Venus and Adonis, Adonis directly references Narcissus. He spitefully compares Venus to Narcissus, asking, “Is thine own heart to thine own face affected? Can thy right hand seize love upon thy left?” (Shakespeare, lines 57-58). It is understandable that Adonis is aiming to hurt Venus with this line. She is essentially keeping him hostage, claiming to love him but ignoring who Adonis actually is, and what he wants. The darkness behind the comparison comes when you consider the real tragedy behind both Venus and Narcissus’s stories. They were so unfortunate as to fall in love with something or someone they could never have. I think the tragic endings are meant to teach the reader a lesson: if you become too attached to someone, you lose sight of who they really are. If you cannot have the person you love, then holding onto them only ends up hurting both of you. You can spend an eternity obsessing over something you can’t have, but you are dooming yourself by doing that.

Given that Venus and Adonis was such a popular Renaissance text, I have to assume that contemporary readers were taking something meaningful away from the story. Obviously, the intense sexuality of the poem attracted readers, but I like to think that through this medium, people were moved to consider themes like consent, the pain of infatuation, and what real love looks like. It feels really significant to me that Narcissus’s punishment comes from simply practicing his right to not give consent. After Narcissus explicitly does not give consent, Echo curses him to fall in love with what he can never have. Venus is obsessed with Adonis despite him explicitly telling her that he does not want to be with her. What do these two stories tell us about consent? That trying to force someone to love you or to be with you, through magic curses or physical force, only puts someone farther out of reach. It causes pain to everyone involved. Real love looks like understanding who your loved one is, and putting their needs above your own desires. It looks like respecting someone’s boundaries in every way, physically and emotionally.

These themes are not restricted to Renaissance texts. They are conversations that people are still having today. Thinking about the two texts in this way helps me feel connected to people who lived during the Renaissance. Knowing that people were grappling with the same types of questions then puts us into conversation with Renaissance people. There is a lot to glean from that conversation, and I hope we can take inspiration from texts of the past to help tackle important conversations today. I’m good with leaving the plague in the past if you guys are too, though.

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Renaissance-style artwork depicting a winged figure representing the Grim Reaper holding a scythe and an hourglass

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Amongst the countless topics that have been discussed by poets over the ages, death is one that remains as pertinent as ever. While this perennial relevancy can be attributed to the unanswerable nature of death and what lies beyond this tangible world, it can also be attributed to the intimacy of death and the uniquely individual ways that we, as humans, cope with our inevitable fate. Ben Johnson and Lady Hester Pulter are Renaissance poets who wrote about death under exceptionally different circumstances, however, each text offers poignant and powerful insight into the poet’s own relationship with death. Johnson’s “On My First Son,” an elegy for his late child, is unsurprisingly a poem that details the grief and sorrow that befalls him as a result of his son’s untimely death. While the poem is brief, it successfully communicates the pain felt by Johnson through the vitriolic language of loss that condemns the cruelty of death. The dichotomy between Johnson mourning “his best piece of poetry” (Johnson, line 10) and also seeming to tackle the idea that his son was “Exacted by thy fate” (Johnson, line 4) is interesting because it demonstrates an attempt to accept the death as somewhat inevitable despite its heartbreaking prematurity. Similarly, in referring to his son’s life as something that was “lent to [him],” (Johnson, line 3) the poet is seeming to recognize death as a respectable force that has power over us all. Despite this recognition, however, it is clear that Johnson feels comfortable registering emotion in his writing and expressing the grief that he undoubtedly tangibly feels. Lady Hester Pulter’s “The Circle [3]” differs from Johnson’s poem in the sense that it is much more metaphysical and describes death in a way that is more abstracted from reality. Pulter’s poem is the third from her manuscript ‘The Circle’ in which she discusses concepts such as death in relation to circularity—specifically the endless rotation of the Earth that continues despite worldly afflictions and tragedy. Pulter begins her poem discussing those who are “unwilling or afraid to die” (Pulter, line 1) and condemns this fear as “a sign of huge impatiency” (Pulter, line 3). This stance differs from Johnson’s as it criticizes those who are opposed to death, however, it is similar in the sense that both poets acknowledge human’s submission to death. It would be unrealistic to expect authors to regard death in the same way, especially seeing that Johnson is speaking on death from a place of grief while Pulter seems to be speaking on death from a place of cautious reverence. Pulter goes on to make an interesting reference to Earth as a “transitory mound” (Pulter, line 6) which emphasizes her transcendental perspective on existence, in general, and her uncanny awareness of life as nothing more than a tiny fraction of time in comparison to the “eternal motion” (Pulter, line 7) and incomprehensible lifespans of heavenly bodies. I can’t help but wonder how one’s abstracted perspective on a concept such as death would be forced to reconcile with the tangible effects of death in the face of a tragedy—it seems as though Johnson is an example of such a reconciliation taking place as he exists in the limbo between grief and awareness of death as an inevitable and expected occurrence. In contrast, Pulter seems to be more detached from the idea of death and able to be more critical which is exemplified by her reduction of death to the phrase “thou dost dissolve” (Pulter, line 5). It is impossible to say whether Pulter’s stance exists because she hasn’t experienced loss or because she has experienced enough loss—I often think that when people are able to speak on a topic in such removed terms, it is either caused by over or under exposure to such a topic. When looking at the poems together, the reader is able to get a comprehensive view of the way that death is digested when people are at different stages in their life. Johnson’s perspective exemplifies one entangled in the emotions of death, trying desperately to recognize the logic behind tragedy while dealing with unimaginable grief. Pulter’s perspective exemplifies the opposite side of the spectrum; death feels like it is being scientifically picked apart with little care for the emotions that characterize its happening. Both perspectives, however, exemplify a common theme that can be seen in many Renaissance poems regarding death—respect and acceptance are owed to death and the subtle control it will always have over the way we live and, more obviously, the way we die.

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A Renaissance dad with his Renaissance sons. 

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It is likely a surprise to no one that in the Renaissance period (and some may argue even today) father's tended to favor their sons over their daughters. Being a man in the Renaissance was easier than being a woman in that men received a level of respect and honor that women could never. Looking at the play Galatea written by John Lyly and the elegies written by Ben Jonson, I am going to explore what it meant to be your father’s favorite, both in life and death.

To begin, looking at Lyly’s play Galatea, elements of favoring one’s son over one’s daughter exist throughout the entire play. Firstly, let’s not pretend that it’s not only the town’s daughters that are being “brought… [to a] tree…bound” and “left for a peace offering unto Neptune”, because it is (1.1.46-50). One could argue that Neptune wouldn’t want the sacrifice of a male, because women hold a certain purity and tenderness to them that men aren’t supposed to, but in my eyes, a virgin is a virgin. In theory, one would assume that Neptune would find any virgin to be pure and tender, at least, that’s what I would think. And yet, Neptune has speculated that it must be the most beautiful, virgin, women to be sacrificed. Up until Galatea and Phillida’s fathers (Tityrus and Melibeus), as readers, we have to assume that the other fathers of the previously sacrificed daughters had to stand (or stood by freewill) idly while their daughter’s were sacrificed. Furthermore, towards the end of the play, when Galatea and Phillida are found out and found to be in love and Venus, the goddess of love, offers to turn oen of the girls into a man so that they may be together, the father’s show that they truly do not value their daughter’s for the sake of being their daughters. Phillida’s father, makes it perfectly clear that his youngest son is his favorite because when trying to decide which girl should be changed, his reasoning for not changing Phillida into a man is that his “young son…(would) lose his inheritance” (5.3.166) It is in no way because he values his daughter as a woman or even a person, but instead that he values his son’s future over his daughter’s. When comparing his daughter’s future of being happily in love and his son’s future of being financially stable, he chooses his son with not even an ounce of hesitation.

Blatant favoritism is a continued theme in Ben Jonson’s elegies to his deceased children: a son and a daughter. When comparing the two elegies side by side, it is very clear who his favorite child was. In the elegy “On My First Daughter,” Jonson describes his daughter’s passing as causing grief to her mother, “In comfort of her mother’s tears” (line 8). But, when describing his own grief, he says “all heaven’s gifts being heaven’s due, it makes the father less to rue” (lines 3, 4). The way these lines are written, it sounds almost as if it is only the daughter’s mother who is grieving, her father is instead finding comfort because he knows that Heaven’s gifts could be called back at any time. However, if this was his logic, then his elegy to his son, “On My First Son,” would follow a similar motto. Instead of finding comfort in his son’s recall to Heaven the way he did his daughter’s, he is instead flabbergasted on how such a terrible thing could happen. He says “To have so soon ‘scaped world’s and flesh’s rage,/ And, if no other misery, yet age?” (lines 5, 6). Jonson describes his daughter’s death as something that is natural and expected, but his son’s death is “misery.”

Lyly’s play and Jonson’s elegy have something in common in that both children are facing death. Yet, the differences are clear, Jonson is dealing with actual deaths of his children, Lyly’s work is fictional; The main characters (the daughter’s in Galatea) do not actually die, instead are just faced with the possibility of it; Jonson does not get a happy ending, Galatea and Phillida likely do. Despite these differences, one commonality remains clear: it is unfavorable to be a daughter. While Tityrus and Melibeus do try and protect their daughters, it is clear that they do not hold a weight the same way a son would. Jonson proves this as well. Both demonstrate that while parents love all their children, their sons hold a priority that their daughters could never even hope to breach. The favoritism of sons was a standard during the Renaissance period; sons were the heirs, the ones who would carry on the family name, and the ones whose parents felt like they could rely on. Daughters were second class humans, they were the caretakers of their fathers and brothers. And while Galatea is feminist-forward for it’s time, these sexist ideologies still hold steady throughout. All this being said, it is not a question to me which child Jonson preferred, nor is it a question of if Galatea and Phillida had been sons at risk of being sacrificed, their fathers would have done significantly more to help them then just sending them into the woods with baggy clothes and wigs.

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A picture of "The Birth of Venus" by WA Bouguereau. Venus is in the center of the painting, surrounded by figures looking up at her admiringly.

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While both Galatea and “Venus and Adonis” feature Venus as a character, she serves very different functions in the two texts. In Galatea, a comedy, she serves as a fairly literal deus es machina, allowing Galatea and Phillida to be with one another by transforming one of them (it remains ambiguous) into a man. In promising to do so, Venus becomes associated with a transformative or non-normative experience of gender, something that becomes more closely linked to the goddess’s own performance of gender in “Venus and Adonis”. The poem describes Venus’s attempt to seduce Adonis, or to act on desires she feels he has, and Adonis’s subsequent death. It is decidedly less comical than Galatea, and accordingly the presentations of gender take on a more aggressive and sinister tone. Venus is, in the poem, portrayed as the suitor and initiator, what we may consider a traditionally male role. The poem compares her to a “bold-faced suitor” (6) and describes her bodily seizing him off of his horse (30-32).

Bolstering this view of Venus taking on the traditionally masculine role in this seduction, Adonis himself is described in a complementary feminine role. He blushes throughout the seduction, “burns with bashful shame” (49), an action which is described as the “maiden burning of his cheeks” (50). Galatea connects the word ‘maid’ to ‘virgin’ (2.1.31-33), and that association, I feel, makes sense here too. Adonis is not only associated with femininity through the word choice, this is also an early indication of what we learn later in the poem, that Adonis is indeed a virgin (409).

He attempts to reject Venus throughout the poem. This, too, can be understood as an inversion of expected gender roles. The horse interlude (259-324) provides a depiction of ‘natural’ gender roles during courting. The male suitor attempts to court the female, and she demurs, rejecting him. However, it is all understood as part of the great game of courting, as she actually loves the attention paid to her, and will eventually respond to her suitor’s advances. This is how Venus understands her courting of Adonis. In addition to this presentation of the horses as demonstrating a ‘natural’ attraction inverted by Venus and Adonis, it is perhaps interesting to consider famous (infamous?) mythical seductions. These stories regularly feature aggressive pursuit on the part of a male god, and a violation of the consent of the pursued. Especially interesting to me in this context is the myth of Daphne and Apollo, which also features a victim who seeks refuge in the natural world, and a transformational sequence which ends with the god taking the plant as their own. While not embedded in the poem the way the horse interlude is, the grander context of godly seduction stories may also reinforce the idea of Venus as the masculine and Adonis as the feminine in this poem. Another interesting facet to consider: while Venus's desperation for Adonis's love and attention may at first seem to put her in a feminine role, the historical context of love sonnets should give us some hesitation. Clearly, based off of some of the romantic poems we have read in class, cathartic despair, pleading, and demanding pity from one's object of affection, as Venus does when she questions "Are thou obdurate, flinty, hard as steel?" (199) are all things that can be safely attributed to the male voice or persona.

In addition to the gendered division, there is the immortal/mortal division. The text calls attention to the earthly parts of Adonis, referring to things like his “sweating palm”, through Venus, as “Earth’s sovereign salve, to do a goddess good” (25-28). Taken in conjunction with the gender dynamics of this poem, I think there is an argument to be made that the gendered power difference (Venus as a powerful masculine, Adonis as the forcibly submissive feminine) is enabled through the direct power difference created by Venus’s godhood. In other words, Venus being a goddess allows her to vacate the traditionally feminine role, and act as the aggressor toward another. Her being a goddess supersedes her womanhood, defeminizing her. If we are to understand the designation of “woman” as being dependent upon an understanding of certain cultural roles or duties, duties that Venus is not by her status beholden to, I think that we can (in this instance of literary comparison, at least) treat her as distinct from the ‘woman’ gender.

This view of how the goddess is separate from the ‘woman’ gender is interesting when applied to the final scene of Galatea. First, as she says, “let it be seen that I can turn one of them to be a man, and that I will” (5.3.151-152). She also references a previous case of gender transformation (5.3.155). Diana questions Venus’s ability to do this (5.3.153). Diana’s doubt is interesting, in that it positions this transformation as something that is solely Venus’s purview. If we take Venus’s complex relationship with gender, her existence outside of the ‘woman’ role, as read, this makes some sense. Diana, of course, hews close to the female ‘virgin’ category, whereas Venus has a more non-normative relationship with gender. The two fathers, who are very concerned with patriarchal divisions of power, as can be seen by their discussion of inheritance (5.3. 166-169) still defer to Venus’s authority, which can perhaps be taken as further evidence that her godhood supersedes her femininity. In sum: a reading of “Venus and Adonis” with a focus on how said poem characterizes Venus’s gender sheds new light on the power Venus wields over gender, and despite patriarchal gender dynamic, in the ending scene of Galatea.

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The image is a meme of a mother, father, and their son with the caption "Strict Parents raise the best lairs" followed by "Sad but true". 

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The pieces of Renaissance writing I want to call into comparison are Galatea by John Lyly and On My First Daughter by Jonson. These writings when combined add insight into Galatea’s father Tityrus and Phillida’s father Melibeus and their morals/intentions. At first Tityrus and Melibeus come across as stupid, silly characters who add some comedic relief when they ask their daughters to dress as men. However, when placing Tityrus and Melibeus’s character in the context of the pain featured in Jonson’s poem On My First Daughter, the reader's perspective changes on Tityrus and Melibeus’s morals. Losing children during the Renaissance time period was a common occurrence and Tityrus and Melibeus are just trying to anticipate the grief they will feel over losing Galatea and Phillida, and they try to put off this pain for as long as possible. The reader sees an insight into their selfish actions and gets to see into a parental perspective of a father wanting to protect their daughter from the dangers of the world.

In Jonson’s poem, he takes on tone of complete fucking despair, “It makes the father less to rue” (Jonson, line 4). He has a hard time reconciling with the loss of his daughter but takes comfort knowing that she died a virgin and innocent which is something that Tityrus and Melibeus also believe in. I think an interesting question to ponder along with these texts is, what is the importance of Renaissance daughters being virgins? Jonson also takes time to describe the “fleshly birth” and “gentle earth” which I think these thick descriptions help him process the painful memories of losing a child (Jonson, 11-12). On another note, in comparison to Jonson’s poem On My First Son his tone is perhaps even more melancholy. I am not sure how much time Jonson got with his daughter but I am pretty sure he got a considerable amount more with his son which could lead into the fact that he calls his son “... his best piece of poetry” (Jonson, line 10). It could also just be that during the Renaissance there was a higher value on sons rather than daughters. At the end of Galatea, it is clear to see that Tityrus and Melibeus also hold their sons in higher regard than Galatea or Phillida because neither of them wants their daughter to become a man and take their first son’s inheritance, “Nay, mine shall not; for by that means my young son shall lose his inheritance” (Lyly, 5.3.165-166). However, despite this higher regard for male children, child loss is still so hard and it motivates a lot of Tityrus and Melibeus’s actions.

At the beginning of Galatea, both Tityrus and Melibeus demand that their daughters pretend to be men in order to avoid being eaten by a sea monster. While this motivation may seem selfish at first, when they explain where this decision comes from it is deeply rooted in love and a fatherly need for protection; Tityrus says to Galatea despite her protests that, “...I think it better us an unlawful means, your honour preserved, than intolerable grief, both life and honour hazarded, and to prevent, if it be possible, thy constellation by my craft” (Lyly, 1.2.68-71). Melibeus has a similar conversation with Phillida; “Everyone thinketh his own child fair, but I know that which I most desire and least have, that thou art fairest. Thou shalt therefore disguise thyself in attire, lest I should disguise myself in affection, in suffering thee to perish by a fond desire, whom I may preserve by a sure deceit” (Lyly,1.3.4-9). Both father's view their daughters in the highest regard and can't bear the thought of losing them.

Through comparing Galatea and On My First Daughter, there is a depth added to Tityrus and Melibeus’s character that would otherwise be lacking. They come off as part of the comical relief in the show but further analyzing their pain after reading Jonson’s poem, there is deep caution and love in their actions. They both refuse to think of the grief that would accompany the loss of their daughters. When placing this deep worry from Tityrus and Melibeus with Lyly’s pain, it is clear to see the agony Lyly is in. He has no preemptive worry because he already lost his daughter, in its place is this deep and terrible grief of losing a child that never goes away. Therefore, with this kind of pain in mind it is easy to understand the fatherly love that Tityrus and Melibeus feel for Galatea and Phillida.

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The goddess Venus seducing Adonis, a young hunter

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Stella, Astrophil, Venus, and Adonis: Objects and Subjects of Desire

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Stella, Astrophil, Venus, and Adonis: Objects and Subjects of Desire

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In Venus and Adonis, William Shakespeare presents an image of male submission that echoes Sonnets 9 and 40 of Philip Sidney’s collection, Astrophil and Stella. Yet while Sidney's Astrophil submits himself to his paramour willingly, even yearningly, Shakespeare’s Adonis is forced to consent to unwanted attention. In conversation with Sidney, Shakespeare’s epic poem demonstrates an inversion of heterosexual gender roles which construct Venus as “man,” while Sidney’s submission sonnets manage to retain a heteronormative position, albeit one that argues for more male tenderness.

When Sidney published Astrophil and Stella in 1591, he introduced English society to a vulnerability that male literature had previously repressed. Many of his sonnets portray Astrophil, Sidney’s romantic persona, as weakened by his overpowering love for Stella. Sonnet 40 imbues Stella with a power that results in Astrophil’s willing submission: “Weigh then how I by thee am overthrown” (Sonnet 40, 5-8). Sidney’s language places the female object of his affection hierarchically above himself while characterizing himself as weak, a move that contrasts his contemporaries’ dominant narratives around heterosexual love.

Shakespeare published Venus and Adonis two years later, in 1593. His characterization of the goddess Venus’ pursuit of a mortal boy inverts gender roles in ways that could have been made possible by Sidney’s male submission narrative. Yet where Sidney speaks from the perspective of a man willingly placing himself at the mercy of the woman he desires, Shakespeare presents a submission that is implied by Venus’ uncomfortable exercise of power over Adonis, reading more like a description of forced consent. Extended metaphorical images present Adonis as trapped by Venus: “Look how a bird lies tangled in a net, / So fastened in her arms Adonis lies” (67-8). In Shakespeare’s poem, the canonical hunter Adonis has become the hunted, a narrative that also diverges from those of other Renaissance poets who often represented women as prey.

While both Sidney and Shakespeare create men who submit to their female counterparts, these men do not occupy the same roles. Shakespeare’s descriptions of Adonis do not parallel Sidney’s descriptions of Astrophil. Instead, Adonis physically resembles Stella. In Sonnet 9, Sidney describe Stella’s beauty by likening her face to the court of “Queen Virtue”:

The door by which sometimes comes forth her Grace
Red porphyr is, which lock of pear makes sure,

Whose porches rich, which name of cheeks endure,

Marble mixed red and white do interlace. (Sonnet 9, 5-8)

Like most Renaissance lovers, Sidney emphasizes Stella’s red mouth (“the door by which sometimes comes forth her Grace”), as well as her rosy cheeks (“marble mixed red and white do interlace”). Shakespeare’s descriptions of Adonis are also centered on blushes, but specifically as reactions to Venus’ advances:

Still he is sullen, still he lours and frets,

‘Twixt crimson shame, and anger ashy pale,

Being red she loves him best, and being white,

Her best is bettered with a more delight.” (75-8)

In Shakespeare’s poem, suitor Venus misreads Adonis’ heightened color as tacit consent, assuming it to be a coy blush. Venus responds to Adonis’ flushed cheeks the same way that Astrophil responds to Stella–it attracts her more.

Venus’ pursuit of Adonis is uncomfortable. But is it only uncomfortable because she is doing precisely what a man would? In one of her pleas for Adonis’ love, Venus cites that she has been pursued in the same way as she is pursuing him now, by Mars, the god of war, “Who conquers where he comes in every jar, / Yet hath he been my captive, and my slave, / And begged for that which thou unasked shalt have” (100-2). Sidney’s Astrophil uses almost identical diction when he ends his address to Stella with “Yet noblest conquerors do wrecks avoid. / Since thou hast so far subdued me / That in my heart I offer still to thee” (Sonnet 40 11-3). In conjunction with Sidney, these lines complicate Venus’ role, turning her both into the submissive and begging suitor that Astrophil embodies, while at the same time being likened to Mars in her attempt to force a youth into submission.

If Sidney’s sonnets can be interpreted as depicting the tender inner thoughts of a male suitor, then the way that this depiction aligns or (or doesn’t) with Venus’ suit of Adonis offers a complicated representation of heterosexual attraction. Taken on its own, Shakespeare’s epic poem questions traditional gender roles by making the woman the suitor, and whatever discomfort is caused by this inversion inspires reflection on the necessity of heterosexual norms. Yet when Venus’ yearning is placed in conversation with Astrophil’s, readers are introduced to another complication around the expression (or not) of desire. Together, the poems have the potential to restructure how readers think about romantic love, both in who should pursue whom, and to what extent both figures are afflicted by yearning.

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The pieces I decided to look at were the Jonson poem, On My First Daughter and Lady Hester Pulter’s poem Circle (3).

In Circle, the main theme is if you are afraid to die, then you won’t live. It is saying that there is so much to see in life and even if you are scared to do anything, you are going to die either way so might as well make the best of it.

In On My First Daughter, the theme is losing a child, specially a girl. The child was only 6 months, and her mother is devastated but takes comfort that she is in heaven.

One poem is about enjoying life while the other is about the grief of losing a young child. But there is an interesting way that they can intertwine.

Although in On My First Daughter it says “At six months’ end she parted hence/With safety of her innocence” (lines 9-10) which is referring to how the daughter never had sex, which meant she was still innocent and pure, could be looked at differently if you put it together with the Circle poem. The child was only six months old, which means that she did not live to the fullest since her life was so short. The Circle poem says “And when thou dost dissolve, it is no more.” (line 5) This means that everyone will die no matter what, so you should use the time you have to learn and explore. But people are scared of death so they do not take risks The child in the Circle poem could be looked at as innocent in a way of saying that since she died so young, she did not get to experience the good things in life but also not the bad things so she never knew about anything that was out there at all. Therefore, since she is never witnessed any corruption, she is innocent.

Both poems talk about death relating to the earth, but the Circle poem talks about how the earth is the only thing that is immortal, “For so this earthly transitory mound/In an eternal motion still runs round” (lines 6-7) which is going with the message that everyone will die, except the world. Towards the end of the On My First Daughter poem, it says “This grave partakes the fleshly birth/Which cover lightly, gentle earth” (lines 15-16) which is saying that the child’s body is on earth but her soul is in heaven. One says that everyone will die, but the place that your soul will leave, and the other is saying that although you are on earth, your soul will live on in heaven. Although they have different point of views on the earth and its role with death, both describe the earth in a positive light, or at least not in a dark description. The On My First Daughter poem, the earth is described as gentle and the Circle poem says the earth “In an eternal motion still runs round” (line 7). The earth is still seen as a happy place where you get to learn and live in both poems. Even in On My First Daughter where they believe she is in heaven, it is still tragic that she isn’t on earth anymore. I think both poems could show that no matter how you view afterlife, your time on earth is important and should be cherished.

The poems both have a calming message. On My First Daughter is a sad poem about losing a child, but it also says about how she will go to heaven “Whose soul heaven’s queen (whose name she bears)/In comfort of her mother’s tears” (lines 11-12). In Circle, it is encouraging you to go out and live life “That many things revolve, thou may’st explore” (line 4). They take the topic of death and allow some kind of silver lining to be shown.

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This image represent Venus, Galatea, Adonis and Phillida. Two beautiful women, a beautiful man, and god hugging a mortal. It is a cycle of love and sadness.

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Irrational and Obsessive Behavior When it Comes to Love and Appearance

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Irrational and Obsessive Behavior When it Comes to Love and Appearance

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In Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare and Galatea by John Lyly, irrational love plays an important theme. It is not logical to love someone as soon as you see them, swear eternal love to them, and make them the most important thing in your world. Those two writers present us with different stories that exaggerate the meaning of love and falling in love.

The first time Galatea and Phillida see each other, the two of them instantly fall in love. Phillida’s first thoughts were “it is a pretty boy and a fair. He might well have been a woman; but because he is not, I am glad I am” (2.1.21-24).  This seems a little out of place. Phillida, a woman, is glad that this “boy” that he encounters in the woods is a man because she is a woman, and therefore, they can be together. Her obsession with Galatea’s looks increases when they are asked to tusk some wood and Galatea asks her to go with her. Phillida tells Galatea that she will go and then thinks to herself “not for these ladies’ company, because myself am a virgin, but for that fair boy’s favour, who I think be a god” (2.2.64-66). She is willing to go with a stranger just based on how he looks. She does not care about the other ladies around them, she is only going because of how handsome Galatea looks, which she compares to a god. It is obsessive how fast she is falling for a boy that she does not know anything about. Galatea did the same thing. While being alone, she said to herself “Oh, would when I hunted his eye with my heart he might have seen my heart in his eyes! Why did Nature to him, a boy, give a face so fair…” (2.4.7-9). Galatea is expressing how in love she is with Phillida, and how if the latter look straight into her eyes, she could find out that Galatea is in love with her. Galatea is also rhetorically questioning why nature had to give a boy such a handsome face.

It is not only the protagonists of this story the ones that fall in love just by looking at such handsome men but the nymphs of Diana are also mesmerized by their beauty. Telusa says to Eurota “how amorously you glanced your eye on the fair boy in the white coat, and how cunningly, now that you would have some talk of love, you hit me in the teeth with love” (3.1.45-48) and Eurota replies by stating “ I confess that I am in love, yet swear that I know not what it is” (3.1.49-50). How can you love someone when you do not even know the meaning of love? Yet again, this is an example of how irrational their “love” is. Everybody is falling in love in this story with the main protagonists, but they cannot explain why or how. Why is everyone so obsessed with their beauty? Why is no one wanting to get to know the person before “falling in love”? I suppose that this has something to do with the phrase “love is blind” and I believe that the author takes this to a whole new level. That phrase in this story means that love comes from the outside, and it can blind your senses to the point that all you care about is how good-looking a person is, not how good internally they are.

This exact same scenario occurs in Venus and Adonis. The poem starts by having Venus being obsessed with how beautiful Adonis is. She states “‘Thrice fairer than myself,’ thus she began, ‘The field’s chief flower, sweet above compare, Stain to all nymphs, more lovely than a man, More white and red than doves or roses are; Nature that made thee, with herself at strife, Saith that the world hath ending with thy life” (lines 7-12). In here, Venus is stating that Adonis is three times more beautiful than her, and she goes all the way to state that he is the most beautiful flower in the field. Things then escalate to what I would consider a “weird” level when Venus states: “A thousand honey secrets shalt thou know: Here come and sit, where never serpent hisses; And being set, I’ll smother thee with kisses:” (lines 16-19). Again, she does not care about where he was going or what he wants, she just saw beauty and is willing to give him her secrets about making love, in exchange for kisses. I find this extremely disturbing. She is desperate for a man that did not know about her existence a few seconds ago, and she did not know about his. Venus goes as far as trying to detain Adonis, who is trying to leave, and she is trying to overpower him. This goes a little too far than Galatea when it comes to loving someone just based on their looks. The worst part about this poem is that Adonis is trying to resist her. He does not want to have any interaction with her! And yet, she does not give up due to her obsession. “Being red, she loves him best; and being white, Her best is better’d with a more delight” (lines 77-78). She is enjoying having him captive there and him becoming angry at how irrational she is acting, but sadly, she is not going to let him free until he kisses her. This is not normal behavior at all.

In those two stories, the reader can see two obsessive behaviors towards the beauty of others and how far things can get to be with the other person. The feeling of falling in love can be irrational, but how much can the beauty of someone make you fall in love completely, to the point of not caring about anything else or to the point of tying someone for a kiss? Those two pieces are a perfect example of how much love can change a person in an instant, but they also demonstrate how obsessed people can become with your appearance. From a god to two mortals, their reaction to beauty is out of place, obsessive, irrational, and scary.

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Death is a necessary and unavoidable part of life. They are complementary opposites and one cannot exist without the other. But how do they co-exist in writing?

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Death is a topic that consistently capitalizes on the human imagination and during the renaissance, almost every writer was exploring Death in some way. This, however, does not mean that they were addressing Death in the same way. For some, like Ben Jonson, Katherine Philips, and Elizabeth Hoby their writing or poetry was about the death of a child and how they coped with that loss. For others like Shakespeare Death became a part of the drama and stagecraft. For some like Hester Pulter, Death took a different role in their writing, it becomes almost characterized and is directly addressed in their writing. In regard to this difference, I would like to offer a closer analysis of both Ben Jonson’s elegy On My First Daughter and Hester Pulter’s The Hope.

Jonson’s poem is a startling account of loss, “At six months’ end she parted hence / With safety of her innocence;” (Jonson, 5-6). His daughter died at six months old. This moment where he has lost a child is beyond sadness. Jonson’s poem laments his loss and begins to query where his daughter might be after her death.  But if you put his poem in conversation with Hester Pulter’s The Hope, something changes in the way we read Jonson’s poem. Pulter’s poem is more about the inevitability of Death itself and that Death is not something to necessarily be feared. Pulter addresses Death directly, “Dear Death, dissolve these mortal charms,” (Pulter, 1), in doing so she points out first that we are burdened by “mortal charms”. These charms might be interpreted as a person’s attachment to this world and the willing destruction of those attachments makes Death suddenly more acceptable. If we consider Jonson’s poem from this perspective what changes? I think that Jonson’s poem becomes moderately less tragic and it takes on a more hopeful or reminiscent tone. Instead of lamenting his lost daughter’s innocence perhaps Jonson is almost glad that his daughter is still innocent, and that her innocence is no longer threatened by “mortal charms”. This creates a weird space between the reader and Jonson’s poem, in that a poem written by a grieving father about his dead daughter is no longer sad but hopeful. These two perspectives seem opposed. Despite this, I would like to offer that they are necessary counterpoints.

To this end, there is another question; whether or not this same concept applies to The Hope. Pulter’s poem is significantly different. It is not centered on a moment of loss but rather on Death itself. My initial interpretation of the poem made it feel objective and straightforward, Pulter was addressing Death and discussing the connotations around it in an almost detached but hopeful way. However, if considered in light of the counterpoint between hope and sadness where Death is involved, Pulter’s poem becomes suddenly haunting, “Then thou may’st use my carcass as thou lust, / Until my bones (and little luz) be dust:” (Pulter, 3-4). Instead of a resigned unsympathetic capitulation to Death, Pulter is also agonizing over the temporary nature of human existence, “And all that is in thee to atoms turned,” (Pulter, 9). She is recognizing that no matter what everything returns to something or is made into something smaller. This deconstruction of everything is tragic when considered alongside Jonson’s mourning of his daughter. Pulter’s titular hope is that Death will not be sad, that it can be separated from the human emotional aspect of our existence because Death is innately emotional.

I wonder, at this moment, if Death itself can be parsed from the emotion that accompanies it does that cheapen Death? If Death becomes emotionless and objective as Pulter seems to hope, then what happens to someone like Jonson who has experienced this ultimately traumatic event? I think that this makes Pulter’s poem suddenly more depressing. The hope that Death can become emotionless must come from having experienced as traumatic an event as what Jonson has experienced. Pulter is so caught up in the emotions of grief and sadness that come from Death that she is hoping that those feelings (the same feelings that drove Jonson to write about his dead child) can go away. Perhaps these overwhelming feelings are Pulter’s “mortal charms” that she wants to be dissolved. The sadness and the hope in both poems become startlingly more apparent when they are put in conversation, as each calls out the other’s shortcomings. Pulter’s poem suddenly feels less like an address and more a plea for this pain to stop, and Jonson’s poem becomes less of a lamentation of his daughter’s death but rather becomes more hopeful about where his daughter might be now.

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Venus, on the right, clings to Adonis, on the left, in hopes of him staying with her.

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Heteronormativity, Heteroshmormativity: How Behn and Shakespeare Subvert Heterosexual Norms

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Heteronormativity, Heteroshmormativity: How Behn and Shakespeare Subvert Heterosexual Norms

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Aphra Behn’s To the Fair Clorinda and William Shakespeare’s Venus Adonis both challenge heterosexual norms with the former explicitly being centered around a genderqueer love and the latter flipping typical gender norms within heterosexual norms on their head. In doing so, heteronormative standards are subverted. To fully capture my observations of the dialogue these two share, I’ll evaluate each text on its own before addressing how the two play off one another and differ from each other.

To begin, Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis depicts a relationship between the two. However, the tale is atypical as Venus, a goddess, plays the role of pursuer whereas Adonis, a boy, fills the role of the pursued. Both power and dominance is embodied in Venus, this extends so far to the point which Adonis is demarcated as “prey”:

Forced to content, but never to obey,

Panting he lies, and breatheth in her face;

She feedeth on the steam, as on a prey,

And calls it heavenly moisture, air of grace (Shakespeare, 61-64)

Shakespeare subverts heterosexual norms by placing Venus, a woman, in a place of absolute power over Adonis, a man, and in this case a creature of prey. Venus has agency that gives her the ability to actively chase Adonis, whereas Adonis is merely at her will. This is further seen in the tale after Venus fails to woo Adonis following further attempts:

'Were I hard-favoured, foul, or wrinkled old,

Ill-nurtured, crooked, churlish, harsh in voice,

O'er-worn, despised, rheumatic, and cold,

Thick-sighted, barren, lean, and lacking juice;

Then mightst thou pause, for then I were not for thee,

But having no defects, why dost abhor me? (Shakespeare, 133-138)

Venus acts as a suitor, one which as the goddess of love is supremely powerful over mere mortals, giving her a status of power-dynamic that places her over Adonis; alas, Adonis still refuses and Venus must continue her pursuit. Given that in the 16th and 17th centuries men were seen as dominant and expected to court women, the reading of Venus filling that role is nothing short of defiance to heteronormativity. With that being said, it should be noted that its far less than likely Shakespeare wrote this to challenge gender norms within relationships, it may have been written even to prey on those norms, in that a woman lusting after a man and playing the role of dominator was enticing to some and fascinating to others. All the same, the story itself can be read as a subversion of heteronormativity.

Aphra Behn’s poem To the Fair Clorinda is clearly a genderqueer love poem. The poem contains a subtitle that follows the title, reading, “Who made love to me // Imagin’d more than a woman” (Behn). The implications of this subtitle are critical to the poem as a whole for it entails the poem is seemingly dedicated to a woman, Clorinda, but Behn sees her as more than just that which is left for the reader to insinuate; perhaps Behn wants to make Clorinda out as a lover, perhaps as something far more complex, such as a goddess, or perhaps Behn does this to allude to a being that has no gender connotations at all. Clorinda is explicitly labeled as Behn’s “Lovely Charming Youth,” clearly denoting her as Behn’s romantic partner in some form or variation (Behn, 4). Overall, the poem embodies a queer relationship, in turn removing heteronormativity entirely from the notion of love.

When the two works are examined together there's a clear subversion of heterosexual norms in both love and relationships. However, it’d be remiss to not note how the two differ. Obviously, Venus and Adonis are a part of a heterosexual union whereas Aphra Behn’s love for Clorinda is one outside of heterosexual conventions. Past this, consent is different between the two. Venus and Adonis is at best partially consensual and at worst coercive:

Full gently now she takes him by the hand,

A lily prisoned in a gaol of snow,

Or ivory in an alabaster band,

So white a friend engirts so white a foe:

This beauteous combat wilful and unwilling,

Showed like two silver doves that sit a-billing. (Shakespeare, 361-366)

Venus and Adonis’s relationship resembles that of jailkeeper and imprisoned as noted by Venus overseeing a lily in a gaol and Adonis being entrapped in an alabaster band. On the other hand, Aphra Behn’s relationship with Clorinda is both consensual and endearing on both ends. Behn writes, “Against thy Charms we struggle but in vain // With thy deluding Form thou giv’st us pain,” (Behn, 9-10). Even when there is struggle in the relationship, the struggle is one which Clorinda and Behn take on together as noted by the “we,” and denying their feelings for one another’s form only results in pain. Even with these differences in mind, both pieces challenge heteronormativity albeit in different ways. Thus, the two pieces show that subverting heterosexual norms doesn’t simply occur in one medium, it occurs through different means; in Venus and Adonis, its done through an inversion of gender roles where Venus takes on the typical role of the pursuer, and Adonis, the role of the pursued. Whereas in Aphra Behn’s love poem, it occurs via validating the love between her and another woman. With both of these validating love and romance outside of heteronormative conventions, 16th and 17th century heteronormativity is subverted and challenged.

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Left: Venus tries to stop Adonis from going on the hunt; painted by Titian. Right: Briseis and Achilles appear to be angry with each other; engraved by Cunego.

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Love: The Cause of Anger, Pain, and Desire

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Love: The Cause of Anger, Pain, and Desire

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Throughout the Renaissance Period, poetry had become one of the dominant forms of literature. Within these poems, writers often expressed immense feelings and emotions, such as heartbreak or love. Two long-form poems that successfully capture their writer’s strong emotions are Ovid’s poem “Briseis to Achilles” from the Heroides and William Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis. Although both poems are about love, when read individually, “Briseis to Achilles” expresses anger and hurt, while Venus and Adonis expresses desire. However, when placed in conversation with one another, “Briseis to Achilles” illuminates the anger and pain Venus feels when Adonis leaves her, while Venus and Adonis reveals the desire Briseis has for Achilles.

Both “Briseis to Achilles” and Venus and Adonis tell stories about love where the male characters reject the females, leaving them with anger, hurt, and desire. Ovid’s “Briseis to Achilles” is a poem written as a letter from the perspective of an angry women that is hurt because her lover left her to fight and is assumed to marry another woman. Throughout lines 69-116, Briseis’s emotions of pain, heartbreak, and anger are clearly apparent to readers through the use of the words “pain,” “loss,” and “grief” (line 69; line 81). In comparison, Shakespeare’s poem Venus and Adonis is about the Goddess of Love who falls for a young boy that would rather hunt a boar than be with her. Throughout lines 217-258, Venus’s desire for Adonis is evident to see through words like “pleading” and “passion” (line 217; line 218). In both poems, the female characters are portrayed differently because they each represent specific emotions; yet when paired together, readers begin to see these sentiments in both poems.

Briseis’s Anger in Venus

Throughout lines 217-258 of Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, Venus’s desire for Adonis is clear to see; however, when read in conversation with lines 69-116 of “Briseis to Achilles,” Ovid’s poem is able to illuminate the anger and hurt Venus also feels when Adonis rejects her. For example, Ovid writes, “I prayed that the earth would open wide and swallow me up / or that a bolt of lightning’s flying fire would fall” (lines 82-83). In these lines, Ovid is describing Briseis’s anger by using words like “bolt of lightning” and “fire,” all of which symbolize anger and aggression. In Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare writes, “Red cheeks, and fiery eyes blaze forth her wrong” (line 219). In this line, Shakespeare is using imagery to show Venus’s reaction to Adonis’s rejection. Because the descriptions Ovid uses to characterize Briseis’s anger is similar to the language Shakespeare uses to describe Venus, such as “fiery” and “blaze,” readers are able to get a sense of the hidden anger Venus feels. Specifically, because Briseis is an angry female character, the similar descriptions used for Venus helps to illuminate this new emotion that would not be visible to readers without being paired with Ovid’s poem.

In addition to anger, “Briseis to Achilles” also helps to illuminate the pain Venus feels in Shakespeare’s poem. Ovid writes, “As your words fell on my terrified ears, my heart’s blood / drained / away from my face and breast, and my sense failed” (lines 76-78). In this quote, Briseis expresses her pain by describing the physical changes she experiences when Achilles leaves her. When looking at Shakespeare’s poem, Ovid’s quote about Briseis’s pain emphasizes a similar feeling within Venus. Specifically, Shakespeare writes, “And now she weeps, and now she fain would speak, / And now her sobs do her intendments break” (lines 221-222). Like Ovid, Shakespeare describes Venus’s pain by showing the physical changes she went through, such as sobbing and weeping. Ovid makes it clear that Briseis is experiencing heartbreak in the line “My heart’s blood drained” (lines 77-78), which helps to illuminate the pain Venus also feels in the line “and now she weeps” (Shakespeare, line 221). Furthermore, because of the heartache these two female characters feel, both Briseis and Venus question who they can turn to for love and comfort. Briseis asks, “To whom will you leave me, I asked. To whom will I turn for / comfort?” (lines 79-80), while Shakespeare asks, “Now which way shall she turn? What shall she say?” (line 253). Briseis question comes as a result of her heartbreak and the need to be loved, which helps clarify Venus’s question because it shows how Venus is also at a loss about how to receive love after being heartbroken. Because Briseis’s pain and anger is clearly apparent, this piece of writing helps shed light on the similar descriptions used in Venus and Adonis and allows us to see a new sense of emotions within Venus.

Venus’s Desire in Briseis

Throughout lines 69-116 of “Briseis to Achilles,” Ovid clearly depicts the emotions of anger and pain, but when paired with Venus and Adonis, lines 217-258 help illuminate the desire Briseis has. For example, Shakespeare writes, “This said, impatience chokes her pleading tongue, / And swelling passion doth provoke a pause” (lines 217-218). In these lines, “pleading tongue” and “swelling passion” indicate the strong desire Venus feels for Adonis. In “Briseis to Achilles,” Ovid writes, “I shall be content / to be your humble servant” (lines 101-102) and “I shall endure whatever abuse she heaps upon me, / if only you do not abandon me now” (lines 110-111). In these lines, Briseis is begging Achilles to take her with her and because she says she will endure any abuse to be with him, Briseis appears to be desperate. However, Shakespeare’s quote illuminates the hidden desire within Briseis’s claims. Specifically, Venus’s pleads come as a result of her strong desire and lust for Adonis, and when placed in conversation with Ovid’s poem, readers are able to see that Briseis is begging Achilles to take her with him because she has a strong desire to be close to him even if it means she cannot be his lover.

In both of these texts, “Briseis to Achilles” and Venus and Adonis express different feelings that are caused by the love the female characters felt for male characters that rejected them. Although “Briseis to Achilles” expresses dominant feelings of pain and anger, and Venus and Adonis expresses a dominant feeling of desire, these feelings become apparent in both poems when placed in conversation with one another, illuminating the hidden emotions Venus and Briseis feel.

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I feel this presents the sweetness of accepting fate and love, and the fear to do so. Thus, lemons frame the two people, near to them but not quite achieved. 

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In Hester Pulter’s poem titled “View But This Tulip,” an internal dispute over the journey her soul will take once she dies takes place. This is done in an attempt to convince the reader that death will bring joy and offer the chance to return to the original self. She conveys this message by comparing the soul to a flower, particularly a tulip, showing how they return to the earth to be “reinspired” (Line 4) and “reanimated” (Line 10) in their souls. In doing this, she dismantles the fear people hold against death, presenting the possibility that our death will bring us a new existence of even more happiness, making the afterlife appear to be one full of “endless pleasure, love, and light” (Line 41).

In Sir Philip Sidney’s poem collection titled “Astrophil and Stella,” a culmination of 108 sonnets expressing an everlasting love toward a character named Stella, the first sonnet repeatedly recognizes the truth of love. Astrophil understands that his love for Stella will not be reciprocated, but that his hope for these pieces is to get her attention. Even if Stella has no change of heart from these sonnets, Astrophil would have been successful in making himself known to her. He goes so far as to admit approval of Stella taking “some pleasure of [his] pain,” (Line 2) as this will guarantee her awareness of his longing for her. This differs from Pulter’s poem because while she places a strong theme of God throughout her piece, Sidney uses the symbol of love to indicate the advantages of trusting the process of life. Both however show that there is no reason to reject the future or fear the unknown.

Both authors use nature to convey a tone of airiness and optimism, as well as a lack of innocence, a trait that has been effectively replaced by mastery in the subject of love and lust. Sidney utilizes nature to show Astrophil’s undying passion for Stella, explaining that his efforts to use the perfection and magnificence of nature and fruit are his way of promising he will never lose his desire for her, as Pulter uses nature and flowers to show that no matter the reality of our knowledge of the afterlife, we can rely on the world around us to feel secure.

Pulter expects that her resurrection will bind her soul to her skin again, as God will honor her as she has seen done with flowers, giving her a life of joy until the end of time. To end Pulter’s poem, she writes “if man can raise a flower, God can thee” (Line 45). This sheds light on the fact that if humans achieve the act of reviving flowers and nature, an act with which God repeatedly gifts us, so should we expect our soul to be treated, “into [our] chaos [we] retire,” (Line 3) later returning as people “reinspired” (Line 4). Further along in Sidney’s sonnet, Astrophil expresses feeling unable to convey the entirety of his emotions, using the praised creations of others as a tool to put his thoughts into prose. He explains that these efforts to analyze “others’ leaves to see if thence would flow” (Line 7) did nothing to ease his feelings of helplessness. He acknowledges that the words he came across failed to spark his imagination, the “fresh and fruitful showers” (Line 8) unable to enlist poetic flow “upon [his] sun-burned brain” (Line 8). This is a differing idea in the two poems, as Sidney presents the lack of benefits in looking to others and relying on the future, while Pulter encourages the reliance on others, no matter the concern about the present, to show us the need for the removal of fear from our lives. Both however prove the beauty of opening ourselves up to the world of possibilities and love that awaits us.

Both pieces differ in their process of finding love and success, but still share a similar message; that as long as we don’t try to suppress our emotions, our hearts will guide us on the path we are meant to take. Thus, if Stella gives into the words of Astrophil, giving him a chance to prove his love for her, they will both find joy and happiness in their lives. Likewise, if we refrain from fearing death, instead accepting and anticipating our demise, we will live a life of joy and certainty followed by an afterlife of profound satisfaction. Had we only had access to one of these poems, we would only receive half the message, and Pulter’s spiritual emphasis may push us away from recognizing the beauty of nature enforced by Sidney, making their comparison with each other an important conversation.

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A photo of a statue of Venus from 3 different positions

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by: Lucas Blackwood
Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis and Galatea are both plays and both by popular renaissance playwrights. They are different in many ways, Venus and Adonis is a tragedy, where Galatea is a comedy with a very happy ending in comparison to even most of Shakespeare’s comedies. What I wanted to focus on was their odd relationships with Venus herself. She shows up in both works, as a title character in Shakespeare and as the resolution to the problem that plagues Galatea. In both texts Venus is shown as very different, in Galatea she is a powerful Goddess, but in Shakespeare she is shown as a woman who just has godly powers. I think that it is interesting because Venus was always seen as a Goddess that even most Gods had to bow to because it is not possible to escape the love that she is in control of. This is shown in Shakespeare’s play, such as when Adonis is unable to escape Venus, but it feels as if the whims that she is carried on and the way that she acts throughout the play is not how a Goddess would act, but how someone at the time may think a woman who had no control over her emotions and whims (that was then given an immense amount of power) would act. For example, line 79 says “Look how he can, she cannot choose but to love;” as though she is being forced by whims to do this, that she is doing this because she can not help it. This feels like she has no will, that she is being forced to do this because she just feels so much. I think that it is really interesting to write her as this, because I do not think Venus is at whim to her emotions, she is deliberate and she has used her powers throughout mythology knowing that love can hardly be controlled to get her way with others. While I am more familiar with her Greek form, Aphrodite, I also recall her becoming upset when people were seen as being more attractive than her, so why would she be so okay with the fact that this man seems to control her so with his beauty. In line 175, Venus is described as “love-sick,” which adds to the fact that she is not in control of her own feelings, her own power. She is the Goddess of love, how can she succumb to the whims of it. On the other hand, in Galatea, Venus appears as a strong, powerful, and lovely Goddess. She not only resolves the problem that was plaguing the play as a whole, but she does it in such a way as to be the voice of reason above any other God, Goddess, or mortal who is in the play. From line 143-145 in act 5 Scene 3, Venus even says “They shall both be possessed of their wishes, for never shall it be said that Nature or Fortune shall overthrow Love and Faith.” She knows her power in this play, she understands the type of control that she keeps with her name and status. It is clear that she is to be feared, a powerful Goddess that can and will do what she thinks is fit. I think that these two are very very different versions of Venus, but I also think that they are, in some way, the same. After all, she solved the conflict that was causing so much strife in Galatea and in Venus and Adonis she sees what she wants and takes it, despite of the tragedy it may cause. In some way, even when she is at the whims of her own emotions, she is still powerful. She is still able to overpower Adonis, the entire play has backwards power dynamics in relation to gender. She is still a Goddess, she is still able to get what she wants, and I think that is where these plays are similar in the way that they portray her, they do not necessarily take away the amount of importance and power she holds as a Goddess, which I think is important, because it is easy to make her less than other Gods because she is a woman, and often you see that in modern day adaptations of Greek and Roman mythology.

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A woman stands next to an instrument wearing a large red dress with a frilly neck piece.

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The two pieces of work I feel spoke to each other the most and shed new light on each other are Ovid's Heroides, lines one through 30, and Sonnet 9 by Mary Wroth. These two texts have obvious differences, but still are able to complement each other. The first glaring differences are superficial, roughly a few hundred years between their publications, and different genres. The reason that these poems are able to speak to each other in such depth is the differences between the speakers in them. Both come from a place of great emotional despair, but the way in which each speaker handles their emotions is very different.

The speaker in Heroides is a woman that is written by a man and I believe it is done in a very sexist manner. She is portrayed as weak and under the control of a man, “It may not be correct for me to complain to you, my beloved master, but I shall risk indecorousness and rely upon your loving indulgence.” (Ovid, Lines 7-9) In my understanding and reading of Sonnet 9 it is nearly opposite in tone. The speaker in Sonnet 9 speaks about not caring about anyone else's emotions or pleasures, and is fine with accepting sorrow. “Doe you delight, I envy not your joy: Have you content, contentment with you be.” (Wroth, Lines 2-3) This to me shows a voice that would look down on the speaker in Heroides with disdain. This line is extremely strong, and feels like a way of saying that the speaker does not care about anything else and is resigned to her sorrow. The reason that Heroides so successfully speaks to this poem is because it is written in such a pathetic tone. Sonnet 9 was written at a similar time that poems such as Heroides were becoming popular again, and I love that Sonnet 9 was around at the same time to show women with a strong voice.

Another way in which these two poems speak to each other very effectively is through the lines that both relate to a prescribed fate. The speaker in Ovid’s poem speaks about what is happening in a manner that makes her appear to have no agency. “My departure might have been deferred. A stay would have eased my heart -and I must suppose- yours.” (Ovid, Lines 19-20) The difference between this line and Wroth’s poem is that this speaker is concerned with the grief of her love interest as well. This makes Wroth's poem seem even stronger, because the speaker is talking about pain and sorrow as if it is nothing and also not caring about anyone else's emotions. “Then if with grief I must now coupled bee, Sorrow Ile wed; Despair thus governs mee.” (Wroth, Lines 13-14) While both poems speakers are resigned to their fates, Wroth’s speaker sounds willingly going toward her fate, while Ovid's speaker sounds as though they are a helpless agent in their own life. Ovid’s poem speaks to Wroth’s here because it shows how Wroth’s speaker is going strongly into the unknown compared to the other speaker. Ovid's Speaker is facing physical capture, while Wroth’s speaker faces emotional hardships, but parallels can still be drawn and speak to each other. Ovid's poem shows a person who lacks self respect and conviction and I feel strongly that Wroth is showing someone who feels independent and strong.

The main reason these two poems go so well together and shine new light on each other is because the speakers come from a very different place emotionally. I find it very encouraging to hear a strong female voice from the renaissance period go against the voice of a woman who is depicted as weak. I believe Wroth’s poem was very strong for the time and I wonder if it has a positive effect on women of the time. Wroth was one of the first female renaissance writer to achieve lasting success so I feel she would have been an inspiration to other women. I would like to hear a conversation between these two voices in how they deal with grief. I believe that the speaker in Sonnet 9 could help the speaker in Heroides overcome her feelings of sadness and rise up to feel like an equal of the person who left her.

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Left: engraving of Venus and Adonis in a 1710 copy of "Works of William Shakespeare: Volume 7." Right: engraving "Nymphs of Diana" by Jan Saenredam date unknown

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The narrative poem, Venus and Adonis, and the play, Galatea, particularly Act 3 scene 1, explore similar themes of love and the power of love. However, within both of these texts it begs the question, is the power of love a good or bad thing? The major difference between the two pieces is that in Venus and Adonis the characters in a “relationship,” for lack of a better word, are talking to each other. However, the nymphs are discussing their newfound attraction with each other, not with the person they are in love with. This leads the two scenes to function slightly differently. In Venus and Adonis, Adonis is desperately trying to convince Venus to leave him alone. He even tells her, “You hurt my hand with wringing. Let us part, / And leave this idle theme, this bootless chat” (Shakespeare, 421-422). In this scene, the beloved is able to reject or accept the lover's love. In this case, Adonis rejects Venus. However, with the nymphs, they are breaking down the power of love, discussing their fate with Diana, and fawning over the object of their desire. Considering, they have never let themselves feel these emotions, they are breaking down what love is and if it is positive or negative. Eurota, one of the nymphs, says, “If this be love, I would it had never been devised” (Lyly, 3.1. 53-54). Ramia, another nymph, later argues, “Love is a god, and lovers are virtuous.” (Lyly, 3.1. 78-79). The nymphs never tell the object of their desire their feelings, instead a debate of love is had. Venus is able to tell the person she loves, yet does not and will never succeed. The mode of conversation varies between the texts, but the content of what they are saying directly informs one another.

As the nymphs break down what love means and what it means for their future, it is in direct conversation with lines 403-442 of Venus and Adonis. In this section, Adonis finally speaks out against Venus, and Venus offers her reply. Venus represents the advocator for love, and tries to sway Adonis into falling in love with her. She can be thought of as the devil on the nymphs shoulders, urging them to give up the life they know for love. Venus tells Adonis, “And that I could not see, nor hear, nor touch, / And nothing but the very smell were left me, / Yet would my love to thee be still as much;” (Shakespeare, 440-442). Venus is saying that love surpasses all senses. Love can exist without the senses and denotes a spiritual connection. At one point the nymphs describe how love took them in the first place. Telusa states, “by the eyes, my wanton eyes, which conceived the picture of his face and hanged it on the very strings of my heart” (Lyly, 3.1. 61-63).  Eurota responds with, “by the ears, whose sweet words sunk so deep into my head that the remembrance of his wit hath bereaved me of my wisdom” (Lyly, 3.1 65-67). Venus informs us that love is beyond all senses. However, the senses are what cause love in the first place. Thus, once love is coded within the senses, they no longer matter. Both Telusa and Eurota compare falling in love with making a mark on her physical heart and providing her more wisdom, respectively. They are agreeing with Venus and stating that love had made a deeper impact on them than just a sensory experience. Love has become ingrained within them, just like with Venus. Both the nymphs and Venus are in agreement that love is beyond the physical, but becomes a spiritual experience. Also, for Venus the most important lesson to learn is love. She tells Adonis, “O learn to love: the lesson is but plain / And once made perfect never lost again” (Shakespeare, 403-404). For Venus, no lesson is more valuable than love. This corresponds to Telusa wanting to give up her vocation with Diana. She states, ““I will forsake Diana for him. I will die for him!” (3.1. 102-103). Thus, love is not only an important lesson, but is also more important than life itself. No other lesson or vocation matters more greatly than love, according to Venus and Telusa.

On the other hand, Adonis represents the distrust and hatred of love due to his immaturity and lack of preparedness for such an emotion. Adonis can be thought of as the angel, urgining the nymphs to stay their course and not give in to love.  He tells Venus,

“Who wears a garment shapeless and unfinished?

Who plucks the bud before one leaf put forth?

If springing things be any jot diminished

They wither in their prime, prove nothing worth.” (Shakespeare, 415-418).

Here Adonis is arguing that to love before one is mature enough is not really love, it is utterly meaningless. He is against love, and particularly against young love which becomes a grotesque understanding of what love actually is. Telusa, who wavers from agreeing with Venus and agreeing with Adonis, at one part in the scene, uses Adonis’ metaphor to discuss love. She states, “Virgins hearts, I perceive, are not unlike cotton trees, whose fruit is so hard in the bud it soundeth like steel, and, being ripe, poureth forth nothing but wool;” (Lyly, 3.1. 19-21). Here Telusa is presenting a similar argument that Adonis presented. Love for virgins and youth alike, will only function if the “fruit,” their heart, is ripe. Love is not something one can experience on whim, it is a delicate process that only the mature are ready for. Virgins and youth must prepare themselves before they can love another. Even then, for Adonis and some of the nymphs, love is not worth it. Adonis states his relationship with love, “My love to love, is love but to disgrace it” (Shakespeare, 412). Adonis disgraces love similarly to the way Eurota compares love to an infection. She states, “If thou be in love (for I have heard of such a beast called love) it shall be cured” (Lyly, 3.1. 41-42). Love is not something grander than life itself, but instead a disease which can and should be cured. Adonis disgraces love because, in the next line, he argues it is death in life. Both Adonis and Eurota utilize the same imagery of love being like disease, or even deadly, to highlight its cataclysmic effect.

Both texts communicate the importance and destruction of love. Is love an angel or the devil? Does it cause more harm for those affected, or only foster positive emotions? Both texts provide us with both views. However, it is crucial to note that Venus never wins Adonis, and the nymphs do not forsake Diana for love. These two texts highlight the complexities and nuances of love and force the reader to decide for themselves: is love the angel or the devil?

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Portia Wounding her Thigh By Elisabetta Sirani (Probably over a man who couldn't love her back).

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By: Piper Vaughn

In the two texts, Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare and the Ovid readings, written by 10-year-old boys, these women are portrayed VERY differently. In Venus and Adonis, Venus is portrayed as this hyper-sexual goddess who is extremely dominant towards Adonis, almost to the point of it becoming non-consensual. However, we see a very different portrayal of women in the Ovid readings, written by young boys of course. In these readings, both of which are written by men (or boys I should say), women are portrayed as weak and needing male dominance to survive. These two polar opposite characteristics illuminate each other in the ways these texts are conversing with one another in the way the authors are depicting women as being the drama of the stories.

Looking at Venus and Adonis, immediately in the first opening lines of the poem, the first description of Venus that the reader is presented with is that being “Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto [Adonis]” (Line 5). Introducing someone as sick-thoughted shows just how lovesick Venus is and how bad she wants Adonis. This is already presenting her as some sort of predator towards her “lover.” When I continued to read further, it became more and more clear how dominant she is in the next upcoming lines, “Nature that made thee with herself at strife,” (Line 11). “Nature” is wanting to go beyond herself in the ways in making Adonis want to have sex with her as she wants him to; proving her dominance even further. After this, Venus begins to “Smother thee in kisses” (Line 18) where she is literally suffocating Adonis and further continuing the theme of a woman being seen as a predator in this sort of manner. This recurring theme of the insane amount of sexual desire that is depicted in Venus continues throughout the entire text. “My flesh is soft, and plumb, my marrow burning” (142). Marrow burning is translated to her hot desire for Adonis and was a common term for this century. In the further lines of the text Women in this text are being the drama as she is doing anything and everything she can to have sex with Adonis, even if that means forcing herself onto him and being predatory. Her strong characterization portrays her as being extremely dominant and dramatic.

In contrast, the Ovid readings portray women as being “dramatic” in the polar opposite way but carry on the conversation regarding femininity as being the drama of the entire reading. This text is also written by 10-year-old boys, which is a bit odd in itself, however, this portrayal of women is what I find especially interesting in contrast to the Venus and Adonis readings. Interestingly, women are separated from their partners and can not be without them. This portrayal presents women as physically and mentally not being able to be without their partner. The depiction of women pursues and shows the reader how jealous a woman becomes, “Cleopatra was able to change his mind- as I have not been able to do with you, my words having little weight. But I do not complain or presume, for I am not a wife but merely a slave you summoned to bed” (Lines 136-140). These lines are showing women not being obsessive in controlling in their powerful ways as Venus is depicted in Venus and Adonis, but submissive and feeling like they are being used by a man that has power over women. This dramatic presentation of a woman's love for a man continues further along in the text, “I beg if your love for me has turned to weary surfeit, tell me and compel my death, which would be more kind than having to live without you” (Lines 193-196). Literally saying that without a man in her life that she would rather die than have to live without him.

Both of these texts, written by men, make women out to be melodramatic, however, the male portrayal in these texts is never seen in this sort of light, and seems to never do any wrong. In the two texts Venus and Adonis and the Ovid readings, roles are reversed in their portrayal of women. As with Venus and Adonis, women are seen as being dramatic in the way that they are intensely powerful and hypersexualized, while in the Ovid readings, the women are portrayed as being frail, and unable to live with the loss of a man. However, these two pieces are in conversation with one another in the way these male authors are depicting women and their emotions.

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The hunt. Is there anything more exciting? More erotic? For some reason, Renaissance writers love the deer, and they use this animal as a symbol for sexual desire, the chase, and overall free will. While Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis and Spenser's Sonnet LXVII explore different ideas, the motif of the hunt is prevalent in both. Lines 231-252 in Venus and Adonis is Venus' proposition that Adonis be a deer in her park. Through comparing this with the huntsman in Spencer's sonnet, the goal of the metaphor is made clear, as well as why it failed to leave any sort of impact on Adonis.

Venus can not get enough of Adonis. She is overcome with desire and will not be satiated until she has him. Adonis, on the other hand, just wants to hunt. He would happily take a boar over a goddess any day of the week. In lines 231-234, in an attempt to speak his language, Venus says to Adonis:

I'll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer:

Feed where thou wilt, on mountain, or in dale;

Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry,

Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie. (231-234)

This passage is dripping with sexual imagery. Venus is not being coy with her emotions or desires. While Adonis is none too impressed with her metaphor and Venus does not get the reaction that she hopes for, the metaphor, itself, is strong. This is the first time that the reader is introduced to the possible sexual implications of the hunt, and the flipping of the roles is telling. No longer is Adonis the hunter, rather, he is the prey. She notes that "[no] dog shall rouse thee" (240), saying that he will be able to live in peace. Venus does not understand the hunt or what Adonis wants. The last thing that he wants to be is the deer. The enjoyment he receives from hunting is not marveling at the beauty of the land, rather the sport of it. He does not desire to live in peace, he desires to live life sportingly. The metaphor was never going to work on him. That is why he flips the metaphor and calls Venus as he sees it, saying, "These lovely caves, these round enchanting pits" (247). Instead of the free, peaceful world that Venus promises him, he sees this proposition as entrapment. Dark and desolate, a pit to fall into. With Venus being so out of touch with Adonis, and the metaphor is so deeply steeped with sexual innuendo, the goal and the overall message of her proposition is slightly muddy.

In order to fully understand what Venus is hoping to achieve, Spencer's Sonnet LXVII must be brought into the conversation. In it, the huntsman is resting after letting his prey get away, only to see the deer coming to get a drink not far from him. As he approaches the deer, he says,

till I in hand her yet halfe trembling tooke,

and with her owne goodwill hir fyrmely tyde.

Strange thing me seemd to see a beast so wyld,

so goodly wonne with her owne will beguyled. (11-14)

This is a wild animal in the eyes of the hunter. An animal that has no reason to be friendly, and all the reason to be skittish, but it stays, with its "will beguyled". It is unknown why the deer in the sonnet stays, it could be out of fear or curiosity, though fear seems to be the likely answer. Venus is hoping that Adonis will fall under a similar spell. Whether it is out of fear or desire, Venus cares not, she just wants Adonis' will to be beguiled. She wants him to go against his nature and be with her, only Adonis will never do this. As seen by the rest of the story, Adonis stays true to his hunting nature until the end. This raises the question: is there was any metaphor that would have gotten through to him?

Instead of flipping the roles, and making Adonis the prey, would the reaction have gone different if Venus had kept Adonis a hunter? The reason it seems to fail is that Adonis has no desire to be the deer, but if she were to say that she was the deer and he was to hunt her, would that have made more of an impact on the young man? This is purely speculative, but it is interesting to think about. The sonnet seems to be presenting the perfect metaphor that may have gotten through to Adonis. A hunter, tired from the hunt, sees his prey and instead of killing it, being kind to it and it being kind in return. Although, sadly, Adonis more than likely would have just killed the deer.