The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare

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Venus and Adonis

Venus and Adonis
This exuberant erotic poem, at once funny and compassionate, was Shakespeare's most popular published work in his own time, running through at least ten editions between its first appearance in 1593 and its author's death in 1616, with another six published by 1636. It remains one of the few major works in world literature to depict the passionate pursuit of a male object by a female subject. Shakespeare's auspicious debut in print may owe its existence to the outbreak of plague that closed the London theatres for nearly two years in July 1592, during which the young playwright apparently turned to an alternative career, as a poet, and to an alternative source of income, a patron. Shakespeare's dedication of Venus and Adonis to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, calls it the ‘first heir of my invention’, implicitly contrasting this legitimate venture into verse on a classical subject with Shakespeare's ‘illegitimate’ earlier...

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