Belsey, Catherine. "Love as Trompe-l'oeil: Taxonomies of Desire in Venus and Adonis." Shakespeare Quarterlv 46, No. 3 (Fall 1995): 257-76.

Views Venus and Adonis as a work that performs a literary illusion by promising a "definitive account of love" but withholding it.

Blythe, David-Everett. "Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis" The Explicator 53, No. 2 (Winter 1995): 68-70.

Argues that the phrase "vails his tail" in Venus and Adonis means "to lift" rather than "to lower" as it is commonly interpreted.

Bradbrook, M. C. "Beasts and Gods: The Social Purpose of Venus and Adonis" In Muriel Bradbrook on Shakespeare, pp. 43-56. Sussex: The Harvester Press. 1984.

Sees the poem Venus and Adonis as a claim to social dignity by Shakespeare in an era when drama and dramatists were frequently disparaged.

Duncan-Jones, Katherine. "Much Ado with Red and White: The Earliest Readers of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis (1593)." Review of English Studies XLIV, No. 176 (November 1993): 479-501.

Considers the early popularity of Venus and Adonis as an erotic courtship poem.

Dundas, Judith. "Wat the Hare, or Shakespearean Decorum." Shakespeare Studies XIX (1987): 1-15.

Examines Shakespeare's altering of his classical sources by tempering Venus's ideal perfection with human traits in Venus and Adonis.

Kolin, Philip C., ed. 'venus and Adonis': Critical Essays. New York: Garland Publishing, 1997, 429 p.

Collection of nineteenth-and twentieth-century essays on Venus and Adonis by various contributors, preceded by a survey of critical reaction to the work.

Martindale, Charles and Colin Burrow. "Clapham's Narcissus: A Pre-Text for Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis?" English Literary Renaissance 22, No. 2 (Spring 1992): 147-76.

Forwards the poem Narcissus by the little-known Elizabethan John Clapham as a source for Venus and Adonis.

Roberts, Jeanne Addison. "The Wild Landscape: Women and Nature." In The Shakespearean Wild: Geography, Genus, and Gender, pp. 23-53. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991.

Mentions Venus and Adonis as part of a discussion of male entry into the feminized wilds of nature in Shakespeare's plays.