{"id":"01KG8B0T5R4G1EX748E1Z68KG5","cid":"bafkreicaozzfje6vophsgsdfuqbsrpzbettmlq2yipjqufwx7v7pflfdju","type":"file","properties":{"cid":"bafkreihdcyycg6ghqjj5r34dwrpc5iwkcla3k7gkj5hbygiyynxxrqfomq","content_type":"image/jpeg","filename":"02_venus_and_adonis_1905_facsimile_page_0038.jpg","height":2400,"key":"pdf-page-1769806521473-m5dzl5ege1b","label":"02_venus_and_adonis_1905_facsimile_page_0038.jpg","page_number":38,"pdf_type":"born_digital","size":554113,"text":"32\nVENUS\nAND\nADONIS\nMarlowe's genius exercised a powerful fascination over Shake-\nspeare's youth, and in all probability under such influence\nAdonis' disdain of the goddess of beauty became the central\nmotive of his first poem.\nThere was much material at Shakespeare's hand which\nmay well have encouraged him to develop Marlowe's hint.\nAnother popular tale which was wholly concerned with\na youth's disdain of a beautiful woman's embraces was\naccessible to him, and it was easy to graft its main features on\nthe legend of Venus and Adonis. Ovid before he approached\nthe tale of Venus and Adonis in his Metamorphoses had\nelaborated the less conventional topic in the tale of\nThe story of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus. That story of Ovid had\nSaimacisand attracted attention in Elizabethan England. It had been\ndims. rendered independently into loose pedestrian English rhyme\nby one Thomas Peend. His Pleasant Fable of Hermaphroditus\nand Salmacis. . . . With a morall in English verse was published\nin a small octavo in is<^f^ But there was little in Peend's\ndoggerel to serve Shakespeare's purpose. There was far more\nin Golding's literary rendering of Ovid's tale. But Shakespeare\nclearly supplemented that source by another.\nIt is of great importance to bear in mind that some four\nyears before the publication of Venus and Adonis^ an Eliza-\nbethan poet, Thomas Lodge, presented with much exuberant\nand original detail a different hero's disdain of a different\nLodge's heroine's advances. In 15-89 appeared Lodge's narrativeG Uncus and\nScilla, 1589. * A freer version followed at a later date, and has been very doubtfully\nassigned to Francis Beaumont, the dramatist. This was first published anony-\nmously under the title of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus in idoz. It is in heroic\nverse and is of much literary interest. The rare copy in the Bodleian Library\nwas reprinted in the Shakespeare Society Fapers (184.7), ^°^* ^^^* PP* 94--i^<^»\nIn Cranley's A7na7tda (1^55), Shakespeare's Venus and Adoiiis is mentioned\n< with Salmacis and her Hermaphrodite ' among a number of * songs of love\nand sonnets exquisite*.","text_extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:55:21.473Z","text_extracted_by":"pdf-processor","text_has_content":true,"text_source":"born_digital","uploaded":true,"width":1632},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG89K4X0DM39SSQK43XXG34R","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KG89JREDR8WY5QQGYR5FZRDY","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:55:22.552Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:55:24.984Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFFH6ETXGRVD10WPNP3007D6"}}