SOURCE: "Venus and Adonis: Can We Forgive Them?" in Studies in Philology, Vol. LXXXV, No. 3, Summer, 1988, pp. 353-77.

In the following essay, Klause discusses the theme of forgiveness in Venus and Adonis, tracing the related comic, ironic, and ambivalent qualities of the poem.

"We may pity, though not pardon thee."

—The Comedy of Errors

"Pardon's the word to all. "

—Cymbeline

"Nothing to be done."

—Waiting for Godot

It became for Matthew Arnold a matter of regret that he had created in Empedocles on Etna a situation "in which there is everything to be endured, nothing to be done"¹—his dissatisfaction arising from his belated intuition that the helpless suffering portrayed in the poem might lame the spirit that contemplated it. In these latter days we are more inclined to find some value in futility. Many critics have come to believe that poets, whatever the fate of their characters...