In the following essay, Cousins examines the complexities of the characterization of Venus and Adonis.

In the following essay, Keach analyzes the ironic imagery and erotic motivations of character in Venus and Adonis, examining the poem's "insight into the turbulence and frustration of sexual love."

In the essay, below, Belsey studies Venus and Adonis as a "literary trompe-l'oeil, a text of and about desire" that "promises a definitive account of love" but withholds it.

In the following essay, originally published in 1995, Belsey observes that Venus and Adonis generates desire and promises to provide a definitive portrayal of love, yet it ultimately fails to deliver.

In the following excerpt, Greenfield explores the reasons why Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis and Spenser's treatment of the Venus and Adonis myth in The Faerie Queen have been read allegorically, observing that the allegorization of such texts stems from a desire to moralize a text or to demonstrate the text's coherence.

In the following essay, originally published in 1987, Dubrow interprets the behavior and motivations of Venus and Adonis, and examines the ways in which Shakespeare dramatized the psychological elements of their characters.

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.

In the following excerpt, Roe provides an introduction to Venus and Adonis, focusing on the poem’s ending, rhetoric, and tragic and comic elements. Additionally, Roe comments on Shakespeare's appeal to the Earl of Southampton in the dedication, studies the influence of Ovidian texts on Venus and Adonis, and compares the poem to Christopher Marlowe's Hero and Leander.

In the following essay, Kuchar examines the rhetorical and intertextual elements of Venus and Adonis and demonstrates “that the poem's frustrating effects are largely a product of its rhetorical design.”

In the following essay, Asals challenges critics who view Venus as a humorous figure who embodies female lust in its lowest and most aggressive form. Asals argues that when Venus's responses to Adonis are studied in terms of Neoplatonism, Venus's growth as a character and her progression from “Lust” to “Love” become recognizable.

In the following essay, Baumlin evaluates Shakespeare's transformation of his Ovidian source material in Venus and Adonis.

In the following essay, Merrix explores the conflict between domestic sexuality and the desire for what is exotic and unknown in Venus and Adonis.

In the following essay, Beauregard addresses the nature of the allegory informing Venus and Adonis and analyzes this issue in terms of the Renaissance theory regarding the sensitive soul and its two parts: the “concupiscible” and the “irascible” powers.

In the following essay, Schiffer offers a psychoanalytic reading of Venus and Adonis that considers the poem's representation of phallic desire.

In the following essay, Shohet illuminates the distinctive oppositional modes of desire articulated by the title characters of Venus and Adonis.

In the following essay, Bate examines Venus and Adonis as an example of “Elizabethan Ovidianism,” in that its treatment of the myth is not intended as a moralization, but as a study of the psychological exploration of love and desire.

In the following essay, Cousins examines Shakespeare's use of rhetoric in characterizing Adonis, seeing him as an anti-Narcissus figure who is the object of a voyeuristic male sexual desire.

In the following essay, Stanivukovic probes the rhetoric of desire in Venus and Adonis.

In the following essay, Cantelupe examines the structure and imagery of Venus and Adonis, viewing the work as an Ovidian poem that satirically contrasts Love and Beauty and features a strong moralizing element in its lust motif.

In the following essay, Halpern focuses on Venus and Adonis as a misogynist poem concerning female sexual frustration that places Venus in the symbolic role of the feminine reader.

In the following essay, Miller comments on Shakespeare's ironic use of Ovidian moral themes associated with the mythological love affair of Venus and Mars recounted in Venus and Adonis.

In the following essay, Doebler compares Renaissance pictorial representations of Adonis and Venus with Shakespeare's rendering of these mythological figures in his poem Venus and Adonis.

In the following essay, Fienberg studies the dynamically shifting marketplace of value operating in Venus and Adonis.

In the following essay, Streitberger stresses the moral themes of Venus and Adonis, and views Adonis as the embodiment of the young nobleman faced with a dilemma between duty and the temptation to neglect responsibility.

Anthony Mortimer, University of Fribourg For much of Venus and Adonis Shakespeare seems careful to avoid direct confrontation with his source for the tale in the Metamorphoses, Book X. It is not simply that he omits all the antecedents that Ovid provides (the incestuous union of Cinyras and Myrrha, the miraculous birth of Adonis, the wounding of Venus with Cupid's arrow) and modifies the whole situation by making Adonis resist the advances of the goddess. The striking fact is that most of the frequen...

In the following essay, Lake identifies the transition between comedy and tragedy in Venus and Adonis and traces Venus's evolution into a sincere, if not admirable, character.