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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is Venus saying when she asks the world "what canst thou boast/ Of things long since, or anything ensuing" (lines 1077 and 1078)?

2. Which is the most reasonable interpretation of Venus's motives as she describes hunting a rabbit?

3. How does Venus know that the dogs are barking at a boar, bear, or lion?

4. What technique is used in lines 647 and 648, "My boding heart pants, beats, and takes no rest,/ But like an earthquake, shakes thee on my breast"?

5. What is the best definition of "sepulchres" in line 622, "His snout digs sepulchres where’er he goes"?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Venus tell Adonis about his beauty and the boar?

2. How does Venus portray Adonis having sex as a kind of selfless action and his choosing chastity as selfishness?

3. After Adonis's death, what does Venus predict about love?

4. What happens to Venus's eyes when she first sees Adonis's dead body?

5. Explain the pun in lines 827 and 828, when after Adonis leaves, the speaker says of Venus, "Even so confounded in the dark she lay,/ Having lost the fair discovery of her way."

6. What does Venus suggest Adonis do if he insists on hunting on the following day?

7. How does the construction of line 832, "Passion on passion deeply is redoubled," mimic the sense of what is happening in this passage?

8. What criticism does the speaker make of lovers' stories?

9. How does Venus's attitude toward death change when she believes that Adonis is alive?

10. What does Venus say about death when she thinks that Adonis has died?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What is the impact of the repetition and parallelism used in Venus and Adonis? The poem is notable both for the variety of these techniques--anaphora, alliteration, assonance, antanaclasis, epistrophe, polyptoton, chiasmus, antimetabole, and antithesis, among others--and for their frequency. How do these techniques create emphasis and highlight the relationships among ideas? In a broader sense, how do they establish ethos and impact the poem's tone? Write an essay in which you analyze the impact that the frequent and varied use of techniques of repetition and parallelism has on the poem's overall effect. Support your arguments with both quoted and paraphrased evidence from throughout the poem, making sure to cite any quoted language in MLA format.

Essay Topic 2

What is the theme of Venus and Adonis? What is the poem saying about lust, love, power, virtue, and mortality? Consider symbolism, the speaker's tone, the characterizations of both Venus and Adonis, the action of the poem, and the choices Shakespeare made in adapting the original story to his own uses as you craft your position on the meaning of this poem. Write an essay that makes and defends a claim about the theme of Venus and Adonis. Support your arguments with both quoted and paraphrased evidence drawn from throughout the poem, and be sure to cite any quoted language in MLA format.

Essay Topic 3

Of the several forms of figurative language Shakespeare employs in Venus and Adonis, metaphors and similes are by far the most frequent. What about this is typical of an epic? Why do epics use so many figures of comparison? Are Shakespeare's metaphors and similes employed in similar ways to those typically found in classical epics, or does he seem to have other purposes in mind? Write an essay that establishes how and why similes and metaphors are commonly used in epic poetry and then compares and contrasts the ways that these figures of comparison are used in Venus and Adonis. Support your arguments with both quoted and paraphrased evidence from throughout the poem, making sure to cite any quoted language in MLA format.

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