Birth of the Anemone

I discovered Shakespeare some time after I finished college.  I’d heard of the guy before that, and I had ever read some of his plays.  But, as is all too common in schooling, nothing in my early readings ever actually opened up the magnificence of Shakespeare.  It was only later, when I first picked up a play and read it as if it was, you know, a play, that I realized that his work wasn’t just good, it was transcendently great.  I’ve read most of his plays now—and I dread reading the few I have never read because what does one do when there is no more Shakespeare to discovered?

But, to date, I had never read his long poems.  In fact, oddly enough, it was only a few years ago I even discovered that he wrote any long poems—I knew about the plays and the Sonnets, but I had never heard of anything in between.  Since discovering the existence of these poems, I had never quite brought myself to read them—after all, I love reading his plays, and the sonnets are nice because they are short and precise, so I never quite found the impetus to read the long poems.

“Venus and Adonis” is really good.  It’s not Hamlet, but it’s really good.  It is also the best proof I have ever seen that the Puritans were right in claiming that Shakespeare was rather prurient.  They were wrong to try to stop the plays from being performed (after all, sometimes greatness trumps the possibility of inciting someone into moral decline, doesn’t it?  Surely, the millstones around necks don’t apply to Shakespeare, do they?), but they were right to note he is not terribly chaste.  “Venus and Adonis” is easily the most erotic thing I’ve ever read by Shakespeare—I guess I should not have been surprised about that given the title—after all, what else would one expect from a retelling of the tale of the titular characters? 

But, being Shakespeare, it wasn’t enough for him to simply write a poem about carnal love; he mixes it with a dissertation on the relationship of love and lust; a tension not quite fully resolved in the poem.  Does Venus love Adonis?  I’m not sure.  (Adonis clearly doesn’t love Venus (or even lust after her); once again, Shakespeare brilliantly modifies the source material.) And then, being Shakespeare, that isn’t enough either; after Adonis bleeds to death, Venus launches into a curse on love.  Now that passage elevated the poem from the good to the really good.  It has serious overtones of The Curse (you know, the most famous Curse in literature).  Taking something Good and turning into something Painful.  So, why is love so hard?  Because Adonis died and Venus cursed Love.

Here it is:

“Since thou art dead, lo, here I prophesy
Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend:
It shall be waited on with jealousy,
Find sweet beginning, but unsavoury end;       
     Ne'er settled equally, but high or low,       
     That all love's pleasure shall not match his woe.

“It shall be fickle, false and full of fraud;
Bud, and be blasted, in a breathing while;
The bottom poison, and the top o'erstraw'd
With sweets that shall the truest sight beguile:      
     The strongest body shall it make most weak,       
     Strike the wise dumb and teach the fool to speak.

“It shall be sparing, and too full of riot,
Teaching decrepit age to tread the measures;
The staring ruffian shall it keep in quiet,
Pluck down the rich, enrich the poor with treasures;       
      It shall be raging-mad and silly-mild,     
      Make the young old, the old become a child.

"It shall suspect where is no cause of fear;
It shall not fear where it should most mistrust;
It shall be merciful and too severe,
And most deceiving when it seems most just;       
     Perverse it shall be where it shows most toward,       
     Put fear to valour, courage to the coward.

“It shall be cause of war and dire events,
And set dissension ‘twixt the son and sire;
Subject and servile to all discontents,
As dry combustious matter is to fire:      
     Sith in his prime Death doth my love destroy,       
     They that love best their loves shall not enjoy.”

Now that is psychological insight.  It’s also not in Ovid.  And, while the sonnets have some similar things, there is nothing in them as starkly brilliant as that.  There is also nothing in the sonnets as overtly sexual as in this poem.  So, in some ways, I guess this poem is just the Sonnets on Steroids.  And, I am not sure whether than is an unambiguously good thing or not.  The poem is worth reading, to be sure, and if you haven’t done so, it’s well worth your time.

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