O cleft effect! Cold modesty, hot wrath,
Both fire from hence and chill extincture hath.
‘For lo, his passion, but an art of craft,
295
Even there resolved my reason into tears;
There my white stole of chastity I daffed,
Shook off my sober guards and civil fears,
Appeared to him as he to me appears,
All melting, though our drops this diff’rence bore:
300
His poisoned me, and mine did him restore.
‘In him a plenitude of subtle matter,
Applied to cautels, all strange forms receives,
Of burning blushes, or of weeping water,
Or swooning paleness; and he takes and leaves
305
In either’s, aptness, as it best deceives,
To blush at speeches rank, to weep at woes,
Or to turn white and swoon at tragic shows.
‘That not a heart which in his level came
Could ’scape the hail of his all-hurting aim,
310
Showing fair nature is both kind and tame;
And veiled in them, did win whom he would maim.
Against the thing he sought he would exclaim;
When he most burned in heart-wished luxury
He preached pure maid, and praised cold chastity.
315
‘Thus, merely with the garment of a grace,
The naked and concealed fiend he covered,
That th’unexperient gave the tempter place
Which, like a cherubin, above them hovered.
Who, young and simple, would not be so lovered?
320
Ay me, I fell, and yet do question make
What I should do again for such a sake.
‘O, that infected moisture of his eye!
O, that false fire which in his cheek so glowed!
O, that forced thunder from his heart did fly!
325
O, that sad breath his spongy lungs bestowed!
O, all that borrowed motion, seeming owed,
Would yet again betray the fore-betrayed,
And new pervert a reconciled maid.’
Venus and Adonis; Lucrece; The Passionate Pilgrim; ‘The Phoenix and Turtle’
The first published works to name William Shakespeare as their author were two long narrative poems. Venus and Adonis was published in April 1593, a few days before its author’s twenty-ninth birthday, Lucrece (or The Rape of Lucrece), a year later. Their printer, Richard Field, was, like Shakespeare, a native of Stratford-upon-Avon. Both poems were dedicated to Henry Wriothesley (probably pronounced ‘Risely’ or ‘Rosely’), Earl of Southampton, a prominent member of the circle that surrounded Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, the rising star of the 1590s. The dedicatory epistle to Venus and Adonis describes it as ‘the first heir of my invention’ and vows to Southampton that if he likes it it will be followed by ‘some graver labour’ as a more fitting gift. That ‘graver labour’, Lucrece, had gone through nine editions by 1655: Venus and Adonis – on this evidence the most popular of all Shakespeare’s works in his own time – went through sixteen editions by 1640. A marginal note by Gabriel Harvey, made no later than February 1601, records that while Venus and Adonis delights ‘the younger sort’, Lucrece and Hamlet ‘have it in them, to please the wiser sort’.
The poems complement each other. Venus and Adonis rewrites the classical myth, best known from Ovid’s version in Book 10 of his Metamorphoses, turning it into a contest between Venus’ passion for a sulky, adolescent Adonis and his greater passion for hunting the boar (which leads to his death). The poem has been interpreted as an erotic celebration of love, a satire on the indignities of sex, or a platonic myth. What can safely be claimed is that it offers, in the predicament of Venus, a sharply defined embodiment of the urgency, perversity and contrariety of love – ‘She’s love, she loves, and yet she is not lov’d’ – as well as justifying her prophecy that love will always be attended by disaster and that ‘They that love best, their loves shall not enjoy’.
Lucrece handles a crucial episode from early Roman history, in which the rape of the chaste wife of the Roman general Collatinus by the king’s son, Sextus Tarquinius, and her subsequent suicide became the flint to fire the republican rebellion which expelled the Tarquin kings from Rome. This story, known to Shakespeare from Chaucer, Ovid and Livy, provided him with his first serious tragic theme, and his poem is replete with ideas and images that were to remain in his imagination for the rest of his career. Tarquin is his first self-destructive self-deceiver, whose lust destroys him as surely as it destroys his victim. The lengthy complaint of Lucrece is written in a familiar tradition of poems of female lamentation. After it, she likens her situation to the siege and fall of Troy, as represented in a picture, in Shakespeare’s first extended treatment of that most familiar topos of tragic deceit, loss and suffering. The poem has provoked new interest and has found a new readership among modern feminists.
William Jaggard’s unauthorized anthology The Passionate Pilgrim, ‘By W. Shakespeare’ (1599), contains only five poems which are certainly by him (three from Love’s Labour’s Lost (3, 5 and 16) and Sonnets 138 and 144 (1 and 2)). Shakespeare is known to have been displeased by the publication, as another author, Thomas Heywood (himself misappropriated by Jaggard in a later edition), has left on record.
‘The Phoenix and Turtle’ is Shakespeare’s most enigmatic work. It was published in a book entitled Love’s Martyr (1601), compiled and largely written by Robert Chester, who also commissioned contributions from other poets. Shakespeare’s poem relates to the subject matter of Chester’s book and may call to mind the ‘metaphysical’ manner of John Donne, but it also belongs in a long tradition of bird poems whose most famous English examples include Chaucer’s Parlement of Foules and the closing songs of Shakespeare’s own Love’s Labour’s Lost.
The Arden text is based on the first editions of Venus and Adonis (1593), Lucrece (1594), The Passionate Pilgrim (1599) and Robert Chester’s Love’s Martyr (1601).
Venus and Adonis
Vilia miretur vulgus: mihi flavus Apollo
Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua.
To the Right Honourable
Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton,
and Baron of Titchfield.
Right Honourable,
I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to your Lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burden. Only, if your Honour seem but pleased, I account myself highly praised; and vow to take advantage of all idle hours, till I have honoured you with some graver labour. But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather, and never after ear so barren a land, for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest. I leave it to your Honourable survey, and your Honour to your heart’s content, which I wish may always answer your own wish, and the world’s hopeful expectation.
Your Honour’s in all duty,
William Shakespeare.
Even as the sun with purple-colour’d face
Had ta’en his last leave of the weeping morn,
Rose-cheek’d Adonis hied him to the chase;
Hunting he lov’d, but love he laugh’d to scorn.
Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him,
5
And like a bold-fac’d suitor ’gins to woo him.
‘Thrice fairer than myself,’ thus she began,
‘The field’s chief flower, sweet above compare;
Stain to all nymphs, more lovely than a man,
More white and red than doves or roses are:
10
Nature that made thee with herself at strife,
Saith that the world hath ending with thy life.
‘Vouchsafe, thou wonder, to alight thy steed,
And rein his proud head to the saddle-bow;
&n
bsp; If thou wilt deign this favour, for thy meed
15
A thousand honey secrets shalt thou know.
Here come and sit, where never serpent hisses,
And being set, I’ll smother thee with kisses.
‘And yet not cloy thy lips with loath’d satiety,
But rather famish them amid their plenty,
20
Making them red, and pale, with fresh variety:
Ten kisses short as one, one long as twenty.
A summer’s day will seem an hour but short,
Being wasted in such time-beguiling sport.’
With this she seizeth on his sweating palm,
25
The precedent of pith and livelihood,
And trembling in her passion, calls it balm,
Earth’s sovereign salve to do a goddess good:
Being so enrag’d, desire doth lend her force
Courageously to pluck him from his horse.
30
Over one arm the lusty courser’s rein,
Under her other was the tender boy,
Who blush’d and pouted in a dull disdain,
With leaden appetite, unapt to toy:
She red and hot as coals of glowing fire,
35
He red for shame, but frosty in desire.
The studded bridle on a ragged bough
Nimbly she fastens – O how quick is love! –
The steed is stalled up, and even now
To tie the rider she begins to prove:
40
Backward she push’d him, as she would be thrust,
And govern’d him in strength, though not in lust.
So soon was she along as he was down,
Each leaning on their elbows and their hips;
Now doth she stroke his cheek, now doth he frown,
45
And ’gins to chide, but soon she stops his lips,
And kissing speaks, with lustful language broken,
‘If thou wilt chide, thy lips shall never open.’
He burns with bashful shame, she with her tears
Doth quench the maiden burning of his cheeks;
50
Then with her windy sighs and golden hairs
To fan and blow them dry again she seeks.
He saith she is immodest, blames her miss;
What follows more, she murders with a kiss.
Even as an empty eagle, sharp by fast,
55
Tires with her beak on feathers, flesh and bone,
Shaking her wings, devouring all in haste,
Till either gorge be stuff’d or prey be gone:
Even so she kiss’d his brow, his cheek, his chin,
And where she ends she doth anew begin.
60
Forc’d to content, but never to obey,
Panting he lies and breatheth in her face.
She feedeth on the steam as on a prey,
And calls it heavenly moisture, air of grace,
Wishing her cheeks were gardens full of flowers,
65
So they were dew’d with such distilling showers.
Look how a bird lies tangled in a net,
So fasten’d in her arms Adonis lies;
Pure shame and aw’d resistance made him fret,
Which bred more beauty in his angry eyes:
70
Rain added to a river that is rank
Perforce will force it overflow the bank.
Still she entreats, and prettily entreats,
For to a pretty ear she tunes her tale.
Still is he sullen, still he lours and frets,
75
’Twixt crimson shame and anger ashy pale.
Being red, she loves him best, and being white,
Her best is better’d with a more delight.
Look how he can, she cannot choose but love;
And by her fair immortal hand she swears,
80
From his soft bosom never to remove
Till he take truce with her contending tears,
Which long have rain’d, making her cheeks all wet:
And one sweet kiss shall pay this comptless debt.
Upon this promise did he raise his chin,
85
Like a dive-dapper peering through a wave,
Who being look’d on, ducks as quickly in:
So offers he to give what she did crave,
But when her lips were ready for his pay,
He winks, and turns his lips another way.
90
Never did passenger in summer’s heat
More thirst for drink than she for this good turn.
Her help she sees, but help she cannot get;
She bathes in water, yet her fire must burn.
‘Oh pity,’ ’gan she cry, ‘flint-hearted boy,
95
’Tis but a kiss I beg, why art thou coy?
‘I have been woo’d as I entreat thee now,
Even by the stern and direful god of war,
Whose sinewy neck in battle ne’er did bow,
Who conquers where he comes in every jar;
100
Yet hath he been my captive and my slave,
And begg’d for that which thou unask’d shalt have.
‘Over my altars hath he hung his lance,
His batter’d shield, his uncontrolled crest;
And for my sake hath learn’d to sport and dance,
105
To toy, to wanton, dally, smile and jest,
Scorning his churlish drum and ensign red,
Making my arms his field, his tent my bed.
‘Thus he that overrul’d I oversway’d,
Leading him prisoner in a red rose chain:
110
Strong-temper’d steel his stronger strength obey’d,
Yet was he servile to my coy disdain.
Oh be not proud, nor brag not of thy might,
For mast’ring her that foil’d the god of fight!
‘Touch but my lips with those fair lips of thine –
115
Though mine be not so fair, yet are they red –
The kiss shall be thine own as well as mine.
What see’st thou in the ground? hold up thy head,
Look in mine eye-balls, there thy beauty lies:
Then why not lips on lips, since eyes in eyes?
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The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 15
