Audrey Boyle

121 10AM Intro to Shakespeare

Lines 259 270

While reading Venus and Adonis, the scene where Adoniss horse sees a beautiful female

horse and runs away with her by far stood out the most to me. It seemed so ill-fitting. The rest of

the poem focuses entirely on Venus and Adonis themselves; no other characters appear until this

moment, if one considers the horses characters (which, based on the total of eleven stanzas

completely dedicated to the horses, is not exactly a stretch). Venus and Adonis is Shakespeares

own interpretation of the famous legend, but the original legend contains no mention of the

horse; Shakespeare independently chose to add this original scene. Thus, one can deem

Shakespeares inclusion of this scene clearly significant, if he wrote an entirely new scene for his

interpretation of the already-famous myth.

Why did Shakespeare include this scene? Firstly, he very well may have included it for

entertainment purposes. Shakespeare inundates the reader with the tale of Venus attempting to

seduce Adonis and the wide variety of ways she does so. An entire epyllion of uninterrupted

description of Venuss love and lust for Adonis may have been boring and repetitive even to

contemporaneous readers. Shakespeare may have interrupted the poem with a brief horse love

story purely to entertain readers by switching the narrative up a little.

Besides pure entertainment, the scene may represent events elsewhere in the poem. The

two horses mirror Venus and Adonis, or, rather, how Venus wants Adonis to act. As in the main

storyline, the female horse approaches the male horse first. She rushes, snorts, and neighs

aloud, running towards him, similar to the way Venus makes amain to Adonis in the first

stanza of the poem. However, unlike Adonis, the male horse breaketh his rein, and to her

straight goes he. The horse behaves how Venus wishes Adonis would; she wishes Adonis

would break his metaphorical reins that prevent him from reciprocating her love.
 Audrey Boyle
121 10AM Intro to Shakespeare
The male horse stomps at the bearing earth whose hollow womb resounds like

heavens thunder. If the horse represents Adonis, in this line, the earth could represent Venus.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, bearing can mean a part of a saddle to restrain a

horse, or figuratively, it can mean a check or restraint upon movements. Venus restrains

Adonis multiple times. Along with this, womb can mean, in biblical use, the stomach as the seat

of the feelings and affections; the heart, the soul. Adonis indeed wounds Venus with his

repeated rejections. Venuss womb is also literally empty (but she wants Adonis to change that).

Elsewhere in the poem, Venus begs Adonis to have sex with her and tells him it is only natural

for them to procreate to create a beautiful child.

Despite my initial confusion at the inclusion of this scene, after a closer reading and

analyzation of the stanzas, I realized its significance and its place within the poem as a whole.

Shakespeares word choice, the stanzas, and the scene as a whole is certainly deliberate and

masterful as ever.