Shakespeare's Adonis Illustrated - Adonis on canvas in the fifty years leading up to the writing of “Venus and Adonis”

Abstract

This thesis will focus on the poem “Venus and Adonis” by Shakespeare, which was written in 1593. The Adonis in this poem acts significantly different to the Adonis as described by Ovid about 1600 years earlier, in the Metamorphoses. I wanted to look into what could have inspired Shakespeare to change Adonis’ behaviour. I am aware I have no way of ascertaining this, so I have decided to focus on whether Shakespeare’s interpretation of the tale of Venus and Adonis was original or already a set tradition. I have decided to limit myself to one of the fields in which this tradition could have existed: the visual arts. If the way in which Adonis is represented in the visual arts is similar to the way Adonis behaves in Shakespeare’s “Venus and Adonis”, there is a possibility this unusual way of portraying Adonis was already a convention at the time. This could provide insight into what might have inspired Shakespeare when writing this poem.