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"It lies not in our power to love or hate, / For will in us is overruled by fate" (Marlowe, 167–8). In a world where love in unconventional forms is still not fully accepted, one can see the significance of these lines in the late sixteenth century when the open discussion of the physical aspects of love in any form was not socially acceptable. Christopher Marlowe wrote these words in one of his final works, the poem Hero and Leander, as a response to William Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis and society's views on sex and desire.
Marlowe, a man whose dabblings in the homosexual world were well known, presumably had a personal agenda of acceptance in writing this new version of an old classic, but his main message covered all erotic forms: the poem suggests that sex within the context of love is a beautiful and natural thing in any form and therefore should not be shunned as improper or distasteful. Physical desire is intertwined with divine love, not separate from it, he argues, and love cannot be restrained. In those two most truthful lines he shows the reader that love cannot be fought off or reasoned against; if it is true love, it is in the hands of fate, not human reason. In order to make these claims convincing, Marlowe utilized elements of Ovid's Venus and Adonis myth, the same ancient story upon which Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis is based. He also did so in order to make clear his poem was in response to Shakespeare's and to one particular argument within it: platonic love.
Shakespeare's epic Venus and Adonis was an entertaining, transgressive, and somewhat shocking piece in its time, as it turned a female goddess into a sex-driven creature and made a strong push for homosexuality as a lifestyle. To this representation, Marlowe had no negative response; it was Shakespeare's further hinting that Marlowe reacted to in his own poem. When Adonis is killed at the end of the story, it is unclear to the reader which choice was his fatal one: the female Venus or his male friends. With arguments possible for both sides, but no solid and convincing evidence for one above the other, the reader is left with a third option: that it was Adonis's choice of desire in any shape that lead to his bloody end. Shakespeare puts a new spin on this ancient tale and urges the reader to shun all desire and opt for a sexless love. This argument, which grew into a larger theme among his works—"desire is death"—relied heavily upon the influence of Plato's Symposium and Ovid's myth of Venus and Adonis, found in his masterpiece, the Metamorphoses.
Ovid's great fifteen-book work made an important contribution to Elizabethan England. Not only did it provide a basis for writers and artists alike in their society-conscious offerings, but it was a fundamental tool in the school system as well. Using the Metamorphoses in schools allowed for practice in Latin versification, but it was also utilized for the meanings within the tales. The Metamorphoses is filled with lessons of moral, philosophical, and political flavors, and it was deemed important that young boys be exposed to such ideas. Reading these tales also forced boys to think, and this was perhaps the Metamorphoses' greatest gift to the school system. Schoolboys had to read the stories and write their own interpretations or responses to them, and they were then given the opportunity to see how their thoughts matched up against those of respected scholars. Through these exercises, the youths were exposed to the societal significance each story held, and they could discover the different sides of social issues through the particular tale that was prevalent at the time.
As different myths arose in the writing and art of different times, they did so not by way of an accident or coincidence. The use of ancient myth as a basis for creative works allowed artists the opportunity to voice their opinions on social disagreements, no matter how transgressive their ideas, without having to take full ownership of them. The well-respected ancient myths provided them with a creative outlet, and this is exactly what occurred in Elizabethan England with the rise of the myth of Venus and Adonis.
Theories of Myth in Literature
Stories and fables have often been written in order to teach a moral lesson or provide commentary about societal issues. Many were adaptations or remakes of ancient Greek and Roman myths, as these old tales were well-known from being studied in primary schools. The reasons why certain myths were used again and again and why they appeared at the times that they did shed light upon the social and cultural history of am age.
In an analysis of the repeated use of the myth of Andromeda in Victorian literature, Adrienne Munich suggests that the use of myth correlates to periods of societal dispute over controversial issues. She argues that while the same myth may be used multiple times, its meaning can get twisted and changed within the contexts of the stories in which it is employed: "Each Victorian representation transforms the myth so that the composite picture over the sixty-year period, like theme and variations, yields apparently irreconcilable meanings. It is precisely this multiplicity that makes the study of Victorian Andromedas revealing—of cultural complexity and of a culture's ways of incorporating what it cannot confront directly" (Munich 1). What Munich found to be true in the Victorian period was also true in Elizabethan England. Both Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis and Marlowe's Hero and Leander make use of Ovid's myth of Venus and Adonis, but in such different ways that they hardly seem to resemble each other at all. The two writers, however, both based their works on the ancient tale, and both for the purpose of making a statement about homosexuality.
The use of the myth allowed Shakespeare and Marlowe to raise the topics of love, lust, and sex between two men—subjects not socially acceptable at the time. It is true that Renaissance love poetry often touched upon the idea of love's consummation, but it did so in discussing its denial, and certainly not with the detail used by Marlowe and Shakespeare. Their highly erotic writing and descriptions of sex actually taking place were deemed inappropriate at that time: "With this shift toward deplatonizing love, however, the frustrated physical appetite of Tantalus begins to take on a new relevance to the poet/lover" (Tromly 156). The repeated use of certain myths places emphasis not on the past from whence they come; instead, the intended meaning of the revamped stories can be found in the culture of their present: "Victorians were aware that classical revivals, particularly in the arts, reflected the contemporary concerns of the age, not necessarily those of the antique past" (Munich 4). Writers often disguised their societal opinions in the employment of ancient myth, but they were not the only group to utilize this method. Artists too found that by using classical figures and stories as subjects, they could expose the public to their points of view and ideas without directly supporting them. In looking at a few pieces by the famous Italian Renaissance painter Titian (Tiziano Vecellio, c. 1485–1576), one can clearly see the influence of Ovid's Venus and Adonis myth as well as Plato's views in his Symposium on love and lust.
Titian's painting Venus and Adonis (1555) is shady and turbulent throughout, using dark and murky colors to lay the shadowy scene. Venus is completely naked, while Adonis is clothed and standing above her, symbolizing lust as a sin of the flesh and love as a superior force separate from sex. The Venus figure struggles to keep Adonis with her, trying to tear off his clothes in a desperate attempt to force sex on him; the depiction borders on rape and gives the viewer the impression of lust as violent and ugly. Adonis, on the other hand, the figure of Heavenly Love, looks down on Venus with superior contempt and disgust to show the distinction between pure love and earthly lust. It is in this separation by personification of love and lust that the influence of Plato's Symposium is clear, and thus one could infer that the painter is indirectly supporting the ideas of Plato's writings.
A second important Titian work addressing theories of love and lust is his painting Sacred and Profane Love (1515). Again he uses two figures and contrasts them with nudity and clothing, but in the opposite manner; Heavenly Love is naked, while Earthly Love is fully clothed. While expressing to the viewer that nudity can be pure and adornment sexual, the painting still shows signs of influence from Plato and calls to mind Shakespeare's ideas. The clothed figure wears a revealing dress and has a seductive look on her face, while the nude figure looks serene and innocent, drawing attention away from her naked body to the emotions her face depicts. The background is split as well; behind the figure of lust, the landscape is dark and forest-filled, complete with a number of rabbits, which traditionally symbolize fertility and sex. Behind the nude figure of pure love, the background is open, clear, and light, with horses playing in the field, the same animal Shakespeare uses in Venus and Adonis to symbolize companionate love.
Even the title of this work, Sacred and Profane Love, seems to parallel Plato's ideas of a Venus split into heavenly and earthly loves. The only oddity is that the nude figure is the Sacred Love and the clothed one Profane. Perhaps this painting shows a mixture of writers' ideas, with some influence by Plato and others who inspired Shakespeare, but also draws from the beliefs on sex in the context of love later shared by Marlowe. Titian does not truly confront the debate about homosexuality in this particular work, but this does not mean that he disagrees with homosexual desire; the two figures hail directly from Plato's Symposium views, a split in the Aphrodite/Venus persona—one that, while female, symbolizes all worldly loves. His emphasis echoes Marlowe's in Hero and Leander, portraying to the reader that nudity and sex in the context of true, pure love are not lewd or sinful, but Heavenly and divine.
Titian's works are very well known and have been studied extensively to find these intended meanings behind their beauty, but this does not mean he is the only artist to have used the Venus and Adonis myth. In fact, a number of painters during Titian's time turned out pieces based on the ancient tale of the eponymous lovers, including Paolo Veronese (1528–1588), Annibale Carracci (1560–1609), Luca Cambiaso (1527–1585), and Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640). With the exception of the Flemish Rubens, all of these are Early Renaissance Italian painters, colleagues of Titian; the frequency of the myth's use at that time is evidence of its cultural significance.
The increased appearance of certain myths at certain times occurs when a tale's moral, political, or philosophical lessons can be used in ideological debates current at the time. The use by Renaissance writers and painters, including Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Titian, of the Ovidian Venus and Adonis myth leads the curious observer to question the various artists' motives. We see that at this point in time, ideas on sex, love, lust, and their place in the public sphere were being debated; through the employment of the myth in their works, these writers and painters could voice their opinions in an indirect manner on a topic that, while changing, was still seen as taboo.
Ovid's Metamorphoses in Elizabethan England
The myth of Venus and Adonis, upon which Shakespeare based his epic poem, finds its roots in the Metamorphoses. This was not the first time an author used Ovidian myth in the foundation of his work, nor was it the last. Marlowe, too, wrote Ovidian-based stories, such as Hero and Leander, and his ancient influence is noticeable in other Shakespearean works as well, including Titus Andronicus, A Winter's Tale, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the Sonnets (Taylor 11). It appears that "for a time . . . English poets felt they could exploit the philosophical gravitas accorded to Ovid's witty fables, both by the humanists and by the educational system they founded, as a means of meddling with impunity in the affairs of the rich and powerful" (Maslen 28). Many of Ovid's tales teach moral lessons of love, sex, and general conduct, and often his characters who face misfortune and are in need of these lessons are those in power. By employing these myths in their poetry and plays, English writers could send the message that the rich and powerful are often corrupt and should not be exempt from punishment or penalty.
Ovidian interpretation and use was not always in accordance with these motives, however. Ovid's writings were studied and mimicked in pre-Shakespeare Elizabethan England, and his works were treated much differently: "Readings and imitations of Ovid's Metamorphoses before Shakespeare were very much more sophisticated—and more politically engaged—than scholars have often been willing to concede" (Maslen 28). In early Elizabethan England, the Metamorphoses were revered and studied in schools because of the moral and philosophical lessons within them as well as the extra Latin practice they provided for the young boys: "The Metamorphoses was widely used as a means of introducing boys to Latin versification in the upper forms of grammar schools through a rigorous process of translation and imitation" (Maslen 17). These young schoolboys studied and wrote imitations of Ovid in order to prepare themselves for the "themes" they had to write, a sort of rite of passage in the English school system. They were "encouraged to decipher the mysteries from the tales in the Metamorphoses: to dig beneath its layers of fiction in an effort to recover the most precious secrets of the ancient world, whether moral, philosophical, historical, or scientific" (Maslen 16). These "themes" combined Ovid's moral lessons, which could be looked at as warnings to the young and rash, and an exercise in writing for the young boys. Through these exercises, they learned "to deploy all their imaginative resources to transform the simplest of narratives into sophisticated moral and political disquisitions" (Maslen 18). Perhaps the schoolmasters recognized the worth of these life lessons Ovid wrote of and thought they were best introduced early in the life of a young man. The exercise of writing about them went beyond just reading these tales; it forced the young schoolboys to think about the morals, understand them, and possibly incorporate them into their lives.
Interestingly, Shakespeare mocks these writing exercises in a few of his works, including Venus and Adonis. In line 422, Adonis makes reference to Venus's advances as "this idle theme," and repeats this characterization in line 770 with "your idle, over-handled theme." By comparing the two, he is calling the themes repetitive and useless as he depicts Venus's courting of Adonis to be. This may have been Shakespeare's opinion, but the themes did give young boys the "opportunity to read old stories in clever new ways" (Maslen 19), thus allowing them the chance to compare their thought and interpretations to those of early scholars (Maslen 19).
While the Metamorphoses were a respected and important part of the education system of that time, not everyone saw Ovid's fables in so positive a light. On the surface, Ovid's writings teach the reader some fundamental life lessons; like most any piece of literature, however, reading deeper and between the lines offers up other interpretations of his message as well: "In the sixteenth century, then, the reading of Ovid was a highly dangerous matter. On the one hand the Metamorphoses could be read as a powerful incitement to follow Reason and abstain from Lust … On the other hand, the same poem could be explained as an incitement to sexual depravity, violence, even tyranny. Titus Andronicus demonstrates Shakespeare's acute sensitivity to the political implications of the different ways of reading a classical text—a text which occupied a central place in the humanist school curriculum" (Maslen 16–17). From the first imitation of Ovidian myth in Elizabethan England, the anonymous The fable of Ovid treting of Narcissus in 1560 (Maslen 20), the stage was set for the debate over the wide variety of readings and interpretations that one could take from the Metamorphoses along with the moral and political ramifications of each.
Even seemingly clear-cut stories could be interpreted incorrectly and with immoral consequences. The beginning of the Venus and Adonis myth, for example, incorporates a lesson of sexual deviancy into the story of Adonis's background, but read the wrong way, it could have serious repercussions. Adonis is the product of his mother Myrrha and her own father, Cinyras; while Myrrha ends up turning into a tree, this occurs as a result of her own request for punishment. Meanwhile, her father is not punished at all, and thus, with incorrect guidance, an impressionable reader could learn that nothing is wrong with this sort of incestuous act.
Over the next century, however, as Shakespeare and Marlowe came onto the literary scene, writers looked less to Ovid for the moral elements of his Metamorphoses and more for his wit. Shakespeare and Marlowe both used Ovidian myth as a basis for some of their highly erotic stories: "Shakespeare and Marlowe raise through their treatment of the erotic, questions about what is morally acceptable in terms of both behaviour and literary expression. Their response to Ovid is partly a response to the subject of freedom … the erotic enjoys free play, even determines the shape and nature of the poetic experience, in a way that is unprecedented in earlier Tudor poetry" (Roe 31–32). This freedom allowed by Ovidian myth gave Shakespeare the latitude to play with the conventions of poetry and the subject of eroticism. His use of iambic pentameter, for example, "enables him to match the fluency, agility, and compression of Ovid, and—most important—gives him freedom over the treatment of his subject" (Roe 33–34). At a time when sex and carnal desire were taboo subjects, Shakespeare found a way to write tales riddled not only with sexual innuendo, but with indirect forays into the topic of homosexuality as well. He sneaks in these references among witty dialogues and descriptions, keeping the tone light and amusing when appropriate: "The sophistication of his verse allows him to laugh in the right places and ensure that the reader does not smile unless such a response is called for. In this he summons to his poem an Ovidian delight in folly and discomfort" (Roe 34). Venus and Adonis is a tragic tale with a morbid ending, but other parts of the narrative are beautiful or graphic in description; humorous passages are intertwined so skillfully with death and desire that the reader experiences the full spectrum of emotions at the appropriate times.
The Venus and Adonis myth finds its roots in Book X of the Metamorphoses and begins with Adonis's incestuous origins. Shakespeare's epic omits any mention of Myrrha's guilt and metamorphosis (Simpson 175–76), but in Ovid, Myrrha and Venus both illustrate to the reader the power of Cupid's influence, as neither could overcome their feelings for their beloved, no matter how ill-fated or ill-suited that love. Marlowe's Hero falls victim to the same power of love, and Hero and Leander communicates this idea in lines 167–168: "It lies not in our power to love or hate, / For will in us is overruled by fate." In Venus's case, Cupid's prick is accidental, but irreversible nonetheless, and she falls in love with the beautiful Adonis. She warns Adonis, who is young and unafraid, to stay away from similarly fearless armed beasts such as lions, boars, and other fierce and savage animals (Simpson 177). As in Shakespeare's poem, Adonis does not heed the goddess's warning, and he is killed by the wild boar; his death is commemorated in the myth with the creation of a flower, the anemone, red for his blood and with petals blown off easily by the wind which gives the flower its name (Simpson 180–81).
Fundamentally, Shakespeare's tale accurately imitates Ovid's myth, but there are a few differences, mainly in tone. In the original story of the ill-fated lovers, Adonis does not seem deeply disturbed by Venus's attraction to him, but he does not shun her affection as he does in Shakespeare's epic: "Shakespeare seizes the opportunity which Ovid gives him of presenting a woman more in love than the man she loves but he creates a more pronounced (and more comic) antithesis than we find even in Ovid, according to whom Adonis is willing enough but a mite indifferent" (Roe 43). This is a noticeable difference between the two works, and it drastically changes the tone of the story. While in Ovid's myth Adonis appears to be a naïve teenager flitting around carelessly, Shakespeare portrays him as a bold young man who is literally repulsed by Venus's advances and cares only about hunting with his male friends. In the original story, Adonis dies alone, not while hunting with his friends; this distinct change between Ovid's tale and Shakespeare's newer version is perhaps most significant, because it is here that we enter into the realm of sexual preference and its consequences.
By altering Adonis's mind state from indifference to repulsion and by having him make the choice of hunting with his male companions over making love to Venus, Shakespeare introduces the idea of homosexuality and the repercussions of his choice. He certainly does not directly label Adonis's choice a sexual one, but he does indirectly imply it in his tone and language, and this is not the only example of writing in which he does so. The Sonnets are also filled with sexual inferences teetering between homo- and heterosexual preference, and even the classic love story Romeo and Juliet can be read for homosexual suggestions. While Ovid's version of the tale of Venus and Adonis does not include the homosexual tone that Shakespeare's does, another story within Book X of the Metamorphoses does incorporate such elements: the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice.
In the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, Orpheus is to marry his great love Eurydice when she suddenly dies. He is so distraught that he goes to Hades to beg for her life back; a deal is made and she is allowed to live again, but Orpheus must escort her back through the valley of Avernus without looking back at her. At the last minute, he turns back in excitement, and his bride is lost once again. After this second tragic death of Eurydice, Orpheus is miserable and rejects women completely out of grief and a need to remain faithful to his twice-dead bride (Simpson 165–67).
Orpheus, however, does not entirely reject the idea of companionship; rather, he singles out females to turn his back on, and Ovid makes a point to show this: "He even taught the men of Thrace to turn their desire to tender males and so to pluck the first blossoms boys offer in that brief springtime before they become young men" (Simpson 167). This lesson of Orpheus's echoes that of Plato in his Symposium when he tells man to "turn to the male, and delight in him who is the more valiant and intelligent nature." So we see that not only does he promote the idea of homosexuality, but he also believes in male superiority. A similar theme is again noticeable in Ovid as Orpheus denounces female desire as well: "Now I need a lighter melody, so let us sing of boys loved by gods and girls gone mad with forbidden desire and rightly punished for their lust" (Simpson 168).
One could interpret Ovid's meaning in two different ways, as Petrarch and Marlowe did. Petrarch displayed misogyny in much of his poetry, "selecting examples of female cruelty from the Metamorphoses and elaborating them as an expression of his continuing unfulfilled relationship with Laura" (Roe 41). His sonnets depicted females as evil, wooing men into their clutches and then torturing them emotionally, not a far reach from Ovid's image. Marlowe, on the other hand, did not choose to elaborate on the seeming distaste for females evident in the Orpheus myth, but rather sees humor in it and pokes fun at the Petrarchan sonnet tradition: "Marlowe just as ingeniously sets Ovid's imagery free from a life of service in the sonnet-pathos tradition, giving it back its former wry detachment. Ovid would doubtless have preferred Marlowe's kind of poetic to Petrarch's" (Roe 41). Marlowe and Shakespeare found much humor in Ovid's writings in other instances as well, so this reading of his "female as evil" remarks is not surprising, nor is it terribly presumptuous to assert that Ovid himself would have preferred this interpretation.
Ovid's tales were not always valued for the writer's lessons of sexuality. The focus was mainly respect for his wit and the moral and philosophical ideas within his fables, which is why his Metamorphoses were such an important part of the English school system in the early part of the Elizabethan era. As the sixteenth century came to a close, however, writers found another value within the great Roman myths: eroticism. Shakespeare and Marlowe alike based their erotic tales on Ovidian myth, perhaps to give them a more respectable foundation, or perhaps to pay homage to the great poet himself. Whatever the reason, the Metamorphoses began to be revered for more than their Latin versification and political ideals. Shakespeare drew out Ovid's wit and his cleverly hidden sexual innuendos, and with this background he found the freedom to express his own ideas on the subject of homosexuality as well.
Ovid in Shakespeare: Desire is Death
The Ovidian Venus and Adonis myth as the foundation for his epic poem named for the lovers provided Shakespeare with a compelling storyline and a witty style with which he could play, giving him free rein to write his creative masterpiece. Venus and Adonis makes "ingenious use of fables which had been central to the Elizabethan literary scene from the 1560s onward" (Maslen 28–29). The freedom Shakespeare found through Ovid's tale allowed him to experiment and toy with convention, resulting in a highly sexual story with multiple levels of meaning.
Venus and Adonis was not Shakespeare's only foray into the world of sexuality within his works; the Sonnets, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Romeo and Juliet all share his flair for the erotic. As we look at this sampling of Shakespeare's literary works, readers can see a common theme among them: the tragedy of desire. The epic poem Venus and Adonis follows this familiar project, illustrating through the tragic tale of the eponymous lovers' lust that "desire is death." The work is defiantly against heterosexual sex; its focal message is that men and women are like parallel lines, running alongside one another, but not fitting together.
While this is the epic's main theme, Shakespeare's project is not solely to convince the reader of the dangers of desire. In Shakespeare's many works, man is constantly searching for the solution to Time and Death, or his own mortality. Venus and Adonis tells the reader that the answer is love, in its highest and purest form, and this sentiment is expressed in some other Shakespearean works as well. In the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, the young star-crossed lovers do not escape death in physical terms, but through their undying love for one another their divine souls live on, transcending the physical world. Their love achieves immortality in the creation of their memorial statues, in which they forever remain young, beautiful lovers, untouchable by Time and Decay.
A more direct statement of love as the passage out of mortality's constraints can be seen in Sonnet #15 of Shakespeare's famous poetic sequence:
When I consider everything that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment;
That this huge stage presenteth naught but shows
Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;
When I perceive that men as plants increase,
Cheered and check'd even by the self-same sky,
Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,
And wear their brave state out of memory:
Then the conceit of this inconstant stay
Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,
Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay
To change your day of youth to sullied night
And all in war with Time for love of you
As he takes from you, I ingraft you new.
In this sonnet, Shakespeare discusses the constant battle between Time, coupled with Decay, and youthful beauty. Man cannot beat these cancers alone and keep from aging, but there is a way out: love. The narrator of the poem, Will, is sending the message to his beloved fair youth that through his pure, unwavering love, he can renew the boy's beauty and youth and provide him with eternal immortality, the solution to Time and Death. Venus and Adonis takes this approach once again, championing love as the link to the divine, yet the poem distinctly discourages male-female unions. It is this paradox that is the basis of Shakespeare's more subtle project—the promotion of homosexuality.
From the beginning of the poem, Shakespeare paints opposing pictures of Venus and Adonis. Interestingly, in lines 1–6 he chooses to do a role reversal of sorts by giving the male Adonis a physical description and the female Venus a mental one, which is quite atypical:
Even as the sun with purple-color'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,
And like a bold-fac'd suitor gins to woo him.
Adonis is described as "rose-cheek'd," while the female Venus is noted as being "sick-thoughted." Even in the first two lines of the poem this role reversal can be seen as the male sun-god is the character described physically, "with purple-color'd face," while the female goddess of the dawn is left without image, weeping because the sun-god has left her bed. This split between the male and female personas sets up the unrequited nature of Venus's love for Adonis, and, essentially, the idea that heterosexual desire for humans is doomed.
Both character descriptions in Shakespeare's epic differ from that of Ovid's myth. Adonis, while innocent and willing enough in Ovid's tale, becomes disdainful and scornful of Venus's advances in Shakespeare's poem. The more interesting change, however, is Venus's metamorphosis from a beautiful goddess in love to Shakespeare's depiction of a rapist-like persona. This change is drastic and unexpected, leaving the reader questioning its inspiration: "In 1978, S. Clark Hulse accounted for the difference between Shakespeare's and Ovid's Venus by offering Titian's painting of Venus and Adonis, as well as Hero and Leander as the possible source for Shakespeare's portrait of Venus as a ‘rapist'" (Kolin 301). Titian's painting is dark and tumultuous, with only the figures of Venus and Adonis in lighter colors. Venus is nude, desperately clinging to Adonis, struggling to hold him to her as he pulls away. He looks down at her contemptuously while attempting to leave and follow his dogs to the hunt. Further forceful imagery can be seen in lines 545–60 of Marlowe's Hero and Leander, a poem that also gives Venus the masculine role (Leander) and Adonis the chaste female (Hero):
Albeit Leander, rude in love, and raw,
Long dallying with Hero, nothing saw
That might delight him more, yet he suspected
Some amorous rites or other were neglected.
Therefore unto his body hers he clung;
She, fearing on the rushes to be flung,
Strived with redoubled strength; the more she strivèd,
The more a gentle pleasing heat revivèd,
Which taught him all that elder lovers know.
And now the same 'gan so to scorch and glow,
As in plain terms (yet cunningly) he craved it;
Love always makes those eloquent that have it.
She, with a kind of granting, put him by it,
And ever as he thought himself most nigh it,
Like to the tree of Tantalus she fled,
And, seeming lavish, saved her maidenhead.
In this passage, the reader is confronted with a scene of rape narrowly escaped; transforming Hero and Leander back into the personas that inspired them, the reader can see the parallels between Marlowe's tale and Shakespeare's epic. Combine Hero and Leander with Titian's Venus and Adonis, and the reader is no longer questioning Shakespeare's source for his depiction of Venus as a rapist and his argument that heterosexual unions in human beings are inherently wrong and doomed.
While Shakespeare attempts to make a provocative statement against human male-female unions, he does not object to the existence of heterosexual relationships in other beings. There is a single image of companionate desire in this poem, a description of two horses in the beginning:
But lo from forth a copse that neighbors by, A breeding jennet, lusty, young, and proud, Adonis' trampling courser doth espy;
And forth she rushes, snorts, and neighs aloud.
The strong-neck'd steed, being tied unto a tree,
Breaketh his rein, and to her straight goes he.
In this passage, the male and female horses catch glimpses of one another, and rush together simultaneously with equal desire. Venus has been busy chasing Adonis and desperately searching for this type of affection, but, ironically, companionate love blooms instead between two animals that were not even looking for it. This passage shows that mutual desire only occurs as an animal condition and is not for humans, foreshadowing the argument against corporealized desire to come.
The lust between Venus and Adonis takes a visual form in lines 229–40 as Venus describes her body and what it can do for Adonis. Shakespeare distinctly keeps from describing Venus's physical appearance earlier in the poem to establish a role reversal, but his choice to offer some representation of her physicality does not contradict this design. Venus's physical description is proffered by the goddess herself, and used as a weapon of seduction on Adonis; this differs greatly from a graphic, titillating narrative given by the lustful male observer. Instead, that sort of outsider's sketch of a character's bodily appearance is given about the male character, Adonis—perhaps an early clue to the subtle promotion of homosexuality to come.
The passage is filled with sexual innuendo as Shakespeare uses nature as a metaphor for the female body:
"Fondling," she saith, "since I have hemm'd thee here Within the circuit of this ivory pale, I'll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer:
Feed where thou wilt, on mountain, or in dale;
Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry,
Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.
"Within this limit is relief enough, Sweet bottom grass and high delightful plain, Round rising hillocks, brakes obscure and rough, To shelter thee from tempest and from rain;
Then be my deer, since I am such a park,
No dog shall rouse thee, though a thousand bark."
The sexual tone of the language serves two purposes: to arouse the reader's desire, and to entice Adonis, using his chosen activity of hunting to encourage sex. Venus claims that she can shelter Adonis from the dangers of the world with the lines, "To shelter thee from tempest and from rain; / Then be my deer, since I am such a park, / No dog shall rouse thee, though a thousand bark." This description is a manifestation of desire with a strong cognitive idea that the female body is the long sought-after solution to Time and Death. Venus and Adonis, however, introduces this idea and then promptly shuts it down when Adonis dies despite Venus's desire.
While Venus claims that her body will shield Adonis and keep him safe, lines 557–58 counter her "deer park" representation and cast a negative light on sex: "Planting oblivion, beating reason back, / Forgetting shame's pure blush and honor's wrack." In these lines, reason is losing the battle to Venus's desperate desire. This passage is significant because it symbolizes the fight between human and animal, but the fight is interior and mental rather than physical. Reason is what characterizes the human identity, what separates man from beast, while throughout this poem lust is shown to be primitive, raw, and animalistic.
The outcome of this battle is of extreme importance, as the identity of the victor will proclaim which persona holds true power over man's mind: human reason or animal desire. Contrary to Venus's earlier claim that her body can shield Adonis from all danger, these lines send the powerful message that sexual passion is dangerous, and that man should avoid it or risk losing his identity as human.
Sexual desire is criticized yet again in lines 793–804 when the author sketches a comparison of love and lust in Adonis's speech to Venus, where he proclaims her desire to be mere primitive lust:
"Call it not love, for Love to heaven is fled,
Since sweating Lust on earth usurp'd his name,
Under whose simple semblance he hath fed
Upon fresh beauty, blotting it with blame;
Which the hot tyrant stains, and soon bereaves,
As caterpillars do the tender leaves.
"Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,
But Lust's effect is tempest after sun;
Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain,
Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done;
Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies;
Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies."
Love is associated with good feelings, beauty, and a positive response, leading to affirmation of character. Lust, on the other hand, is considered to be ugly, sinful, and something to be avoided, as it leads to degeneracy of the human identity.
The young and inexperienced Adonis, knowing of love and lust only from books, rejects Venus, saying he sees only lust in her affections and not the pure, comforting truth of real love. Venus may very well love Adonis as well as lust after him, but it is overpowered by her sweaty, stormy desire. Her feelings remain unbalanced and unrequited by Adonis, continuing to support this work's established theory that companionate desire cannot exist in humans.
The intent of this poem is not to scorn all feelings of love and desire; in fact, it seems to strongly support the idea of pure love between two souls, shown by the glowing descriptions of love in Adonis's speech. In his Symposium, Plato uses the goddess Aphrodite, Venus's Greek counterpart, to further describe the split between beautiful love and dangerous lust. Plato shows that there are two goddesses of love: Earthly, or "common," and Heavenly. He then explains the split of emotions by stating, "For we all know that Love is inseparable from Aphrodite, and if there were only one Aphrodite, there would be only one Love; but as there are two goddesses there must be two loves" (Jowett 153).
It is the Earthly goddess persona whom the reader encounters in Shakespeare's poem, characterized by the importance of her physical body. The poem's events illustrate Plato's claim that if man links with this Earthly Aphrodite, he is doomed: "But the Love who is the son of the common Aphrodite is essentially common, and has no discrimination, being such as the meaner sort of men feel, and is apt to be of women as well as of youths, and is of the body rather than of the soul—the most foolish beings are the objects of this love which desires only to gain an end, but never thinks of accomplishing the end nobly, and therefore does good and evil quite indiscriminately" (Jowett 153). Heavenly Aphrodite, however, can make man immortal: "not every love, but only that which has a noble purpose, is noble and worthy of praise" (Jowett 153). Interestingly, in Plato's praise of this "noble" love, he implies that homosexuality fits its mold with the line, "Those who are inspired by this [noble] love turn to the male, and delight in him who is the more valiant and intelligent nature" (Jowett 153). Plato is trying to show that man should turn his gaze from physical beauty to the abstract "form" or "ideal" of beauty. He makes the distinction that "open loves are held to be more honorable than secret ones, and that the love of the noblest and highest, even if their persons are less beautiful than others, is especially honorable" (Jowett 154).
Adonis himself sees the distinction between Heavenly and Earthly love, and calls Venus on her predilection toward the physical in lines 789–92:
I hate not love, but your device in love That lends embracements unto every stranger You do it for increase: O strange excuse! When reason is the bawd to lust's abuse.
Venus claims love to be her motive, but Adonis responds to her trickery by denying the truth of her claim, arguing that she is misinterpreting her lustful feelings as love. Although Adonis is portrayed as indifferent and seemingly immune to feelings of love, the truth is that he is merely unaffected by Venus's lustful advances; in this passage he begins by stating that he does not hate love, merely her "device in love." He is very much open to pure, Heavenly Love: "So Venus is shown as the destructive agent of sensual love; Adonis, as reason in love. The one sullies whatever it touches; the other honors and makes it beautiful. The one is false and evil; the other is all truth, all good. Reason in love, truth, beauty—these are the weapons with which lust must be met, or the ideals of man must go down in defeat before the appetites" (Kolin 105). Sensuality is distinctly associated with lust, standing in opposition to love in its pure and honorable form. Again the female is pitted against the male, and lust is clearly distinguished from love.
While there are, of course, sexual elements to homosexuality, Plato and Shakespeare focus on the spiritual and emotional power of true, "noble" love, and, in a sense, de-sexualize love by praising its honorability so highly. When man chooses this higher, more spiritual love, only then can he see the truth and link with the divine; this is the true passage out of time and death, not the physical body of a woman, as Shakespeare's Venus claims.
Shakespeare himself alludes to this distinction in his language, essentially constructing the female body as a deadly poison, such as in the line describing Venus's lips as "dripping with death." His language becomes savage and fierce in lines 547–58, the passage in which Adonis finally gives in to Venus's lustful advances and kisses her.
Now quick desire hath caught the yielding prey,
And glutton-like she feeds, yet never filleth;
Her lips are conquerors, his lips obey,
Paying what ransom the insulter willeth;
Whose vultur thought doth pitch the price so high
That she will draw his lips' rich treasure dry.
And having felt the sweetness of the spoil,
With blindfold fury she begins to forage;
Her face doth reek and smoke, her blood doth boil,
And careless lust stirs up a desperate courage,
Planting oblivion, beating reason back,
Forgetting shame's pure blush and honor's wrack.
The ugliness of this mortal desire is illustrated in such lines as "her face doth reek and smoke, her blood doth boil," and images of Venus "feeding" and "foraging" on the treasures of Adonis's lips. Again, Shakespeare's words also send the message that desire between man and woman, in the form of the Earthly Venus, is unbalanced and non-companionate: "Now quick desire hath caught the yielding prey, / . . . Her lips are conquerors, his lips obey." Through these lines he continues to communicate the idea that desire is animal-like and unrequited, like a hunt.
In relating to the reader Adonis's repulsion and Venus's desperate desire, Shakespeare employs strong language, but he maintains the overall tone of the epic with moments of comic relief. He includes some "deliberately farcical moments" (Roe 33), such as lines 595–600:
Now is she in the very lists of love,
Her champion mounted for the hot encounter,
All is imaginary she doth prove,
He will not manage her, although he mount her,
That worse than Tantalus' is her annoy,
To clip Elysium and to lack her joy.
Again he uses imagery of horses, but this time as a humorous device in order to show how delusional Venus has become under love's spell. She is trying to keep Adonis from going off to hunt the boar, sensing the mortal danger this activity poses to her beloved, so she pulls him down on top of her. In this compromising position, she imagines that he reciprocates her feelings, but through Shakespeare's verse it is both obvious and quite amusing to the reader that Adonis has no intention of making love to her, that he is merely looking for his easiest exit. Taking a lesson from Ovid, Shakespeare "introduces the effect of bathos into the love of Venus for Adonis, but he does so by intention" (Roe 33). The overdone pathos lightens the tone after the highly graphic passage before, while still communicating the message that Venus's desire for Adonis is not shared by him.
Heterosexual sex is most definitely problematic in this poem, and the reader is left wondering what man is supposed to do. The author encourages true love and linking with the divine, the Heavenly Venus, but strongly opposes heterosexual unions. Indirectly, Shakespeare may very well be introducing homosexuality as the best solution in man's search for an escape from Time and Death. Venus is a goddess, and she desperately desires Adonis, yet he would rather join his male friends on a hunt for the boar than share in anything with her. Earthly Venus is meant to represent all mortal women, so when Adonis rejects her, it begs the question, to whom is he attracted?
Over the centuries, many critics have theorized that this tragic poem is one of a number of Shakespeare's works with an underlying homosexual theme. Much like his Sonnets, Venus and Adonis paints the female in a negative, unappealing manner, while the male character is depicted as beautiful, the "man right fair." Indeed, this epic poem resembles the first seventeen sonnets of the series in its prescriptive treatment of the procreative imperative as well, concerned more with the importance of pure love than the human obligation to procreate. Finally, there is the matter of the epic's dedication; Shakespeare dedicated Venus and Adonis to his longtime patron, the Earl of Southampton, a young noble who is also assumed to be the male subject of his sonnet sequence, once again linking the homosexual elements in the two works.
Ovidian influence can be seen as furthering these homoerotic suggestions in the reading of his original myths, but Marlowe as well, in his use of the myth of Venus and Adonis in Hero and Leander, promotes the idea of homosexuality as the answer:
The men of wealthie Sestos, everie yeare,
(For his sake whom their godesse held so deare,
Rose-cheekt Adonis) kept a solemne feast,
Thither resorted many a wandering guest,
To meet their loves; such as had none at all,
Came lovers home, from this great festival.
Roe suggests, "Almost from the start there runs through his poem an Ovidian, subversive undercurrent which carries a homoerotic agenda. The (male) worshippers come to celebrate not Venus herself but the boy whom Venus loved" (39). Shakespeare's case for homosexuality appears to carry even more weight as it floats under the surface of a number of his own works, as well as in that of his colleague Marlowe.
Perhaps homosexuality is the answer to Time and Death. Adonis's story, however, still poses one problem: he dies while hunting with his male friends, the activity he has chosen over sex with Venus. The question of what led to Adonis's death becomes problematic, because while he does give in to Venus's kiss, representing heterosexual desire, he dies when he chooses his male friends over her, representing homosexual desire. The reader is left wondering, which indulgence cost Adonis his life? Scholars have previously read Venus and Adonis as a promotion of homosexuality, but they were still troubled by the question, "And why is Adonis killed for what he didn't do or, worse yet, why didn't he do it?" (Kolin 203)
Shakespeare suggests repeatedly that "desire is death," but it seems here to be expanded to possibly include all desire. While he promotes homosexuality above heterosexuality, it appears that he rejects the "earthly" or physical versions of both equally. It can be argued that Venus and Adonis actually presents the idea that any type of sexual desire, if corporealized, puts man in mortal danger. Thus, Shakespeare's endorsement is not simply of homosexuality above all else, but a "heavenly," spiritualized version that focuses on the divine union of two souls in love.
Adonis's death also introduces the question of the consequences of female desire. While it is true that Venus is a goddess, and therefore immortal, in this story she is meant to represent all mortal women. It is Venus's raging lust and desperate desire that overpower the reader, yet Adonis dies while Venus remains unharmed. If Shakespeare truly means to convince the reader that all desire is poisonous and fatal, should not female desire come with some consequence as well?
In the tragic poem Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare successfully illustrates that "desire is death." His language continually depicts lust as an ugly, animalistic force in his attempt to show the reader that it is not meant for human indulgence. Shakespeare has always seemed ahead of his time, and perhaps this poem is no exception. What could be viewed as a simple critique of heterosexual lust may in fact be an early argument for the alternative of homosexuality.
Marlowe's Response: An Inherent Homosexuality
While sexual desire, often coupled with a homoerotic undercurrent, is a common Shakespearean theme, he was not the only writer of his time to tackle the subject. Christopher Marlowe, a renowned colleague of Shakespeare with well-known homosexual tendencies, often wrote about sex as well, even employing the same Ovidian myth of Venus and Adonis in his poem Hero and Leander.
Marlowe's poem is the tale of the handsome Thracian soldier Leander, the object of his love, the beautiful virgin Hero, and what happens when they are struck by Cupid's arrows. The two characters are modeled after the Ovidian Venus and Adonis, but in a way quite different from Shakespeare's characters. In the ancient myth, the female Venus chases after the male Adonis, and though he is hesitant and resistant, he is not altogether opposed to sex with the goddess. In Marlowe's work, Venus is reincarnated in the male Leander, who chases after the innocent and Adonis-like character, Hero. It is an interesting gender-reversal, successful as a more natural representation than the Shakespearean depiction of Venus as the masculine, rapist-like figure and Adonis as her innocent victim. This becomes important as we look at Hero and Leander both within its cultural context and in terms of Marlowe's purpose in writing it.
One school of thought focuses strongly on Marlowe's personal homoerotic tendencies and similar undertones in Hero and Leander, thereby characterizing it solely as another story of heterosexual love gone bad. One scholar of Marlowe and desire, Fred Tromly, agrees with this view: "Given the narrator's pronounced homoerotic interest in Leander, whose body he describes with far more attention than Hero's, it should not be surprising that he . . . tells a story in which heterosexual love is by turns foolish and violent, but never mutual and never fulfilling" (Tromly 154).
I offer a different angle. While acknowledging the instances of homoeroticism within the poem, I view the work as a whole in a more objective manner, in search of a deeper meaning than simply the promotion of homosexuality.
The chronology of events shows that Marlowe wrote Hero and Leander in 1593, the same year that Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis was published. Comparing the two poems and their messages, one can argue that Marlowe's piece was actually a response to Shakespeare's. The message that Venus and Adonis carries is two-fold; not only does Shakespeare tell the reader to turn away from the female and choose homosexual relationships in order to link with the divine, he argues beyond this for a platonic homosexuality, claiming that all desire is damning. Marlowe, his own homosexual pursuits being fairly well known, agreed with his colleague's belief in male-male relationships being praiseworthy. He did, however, differ distinctly from Shakespeare in two major aspects of this philosophy, and he wrote Hero and Leander in order to illustrate this.
Marlowe's first argument is in response to Shakespeare's instruction to "choose" homosexuality above male-female unions. This is clearly stated in lines 167–68 of Hero and Leander: "It lies not in our power to love or hate, / For will in us is overruled by fate." This couplet directly attacks Shakespeare's idea that one can decide his heart's joy based upon what can save him from Time and Death. Marlowe insists that will plays no part in love, that love is predetermined by fate and cannot be changed or chosen. The entire story of Hero and Leander furthers this belief; throughout the poem, Hero runs from Leander, pushing him away, fighting his sexual and romantic advances, while in reality fighting her own love for him. In the end Hero's resistance fails, proving that love is both stronger than will and entirely unrelated to it when she and Leander consummate their love quite happily.
In making this argument, Marlowe is actually serving a purpose near to his own heart. He wants the reader to understand that love is a predetermined, unstoppable, and, above all else, a natural force, no matter what shape it takes. In essence, Marlowe is attempting to justify his own sexual exploits by arguing for the naturalization of homosexuality; the figuring of the heterosexual love story of Hero and Leander as "fated" becomes a displacement of a belief in an inherent homosexuality. Sixteenth-century culture was not exactly open to the idea of homosexual relationships, and Marlowe would obviously have wanted to change that. By convincing the reader that love is not a choice, that one cannot control whom he loves, he gives the reader the logical reasoning with which he can justify homosexuality. The popular argument that homosexuality "just isn't natural" would not hold up against the idea that love is a force of nature, no matter where it occurs.
While Marlowe believed that homosexual love should be respected like any other love, he realized that the best way to argue such a controversial point would not be to throw this alternative lifestyle in the face of the homophobic public. By disguising his argument for the naturalization of homosexuality in a story of heterosexual love, Marlowe was presenting it in a more socially acceptable way, increasing its chance of being well received both in his society and in ours. Telling the reader that homosexuality is as natural as heterosexuality is not effective, but allowing the reader to come to the conclusion on his own is. If Marlowe were to make his statement about the validity of same-sex unions first, no one would listen to his reasons. But by first presenting his foundational argument and persuading the reader to agree, he is more likely to convince the reader of his main point's validity.
Once Marlowe has met his first goal of convincing the reader that love in any form is natural and uncontrollable, he moves on to his second response to Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis. Sexual desire is extremely problematic in Shakespeare's work; it seems he is really endorsing a platonic form of homosexuality, in which the focus is entirely on pure, Heavenly Love between two men. Here Marlowe disagrees, as one might expect from his own personal choices, and shows the reader that physical love does not always have to be damning. As long as two people are truly in love and share a companionate desire, then Marlowe believes that sex is a beautiful, natural expression of that love. In Hero and Leander, the main reason Hero fights Leander's advances is to keep her virginity intact, as she had for so long and with such pride. But Leander points out in lines 303–8 that shunning sex in honor of Venus is contrary to what the for which the goddess really stands:
Thee as a holy idiot doth she scorn,
For thou in vowing chastity hast sworn
To rob her name and honour, and thereby
Commit'st a sin far worse than perjury,
Even sacrilege against her deity,
Through regular and formal purity.
Love does not have to separate itself from sex, Leander argues, and this argument makes sense. Venus is the goddess of love, and in Ovid's myth she spends the entire tale eliciting sex from Adonis. She was a very sensual figure, so it makes sense that she would be a proponent of sex between two lovers, rather than encouraging chastity. Plato spoke of two Loves, two Venuses, splitting up the romantic and the sexual. While he was correct in separating pure love from earthly lust, he failed to see that true love is really a combination of the two, as Marlowe argues. When pure, companionate love exists between two people—no matter what their gender—the physical aspects of love go hand in hand with the emotional.
Marlowe is clear about the fact that the feelings of love must go both ways; he presents two scenarios of desire, but only one in which that desire is consummated. Interestingly, the one-sided love he depicts is between two men, Leander and Neptune, the god of the sea. In lines 665–76, Marlowe illustrates Neptune's feelings for the Thracian:
He clapped his plump cheeks, with his tresses played, And smiling wantonly, his love bewrayed.
He watched his arms, and as they opened wide
At every stroke, betwixt them would he slide
And steal a kiss, and then run out and dance,
And as he turned, cast many a lustful glance,
And threw him gaudy toys to please his eye,
And dive into the water, and there pry
Upon his breast, his thighs, and every limb,
And up again, and close beside him swim,
And talk of love. Leander made reply,
"You are deceived, I am no woman, I."
While the reader could simply dismiss this exchange as negativity toward homosexuality, this interpretation is shallow and misinformed. Leander turns away and blocks Neptune's attempts because the feelings are one-sided: Leander loves another. Marlowe's true intent behind these scenarios is to show the reader that love can bloom anywhere, and the only time it should be left alone is when it is unrequited. The only clear personification of homosexual desire in the work is Neptune; if Marlowe were trying to cast a negative light on same-sex love, would he have chosen to characterize it in the form of an immortal god? No. While Roman gods were no longer the omnipotent icons they once had been, they were still respected figures in literature and were used to symbolize immortality and greatness.
There is one other indication of Marlowe's homosexual tendencies in Hero and Leander: the narrator. With subtleties only a narrator can get away with, Marlowe lays a light homoerotic undertone, which follows his plan of subconsciously convincing the reader that homosexuality is okay: "Like Neptune, the narrator of Marlowe's poem reveals himself to be very aware of Leander's effeminate beauty, and, as we will see, his sexual preference for Leander complicates what was in Marlowe's sources a tale of (heterosexual) love in which gender divisions are as distinct and separate as Sestos and Abydos" (Tromly 155).
As in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, the narrator gives a detailed physical description of the male character, but fails to provide an equal illustration of the female. Hero supposedly possesses such beauty that every man desires her, but the narrator seems unfazed, stating this key trait matter-of-factly rather than admiringly. His trumpeting of Leander's feminine prettiness, however, exudes his homoerotic tastes and tendencies, thus providing a subtle push in the promotion of same-sex love. One early graphic description of Leander's body occurs in lines 63–66:
Even as delicious meat is to the tast,
So was his necke in touching, and surpast
The white of Pelops shoulder, I could tell ye
How smooth his brest was, & how white his bellie.
By contrast, Hero is given not a description of her body's shape or nakedness; rather, Marlowe gives details of the ornamentation of her ceremonial attire. Marlowe's placement of such illustrations is significant as well: "Emphasizing Leander's body as a potential source of gratification conveniently obliges Marlowe to make good his promise when the opportunity occurs, and he does so not as might conventionally be expected via the love-making with Hero but through the attentions of Neptune, whose amorous play with Leander surpasses anything Marlowe allows us in terms of mutual enjoyment of the young lovers, either at the moment when he secures Hero's consent or, later, at the time of the consummation" (Roe 40). Again, Marlowe makes subtle homoerotic choices to open the reader's mind to the idea of same-sex unions, yet keeps the reader unaware of this at the same time. Even as the interaction between Leander and Neptune earns the more in-depth description, however, it is still the heterosexual couple, Leander and Hero, whom he allows to consummate their desire.
We have seen that Marlowe endorses sex, but only as an expression of love. Hero and Leander consummate their love because it is true love on both sides, as illustrated in lines 511–16:
Look how their hands, so were their hearts united, And what he did she willingly requited.
(Sweet are the kisses, the embracements sweet,
When like desires and affections meet,
For from the earth to heave in Cupid raised,
Where fancy is in equal balance peised.)
This description is wholly different from the sex scene in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, lines 547–58:
Now quick desire hath caught the yielding prey,
And glutton-like she feeds, yet never filleth;
Her lips are conquerors, his lips obey,
Paying what ransom the insulter willeth;
Whose vultur thought doth pitch the price so high
That she will draw his lips' rich treasure dry.
And having felt the sweetness of the spoil,
With blindfold fury she begins to forage;
Her face doth reek and smoke, her blood doth boil,
And careless lust stirs up a desperate courage,
Planting oblivion, beating reason back,
Forgetting shame's pure blush and honor's wrack.
Contrasting these two passages, the reader sees two clearly opposing views of sex in the context of love. Marlowe wrote a beautiful love scene, even in the framework of Venus and Adonis's unrequited love story, in response to Shakespeare's ugly depiction. Shakespeare's ideal of platonic homosexual love is romantic when it comes to the immortality of the soul, but Marlowe points out that "sins of the flesh," under the umbrella of pure, companionate love, are just as romantic and immortalizing.
Hero and Leander's lovemaking is in itself a conscious decision on Marlowe's part and a necessary part of his plan. In the original Ovidian myth, Leander drowns while swimming across the Hellespont (Tromly 154). This is not surprising, as it is in accordance with his Venus and Adonis myth, in which sexual love dooms the male to death. Marlowe's choice to alter this part of the story, then, is highly significant, as he allows Leander to live and thus gives the lovers the chance to consummate their love. He makes the change in order to prove his message that love makes sexual desire beautiful and immortalizing, not damning.
While Hero and Leander do eventually make love in Marlowe's poem, it is not without some foreplay. From beginning to end, Leander oozes with desire for the beautiful Hero, and Marlowe constructs his narrative like a game, one taken from Ovid's Amores: "the idea of a flight which entices pursuit, and a pursuit which stimulates flight" (Tromly 156). The continuous cycle of the chase builds the tension to an almost unbearable level; this sexual frustration "is not merely a function of geography but part of the essential psychology of sexuality" (Tromly 155). In the original myth of the two lovers, the frustration Leander feels is due solely to the fact that they are separated by the Hellespont River, and it is difficult for him to pine for someone from whom he is physically distant. In Marlowe's version of the tale, however, the sexual frustration is about Hero's coyness in drawing Leander near, and then running away. It takes on the shape of teasing, game-playing, and foreplay, a precursor to the sex that Marlowe celebrates.
In twentieth-century culture, teasing and tantalization have become more accepted in the public sphere, but in Marlowe's time, when sex was seen as a sin of weakness, something impure and below proper behavior, foreplay was despicable. As Marlowe looks to correct this perspective, however, he would, of course, include a positive image of teasing buildup: "In the course of the narrative there is a growing emphasis on physical contact, as the amorous strife of tantalization is first played out through the lovers' words and later through their bodies" (Tromly 157). As Leander chases Hero throughout the poem, he repeatedly describes the desire he feels for her and what he would like to share with her physically, sexually. But each time Hero starts to give in, she recoils and steps back, which, as is Marlowe's intent, only incenses Leander further:
He kneeled, but unto her devoutly prayed;
Chaste Hero to herself thus softly said:
'Were I the saint he worships, I would hear him,'
And as she spake those words, came somewhat near him.
He started up, she blushed as one ashamed;
Wherewith Leander much more was inflamed. (177–82)
Leander continues to chase after Hero, to plead for her love and attention, using his words to try and charm her, and the same pattern follows:
And now begins Leander to display
Love's holy fire, with words, with sighs and tears,
Which like sweet music entered Hero's ears,
And yet at every word she turned aside,
And always cut him off as he replied. (192–6)
This pattern is all part of Marlowe's cleverly constructed buildup of frustration through words, then into actions, until the tension is finally unleashed when Hero gives in to her feelings.
A key to this structure that Marlowe has created is Hero's back-and-forth state of mind. In order for the tension to reach the necessary level, Hero must repeatedly waver in her resolve, allowing Leander to draw near, then retreating at just the right moment. Again, this was a conscious decision made by Marlowe in his construction of the story; "By contrast, the Heroes of Ovid and Musaeus are anything but coy" (Tromly 155). In the Amores, Hero begs for Leander to come to her with almost desperate passion, writing, "delay but a little longer, and I shall die!" (19:8). Marlowe's message of unconquerable love would not carry as much conviction if he had written Hero so easily accepting as this. The drama created by Hero's division between her love and desire for Adonis and her devotion to Venus, to whom she has vowed her chastity, is almost too much for the reader to bear, yet it is this buildup that gives the tale its conviction. At the point of consummation, the reader cannot help but feel the happy release of incredible tension, and it is here that Marlowe captures him. Marlowe deliberately mixed in elements of the Venus and Adonis myth of Ovid's Metamorphoses in order to bring this change to the Hero and Leander of the Amores, and it is a successful one.
Marlowe's playfulness, wit, and ingenious ability to create extreme sexual tension and frustration make Hero and Leander an entertaining and highly significant work in his canon. The frustration of desire is at its peak in this version of the ancient tale, and it is this characteristic that is the key. In this, Marlowe's response to Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, he used dramatic tension to win over the reader and prove that sex within the context of true, pure love is not only acceptable, but beautiful and natural, in any form.
In Marlowe's Hero and Leander, Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, and the paintings of a number of Renaissance artists, Ovid's myth of Venus and Adonis is poked, prodded, and tweaked for all of its elements of the erotic. Each representation portrays its own unique message about sex, and each holds cultural significance. Whether simply depicting the eponymous lovers as yet another example of non-companionate love or painting Venus in the role of a rapist, the artists each found sexual significance in the myth and its use during that time period.
Shakespeare took a progressive step in publishing his epic poem, Venus and Adonis. Elizabethan England was still a proper place in which sex and lust were taboo subjects confined to the private sphere, and while the Renaissance movement was beginning to change this, an action of such audacity and magnitude had yet to be taken. Not only did Shakespeare openly and graphically discuss lust, sex, and carnal desire, he introduced and strongly supported the idea of homosexual love. Marlowe followed up Shakespeare's work with a poem of his own, Hero and Leander, which also argued for same-sex unions. There exists, however, an extremely significant, distinct, and fundamental difference between the two. While Shakespeare urges the reader to choose a platonic form of homosexuality, Marlowe disagrees with this logic. Marlowe argues that sex within the context of love is not damning as his colleague suggests. More important, he also argues that love is not a choice, but part of a predetermined plan that one cannot alter, no matter how great the effort or desire. Marlowe uses a heterosexual love story to make this argument, but his true purpose in such a persuasion is for the reader to transfer this theory of fated love into the realm of homosexuality as well, thus distinguishing it as a natural occurrence. This was a profoundly important primary step in the ongoing fight for homosexual acceptance.
In making their distinct commentaries, Marlowe, Shakespeare, and the other Renaissance artists put a single common myth to use: Ovid's tale of Venus and Adonis, found in his great work, the Metamorphoses. Ovid's Metamorphoses were originally valued simply for their Latin versification and moral lessons; in Renaissance interpretations and imitations of the myths, however, the erotic enjoys a sense of freedom, and the focus is more on Ovid's wit and playful creativity. These artists discovered more than an opportunity for schoolhouse exercises in Ovid's writing, and through imitation they brought his ancient works into their own modern culture. Shakespeare and Marlowe used the context of art and respected ancient myth to extract the erotic and write commentaries on sex, both heterosexual and homosexual, without making direct claim to their opinions. Their works could be argued "art for art's sake" if their motives were questioned, but their subtle claims still managed to shine through to the reader and accomplish their intended goals.
At this time of exploration and experimentation, the writers used the Venus and Adonis myth to bring the topic of desire, and, specifically, support for homoerotic desire, into the public sphere. Before their audacious efforts, such topics were completely confined to the private arena, if acceptable at all. But by bringing Venus and Adonis into Elizabethan England, these artists transformed Ovid's classic Metamorphoses, and fundamentally laid the groundwork for the acceptance of homosexuality and eroticism of all kinds, a debate that continues today.
Works Cited
Kolin, Philip C., ed. Venus and Adonis: Critical Essays. New York: Garland, 1997.
Marlowe, Christopher. The Complete Poems. Ed. Mark Thornton Burnett. London: Orion, 2000.
Maslen, R. W. "Myths exploited: The metamorphoses of Ovid in early Elizabethan England." Shakespeare's Ovid: The Metamorphoses in the Plays and Poems. Ed. A. B. Taylor. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. 15–30.
Munich, Adrienne A. Andromeda's Chains: Gender and Interpretation in Victorian Literature and Art. New York: Columbia UP, 1989.
Ovid. Metamorphoses. Trans. Michael Simpson. Amherst, Mass.: U of Massachusetts P, 2001.
Plato. The Dialogues of Plato, 27th ed. Trans. Benjamin Jowett. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1984.
Roe, John. "Ovid ‘renascent' in Venus and Adonis and Hero and Leander." Shakespeare's Ovid: The Metamorphoses in the Plays and Poems. Ed. A. B. Taylor. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. 31–46.
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd ed. Ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
Taylor, A. B., ed. Shakespeare's Ovid: The Metamorphoses in the Plays and Poems. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000.
Tromly, Fred B. Playing with Desire: Christopher Marlowe and the Art of Tantalization. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1998.
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