invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather...
- Dedication
Venus and Adonis was published about April 1593, at which time Shakespeare was just twenty-nine. He had already established himself as a competent actor and had probably done considerable patching of old plays; notably Henry VI, Part One (see page II-640). Henry VI, Part Two and Henry VI, Part Three were mostly or entirely his and it is possible he had already written two comedies: The Comedy of Errors and Love's Labor's Lost. It is even possible that two more plays, Titus Andronicus and Richard III were in the process of production.
These works, however, were meant to be played, not read, and it was to be years before they were actually published. Venus and Adonis was the first piece of Shakespeare's writings that actually appeared in print, and it was in that sense only "the first heir of my invention."
Shakespeare seems, by the way, to have turned to narrative poetry only because of a siege of enforced idleness. The London theaters were closed between mid-1592 and mid-1594 as a result of a heightened incidence of plagues, and Shakespeare used the additional time on his hands to write Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece.
Rose-cheek'd Adonis...
The poem begins early in the day, with Adonis making ready to hunt:
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.
- lines 1-4
Adonis is the Greek version of a Semitic vegetation god. From the beginnings of agriculture, there must have been a kind of relief each year among the farmers that, after the death of vegetation in the fall, there was a rebirth in the spring. Rituals personifying this death-and-rebirth were invented and they must have been looked upon as a kind of flattering homage to Nature (or even as a hint to a possibly forgetful Nature), inducing her to continue. The feeling would surely arise at last that only a thorough-going carrying through of the ritual each year would bring about a fertile growing season and a good harvest, and upon that, life through the barren winter would depend.
In that sense, the type of myth of which the tale of Venus and Adonis is representative (though prettied-up from its straightforward origins by the sophisticated imaginations of the later classical poets), reflects the historic birth of agriculture. It can be tied to the great event, some seven thousand years before the Trojan War, that saw the first deliberate cultivation and harvest of wild grain in the foothills of the Zagros Mountains in what is now western Iran.
The Sumerians, about 2000 b.c., represented the agricultural cycle with a god, Dumu-zi, who died and was resurrected; a death-and-resurrection which was celebrated each year by the people of the land. The myth and the ritual were adopted by the later Babylonians and Assyrians-the Semitic peoples who succeeded the Sumerians in the land of the Tigris and Euphrates. In the Semitic language of Babylonia, the name of the vegetation god became Tammuz.
In the Tammuz myth, the god descends into the underworld after his death and all vegetation dies with him. A wailing goddess (variously described as his sister, mother, or wife) manages to rescue him. In the most familiar form of the myth, the rescuer is Ishtar, his wife or love.
The passionate rites for Tammuz were exceedingly attractive to women in particular. They found emotional relief in the wailing and utter grief that symbolized Tammuz' death and in the almost orgiastic joy that came when the priests raised the cry that he was reborn.
The stern prophets of Israel had a hard job keeping the Israelite women from joining in this pagan rite. The tale of Jephthah's daughter was possibly an attempt to solve the problem by converting the rite into a patriotic commemoration. The Israelite general Jephthah had beaten the enemy, after making a rash vow to sacrifice the first living thing that came to greet him on his return. It turned out to be his daughter, whom he sacrificed. The Bible goes on to explain: "And it was a custom in Israel, That the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year" (Judges 11:39-40).
If so, this pious wile did not work. Ezekiel, at the time of the Judean exile in Babylon, enumerated the sins of the Jews of the time and said that