Venus and Adonis

On the evidence of the poem, the relationship between Venus and Adonis must be one of the most one-sided ever recorded. Venus is completely smitten by the young man she admires so much, but he cares not a whit for her. He is not interested in having a love affair with anyone, and certainly not with Venus. In spite of this, she is extremely persistent, and she fails to understand why she is putting him off when all she wants to do is reel him in. The fact that her love is unreturned brings her great sorrow. For his part, Adonis dismisses her claims to love him and makes it clear why: He thinks she is simply lusting after him, and lust, he believes, has no connection to true love. Indeed, love is the opposite of lust, in the view of this idealistic young man.

The lustful nature of Venus becomes apparent early in the poem, when “desire doth lend her force / Courageously to pluck him from his horse” (Lines 29-30). In medieval times, the word courage had the additional meaning of lust, and here “courageously” means “lustfully.” (The word is so used in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Merchant’s Tale, just to give one example.