Venus and Adonis

The narrative poem explores the themes of unrequited love and desire through the goddess Venus's pursuit of the handsome Adonis, who prefers hunting over romance. Blending pastoral, erotic, comic, and tragic elements, it features 199 stanzas in a distinctive six-line iambic pentameter form, now known as the Venus and Adonis stanza. Inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses, Shakespeare's version presents a more passionate and aggressive Venus. The poem was published during a period when theaters were closed due to the plague, marking it as Shakespeare's first major work.