But when Adonis liv'd, sun and sharp air Lurk'd like two thieves, to rob him of his fair: "And therefore would he put his bonnet on, Under whose brim the gaudy sun would peep; The wind would blow it off, and, being gone, Play with his locks: then would Adonis weep;

And straight, in pity of his tender years, 1091 They both would strive who first should dry his tears.

"To see his face the lion walk'd along
Behind some hedge, because he would not fear him;
To recreate himself when he hath sung,
The tiger would be tame, and gently hear him;
If he had spoke, the wolf would leave his prey,
And never fright the silly lamb that day.

1109

If he did see his face, why then I know
He thought to kiss him, and hath kill'd him so.

"'Tis true, 't is true; thus was Adonis slain:
He ran upon the boar with his sharp spear,
Who did not whet his teeth at him again,
But by a kiss thought to persuade him there;
And nuzzling in his flank, the loving swine
Sheath'd, unaware, the tusk in his soft groin.
"Had I been tooth'd like him, I must confess,
With kissing him I should have kill'd him first;
But he is dead, and never did he bless
My youth with his, the more am I accurst."
With this, she falleth in the place she stood,
And stains her face with his congealed blood.

She looks upon his lips, and they are pale;
She takes him by the hand, and that is cold;
She whispers in his ears a heavy tale,
As if they heard the woful words she told;

1119

1 Urchin-snouted; properly an urchin was a hedgehog.

1129

1139

She lifts the coffer-lids that close his eyes, Where, lo, two lamps, burnt out, in darkness lies; Two glasses, where herself herself beheld A thousand times, and now no more reflect; Their virtue lost, wherein they late excell'd, And every beauty robb'd of his effect: "Wonder of time," quoth she, "this is my spite, That, thou being dead, the day should yet be light. "Since thou art dead, lo, here I prophesy Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend: It shall be waited on with jealousy, Find sweet beginning, but unsavoury end; Ne'er settled equally, but high or low; That all love's pleasure shall not match his woe. "It shall be fickle, false, and full of fraud; Bud and be blasted in a breathing-while; The bottom poison, and the top o'erstraw'd With sweets that shall the truest sight beguile: The strongest body shall it make most weak, Strike the wise dumb, and teach the fool to speak. "It shall be sparing and too full of riot, Teaching decrepit age to tread the measures;2 The staring ruffian shall it keep in quiet, Pluck down the rich, enrich the poor with treasures; It shall be raging-mad and silly-mild, Make the young old, the old become a child.

1149

"It shall suspect where is no cause of fear; It shall not fear where it should most mistrust; It shall be merciful and too severe,

And most deceiving when it seems most just; Perverse it shall be where it shows most toward, Put fear to valour, courage to the coward.

"It shall be cause of war and dire events, And set dissension 'twixt the son and sire; 1160 Subject and servile to all discontents,

As dry combustious matter is to fire:

Sith in his prime Death doth my love destroy, They that love best their loves shall not enjoy." By this, the boy that by her side lay kill'd Was melted like a vapour from her sight; And in his blood, that on the ground lay spill'd, A purple flower sprung up, chequer'd with white, Resembling well his pale cheeks, and the blood Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood.

2 Measures, dances.

1170

"Here was thy father's bed, here in my breast;
Thou art the next of blood, and 't is thy right:
Lo, in this hollow cradle take thy rest,
My throbbing heart shall rock thee day and night:
There shall not be one minute in an hour
Wherein I will not kiss my sweet love's flower."
Thus weary of the world, away she hies,
And yokes her silver doves; by whose swift aid
Their mistress, mounted, through the empty skies
In her light chariot quickly is convey'd;
Holding their course to Paphos, where their queen
Means to immure1 herself and not be seen.

1 Immure, shut in. 359

1189

Pocula Castaliis plena ministret aquis."

The couplet, by the way, is from Ovid's Amores, bk. I. Elegy xv. lines 35, 36, a poem which, as Professor Baynes notes, had not been translated into English; when Marlowe's Version first appeared is not certain, perhaps, as Gifford thinks, in 1598. The rendering of this particular Elegy (xv.) was evidently by Ben Jonson; see the Poetaster, i. 1 (page 107 in Routledge's edition), where the poem has undergone some revision and alterations from its original form as published in Marlowe's volume. Thus the first version of the present couplet runs:

Let base-conceited wits admire vild things;
Fair Phoebus lead me to the Muses' springs.
-Bullen's Marlowe, vol. iii. p. 137;

while in The Poetaster it stands, quaintly enough:

Kneel hinds to trash: me let bright Phoebus swell
With cups full flowing from the Muses well.

-Ben Jonson, Works, p. 107.

Marston is probably sneering at Shakespeare when he says in the poem to the third book of his Satires:

I invocate no Delian deitie,

No sacred ofspring of Mnemosyne;

I pray in aid of no Castalian muse.

-Works, edn. 1856, iii. p. 285.

2. Dedication: the first heir of my INVENTION. - So Marston describes his Pigmalion as being a "young newborn invention;" and again in the lines To his Mistres writes:

I invocate no other saint but thee,
To grace the first bloomes of my poesie.
Thy favours, like Promethean sacred fire,
In dead and dull conceit can life inspire,
Or, like that rare and rich elixar stone,
Can turn to gold, leaden invention

-Works, iii pp 200, 202. Some critics regard Marston's Pigmalion (1598) as a parody of Venus and Adonis; others, as an imitation of Shakespeare's poem. For myself, I must confess I cannot trace the supposed resemblance. Shakespeare, by the way, may conceivably be the fifth poet described in the sixth satire of the Scourge of Villanie (1598) (Works, iii. pp. 275, 276). 3. Dedication: and never after EAR.-See note on unear'd, Sonnet iii. 5.

4. Lines 1, 2: Even as the sun, &c.-One of Gullio's pla

giarisms in The Returne from Parnassus, iii. 1. 1052, 1053 (Parnassus, Three Elizabethan Comedies, 1597-1602, ed. Macray, p. 58).

5. Line 3: ROSE-CHEEK'D Adonis. --Perhaps Shakespeare owed this beautiful epithet to Marlowe; cf. Hero and Leander, the first sestiad, 93:

Rose-cheek'd Adonis kept a solemn feast.
-Bullen's Marlowe, iii 9.
It found favour with Burton; see The Anatomy, p 511,
Chatto & Windus' Reprint, 1881. Compare, too, Weever's
22nd epigram:

Rose-checkt Adonis with his amber tresses
-Shakspere Allusion Book, p 182;

and Timon of Athens, iv 3 86.

6. Lines 5, 6: Sick-thoughted Venus, &c.-This couplet, too, is quoted in The Returne from Parnassus, iii. 1 1006, 1007:

Gull. Pardon, faire lady, thoughe sick-thoughted Gullio maks amaine unto thee, and like a bould-faced sutore 'gins to woo thee. -Parnassus, ed. Macray, p. 56.

7. Line 9: STAIN to all nymphs.-That is, eclipsing all nymphs; so in Coriolanus, i. 10. 18: "suffering stain"= being surpassed. See note on Sonnet xxxiii. 14.

8. Lines 11, 12: Nature that made thee, &c.—See again The Returne, iii. 1. 1022, 1023, p. 57

9 Line 26: The PRECEDENT of pith-So Malone The Quartos all have president.

10. Line 55 Even as an EMPTY EAGLE -Compare IL Henry VI. iii. 1. 248, 249.

an empty eagle set To guard the chicken,

and III. Henry VI. i. 1. 268, 269:

like an empty eagle,

Tire on the flesh.

So Edward III. iii. 1:

as when the empty eagle flies, To satisfy his hungry griping maw.

-Tauchnitz ed. p. 34.

11 Line 112: Yet was he servile to my Coy disdain. Coy often had, as here, the sense of contemptuous Compare The Two Gentlemen of Verona, i. 1 29, 30 To be in love, where scorn is bought with groans; Coy looks with heart-sore sighs.

So in England's Helicon:

If void she seem of joy, Disdain doth make her coy.

-Bullen's Reprint, p. 227. Cotgrave gives: "Mespriseresse: A coy, a squeamish, or scornfull dame."

12. Line 114: For MASTERING her.-Q. 1, Q. 2, and Q. 3 have the old form maistring.

13. Line 125: These BLUE-VEIN'D violets whereon we lean. I find the same graceful epithet applied to the violet by Day in The Parliament of Bees, Character i. line 7:

The blue-veined violets, and the damask rose.

So in a charming lyric in England's Helicon:

How shall I her pretty tread

Express

When she doth walk?

Scarce she does the primrose head

Depress,

Or tender stalk

Of blue-vein'd violets,

Whereon her foot she sets.

-Bullen's Reprint, p. 88.

14. Line 130: Beauty within itself, &c.-Compare Sonnet ix. 11, 12:

But beauty's waste hath in the world an end,
And kept unused, the user so destroys it.

15. Line 140: Mine EYES are GRAY.-See Two Gentlemen of Verona, note 111; also Titus Andronicus, ii. 2. 1. 16. Line 147: Or, like a nymph, &c. -These lines are not unsuggestive of Midsummer Night's Dream, ii. 1. 85, 86.

17. Line 157: Is thine own heart to thine own face affected?-This curious idea of self-love meets us in Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, iv. 4:

Dearer than thou canst love thyself though all

The self-love were within thee that did fall With that coy swain that now is made a flower. -Beaumont & Fletcher, in Mermaid Series, vol. ii. p. 383; the swain in question being, of course, Adonis Compare, too, a stanza in Bullen's Lyrics (1887), pp. 63, 64: O let not beauty so forget her birth

That it should fruitless home return to earth!
Love is the fruit of beauty, then love one!

Not your sweet self, for such self-love is none.

18. Line 161: NARCISSUS so himself, &c. -For similar references cf. Antony and Cleopatra, ii. 5. 96: "Hadst thou Narcissus in thy face;" and The Faithful Shepherdess, i. 3:

Not Narcissus, he

That wept himself away in memory
Of his own beauty,

-Beaumont & Fletcher, Mermaid ed vol. ii. p. 338;

and The Two Noble Kinsmen, ii. 2. 119-121:

Emt. What flower is this?

Wo. 'T is call'd Narcissus, madam.

Emi. That was a fair boy certain, but a fool To love himself,

See Two Gentlemen of Verona, note 22. 27. Line 310: She puts on outward STRANGENESS. -See note on "look strange," Sonnet lxxxix. 8.

28. Line 319: His TESTY master.—Compare Sonnet cxl. 7, 8: As testy sick men, when their deaths be near, No news but health from their physicians know, Testy comes from O. F. teste = head, i.e. téte: Cotgrave gives testu heady. Tester is from same root; see Skeat, s.v. 29. Line 331: An oven that is STOPP'D.-Compare Titus Andronicus, ii. 4. 36, 37:

Sorrow concealed, like an oven stopp'd,

Doth burn the heart to cinders.

A red sky at night's a shepherd's delight;
A red sky at morning's a shepherd's warning.
And another version says:

If red the sun begins his race,
Be sure the ram will fall apace..

This, of course, is the reference in St. Matthew xvi. 2, 3: "When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather; for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day; for the sky is red and lowering."

According to Thiselton Dyer, the notion is "common on the Continent. Thus, at Milan, the proverb was, 'If the morn be red, rain is at hand"" (Folklore of Shakespeare, p. 62).

33. Line 469: all-AMAZ'D.—So Q. 1, Q. 2, Q. 3. The others have in a maze.

34. Line 481: The NIGHT OF SORROW now is turn'd to day.-Compare Sonnet cxx. 9, 10:

O, that our night of woe might have remember'd
My deepest sense.

35. Line 482: Her two blue WINDOWS faintly she upheaveth.-See note on Sonnet xxiv. 11.

36. Line 500: SHREWD tutor.-Q. 1 and Q. 2 give shrowd. 37. Line 506: their crimson liveries WEAR. Wear= wear away; so Sonnet lxxvii. 1:

44. Line 589: whereat a sudden PALE.-That is, paleness; for substantival use of adjectives see Troilus and Cressida, note 186.

45. Line 602: Do surfeit by the eye and PINE the maw. -For pine-starve, used, however, intransitively, compare Sonnet lxxv. 13.

46. Lines 631-634: Alas, he naught esteems, &c.—This, as Professor Baynes says (Fraser's Magazine, vol. ci. pp. 631, 632) is extremely suggestive of Ovid, Metamorphoses, X. 547-549:

Non movet ætas,

Nec facies, nec quæ Venerem movere, leones,
Setigerosque sues.

47. Line 632: Love's eyes PAY.-So Malone. Q. 1 and Q. 2 have eyes paies; Q. 3, eyes payes.

48. Line 656: Love's tender SPRING. — That is, love's young shoot or blossom. Compare Comedy of Errors, iii. 2.3:

Even in the spring of love, thy love-springs rot?

49. Line 657: This carry-tale, DISSENTIOUS Jealousy.— Dissentious seditious: so Coriolanus, iv. 6. 7: “Dissentious numbers pestering streets." For carry-tale compare Love's Labour's Lost, v. 2. 463.

50. Line 673: But if thou needs wilt hunt, &c.-Probably few people know that Sir Charles Sedley-risum teneatis-attempted a Venus and Adonis; or the Amour of Venus; it is "after" Shakespeare, as Mr. Punch would

say, and at a respectful distance. This is a sample of the paraphrase perpetrated by Dryden's Lisideius:

Forbear, regardless youth! at length forbear;
Nor prosecute with Beasts an endless War,
Thy Venus do's in all the Danger share.
Or, if, alas! thy too licentious Mind

Is still to Vig'rous Sylvan Sports inclin'd,
At least, dear youth! be cautious in thy Way,
Fly, fly with care each furious Beast of Prey;
Ne'er arm'd with Launce provoke the raging Boar
And dread the Lion's most tremendous Roar:
From the rough Bear's rude Grasp, oh! swiftly run,
The Leopard and the cruel Tyger shun;
With strict Regard, oh! ever such avoid,
Lest all my joy shou'd be with thee destroy'd:
But Nets, or fleetest Hounds for Deer prepare;
Or chace the crafty Fox, or tim'rous Hare:
Mix Safety ever with thy Sports, be wise,

And ne'er approach where Danger may arise.

51. Line 680: to OVERSHOOT his troubles.-Q. 1, Q. 2, and Q. 3 give ouer-shut. The reading in the text is due to Steevens.

52. Line 682: He CRANKS and crosses, &c.-For crank =run crookedly, cf. I. Henry IV. iii. 1. 98:

See how this river comes me cranking in. Everyone will recollect Milton's "quips and cranks," L'Allegro, 27, where cranks is equivalent to sharp turns of wit; and an equally good illustration of the use of the word occurs in The Faerie Queene, bk. vii. c. vii. st. lii. 9: So many turning cranks these have, so many crookes. -Globe ed. of Spenser, p. 435

Compare also Coriolanus, i. 1. 141.

53. Lines 695, 696: Echo replies, &c.-In the Fortune's Tennis-ball, or Pocula Castalia (1640), of Robert Baron several very daring appropriations of lines in Venus and Adonis occur. For instance, the present couplet appears in this form:

The airy queen (sounds child) each cell replies,
As if another chase, &c.

-Stanza xviii. See the Shakespeare Centurie of Prayse, in the publications of the New Shakspere Society, p. 231.

54. Line 697: By this, poor WAT, &c.-Dyer (Folklore, p. 178) suggests that the name comes from the long ears or wattles of the hare, though properly, according to Skeat, a wattle is "the fleshy part under the throat of a cock or turkey." In any case, Wat is a recognized term for a hare; cf. Drayton's Polyolbion, xxiii.:

The man whose vacant mind prepares him to the sport,
The finder sendeth out, to seek out nimble Wat.

55. Line 724: Rich preys make true men thieves.-The sentiment is that of Sonnet xlviii. 14:

For truth proves thievish for a prize so dear.

56. Line 757: a SWALLOWING GRAVE.-Compare “mouthed graves" in Sonnet lxxvii. 6.

57. Line 765: Or theirs whose desperate hands THEMSELVES do slay. -For Shakespeare's sentiments on this subject we may turn to Cymbeline, iii. 4. 78-80: Against self-slaughter There is a prohibition so divine That cravens my weak hand.

Compare, too, Hamlet, i. 2. 131, 132.