ABSTRACT
As Richard Meek astutely points out, Venus and Adonis is “a sophisticated elaboration of the visuality of literary language in its own right.” It is as if when Shakespeare came to write Venus and Adonis, he took as his model this depiction of one moment of the story rather than Ovid’s narrative, which would make his poem a kind of ecphrasis. Both metaphor and simile operate through substitution. Simile is especially predominant in Venus and Adonis because it is useful for Shakespeare to use this form of metaphor, in which the substitution is explicitly signalled. Venus’ praise of Adonis is obviously hyperbolic—although it is admittedly unclear how hyperbolic it is, as Adonis was famed for his beauty—and she exceeds this verbal excess by declaring him to be “sweet above compare” at the same time she compares him to herself, to men, to nymphs, and to doves and roses.
