Shakespeare's Poems

by William Shakespeare, H.R. Woudhuysen (Editor), Ann Thompson (Series Editor)

In 1593 Shakespeare awoke and found himself famous. Lines from his comic, erotic, tragic poem Venus and Adonis were on everyone's lips.The appearance in 1594 of the darkly reflective and richly descriptive Rape of Lucrece confirmed his fame as 'Sweet Master Shakespeare', Elizabethan England's most brilliant non-dramatic poet. Shorter poems in this volume testify further to Shakespeare's versatility and to his poetic fame. Some, like the much-debated 'Phoenix and Turtle', pose problems of meaning; others raise questions about authorship and authenticity. Detailed annotation and a full Introduction seek to resolve such difficulties while also locating Shakespeare's poems in their literary context, which includes his own career as a playwright.

Genres: Poetry, Shakespeare, Classics

616 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1623

About the author

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI and I of Scotland to the English throne. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and even certain fringe theories as to whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminge and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".

Reviews

[Jason]

Venus & Adonis

Stunningly beautiful, lusciously sumptuous. Bees buzz for delicious wildflowers, golden strands of honey spun like Venus' silken hair. A thoroughbred stallion paws at the dirt, muscles rippling from shoulder to back, a character so rich as to rival the God and Goddess. The contrast of light and shadow on Adonis' face is evocative of the small moments that pass in a day, of the tragedy that his simple hubris, youths' indifference to time, will bring. That tragedy is transformed before us as magic and a beautiful myth is preserved like a summer day from our youth, trapped between amber imagining and her lost love.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shakespeare wrote these poems when plague outbreaks caused theater closures for a substantial portion of several years. The poems include two great (long) narrative poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. Unlike his early plays, these were published with his approval and with his name attached as the author. The experts say that Shakespeare first became a well-known writer because of these poems, rather than because of the early plays, something that surprises many now because we know him mostly for his plays. Before my Shakespeare group designated Shakespeare’s poems for our November 2025 read, I had not read these poems. I am having a much harder time reading them than the plays (needing to drink lots of coffee to keep my focus!), they required a deeper more intense level of concentration that I found it more difficult to sustain for such length, surprisingly finding it easier to read the scholarly material in my Arden edition that the poems themselves. Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis is entirely different than the Ovidian story I so loved when studying classical writings when I was in college (a tale of intense, reciprocal love I found to be extremely romantic); Shakespeare’s is a tale of fierce longing and frustration, Venus begging for Adonis’s attention and being refused, a chaste and tragic tale told in erotic language, while considering the nature of true love versus lust. The Rape of Lucrece is somewhat the opposite of Venus and Adonis (woman as prey rather than predator), about a happily married virtuous young woman who is forcefully raped by the king’s son (who also is in the army with and supposedly friends with Lucrece’s noble husband) motivated by the corrupt greed of a privileged man who has everything but wants more. He justifies himself by blaming Lucrece for her tantalizing beauty and her husband for his pride in his wife’s virtue. Public outrage results in permanent exile of the king’s family and changing the government from one of kings to consuls (oh the Shakespearean timeless parallels to current times). (Note that Shakespeare told a similar rape story in Titus Andronicus, but there the theme was revenge rather than greed and corruption.) There are also a couple of shorter poems. The Passionate Pilgrim (the title is a Romeo and Juliet reference) is a collection of sonnets, many about Venus and Adonis. Only 5 of them are known to be written by Shakespeare, but they all are “Shakespearish” and could be versions of sonnets from a lost Shakespeare play Love’s Labours Won. The Phoenix and Turtle is an allegory about true love, which could be a political allegory, but scholars don’t agree.

[Baswood · Rating 5 out of 5]

What to do if you are a playwright and the theatres are closed because of the plague. Well if you fancy yourself as a bit of a poet then you can stay at home and write some poetry. This is what Shakespeare did and in 1593 he published Venus and Adonis and in 1594 The Rape of Lucrece. They were the first items published under his own name. He was already a writer and actor of note in the theatre, but had not published any of his early plays and would not do so himself in his lifetime. Venus and Adonis was an immediate hit and soon went through seven re-prints. The more sombre Rape of Lucrece was not quite so popular, but there were still a number of re-prints. Perhaps he asked himself "what sells:" well there were plenty of poets and sonneteers rushing into print after the success of Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella and sex (I mean love poetry) sells better than most. So Shakespeare made his name as a poet and maybe a poet of erotic verse.

Venus and Adonis (1190 lines) and The Rape of Lucrece (1855) are both long narrative poems and as far as we know Shakespeare never attempted anything similar, apart from his sonnet collection (not included in this book). The reading public and even Shakespeare himself may have thought that he was first and foremost a poet and his place in literature would be judged on his poems. Venus and Adonis is a retelling and an augmentation of a story by the Latin Poet Ovid, but Shakespeare gives it a twist in that he makes the character of Adonis; beautiful although he is; a sullen young adolescent who is not interested in love. Goddess Venus does all she knows to tempt him to have sex, but the young lad is only interested in hunting. Shakespeare's poem is one of seduction, but like the playwright he is, we see both sides of the story. Here is an example of Venus hot love for Adonis:

"And having felt the sweetness of the spoil,
With blindfold fury she begins to forage;
Her face doth reek and smoke, her blood doth boil,
And careless lust stirs up a desperate courage, 556
Planting oblivion, beating reason back,
Forgetting shame’s pure blush and honour’s wrack.

Hot, faint, and weary, with her hard embracing,
Like a wild bird being tam’d with too much handling,
Or as the fleet-foot roe that’s tir’d with chasing, 561
Or like the froward infant still’d with dandling:
He now obeys, and now no more resisteth,
While she takes all she can, not all she listeth." 5

The poem takes the form of six line stanzas with a rhyming scheme mostly in iambic pentameters. It is never dull and was said to be popular with young men especially with Venus the goddess of love featuring in the title of the poem. The poem is a delight from start to finish and the immediacy of the action makes it an exciting read.

The Rape of Lucrece dramatises an episode from Roman History. It is a poem of seven line stanzas again in iambic pentameters and a rhyming scheme. Tarquin heir apparent to the throne becomes stirred up with lust, when he hears his friend Collatine boasting of his beautiful and chaste wife. Tarquin arranges things so that he can slip away from the army camp ahead of a general release, so that he can stay in Collatine's house with Lucrece. She welcomes him as an honoured guest, but will not be seduced. Later that night Tarquin forces his way into her room and rapes her, afterwards he slinks away and Lucrece is left with the devastation of being violated. She sends an urgent message to her husband to return home as soon as he can and after telling the household of what has taken place she stabs herself to death. Collatine vows to destroy the Tarquin kings of Rome. This is a tragic story and Shakespeare gives all due weight to the events.

The poem can be read as an allegory of passive suffering under a tyrant leading to his overthrow when he abuses his power, however that does not seem to be Shakespeare's intention because the horror of the rape and then the suicide is at the heart of this poem. Shakespeare tells the first part of the story from Tarquin's point of view. His brief struggles with his conscience, his worries about the consequences of the rape that he is going to commit and then the lust that takes hold of him. Here is Tarquin in Lucrece's bedroom:

"As the grim lion fawneth o'er his prey,
Sharp hunger by the conquest satisfied,
So o'er this sleeping soul doth Tarquin stay,
His rage of lust by grazing qualified;
Slack'd, not suppress'd; for standing by her side,
  His eye, which late this mutiny restrains,
  Unto a greater uproar tempts his veins:

And they, like straggling slaves for pillage fighting,
Obdurate vassals fell exploits effecting,
In bloody death and ravishment delighting,
Nor children's tears nor mothers' groans respecting,
Swell in their pride, the onset still expecting:
  Anon his beating heart, alarum striking,
  Gives the hot charge and bids them do their liking."

In spite of all his threats she does not consent and after the rape she is mortified. The point of view then changes to Lucrece as she wrestles with how to deal with her violation. Should she kill herself? she cannot pretend that nothing has happened, can she get revenge? Shakespeare uses many verses to describe her thoughts as she wrestles with her situation and finally when she takes action it makes for the tragedy:

"Here with a sigh, as if her heart would break,
She throws forth Tarquin's name: 'He, he,' she says,
But more than 'he' her poor tongue could not speak;
Till after many accents and delays,
Untimely breathings, sick and short assays,
  She utters this, 'He, he, fair lords, 'tis he,
  That guides this hand to give this wound to me.'

Even here she sheathed in her harmless breast
A harmful knife, that thence her soul unsheathed:
That blow did bail it from the deep unrest
Of that polluted prison where it breathed:
Her contrite sighs unto the clouds bequeathed
  Her winged sprite, and through her wounds doth fly
  Life's lasting date from cancell'd destiny."

Two poems that deal with sexual aggression and while one is more light and frothy, the other is sombre and tragic. Both poems demonstrate Shakespeare's powers as a poet; in telling a narrative and plunging the reader into the heart of the situation described. In Venus and Adonis there are some vivid hunting scenes and animals of the woodland feature prominently. In The Rape of Lucrece a painting of the trojan war is used to demonstrate the anguish of Lucrece. There are some brilliant stanzas and while Shakespeare's contemporaries fooled around with pretty verses he made some real drama. There are some other poems and bits and pieces, but the discussion in the introduction is mainly concerned as to whether or not they are by Shakespeare. There is very little else to detain the reader, but these two great poems are enough and so 5 stars.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's really fascinating that these poems, particularly Adonis and Lucrece, which were the things that made Shakespeare's name as a poet and a writer, are so neglected now, and the introduction makes it clear why this shouldn't be the case:

Wow! Venus and Adonis was Shakespeare's big hit, reprinted more times in his lifetime than all his plays put together, and it is fabulous. Every stanza quotable, emotions bare and naked, beauty in imagery.

But-and: what this absolutely reminded me of was Lolita. Sexual desire for a child dressed up in romantic language, with the slow eroding of the child's sexual resistance until forced-persuaded into sexual acquiescence: at no point do we get any idea that Adonis is the slightest bit willing. And as with Nabokov, despite the beauty of the language and the self-perception of the predator as romantic, there seems to be no doubt that what we are witnessing is pederastic. Venus' "love" has no interest in the child Adonis as a person, only in his physical attractiveness, and her own sexual pleasure.

Venus is utterly self-interested, and both she and Tarquin share the idea that they are powerless against their desire. The fact that this is the Goddess of Love (Love itself) unable to perceive that her actions have nothing whatsoever to do with love, and only to do with carnal gratification (and with a prepubescent child) gives this story a bucketload of irony.

Lucrece is Shakespeare's second big hit, that enabled him to buy the big house in Stratford, and I'm surprised I've never read it before, and it's wonderful.

Almost every stanza has a memorable line, characters are powerfully drawn (Tarquin has a real proto-Macbeth thing going on: the man is already guilty before he commits his rape, but is driven on by his decision), and it's very readable: it's something you CAN read on the bus and follow (unlike, say, the Faerie Queene, which needs real attention).

And the character of Lucrece is fabulous: someone who can't believe the situations she's in, that the son of the King is a rapist (how unlike our own royal family), and moving.

The ending, with the men hanging around, is possibly the least effective bit, because frankly Shakespeare isn't terribly interested in them, but expressing the clear republican movement: Shakespeare really despised monarchs (including people so powerful they could get away with things the rest of us can't), and republican heroes sort of get lines to say: look what happens next.
But this is wonderful.

If you are looking for a cute little poem to wash over you with beauty, but not really have the faintest idea what it's about, The Phoenix and the Turtle is great. Almost every stanza has something in it that's worth making a note of, but it seems to be a metaphysical poem to which I am missing the key. Katherine Duncan Jones explains it in terms of the book (Love's Martyr) from which it is taken, and the politics of the later years of Queen Elizabeth, but that looks to me like a (clever) guess.

I think it's a love story between two birds, but there is probably a reason Shakespeare's not known for his metaphysical poetry.

Well, there are some all right poems in The Passionate Pilgrim, but this is a hotchpotch of utterly average Renaissance love songs, fronted by four Shakespeare Sonnets taken from elsewhere and touched up a little bit (if you've read Shakespeare's Sonnets and Love's Labour's Lost, you'll already know them). Come Live With Me and Be My Love is the best of the lot, and that's probably by Marlowe.

This does mean, though, that now I've read the Complete Works of Shakespeare. so yay me.

The early attributed poems: well, good they've been collected, but if they're by Shakespeare, how cares? a three-line poem on the gift of a glove? An epitaph on someone he might have known in Stratford?

No: read Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece: they are fabulous, and worth the price of admission alone.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll be honest - I only read this so I can say, finally, that "I've read all of Shakespeare, " at least of the stuff that's accepted to be his. While I liked the Arden series's Sonnets, this one was a tough slog. The poems are less well known, so the editors larded up lots of details and textual analysis. Of the two major poems, "Venus and Adonis," and the "Rape of Lucrece," I admire both, but like Lucrece more. "Venus and Adonis" is a bit silly. I think it's useful for students of Shakespeare's plays to read these poems because they show his facility with language and shed light on the language used in his plays. These long poems are similar to his early work in that he likes to show off his writing chops in both. Thankfully, in his later work, he focuses less on showy poetry and more on human drama.

The Phoenix and the Turtle is the other well-known poem. The editors spend many pages on this short, confusing, and somewhat boring poem. There are also lots of poem fragments that may or may not have been written by Shakespeare. Again, there was way more detail than I cared to read.

[andré crombie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scarce had the sun dried up the dewy morn,
And scarce the herd gone to the hedge for shade,
When Cytherea (all in love forlorn)
A longing tarriance for Adonis made,
Under an osier growing by a brook,
A brook where Adon used to cool his spleen.
Hot was the day; she hotter that did look
For his approach that often there had been.
Anon he comes and throws his mantle by,
And stood stark naked on the brook’s green brim.
The sun looked on the world with glorious eye,
Yet not so wistly as this queen on him.
He, spying her, bounced in whereas he stood;
‘O Jove,’ quoth she, ‘why was not I a flood?’

[Nora · Rating 3 out of 5]

venus and adonis was definitely the highlight! i love shakespeare ,always have and always will.