Argument
According to scholars like Sir Jonathan Bate, Adonis is about 16 years old. Here, I contend he’s about half that.
[Fun fact about Venus & Adonis: it was Shakespeare’s most popular work in his own lifetime—by far! I wrote my first article on V&A, and am now working on a short, separate book on it, trying to show that it’s a more ironic and ingenious work than we’ve appreciated.]
“Young, and so unkind,” Venus calls Adonis at one point (187).
Young indeed.
How young?
Like eight. Maybe nine.
How do we know? What suggests this? Who suggests this?
Adonis himself. The narrator. And Venus. All three agree. Agree in describing him as young. And small. Very young and small.
And disagree only in what conclusion they draw from that fact. (Venus thinks, meh, whatever. I like him. I want him.)
Let’s start by looking at what Adonis asserts about his age.
We’re 400 lines in before he finds a chance to defend himself. To pull Venus’ hand and lips from his mouth and actually speak.
Immediately he points to his age. His exceedingly young age. He asks,
Who wears a garment shapeless and unfinish’d?
Who plucks the bud before one leaf put forth?
If springing things be any jot diminish’d,
They wither in their pride, prove nothing worth:
The colt that’s back’d and burden’d being young
Loseth his pride and never waxeth strong. (415-20)
A half-finished article of clothing. A shoot-less plant. A mere “springing thing.” A foal not a stallion. Would you leave me alone already? I’m just. too. young.
A hundred lines later, still confronting a goddess who won’t take No for an answer, he asserts the same. “Fair queen,” he implores her,
if any love you owe me,
Measure my strangeness with my unripe years.
Before I know myself, seek not to know me;
No fisher but the ungrown fry forbears.
The mellow plum doth fall, the green sticks fast,
Or being early plucked is sour to taste. (523-8)
Go catch a big fish. Pick a purple plum. Can I, you know, reach puberty first? Don’t take it personally. Don’t go away mad. Just go away.
Some critics dispute these assertions, saying Adonis is not as young as he claims. For example, Coppelia Kahn says,
the real issue isn't age but rather Adonis's sense that eros is a threat to the self.
In other words, he isn’t too young. He’s just closed to the possibility of love.
And yet both the narrator and Venus corroborate his statements about his physical immaturity.
The narrator describes Adonis as both small and undeveloped in one of the opening stanzas, where Venus, having plucked the youngster from his horse, tucks him under one arm:
Over one arm the lusty courser’s rein,
Under her other was the tender boy. (31-2)
Not just “boy.” “Tender boy.” One-armed. Like a football.
But what really settles any debate is what Venus herself says.
You’d think she’d contradict him. Say he’s old, or old enough, or whatever.
She does the opposite, describing him with many of the same adjectives!
For example, the narrator calls Adonis “tender.” And so does the goddess. Twice. (See 127 and 1091).
The narrator also likens Adonis to an “infant.” So does Venus (942).
Adonis calls himself “young” (419). She the same (187).
He calls himself “unripe” (524). Her too (128).
Venus tells Adonis early on,
The tender spring upon thy tempting lip
Shows thee unripe; yet mayst thou well be tasted. (127-8)
Tender. Unripe. But whatever. Come here, gimme a taste. Let me kiss you. Pluck you.
Therefore, Adonis is young. Very young. Too young.
He says so. The narrator says so. And Venus says so.
And…
She wants him anyway.
Her introductory epithet’s not “sick-thoughted” for nothing.
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Hi John. I've been enjoying your brief essays. I think you're right about Adonis' youth. However, I do read the "tender" and "youth" references as being deliberate exaggerations on Shakespeare's part. He created a very earthy goddess, who pants when running through the undergrowth, whose face goes red with passion, and who veers between lust, maternalism, and advising Adonis to have children - though not with her. Equally, just as Venus is depicted as more a matrix of female attributes than single character, so Adonis is multi-faceted. However, I agree with you that youthfulness is a consistent trait.
I offer a psychological reading of this. Shakespeare wrote his play to appeal to Southampton. The Earl was 19 in 1593 when the poem was published. He was then the ward of Lord Burghley (until he turned 21 in 1595). In 1590, when Southampton turned sixteenth, Burghley proposed Southampton marry his (Burghley's) granddaughter, Elizabeth de Vere. Southampton turned him down. His rationale? That he was too young to marry!
We don't have this in his words, but in correspondence by Southampton's mother and grandfather, written to Burghley, who was pressuring them to change the "boy's" mind. The "boy held out, even when Burghley fined him 5,000 pounds when he turned 21.
I read the characters of Venus and Adonis, and their relationship, as reflecting the political/personal situation playing out between Burghley and Southampton. The goddess' pushiness, and Adonis' intransigence, reflect what was playing out in real life. Shakespeare had to be careful how he did this. His childhood friend, and publisher, Richard Field, also had business dealings with Burghley. And Shakespeare knew Burghley would read a poem dedicated to his ward. So Shakespeare had to not make what he was doing too obvious.
In a couple of places Adonis actually encourages Adonis to have children - which, to Elizabethans meant marrying (in theory, although many, like Shakespeare himself and eventually Southampton, did it the other way round). Venus' verses on reproduction are 156-174 and 721 ff. This last is followed by Adonis' extended repudiation of all Venus' arguments. It lasts five stanzas - one of the only three times he speaks in the poem, and almost all of what he says. I read this repudiation as being not just Adonis' refusal to succumb to Venus' lust, but also reflecting Southampton's refusal to subject himself to Burghley's will. I consider this is why Southampton was so happy with the poem: Shakespeare put into Adonis' mouth words that Southampton wanted to say to Burghley, but couldn't.
I agree with you that Venus and Adonis is a very sophisticated poem. As a consequence, it's also open to multiple readings. Yet it remains under-estimated, ignored, or even written off, by many Shakespearean scholars. Thanks for your thoughts.
Your thesis on the actual age of Adonis, and therefore, the ruthless immorality of Aphrodite, appears well corroborated by the text. It beggers one to ask how some scholar's cannot or will not accept the text before them, and insist on - what appears to be -facicious filtering? Why the cognitive dissonance at play when some analyse such works? In other words, what skin do some have in the game? And how do these analyses, if at all, impact societal norms, both physical and moral?