Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis
'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.
| Device | Example | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Prophetic Declaration | "lo! here I prophesy" | Establishes Venus as oracle pronouncing cosmic curse |
| Personification | Sorrow and jealousy "attending" and "waiting on" love | Makes emotions into servants that follow love |
| Contrast | "sweet beginning" vs. "unsavoury end" | Emphasizes love's tragic progression from joy to sorrow |
| Absolute Language | "Ne'er," "shall not match" | Creates finality and inevitability of the curse |
| Binary Opposition | "high or low" with no middle ground | Shows love's destined instability |
| Cause and Effect | "Since thou art dead" causes universal love curse | Links personal loss to cosmic consequence |
| Mathematical Imbalance | Pleasure never matching woe | Presents love as eternally negative equation |
| Prophetic Authority | Venus as divine oracle | Gives her curse cosmic power and legitimacy |
This stanza presents Venus's famous curse on love, transforming her personal grief into a cosmic pronouncement that will affect all future lovers. It serves as an etiology explaining why love is always troubled and painful.
The Divine Curse: Venus uses her divine authority to curse all future love, making her personal loss into universal law. This transforms her grief from private sorrow into cosmic legislation.
Love's Eternal Imbalance: Venus decrees that love will "ne'er settled equally" but always exist in extremes of "high or low." This eliminates the possibility of stable, contented love.
The Attendant Emotions: Sorrow and jealousy become love's permanent servants—they "attend" and are "waited on" by love, making negative emotions inseparable from romantic feeling.
The Tragic Pattern: Love will always follow the pattern of "sweet beginning, but unsavoury end," making disappointment inevitable regardless of how promising love initially appears.
The Mathematics of Suffering: Venus declares that love's pleasure "shall not match his woe," creating a cosmic equation where pain always exceeds joy in romantic relationships.
Personal Loss as Universal Law: Venus transforms her specific experience with Adonis into the governing principle for all love, making her personal trauma into cosmic reality.
The Origin of Love's Problems: This curse serves as an origin story explaining why love is difficult, jealous, unstable, and ultimately disappointing—it's because of Venus's grief over Adonis.
Divine Revenge: Unable to have Adonis herself, Venus ensures that no one else can have uncomplicated love either. This reveals the vengeful, spiteful aspect of her divine nature.
The Institutionalization of Suffering: By making sorrow and jealousy permanent "attendants" of love, Venus institutionalizes romantic suffering as natural law rather than unfortunate accident.
Prophecy as Power: Venus asserts her remaining power after losing Adonis by becoming an oracle whose predictions have the force of divine decree.
The Democratization of Pain: Venus's curse ensures that her specific suffering becomes universal human experience—everyone must share her pain.
This stanza establishes why love is always troubled in human experience, presenting Venus's personal loss as the cosmic origin of all romantic difficulties and positioning her grief as the source of universal amorous suffering.