🌹 Stanza 69 - Literary Analysis

Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis

📖 Original Stanza

‘I know not love,’ quoth he, ‘nor will not know it,
Unless it be a boar, and then I chase it;
‘Tis much to borrow, and I will not owe it;
My love to love is love but to disgrace it;
For I have heard it is a life in death,
That laughs and weeps, and all but with a breath.

🔍 Line-by-Line Analysis

Line 1: ‘I know not love,’ quoth he, ‘nor will not know it,

• "I know not love": An archaic way of saying "I do not know love." This emphasizes Adonis's youth and inexperience with romantic affection.
• "quoth he": An archaic phrase meaning "said he." It's a common narrative tag in older literature.
• "nor will not know it": A double negative, common in Shakespearean English, which serves to emphatically state his refusal: "and I will not know it." It highlights his resolute rejection of the concept of love and Venus's advances.
• Meaning: "He said, 'I do not understand love, nor do I ever wish to understand it.'"

Line 2: Unless it be a boar, and then I chase it;

• "Unless it be a boar": Adonis equates his understanding of "pursuit" or "passion" solely with hunting wild animals, specifically a boar. This starkly contrasts with Venus's romantic pursuit and reveals his priorities.
• "and then I chase it": His only accepted form of passionate engagement is the physical, dangerous act of hunting. This line is significant for its dramatic irony, as he will tragically die by the very creature he embraces with passion.
• Meaning: "Unless it takes the form of a boar, in which case I will eagerly pursue it."

Line 3: ‘Tis much to borrow, and I will not owe it;

• "‘Tis much to borrow": An archaic contraction for "It is much to borrow," meaning "It is a great deal to borrow." Adonis metaphorically views love as a debt or an obligation that incurs significant cost or commitment.
• "and I will not owe it": He refuses to be indebted or obligated by love. This reveals his desire for independence and his perception of love as a burden or a trap that demands more than it gives.
• Meaning: "Love is like a great debt that one incurs, and I refuse to be obligated by it."

Line 4: My love to love is love but to disgrace it;

• "My love to love": Refers to Adonis's own inclination or feeling towards the concept of romantic love itself.
• "is love but to disgrace it": This is a clever use of wordplay. The first "love" signifies his preference or inclination, while the second "love" refers to the emotion Venus embodies. He means his inclination towards the idea of love is only to belittle it, to show it disrespect, or to prove it worthless. He has a "love" for dismissing love.
• Meaning: "My attitude towards the very concept of love is one of scorn, only to disparage it."

Line 5: For I have heard it is a life in death,

• "For I have heard": This phrase emphasizes that Adonis's understanding of love is based on hearsay and common perceptions, not personal experience. It underscores his youth and naivete.
• "a life in death": This is an oxymoron, a figure of speech that combines contradictory terms. Adonis believes love brings such intense suffering or consumes one so entirely that it's like being alive but emotionally or spiritually deadened. It speaks to the paradoxical and potentially destructive nature of love from his perspective.
• Meaning: "Because I've heard that love is a paradoxical state, a form of living death."

Line 6: That laughs and weeps, and all but with a breath.

• "That laughs and weeps": This describes the intense and contradictory emotional swings associated with love – joy quickly followed by sorrow, or vice versa. It highlights love's unpredictable and volatile nature as Adonis perceives it.
• "and all but with a breath": This phrase suggests the rapid succession or fleeting nature of these emotions, as if they occur almost simultaneously or within a very short span of time, like a single breath. It implies the instability or perhaps the overwhelming intensity of love's emotional impact.
• Meaning: "Love causes one to experience extreme emotions, both laughter and tears, almost simultaneously and fleetingly."

🎭 Literary Devices

🎯 Overall Meaning & Significance in the Context of the Poem

This stanza is a pivotal moment in Venus and Adonis, offering a profound insight into Adonis's character and his stark contrast with Venus. It encapsulates his youthful immaturity, his staunch aversion to romantic love, and his naive understanding of passion.

Adonis articulates his view of love not as an enticing pleasure, but as a burdensome obligation ("much to borrow, and I will not owe it") and a paradoxical, painful state ("a life in death, / That laughs and weeps"). His disdain is so strong that he claims his "love to love is love but to disgrace it," indicating his active contempt for the very concept Venus embodies. This rejection is based on hearsay ("For I have heard"), emphasizing his inexperience and the gap between his theoretical understanding and Venus's lived experience.

Crucially, his only accepted form of "chase" or passionate pursuit is hunting, specifically the boar. This line serves as potent dramatic irony and foreshadowing, as his dedication to this dangerous pursuit will ultimately lead to his tragic death, ironically fulfilling the "life in death" prophecy he associates with love itself.

The stanza highlights the central thematic conflict of the poem: the clash between raw, unbridled desire (Venus) and youthful, unyielding resistance (Adonis). His refusal to accept Venus's advances sets the stage for the tragic narrative, portraying him as a figure who, by rejecting the human complexities of love and embracing only the primal thrill of the hunt, ultimately seals his own fate. It underscores themes of innocence versus experience, the destructive nature of unrequited passion, and the ironic interplay between fate and free will.