Elizabethan narrative poets inherited more than one way of treating mythological figures. A medieval practice bequeathed to the Renaissance was to emphasize the allegorical dimensions of mythological characters. In contrast, the practice of Ovid, to whose Metamorphoses Shakespeare and others turned , was to de-emphasize allegory and to anthropomorphize mythological figures...
 

...Venus generally represents Lust and Adonis, virtuous Chastity.
 

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...motivations and actions of the figures are made to conform to traditional allegories, just as the outcome of the story is made to meet certain demands of the overriding myth...
 

?alters his received material in a way which weakens rather than strengthens the traditional ethical underpinnings of the poem.
 

?other Venus tradition, Standing in contrast to the wanton Venus is a beneficent goddess who maintains earthly harmony and proportion by inspiring love and the continual regeneration of the species...
 

?inspires passion?mother of generation?hardly be censured in terms of morals?appears widely in ancient, medieval, and Renaissance poetry.
 

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?tradition stemming from literary Platonism...
 

...twelfth-century school at Chartres?produced narrative poetry?dramatized?processes of creation and regeneration. Venus, along with Nature?important position in the allegorized cosmology...
 

...Venus; presence in Chartrian poetry?revindication?Venus as a goddess with a legitimate natural function?produced an interest, more philosophical than romantic, in reproductive love?prompted by Platonic discussion of the nature of love (Symposium, 206b-208b), gave rise to later medieval and Renaissance literary material touching on the importance of procreative love.
 

? in Chartrian poetry ...God, the First Creator, who creates the archetypal forms to be used in making the material world; Nature, who brings order to chaos by shaping the unformed matter of chaos according to the forms which God supplies; and Venus, who is to assure that the individuals produced by Nature continually replenish themselves.
 

Venus, Nature?s ?under deputy,??
 

Nature, a conspicuous medieval goddess, is assisted by Venus, a classical goddess of fertility...
 

?she is to renew the diverse species established by God through Nature, and in doing so she is to oppose creation's enemy, Death, who would destroy all creation, returning it to chaos.
 

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?Nature in Alain?s De Planctu Naturae complains against man?s unproductive love?a set piece in later medieval poetry.
 

Jean de Meun?traditional enmity between nature and Death?man opposes Atropos, the Fate who would destroy the human race.
 

Spenser?s Venus, it should be noted, shows the influence of literary Platonism.
 

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The Venus of the Fairie Queene?incorporates qualities traditionally held by Nature as well as Venus. ...first formed things of this world and continues to insure their harmony and order ?inspires passion and urges creatures to repair their numbers?
 

Although?Venus and Adonis often is perceived?ethical?Lust opposes Reason or Beauty?variation?traditional conflict between Nature and man ?complaint?not against all men but against the selfish and unproductive inclinations of Adonis.
 

In both Venus and Adonis and the Sonnets, Shakespeare ...allegorized hierarchy similar?twelfth-century poets? Sonnet 11?
 

She carv?d thee for her seale, and ment therby,

Thou shouldst print more, not let the coppy die.
 

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Seeds spring from seeds, and beauty breedeth beauty...
 

By law of nature thou art bound to breed

(166-74)
 

Heather Asals suggests substantial links between Ficino?s Venuses and Shakespeare?s goddess.
 

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?death is the enemy of Nature?s labors, in Venus and Adonis? ?fruitless chastity? ?
 

?the world will hold thee in disdaine

Sith in thy pride, so faire a hope is slaine? (761-2)
 

Early critics commonly praised Adonis? chastity and frequently viewed the youth one-dimensionally as virtue personified. Recent critics?stalwart chastity as indicative of a moral flaw rather than a virtue.
 

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The medieval Ovide Moralisé, for example, interprets Adonis in malo as one who delights too much in his own beauty, follows luxuria, and pursues his own destruction.
 

...Robert Greene?s reference to an Adonis whose ?Beauty was a bane? that led to ?lawlesse lust? and death. Thus, Adonis? beauty in some cases is seen as a basis for pride.
 

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Boccaccio, following Ovid?s own prompting, notes that the story of the slain Adonis points to the short duration of beauty and, finally, of life itself.
 

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Spenser?s understanding of Adonis, like his conception of Venus, is influenced by Platonic notions.
 

Creation as a process involving god, the First Creator,?Venus, who produces the things of this world and inspires them to continual regeneration?Adonis?intermediary in the process of creation?form after which all men are patterned. God is the First Creator, and Venus is the maker of individuals, but Adonis is the ?Father of all formes??
 

Shakespeare clearly is influenced by the vegetation myth...Adonis as the sun and a source of generation...the young boy is the ?earthly sunne? as compared to the heavenly one (860-4).
 

. . .how much a foole was I . . .

To waile his death who lives, and must not die

?Till mutuall overthrow of mortall kind?

For he being dead, with him is beautie slaine,

And beautie dead, blacke Chaos comes againe. (1015-20)
 

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Although Shakespeare depicts his Venus as lustful, he also endows her with qualities that are characteristic of the Venus of generation. Indeed, Shakespeare incorporates material that calls forward a tradition of medieval literary Platonism. Within this tradition, which holds that the good possessed by each person should be propagated in the world, Venus has the legitimate function of inciting reproduction
 

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The death of the celibate youth reinforces the opinions of Ovid and his commentators concerning the brevity of beauty and further supports Venus? judgment concerning the destructiveness of self-love.
 

In addition, the rejection of Venus results in the final departure of Venus and harmonious love from the world (1135ff)
 

?the frustration of such a union in Shakespeare ushers in the end of the golden Age, bringing the death of ideal beauty, the departure of love, and the return of ?blacke Chaos.?
 

?human ethics, a system in which lust is usually evil and chastity most often good. Venus, however, calls forward another system of value, one which coincides with a divinely established order of nature...
 

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n8 ...Bernardus Silvestris? gloss on the Aeneid... ?We read that there are indeed two Venuses, one lawful, and the other the goddess of wantonness. The lawful Venus is the harmony of the world, that is, the even proportion of worldly things, which some call Astrea, and others call natural justice...The shameless Venus, however, the goddess of wantonness, is carnal concupiscence since that is the mother of all fornication.?
 

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n40  ?By Adonis, is meant the sunne, by Venus, the upper hemisphere of the earth (as by Proserpine the lower) by the boare, winter: by the death of Adonis, the absence of the sunne for sixe wintrie moneths; which time, the earth lamenteth: Adonis is wounded in those parts, which are the instruments of propagation: for in winter the son seemeth impotent, and the earth barren: neither that being able to get, nor this to bear either fruit or flowers,? from Abraham Fraunce, The Third Part of the Countesse of Pembroke?s Yvychurch (1592)...