Venus and Adonis: The Equinoctial Boar and the Easter Flower

Reading Venus and Adonis Part 3

Now Adonis was no other then the Sun, adored under that name by the Phoenicians; as Venus by the name of Astarten: for the Naturalists call the upper Hemisphere of the Earth, in which we inhabit, Venus; as the lower Proserpina: Therefore they made the Goddesse to weepe, when the Sun retired from her to the sixe winter signes of the Zodiacke; shortning the daies, and depriving the earth of her delight and beauty: which againe he restores by his approach into Aries. Adonis is said to be slaine by a Bore, because that beast is the Image of the Winter; salvage, horrid, delighting in mire, and feeding on ackornes, a fruit which is proper to that season. So the Winter wounds, as it were, the Sunne to death, by deminishing his heate and lustre; whose losse is lamented by Venus, or the widdowed Earth, then covered with a vaile of clowds; Springs gushing from thence, the teares of her eies, in greater abundance; the fields presenting a sad aspect, as being deprived of their ornament. But when the Sun returnes to the Equator, Venus recovers her alacrity; the trees invested with leaves, and the earth with her flowrie mantle: wherefore the ancient did dedicate the month of Aprill unto Venus.

Ovid's Metamorphosis. Englished Mythologiz’d And Represented in figures by G[eorge]. S[andys]. (Oxford, 1632), pp. 366-67

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The Greek Adonis myth is believed to derive from the ancient middle eastern proto god Adon who died and was reborn in that deepest of myth traditions that aligns to the season of ripeness followed by the long dark winter and Spring’s hope and life reborn. Adon also has echoes in the Egyptian Osiris story and in the Christian tradition celebrated with Easter,

Investigating the references to time and numbers we can see that Shakespeare carefully wove that seasonal myth into the structure of the poem

By this the lovesick queen began to sweat,

For where they lay the shadow had forsook them,

And Titan, tirèd in the midday heat,

With burning eye did hotly overlook them,

Wishing Adonis had his team to guide,

So he were like him, and by Venus' side.

Venus and Adonis begins with the Sun already risen. In stanza 30 we learn that it is directly overhead – “the shadow had forsook them.” The sun god, here named Titan, looks down upon them and wishes to trade places with Adonis.

Later at stanza 89 the sun sets, “his day’s hot task has ended in the west” and Adonis finally offers Venus a parting kiss.

"Look, the world's comforter with weary gait

His day's hot task hath ended in the west;

The owl, night's herald, shrieks, 'tis very late;

The sheep are gone to fold, birds to their nest,

  And coal-black clouds, that shadow heaven's light,

  Do summon us to part and bid good night.

"Now, let me say good night, and so say you;

If you will say so, you shall have a kiss."

"Good night," quoth she, and ere he says adieu,

The honey fee of parting tendered is.

  Her arms do lend his neck a sweet embrace.

  Incorporate then they seem; face grows to face.

Stanza 136 line 816

With this he breaketh from the sweet embrace

Of those fair arms which bound him to her breast,

And homeward through the dark laund runs apace,

Leaves love upon her back, deeply distressed.

Look how a bright star shooteth from the sky,

So glides he in the night from Venus' eye.

Stanza 143, line 856 in the poem. “the sun ariseth in his majesty”

Lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest,

From his moist cabinet mounts up on high

And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast

The sun ariseth in his majesty,

  Who doth the world so gloriously behold,

  That cedar tops and hills seem burnished gold.

Math

Shakespeare has noted the exact moments of noon and sunset on the first day, and sunrise on the second, as follows.

Noon line 177 stanza 30

Sunset line 530 stanza 89

Sunrise line 856 stanza 144

Subtracting we find the night lasted 856-530 = 326 lines, the half day from noon to sunset 530-178 = 353 doubled makes 706 so a full day would be 1032 lines. Dividing by 24 hours yields exactly 43 lines per hour. Which further tells us that the first day lasted 706/43 = 16.37 hours. If we consult an astronomical chart for London for midsummer’s day, we find it occurs on June 20 in 2024 and lasts 16 hours and 37 minutes from sunrise to sunset.

This remarkable coincidence prompted a seminal paper by Christopher Butler and Alistair Fowler in 1964, Time Beguiling Sport: Numerical Symbolism in Venus and Adonis. However, identifying the time of the poem with Midsummer day creates an interpretive problem with the traditional myth of Adonis. Adonis is traditionally viewed as an aspect of Summer, the Green Man born in the Spring and dying with the onset of Winter. Therefore, his death should occur on the autumnal equinox, not the solstice. But Butler and Fowler find another numerical equivalence in the poem. From sunrise until the end of the poem there are 55 stanzas, the same number that comprise the period of the night. So taking the first number as the length of the second day we have a day which equals the previous night, so Shakespeare has condensed the summer into a single day, and while Venus woos Adonis on Midsummer, he dies the next day at the autumnal equinox. After death he is transformed into an anemone flower. With its white petals tinged with red, the European wood anemone (Anemone nemorosa) or windflower is a woodland flower that appears before the trees have leaved out, as the first warmth of spring sunshine reaches the forest floor. Thus, it is a traditional symbol of spring, associated with that other equinox and its traditional celebration of the return of Adon in his Christian form. (The anemone native to the middle east, Anemone coronaria blooms in February in the warmer Mediterranean climate and is generally deep red, Israel has a festival around the blooming called Darom Adom)

There are many more explicit references to time in the poem, including the line that provided the title for Butler and Fowler’s article:

“A summer’s day will seem an hour but short,

Being wasted in such time-beguiling sport”

The long midsummer day will seem but a moment if they spend it making love.

However even the shortest night drags on as she anticipates the dawn without Adonis,

“Her song was tedious and outwore the night,

For lovers’ hours are long, though seeming short.”

 “A thousand honey secrets shalt thou know.” (1. 16)

“No dog shall rouse thee, though a thousand bark.” (1. 240)

 ...a thousand ways he seeks

To mend the hurt (l 477-78)

“A thousand kisses buys my heart from me.” (1. 517)

“What is ten hundred touches unto thee?” (1. 519)

“He cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles.” (1. 682)

“Is twenty hundred kisses such a trouble?” (1. 522)

“If love have lent you twenty thousand tongues…”(l. 775)

And “Ay me,” she cries, and twenty times, Woe, woe,”

And twenty echoes twenty times cry so.”

This last totals 20x2x20 woes for 800. Add all those up and we get the curious number 28,800.

There are 1440 minutes in a day (24x60) so this is the number of minutes in 20 days. Twenty is another number which recurs repeatedly in the poem. Burton and Fowler believe that its importance derives from the fact that Wriothesley (the dedicatee) was 20 years old when the poem was published. They also note that during the twenty-year period of Southampton’s life there have been 12 conjunctions of the Sun and Venus which corresponds to the number of kisses Venus extracts from Adonis.