Venus and Adonis (annotated)

Venus and Adonis is a poem by William Shakespeare, written in 1592-1593, with a plot based on passages from Ovid's Metamorphoses. It is a complex, kaleidoscopic work, using constantly shifting tone and perspective to present contrasting views of the nature of love. It is written in a verse form known as sesta rima, which is a quatrain followed by a couplet (ABABCC). This form was also used by Edmund Spenser and Thomas Lodge. The poem consists of 199 stanzas or 1,194 lines of iambic pentamet...