Literary Background
Venus and Adonis comes from the 1567 translation by Arthur Golding of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book 10. Ovid told of how Venus took the beautiful Adonis as her first mortal lover. They were long-time companions, with the goddess hunting alongside her lover. She warns him of the tale of Atalanta and Hippomenes to dissuade him from hunting dangerous animals; he disregards the warning, and is killed by a boar.
Shakespeare developed this basic narrative into a poem of 1,194 lines. His chief innovation was to make Adonis refuse Venus's offer of herself. It has been argued (by Erwin Panofsky) that Shakespeare might have seen a copy of Titian's 'Venus and Adonis', a painting that could be taken to show Adonis refusing to join Venus in embraces. But Shakespeare's plays already showed a liking for activist heroines, forced to woo and pursue an evasive male (cf. The Two Gentlemen of Verona).
The other innovation was a kind of observance of the Aristotelian unities: the action takes place in one location, lasts from morning till morning, and focuses on the two main characters.
Read more about this topic: Venus And Adonis (Shakespeare poem)
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