n yet
another literary capacity. On April 18, 1593, Richard Field, the
printer, who was his fellow-townsman, obtained a license for the
publication of 'Venus and Adonis,' a metrical version of a classical tale
of love. It was published a month or two later, without an author's name
on the title-page, but Shakespeare appended his full name to the
dedication, which he addressed in conventional style to Henry
Wriothesley, third earl of Southampton. The Earl, who was in his
twentieth year, was reckoned the handsomest man at Court, with a
pronounced disposition to gallantry. He had vast possessions, was well
educated, loved literature, and through life extended to men of letters a
generous patronage. {74} 'I know not how I shall offend,' Shakespeare
now wrote to him, 'in dedicating my unpolished lines to your lordship,
nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to
support so weak a burden. . . . But if the first heir of my invention
prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather.' 'The
first heir of my invention' implies that the poem was written, or at
least designed, before Shakespeare's dramatic work. It is affluent in
beautiful imagery and metrical sweetness, but imbued with a tone of
license which may be held either to justify the theory that it was a
precocious product of the author's youth, or to show that Shakespeare was
not unready in mature years to write with a view to gratifying a patron's
somewhat lascivious tastes. The title-page bears a beautiful Latin motto
from Ovid's 'Amores:' {75a}

Vilia miretur vulgus; mihi flavus Apollo
Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua.

The influence of Ovid, who told the story in his 'Metamorphoses,' is
apparent in many of the details. But the theme was doubtless first
suggested to Shakespeare by a contemporary effort. Lodge's 'Scillaes
Metamorphosis,' which appeared in 1589, is not only written in the same
metre (six-line stanzas rhyming _a b a b c c_), but narrates in the
exordium the same incidents in the same spirit. There is little doubt
that Shakespeare drew from Lodge some of his inspiration. {75b}

'Lucrece.'

A year after the issue of 'Venus and Adonis,' in 1594, Shakespeare
published another poem in like vein, but far more mature in temper and
execution. The digression (ll. 939-59) on the destroying power of Time,
especially, is in an exalted key of meditation which is not sounded in
the earlier poem. Th