sex raises some pretty good questions."

Throughout his plays and poetry Shakespeare imbeds numerous and diverse themes, many of them relating to love, sexuality, life, death, religion and countless others. In his poem Venus and Adonis Shakespeare tackles the theme of sexuality as a representation of love, and a function of Nature. The characters of Venus and Adonis, often times reminiscent of an Elizabethan fallen Adam and Eve, create a sexually charged poem that lends much of the power and influence of love and life and death to Nature. Shakespeare creates a natural phenomenon that physically links the love and actions of these two characters to the forces, both positive and destructive, to Nature herself. The poem allows Venus and Adonis a certain power or authority over the forces that lie within the powers of Nature, but Shakespeare's creation of this sexual narrative as a depiction of erotic desire as a tragic event leads the characters to inevitable misfortune, and a complete loss of control over their circumstances.

Shakespeare's text can be broadly divided into three sections.

Always present on the fringes of Venus' imaginary Eden, is the possibility of danger and the threat of a wilderness outside of her beautiful primrose bank, and picturesque flowers. As this wilderness emerges in the second and into the third parts of the poem, the similarities to Eden are quickly destroyed by the realistic dangers they encounter. In the first section, Venus compares Adonis' breath to `heavenly moisture', a dew like the one God used to water the plants before he invented rain (62-6). And as the surrounding climate of the area changes, so we follow the emotional and sexual changes within Venus and Adonis. But the alternating weather conditions generated by the lovers' bodies grow steadily less moderate, passing from rain to parching heat and back again to rain in a bewildering flurry of changes.

Disorder breeds by heating of the blood (739-42).

Here Nature attempts to replace what was lost, and gives reassurance to the suffering Venus by leaving her with a remembrance of Adonis in the form of a beautiful flower.

The first being Venus' expressions of love for Adonis, the second involving Adonis' death and the hunt, and the third and final section focuses on Venus' reaction to the loss of Adonis. In the first third, Venus tries with increasing desperation to entice Adonis into sex. The pastoral setting on the primrose bank is ideal for the sexually charged analogies she creates.

At the same time Venus loses control over her body. As she hurries through the woods after the sound of Adonis' horn, her body is subjected to the intrusive gropings of bushes: "Some catch her by the neck, some kiss her face, / Some twine about her thigh to make her stay" (872-3). This attack on Venus' physical body, and her inability to stop it renders her even more powerless, and her dominating sexuality is turned to frightened reserve as she searches for Adonis. Her efforts to entice Adonis through her pastoral metaphors have failed,

Some common words found in the essay are:
Nature Shakespeare's, Venus Adonis, Allen Throughout, Nature Shakespeare, Adam Eve, Adonis Shakespeare, Nature Love, venus adonis, life death, imaginary doth prove', `all imaginary doth, sexuality life death, doth prove', `all imaginary, sexuality life, poem venus, wholly sexual, entice adonis, primrose bank, sexually charged,
Approximate Word count = 1319
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)