Shakespeare’s Tiger King

Yes, you read that right…

We’ve heard this story before…

A plague brakes out. Everyone is stuck at home, with nothing to do, and no end in sight. For entertainment, all are watching this amazing but crazy story unfold…

But this isn’t Covid.

It was the summer of 1592. There’s an outbreak of the plague (the OG kind) and officials shut everything down — yes, they knew even back then that people gathering in groups spread it…it’s a small world. At its peak about a thousand people died a week and about ten percent of the population perished.

Shakespeare’s company couldn’t perform in the theater, and the actors were out of work. To get a little money, Shakespeare penned what was at the time his most famous writing. He’s know today for his plays, but he first broke on the scene in his own time with an epic poem: Venus and Adonis.

The story is of a goddess (Venus) pursuing the hunter, Adonis, for…love. Adonis is more into hunting and isn’t so sure about all this until…this is a steamy story. Look at what Venus tells him:

I’ll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer;
Feed where thou wilt, on mountain or in dale:
Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry,
Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.Feed where thou wilt, on mountain or in dale:

Venus telling Adonis to wonder south? Into her “garden”…The poem is a fun one. Elizabethan sexuality was actually less puritanical than we realize, but even this poem had trouble getting to print because of its scandalousness.