Shakespeare/Poems and Sonnets
His plays
have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.
POEMS
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In 1593 and 1594, when the theatres were closed because of plague, Shakespeare
published two narrative poems on erotic themes, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of
Lucrece. He dedicated them to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. In Venus
and Adonis, an innocent Adonis rejects the sexual advances of Venus; while in The
Rape of Lucrece, the virtuous wife Lucrece is raped by the lustful Tarquin.
Influenced by Ovid's Metamorphoses, the poems show the guilt and moral
confusion that result from uncontrolled lust.[
Both proved popular and were often reprinted during Shakespeare's lifetime. A third
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