Extract from Venus and Adonis. It begins as follows: "Hard favoured tyrant, ugly, meagre, leane, Hateful divorce of love, (thus chides the death) Grim-grinning ghost, earths worm what doest thou to stifle beauty, and to steale his breath?!Venus and Adonis title

Venus and Adonis is a long poem based on the Metamorphosis, a set of Ancient Greek stories told by Ovid.

It gave Shakespeare a dream debut in 1594, and was a lasting success - reprinted seven times before 1620.

The printer was a Stratfordian called Richard Field, while the text was dedicated to Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton. Wriothesley was also Shakespeare's patron.

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