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Shakespeare on Stage
American Shakespeare Center, The Duchess of Malfi. To Jun. 15, 2013.
American Shakespeare Center, Twelfth Night. To Jun. 16, 2013.
American Shakespeare Center, Return to the Forbidden Planet. To Dec. 1, 2013.
Folger Shakespeare Library, Twelfth Night. To Jun. 9, 2013.
American Shakespeare Center, Love's Labour's Lost. To Jun. 15, 2013.

Venus and Adonis (Modern)

Author: William Shakespeare
Editor: Hardy M. Cook
Peer Reviewed

Which after him she darts, as one on shore
Gazing upon a late embarkèd friend
Till the wild waves will have him seen no more,
820Whose ridges with the meeting clouds contend.
So did the merciless and pitchy night,
Fold in the object that did feed her sight.
Whereat amazed, as one that unaware
Hath dropped a precious jewel in the flood,
825Or stonisht, as night wanderers often are,
Their light blown out in some mistrustful wood,
Even so confounded in the dark she lay,
Having lost the fair discovery of her way.
And now she beats her heart, whereat it groans,
830That all the neighbor caves, as seeming troubled,
Make verbal repetition of her moans;
Passion on passion, deeply is redoubled.
"Ay me," she cries, and twenty times, "Woe, Woe,"
And twenty echoes twenty times cry so.
835She marking them begins a wailing note
And sings extemporally a woeful ditty
How love makes young men thrall and old men dote,
How love is wise in folly, foolish witty.
Her heavy anthem still concludes in woe,
840And still the choir of echoes answer so.
Her song was tedious and outwore the night,
For lovers' hours are long, though seeming short.
If pleased themselves, others they think, delight
In such like circumstance with such like sport.
845Their copious stories, oftentimes begun,
End without audience and are never done.