Short answers, pulled from the story.
Venus and Adonis is a 1593 narrative poem in which Venus, the goddess of love, attempts to seduce Adonis, a young man interested only in hunting. Adonis is killed by a wild boar, and Venus in her grief decrees that love will henceforth be 'fickle, false and full of fraud.' The poem draws on book ten of Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Venus and Adonis was published in 1593 and is considered likely to be Shakespeare's first publication. It was printed by Richard Field, who, like Shakespeare, came from Stratford-upon-Avon, and it was reprinted fifteen times before 1640.
Venus and Adonis is dedicated to Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton. Shakespeare describes the poem in the dedication as 'the first heir of my invention.'
The Venus and Adonis stanza is a six-line stanza of iambic pentameter with the rhyme scheme ABABCC. Although Edmund Spenser and Thomas Lodge used the form before Shakespeare, it is now commonly named after this poem.
The title Grim Grinning Ghosts, the theme song for the Haunted Mansion attractions at Disneyland, Walt Disney World, and Tokyo Disneyland, is taken from a line in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis.
The Royal Shakespeare Company staged Venus and Adonis with marionettes in 2004, directed by Gregory Doran. The Boston Metro Opera produced a chamber opera version during the 2010-2011 season, and Rodrigo Ruiz's song cycle based on the poem was released on the 27th of September 2024. Ted Hughes also published a major critical study of the poem in 1992.