The Fayre Mayde of the Exchange: Venus and Adonis quoted and referred to by title

The Fayre Mayde of the Exchange, possibly written by Thomas Heywood, and printed in 1607, alludes to lines 229-40 of Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis. In these lines Venus likens her body to a deer park and offers Adonis a private tour of the grounds. Shakespeare’s popular narrative poem, first printed in 1593, is also named specifically in the play.

In The Fayre Mayde, Bowdler, who is described in the dramatis personae (character list) as “an humorous gallant,” tells Cripple that he wishes to woo Mall Berry but that he is “not furnish’d of a courting phrase, to throw at a dogge,” much less at the “glorious angell.” When Cripple asks if he can remember anything from his reading, Bowdler admits that he “neuer read any thing but Venus and Adonis.” Cripple replies encouragingly: “Why that’s the very quintessence of loue.” Unfortunately, neither Bowdler nor Mall quite understands the poem — Bowdler asks her to “alight [her] steede,” although, as Cripple notes, “shees not on horsebacke,” while Bowdler’s offer to smother her with kisses simply makes her wonder why his breath is so hot. When his efforts go unrewarded, he concludes that the poem itself is to blame: “Venus her selfe with all her skill could not winne Adonis, with the same wordes: O heauens! was I so fond then to thinke that I could conquer Mall Berry? O the naturall fluence of my owne with had been farre better!”

If the play was in fact written by Heywood, it would be consistent with what Katherine Duncan-Jones has shown was a lifelong interest in the poem, which he also alluded to in Oenone and Paris (1594) and The Brazen Age (1613). Venus and Adonis was tremendously popular, as demonstrated by its many re-printings and the range of references and allusions to the work. This particular passage was alluded to and reworked by many authors in a wide range of contexts. The same lines quoted in The Fayre Mayde are included in The Dumbe Knight (1608) and transcribed by Henry Colling.

The Folger Shakespeare Library owns two copies of this edition; the copy shown here was previously owned by the Shakespeare scholar and forger John Payne Collier and then by Herbert T. Griffiths, before Mr. Folger purchased it. Five more copies are held at the British Library, the National University of Scotland, the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, the Houghton Library at Harvard University, and the Huntington Library.