Oxford and Venus & Adonis

Charles Beauclerk reads Venus and Adonis as a book of initiation rather than Ovidian erotica — a "royal gift" from a shadow king to a shadow heir, set against King James's Basilikon Doron. At its heart is the hunt of Venus, Adonis and the boar, in which the boar becomes the poet's own genius. The talk runs from Ovid and Ted Hughes through the Sonnets and King Lear to the scaffold of Charles I. This 42-minute video is from the 2025 Shakespearean Authorship Trust conference.