Two early poems of Shakespeare, based on love and lust from classical mythology.

The first is a stillborn May-December romance where the goddess Venus tries to seduce, then protect, a young boy she loves, failing at both. The goddess of love here comes across as a desperate cougar, oddly lacking in power, not so surprisingly lacking in sense. I'm not sure how I would have felt about the goddess if I had merely read her story. Instead I listened to Claire Corbett read her, and she gave her such heart that I could forgive her folly and tyranny and mourn her loss.

The second work was even darker, with Shakespeare probing the psyches of a rapist and his victim. The greatest dramatic psychologist had early shown an interest in extreme psychopathology with Richard III, but I found the power and depth that he showed here almost worthy of the tragedies he would write a decade later. Eve Best, a star on the London and Broadway stage, nearly brought tears to my eyes as the wronged heroine examined her options and decided on suicide. ( )