"Venus and Adonis" stands out in his oeuvre as one of Shakespeare's most popular pieces of work, at least during his lifetime, though many scholars point to its similarities to other works of his. Other plays that are tell stories of unrequited love are Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Other works of Shakespeare's that retell stories of Roman and Greek mythology include his play Troilus and Cressida and his narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece.
Other major authors of Elizabethan literature are Edmund Spenser and Ben Jonson. Major works that Shakespeare looked to for official tellings of these stories are Homer's Iliad and The Odyssey, as well as...
