- In 1992, the then British poet laureate, Ted Hughes, published a book, Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being (Faber and Faber in UK, Farrar Straus in US) based on a "shamanic" interpretation of Venus and Adonis as a "key" to Shakespeare's tragic dramas.
- In 1996 The Theatreworks Company, Dublin, staged an acclaimed adaptation by Artistic Director Michael Caven (now Barker-Caven).[5]
- In 2004, the Royal Shakespeare Company staged Venus and Adonis with marionettes (Gregory Doran, director).[6]
- During the 2010–2011 season, the Boston Metro Opera staged Venus and Adonis, a chamber opera in one act (duration approximately 40 mins). The libretto is Shakspeare's poem (edited by Gretchen Snedeker (1983–2008), American French horn player and adjunct professor of music at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York). The music is by American composer Zachary Wadsworth (born 1983).[7]
- The original poem is read by several British actors (among them David Burke, Eve Best, and Benjamin Soames) on a Naxos audiobook. The audiobook also includes The Rape of Lucrece.
- Richard Burton recorded a spoken word album of the poem for Caedmon Records.
- The title of the theme song for the Haunted Mansion attractions at Disneyland, Walt Disney World, and Tokyo Disneyland, Grim Grinning Ghosts, is taken from a line in Venus and Adonis:
"Hard-favour'd tyrant, ugly, meagre, lean, Hateful divorce of love," thus chides she Death, Grim-grinning ghost, earth's worm, what dost thou mean To stifle beauty and to steal his breath, Who when he liv'd, his breath and beauty set Gloss on the rose, smell to the violet?
- A theatrical adaptation, William Shakespeare's Venus & Adonis, with an original score and songs by Christopher Reiner, was performed by Zombie Joe's Underground Theatre Group in North Hollywood, California, in 2006.[8]
