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The Rape of Lucrece

Background

Setting: The time is immediately before the establishment of the Roman republic in 509 B.C. The
places are Ardea, 24 miles south of Rome; Collatium, 10 miles east of Rome; and Rome.
Date of Publication: On May 9, 1594, the poem was entered in the Hall Book of the Worshipful
Company of Stationers, the English government's pre-publication registry. The poem was highly
popular with educated readers.
Alternate Titles: The poem was listed in the Hall Book under the title of The Ravyshement
[Ravishment] of Lucrece but was published with the title Lucrece. The Rape of Lucrece was
substituted as a title at a later date.

Probable Main Sources

(1) The History of Rome, by Livy (full name, Titus Livius), was one of Shakespeare's most
important sources for The Rape of Lucrece . Livy (59 B.C-17 A.D) wrote about early
Rome–from its founding in 753 B.C. to the age of Caesar Augustus, down to about 9 B.C.
Livy's History–told in 142 volumes, of which 35 survive intact and others survive in
fragments or in references to his History in works of other writers–is a masterpiece and
required reading for all historians. However, Livy was a moralist who wrote history as a
reformer. He was also a layman who had little experience in the day-to-day workings of
government. When writing, he sometimes accepted undocumented accounts–accounts
more properly categorized as legend than as history. Such is his account of the rape of a
woman named Lucretia (the Lucrece of Shakespeare's poem). The account is taken as
fact by some, fiction by others. Thus, Livy–a rich source of information about early Rome
during the age of kings–was not always reliable. (2) Fasti (Calendar) by the Roman poet
Ovid (full name, Publius Ovidius Naso) was another important source of information.
Shakespeare may have used an English translation of Fasti by Arthur Golding, although it
is just as likely that he used an original Latin text. Of course, he may have paged through
both texts while writing his poem. Ovid (43 B.C.-18 A.D.) is famous for his love poems,
but Fasti was a 12-volume account of the Roman calendar that listed special events and
festivals on a given day. "Book II" of Fasti tells the story of the rape of Lucretia, or
Lucrece, because of its importance as a significant turning point in Roman history. Used
as evidence of the corruption of the reigning King of Rome (his son was the rapist), the
incident led to the overthrow of the king and the establishment of the Roman republic.

Type of Poem, Rhyme Scheme, and Meter

Type of Poem and Length: Narrative poem resembling a revenge tragedy; 1,855 lines

Rhyme Scheme and Meter: The poem is in rhyme royal (or rime royal) with each stanza having
seven lines in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme is ababbcc–that is, Line 1 rhymes with Line
3, Line 2 rhymes with Lines 4 and 5, and Line 6 rhymes with Line 7. Geoffrey Chaucer, author of
the Canterbury Tales, pioneered this rhyme scheme in England in his works Troilus and Criseyde
and The Parlement of Foules. Rhyme royal was going out of fashion when Shakespeare wrote
Lucrece, although later poets–including John Milton in the 17th Century and John Masefield in the
20th–revived it. Stanza 8 of the poem aptly displays rhyme royal and iambic pentameter:
.
..............A...From the besieged Ardea all in post,
..............B...Borne by the trustless wings of false desire,
..............A...Lust-breathed Tarquin leaves the Roman host,
..............B...And to Collatium bears the lightless fire
..............B...Which, in pale embers hid, lurks to aspire
..............C...And girdle with embracing flames the waist
..............C...Of Collatine's fair love, Lucrece the chaste.

Imagery

The language and imagery in the poem are elegant and accomplished, demonstrating great
technical skill. Shakespeare was attempting to establish his reputation when he wrote the poem.
If there is a weakness, it is that Lucrece sometimes resembles an automaton expressing
emotions rather than feeling them.

Dedication

Shakespeare dedicated The Rape of Lucrece to Henry Wriothesley, the Third Earl of
Southampton. Wriothesley (1573-1624) was a patron of Shakespeare and other writers of the
time. Although a favorite at the court of Queen Elizabeth I, his association with the headstrong
Robert Devereux, the Second Earl of Essex–another fixture at court–led him to take part in
Devereux’s 1601 rebellion against the queen. Wriothesley was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Summary of the Poem

In the mid-Sixth Century, B.C., Lucius Tarquinius murders his father-in-law to become King of
Rome. He is an arrogant, despotic ruler, fully deserving his epithet, Tarquin the Proud, or
Tarquinius Superbus. Because he covets the town of Ardea, 24 miles south of Rome, he orders
troops there to lay siege.
.......While encamped at Ardea, officers gather after supper at the tent of the king’s son, Tarquin,
to socialize and tell stories. By and by, they begin extolling the virtues of their wives. One officer,
Collatine, boasts that his wife, Lucrece, is by far the most beautiful and virtuous woman of all. His
accounting of her excellent qualities arouses lust in the heart of young Tarquin; he must see this
wonder for himself. So it is that he steals away to Collatine's home in Collatium, 10 miles east of
Rome, where Lucrece manages the household in the absence of her husband.
.......When he presents himself at her door as a comrade of her husband, she receives him
hospitably. Her beauty and innocent charm astound him. Collatine’s praise of her, generous as it
was, was not generous enough. He resolves to have her. Lucrece believes him honorable and
upright, a fine and noble gentleman like her husband; she is trusting to a fault. The narrator draws
back the curtain of her mind:

..............This earthly saint, adored by this devil,


..............Little suspecteth the false worshipper;
..............For unstain'd thoughts do seldom dream on evil. (85-87)

The clever Tarquin ingratiates himself with guileless Lucrece, praising her husband’s soldierly
valor and “manly chivalry” (109).He also invents excuses for his visit, deciding to restrain his
libido until nightfall. After supper, they while away the evening in conversation. When they retire
to separate chambers, the omniscient narrator interprets Tarquin’s motives and, in doing so,
preaches a lesson:

..............Those that much covet are with gain so fond,


..............For what they have not, that which they possess
..............They scatter and unloose it from their bond,
..............And so, by hoping more, they have but less;
..............Or, gaining more, the profit of excess
..............Is but to surfeit, and such griefs sustain,
..............That they prove bankrupt in this poor-rich gain. (134-140)

.......When deepest night silences all living things, save for the howling wolf and the screeching
owl, Tarquin steals forth to plunder his treasure. He lifts a latch. He knees open the door. Before
him, Lucrece lies fast asleep. “Into the chamber wickedly he stalks, / And gazeth on her yet
unstained bed" (365-366). Under his groping hands, Lucrece awakens and "Wrapp'd and
confounded in a thousand fears, / Like to a new-kill'd bird she trembling lies" (456-457). She must
submit to him willingly, he tells her, or he will take her by force. 'Lucrece,' quoth he,'this night I
must enjoy thee: / If thou deny, then force must work my way" (512-513). Lucrece begs him, by all
that is right and good, to leave her alone.

..............She conjures him by high almighty Jove,


..............By knighthood, gentry, and sweet friendship's oath,
..............By her untimely tears, her husband's love,
..............By holy human law, and common troth,
..............By heaven and earth, and all the power of both,
..............That to his borrow'd bed he make retire,
..............And stoop to honour, not to foul desire. (568-574)

.......Tarquin deafens his ears to her pleadings–and takes her. “The wolf hath seized his prey, the
poor lamb cries” (677). Then he leaves her, a wretched, heartbroken woman, polluted to the
deepest fathom of her soul. “She hath lost a dearer thing than life” (687). With her nails, she tears
her flesh. She says:

.............."O Night, thou furnace of foul-reeking smoke,


..............Let not the jealous Day behold that face
..............Which underneath thy black all-hiding cloak
..............Immodestly lies martyr'd with disgrace!" (792-802)

In handwritten messages, she summons Collatine from Ardea and her father, Lucretius, from
Rome. While awaiting their arrival, she reflects on a painting of the Trojan War and recalls the
suffering that resulted in Troy from the event that caused it: the abduction of the beautiful Helen,
wife of King Menelaus of Greece, by Paris, son of King Priam of Troy.

.............."Here friend by friend in bloody channel lies,


..............And friend to friend gives unadvised wounds,
..............And one man's lust these many lives confounds:
..............Had doting Priam cheque'd his son's desire,
..............Troy had been bright with fame and not with fire." (1487-1491)

Lucrece compares Tarquin with Paris, and herself with Priam.

.............."To me came Tarquin armed; so beguiled


..............With outward honesty, but yet defiled
..............With inward vice: as Priam him did cherish,
..............So did I Tarquin; so my Troy did perish." (1544-1547)

.......After her husband and her father arrive with friends, Lucrece–now dressed in mournful
black–tells them the shocking news, that she has been raped. "Mine enemy was strong, my poor
self weak, / And far the weaker with so strong a fear" (1646-1647). Then, before naming the
rapist, she asks them to avenge the terrible crime:
..............“But ere I name him, you fair lords,” quoth she,
..............Speaking to those that came with Collatine,
..............“Shall plight your honourable faiths to me,
..............With swift pursuit to venge this wrong of mine;
..............For 'tis a meritorious fair design
..............To chase injustice with revengeful arms:
..............Knights, by their oaths, should right poor ladies' harms.” (1688-1694)

But when she names Tarquin, she plunges a knife into her own breast. Astonishment paralyzes
Collatine. But her father throws himself in grief upon her, and Brutus withdraws the knife,
releasing small rivers of blood. Brokenhearted Lucretius cries out to her, “That life was mine
which thou hast here deprived” (1752). Collatine falls on his wife and in her blood “bathes the
pale fear in his face” (1775) until “manly shame bids him possess his breath and live to be
revenged on her death.” Brutus holds out the bloody weapon, saying, “By this bloody knife we will
revenge the death of this true wife” (1840-41). His compatriots fall to their knees and swear they
will.
.......They then bear the body of Lucrece through the streets of Rome and inform the people of
Tarquin’s “foul offence” (1852). At the same time, they denounce the tyrannical rule of Lucius
Tarquinius. The entire Tarquin family is rooted out, deposed, and banished. And Rome, in 509
B.C., establishes a republic ruled by representatives of the people. There will be no more
Tarquins, no more kings.
VENUS AND ADONIS

Venus and Adonis is a poem by William Shakespeare, written in 1592-93, with a plot
based on passages from Ovid's Metamorphoses. It is a complex, kaleidoscopic work, using
constantly shifting tone and perspective to present contrasting views of the nature of love.

Venus and Adonis was entered into the Stationers' Register on April 18, 1593; the poem
appeared later that year in a quarto edition, published and printed by Richard Field, a Stratford-
upon-Avon man and a close contemporary of Shakespeare. Field released a second quarto in
1594, then transferred his copyright to John Harrison ("the Elder"), the stationer who published
the first edition of The Rape of Lucrece, also in 1594. Subsequent editions of Venus and Adonis
were in octavo format rather than quarto; Harrison issued the third edition (O1) probably in 1595,
and the fourth (O2) in 1596 (both of Harrison's editions were printed by Field). The poem's
copyright then passed to William Leake, who published two editions (O3, O4) in 1599 alone, with
perhaps four (O5, O6, O7, and O8) in 1602. The copyright passed to William Barrett in 1617;
Barrett issued O9 that same year. Five more editions appeared by 1640 — making the poem,
with 16 editions in 47 years, one of the great popular successes of its era.[1]

Historical background

In 1593, an outbreak of the plague in London caused the city authorities to close all the public
playhouses. Shakespeare had by this time written perhaps the first 5 or 6 of his plays, and was
building a reputation. He set about what he would publish as "the first heire [sic] of my invention"[2]
— that is, the first legitimate offspring from his "muse".[3] He dedicated the work to Henry
Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton.
In 1594 Shakespeare dedicated Lucrece to Southampton as the 'graver labour' promised in his
dedication to Venus and Adonis. Southampton was in financial difficulties, but it is still possible
that this patron was extravagant enough to reward these irresistible overtures with a substantial
amount of money. Shakespeare from somewhere acquired enough capital to become a one-
twelfth sharer in his theatre company's profits from performance. It was thereafter apparently
more lucrative for him to write plays than long poems.[4]

Literary background

Venus and Adonis comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book 10. Ovid told of how Venus
took the beautiful Adonis as her first mortal lover. They were long-time companions, with
the goddess hunting alongside her lover. She warns him of the tale of Atalanta and
Hippomenes to dissuade him from hunting dangerous animals, he disregards the warning,
and is killed by a boar.

Shakespeare developed this basic narrative into a poem of 1194 lines. His chief
innovation was to make Adonis refuse Venus's offer of herself. It has been argued (by Erwin
Panofsky) that Shakespeare might have seen a copy of Titian's 'Venus and Adonis', a painting
that could be taken to show Adonis refusing to join Venus in embraces. But Shakespeare's plays
already showed a liking for activist heroines, forced to woo and pursue an evasive male (see The
Two Gentlemen of Verona).

The other innovation was a kind of observance of the 'Aristotelian' unities: the action
takes place in one location, lasts from morning till morning, and focuses on the two main
characters.

Plot
Venus enters the poem 'sick-thoughted' with love, and hoists Adonis from the saddle of
his horse. She then plies him with kisses, and arguments, but nothing she does or says can rouse
him to sexual desire. This he repudiates. By the mid-point of the poem, Adonis has announced
his intention to go boar hunting the next morning. Venus tries to dissuade him, and get him to
hunt more timid prey. This he ignores, and breaks away from her. She spends the rest of the
night in lamentation, at dawn, she hears the sound of the hunt. Full of apprehension, she runs
towards the noise, knowing that, as the sound comes from just one place, the hunters are
confronting an animal that isn't running away. She comes upon the body of Adonis, fatally gored
by the boar's tusks. In her horror and sorrow, the Goddess of Love pronounces a curse upon
love: that it will always end badly, and those who love best (like her) will know most sorrow. This
curse provides an aetiology, a myth of causation, explaining why love is inseparable from pain
(this is characteristic of the form).
Shakespeare's poem is seen as an 'epyllion', a minor epic of sexual love. Thomas Lodge had
inaugurated the genre in his 'Glaucus and Scilla' (1589). The main rival was Marlowe's unfinished
Hero and Leander. That poem, and Shakespeare's, went on being reprinted through the first half
of the 17th century. Problems about who owned the text probably prevented its publication in the
1623 Folio of Shakespeare's works.
Venus and Adonis is written in an incessantly clever manner. Venus's words to Adonis from line
229 onwards:
"Fondling," she saith, "since I have hemm'd thee here
Within the circuit of this ivory pale,
I'll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer;
Feed where thou wilt, on mountain or in dale:
Graze on my lips; and if those hills be dry,
Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie."
were endlessly alluded to in the period. They are typical of the poem, in making the reader have
the indecent thoughts, while remaining almost innocent: 'those hills' all too easily cease to mean
her swelling lips, and turn into her breasts, so that the reader's imagination runs down her body,
and the closing lines start to hint at cunnilingus. Throughout the poem, Shakespeare denies to
his reader the sexual consummation Adonis denies to Venus. The poem had a contemporary
reputation as erotica, but functions more as a witty frustration of pornographic reading.
At line 505, Shakespeare rather daringly alludes to the perils of 1593. Venus coerces a kiss from
Adonis, and to celebrate its sweetness, says of Adonis' lips:
"Long may they kiss each other, for this cure!
O, never let their crimson liveries wear!
And as they last, their verdure still endure,
To drive infection from the dangerous year!
That the star-gazers, having writ on death,
May say, the plague is banish'd by thy breath."

In these lines, Adonis's sweet breath acts like the kind of herbal nosegays people used to
carry around, to try to keep themselves from inhaling the miasma which they thought spread the
plague. It is possible that contemporaries would have sensed, in reading the lines about Adonis's
beautiful body despoiled by the boar, which has ripped open his groin, that the end of the poem
invited them to consider the plague victims. The buboes of bubonic plague formed in the neck
and the groin, and the victim died when they burst, agonisingly: love cannot save even the most
beautiful from an ugly death.

Adaptations

• Doom metal band My Dying Bride used extracts of the poem in the song For My Fallen
Angel, on their 1996 album, Like Gods of the Sun.

• The Lone Star Ensemble, a theatre company, has presented a fully staged performance
of the poem.
• 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 once recorded a spoken word album of the poem for Caedmon Records.

• Melbourne based company Malthouse Theatre collaborated with Sydney's Bell


Shakespeare to produce a musical adaption of the work. Directed by Marion Potts, with
music by Andree Greenwell, the work was first performed in the Malthouse Theatre in
Melbourne in 2008 and again in Sydney Theatre Company's Wharf 2 in February 2009.
Most recently the show has traveled to Auckland, New Zealand and been performed in
The Bruce Mason Centre as part of the 2009 Auckland Festival.

This unusual version Venus & Adonis starred Melissa Madden-Gray and Susan Prior, both
playing the character of Venus. The Adonis character is absent from the stage and is 'played' by
the audience. Throughout the performance Venus (Madden-Gray and Prior) attempt to seduce
the audience. Venus & Adonis received good reviews in all of its three seasons.
SONNET 28

How can I then return in happy plight,


That am debarre’d the benefit of rest?

This sonnet paints a man (or the poet himself) lamenting on how he will find happiness
despite of all the oppression and pain which his enemies (or the people who are not in favor of
him) caused. Instead of finding solitude and rest in his nights, he lies awake wrapped in the arms
of his grief, shedding tears as the voices in his mind shout for rest, asking why despite of all his
labors there are still people who cannot appreciate his effort. it tells us that not even the night and
the day can free us from our pain; and despite all the “crabs” who are pulling us down,
temptations hindering our journey, we still must struggle, learn how to survive and exist, no longer
for them but for our Creator.

SONNET 91

Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,


Some in their wealth, some in their body’s force

People give too much weight or importance on their physical belongings, things which do
not really matter, materials which one cannot bring with him when his time on Earth has come to
an end. We forget that love is better than all of these. The love of a woman, the love of a Being
humans address as God, is enough to make one man proud and wealthy though he does not live
a wealthy life for he knows that without this love, he is nothing but an empty shell.

SONNET 14

Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck;


And yet methinks I have astronomy,

The poet tells us that he bases his judgment not on the stars, though he thinks he knows
astronomy, but on his daily observations of life, the reality that is happening around him. This has
something to do with the Elizabethan worldview; people are guided by the belief that things
happening in the human sphere also happen in the cosmic sphere and they are so fascinated and
engrossed with the mysteries of astronomy.

SONNET 23

As an unperfect actor on the stage


Who with his fear is put besides his part,

The poet is a man who is afraid to tell his affection towards his ladylove so instead of
saying it to her, loud and clear, he opted to write it, put it in words, and pour his heart in books.
This might also tell us that there are persons who are born writers, not actors or speakers, whose
talents are seen in his/her writing. They find freedom, happiness, and peace with their pen and
paper as the words flow freely from their hearts.

SONNET 62

Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye


And all my soul and all my every part;

Narcissism is one flaw committed by most humans, a sickness which one has to battle if
he/she wants to be rid of it. It is in every human’s heart, perhaps, some are not just aware of it
while others are “enjoying” it. We enjoy hearing the wonderful things about us, we tend to
embrace and love only ourselves that in so doing, we separate ourselves from the rest of
humanity.

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