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=                        The_Rape_of_Lucrece                         =
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                            Introduction
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'The Rape of Lucrece' (1594) is a narrative poem by William
Shakespeare about the legendary Roman noblewoman Lucretia. In his
previous narrative poem, 'Venus and Adonis' (1593), Shakespeare had
included a dedicatory letter to his patron, the Earl of Southampton,
in which he promised to compose a "graver labour". Accordingly, 'The
Rape of Lucrece' has a serious tone throughout.

The poem begins with a prose dedication addressed directly to the Earl
of Southampton, which begins, "The love I dedicate to your Lordship is
without end."  It refers to the poem as a pamphlet, which describes
the form of its original publication of 1594.

The dedication is followed by "The Argument", a prose paragraph that
summarizes the historical context of the poem, which begins 'in medias
res'.

The poem contains 1,855 lines, divided into 265 stanzas of seven lines
each. The meter of each line is iambic pentameter.  The rhyme scheme
for each stanza is ABABBCC, a format known as "rhyme royal", which was
used by Geoffrey Chaucer before Shakespeare and by John Milton and
John Masefield after him.


                              Setting
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The poem is set just before the establishment of the Roman Republic in
509 BC. The poem's locations are Rome, Ardea, twenty-four miles south
of Rome, and Collatium, ten miles east of Rome.


                             Characters
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* LucreceAn honorable woman
* CollatineLucrece's husband, an officer in the Roman army
* Tarquin (Sextus Tarquinius)Son of king Lucius Tarquinius and an
officer in the Roman army, who rapes Lucrece
* LucretiusLucrece's father
* Junius BrutusFriend to Collatine and Lucretius
* A Messenger
* Lucius Tarquinius (Tarquin the Proud)King of Rome and Tarquin's
father
* Servius TulliusFather-in-law of Lucius Tarquinius
* Publius ValeriusFriend of Collatine and Lucretius


                              Synopsis
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One evening, in the town of Ardea, where a battle is being fought, two
leading Roman soldiers, Tarquin and Collatine, are talking. Collatine
describes his wife, Lucrece, in glowing terms--she is beautiful and
chaste. The following morning, Tarquin travels to Collatine's home.
Lucrece welcomes him. Tarquin entertains her with stories of her
husband's deeds on the battlefield.

Tarquin spends the night at Collatine's house, and is torn by his
desire for Lucrece. His desire overcomes him, and he goes to Lucrece's
chamber, where she is asleep. He reaches out and touches her breast,
which wakes her up. She is afraid.  He tells her that she must give in
to him, or else he will kill her. He also threatens to cause her
dishonor by murdering a slave and placing the two bodies in each
other's arms, and then he would claim that he killed her because he
discovered them in this embrace. If she would give in to him, Tarquin
promises to keep it all secret.  Lucrece pleads with him to no avail.
He rapes her.

Full of shame and guilt, Tarquin sneaks away. Lucrece is devastated,
furious and suicidal. She writes a letter to her husband, asking him
to come home. When Collatine gets home, Lucrece tells him the whole
story, but does not say who did it. Collatine demands to know.  Before
she tells him, Lucrece gets the soldiers, who are also there, to
promise to avenge this crime. She then tells her husband who did it,
and she immediately pulls out a knife, stabs herself and dies.
Collatine's grief is so great that he wants to kill himself, as well.
His friend, Brutus, suggests that revenge is a better choice. The
soldiers carry Lucrece's body through the streets of Rome.  The
citizens, angered, banish Tarquin and his family bringing Republic
rule back to Rome.


                       Publication and title
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'The Rape of Lucrece' was entered into the Stationers' Register on 9
May 1594, and published later that year, in a quarto printed by
Richard Field for the bookseller John Harrison ("the Elder"); Harrison
sold the book from his shop at the sign of the White Greyhound in St.
Paul's Churchyard. The title given on the title page was simply
'Lucrece', though the running title throughout the volume, as well as
the heading at the beginning of the text is 'The Rape of Lucrece'.
Harrison's copyright was transferred to Roger Jackson in 1614; Jackson
issued a sixth edition (O5) in 1616. Other octavo editions followed in
1624, 1632 and 1655. The poem went through eight editions before 1641.


                       Historical background
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'The Rape of Lucrece' draws on the story described in both Ovid's
'Fasti' and Livy's 'History of Rome'. Both authors were writing a few
centuries after the events occurred, and their histories are not
accepted as strictly accurate, partly because Roman records were
destroyed by the Gauls in 390 BC, and the histories prior to that have
been mixed with legends.

The Roman king was Lucius Tarquinius, or Tarquin.  Because of his
arrogance and his tyranny, he is also known as 'Tarquinius Superbus'
(Tarquin the Proud). Lucius Tarquinius had killed his brother-in-law
and father to become king of Rome. His son, Sextus Tarquinius, heir to
the throne, is the rapist of the story. At the beginning of the poem
the Roman army is waging war on a tribe known as the Volscians, who
had claimed territory south of Rome.  The Romans are laying siege to
Ardea, a Volscian city 20 miles south of Rome.

In 509 BC, Sextus Tarquinius, son of the king of Rome, raped Lucretia
(Lucrece), wife of Collatinus, one of the king's aristocratic
retainers. As a result, Lucrece committed suicide. Her body was
paraded in the Roman Forum by the king's nephew. This incited a
full-scale revolt against the Tarquins led by Lucius Junius Brutus,
the banishment of the royal family, and the founding of the Roman
Republic.


''Titus Andronicus''
======================
'The Rape of Lucrece' is also closely related to the early Roman
tragedy 'Titus Andronicus' (). In this revenge play, when the raped
and mutilated Lavinia reveals the identity of her rapists, her uncle
Marcus invokes the story of Lucrece to urge an oath to revenge the
crime: "And swear with me--as, with the woeful fere / And father of
that chaste dishonoured dame, / Lord Junius Brutus swore for Lucrece'
rape-- / That we will prosecute by good advice / Mortal revenge upon
these traitorous Goths, / And see their blood, or die with this
reproach" (4.1.89-94).


''The Taming of the Shrew''
=============================
In 'The Taming of the Shrew' Act 2, Scene 1, Petruchio promises
Baptista, the father of Katherine (the Shrew), that once he marries
Katherine "for patience she will prove second Grisel, / And Roman
Lucrece for her chastity" (2.1.292-293).


''Twelfth Night''
===================
In 'Twelfth Night', Maria's letter in Olivia's handwriting designed to
gull Malvolio reads: "I may command where I adore; but silence, like a
Lucrece knife, With bloodless stroke my heart doth gore: M, O, A, I,
doth sway my life." As Malvolio interprets the "fustian riddle",
Olivia's inability or unwillingness to speak of her love for him is
killing her, like the literal knife of Lucretia's suicide. Malvolio
also notes that Olivia uses an image of Lucrece as a personal seal,
and it is this that convinces him the letter is from Olivia.


''Macbeth''
=============
The rapist Tarquin is also mentioned in Macbeth's soliloquy from Act 2
Scene 1 of 'Macbeth': "wither'd Murther ... With Tarquin's ravishing
strides, towards his design / Moves like a ghost" (2.1.52-56).
Tarquin's actions and cunning are compared with Macbeth's
indecision--both rape and regicide are unforgivable crimes.


''Cymbeline''
===============
Shakespeare retains the essence of the classic story, incorporating
Livy's account that Tarquin's lust for Lucrece sprang from her
husband's own praise of her. Shakespeare later used the same idea in
the late romance 'Cymbeline' (). In this play, Iachimo bets Posthumus
(Imogen's husband) that he can make Imogen commit adultery with him.
He does not succeed. However, Iachimo convinces Posthumus otherwise
using information about Imogen's bedchamber and body. Iachimo hid in a
trunk which was delivered to Imogen's chamber under the pretence of
safekeeping some jewels, a gift for her father, King Cymbeline. The
scene in which he emerges from the trunk (2.2) mimics the scene in
'The Rape of Lucrece.' Iachimo compares himself to Tarquin in the
scene: "Our Tarquin thus, / Did softly press the rushes ere he waken'd
/ The chastity he wounded" (2.2.12-14).


                       Analysis and criticism
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'The Rape of Lucrece', one of Shakespeare's earliest works, was
published one year after 'Venus and Adonis'. It is seen as a tragic
narrative poem, that is extremely rich in poetic images, fancies, and
metaphors. It tells a moralistic tale of a bad deed, what caused it,
how it occurred, and the tragic result.

In a post-structuralist analysis of the poem, Joel Fineman argues that
'The Rape of Lucrece', like Shakespeare's sonnets, deconstructs the
traditional poetics of praise. Fineman observes that the tragic events
of the poem are set in motion precisely by Collatine's hyperbolic
praise of Lucrece; it is his "boast of Lucrece' sov'reignty" (29) that
kindles Tarquin's profane desire. It is not the fact of Lucrece's
chastity, but rather the fact that her husband praises her with the
"name of 'chaste'" that inspires Tarquin's crime: "Haply, that name of
'chaste' unhapp'ly set / This bateless edge on his keen appetite"
(8-9). Collatine's praise paradoxically creates the circumstances that
will ruin both the woman that he praises and the integrity of the
rhetoric of praise itself. Furthermore, the poem itself draws
attention to its own complicity in Collatine's fatal rhetoric of
praise: "the poem itself performs or activates this same praising word
of which it speaks" by citing, in the first line of the second stanza,
its own use of "chaste" in the last line of the first stanza:
"Collatine's fair love, Lucrece the chaste" (7). To Fineman, the
poem's initial self-citation is just one example of how the "poem's
own rhetoricity is... performatively implicated in the rape it
reports". In other words, the opening of the poem highlights an
intrinsic link between the language of poetic praise and sexual
violence. In these same opening stanzas, 'The Rape of Lucrece' also
acknowledges how its own poetic rhetoric is part of this larger
literary tradition which yokes praise and violence.

Jane Newman's feminist analysis of the poem focuses on its
relationship to the myth of Philomel and Procne from Book VI of the
'Metamorphoses' by Ovid. In Newman's reading, the tradition of violent
female revenge for rape represented by the myth of Philomel is
repressed in Shakespeare's 'The Rape of Lucrece'. Shakespeare's poem
faintly alludes to Ovid's myth, but does not present Procne and
Philomel's method of revenge as an authentic option for Lucrece.
Although Lucrece maintains the ability to speak after the rape (in
contrast to the mutilated Philomel who loses all speech), Newman
argues that the poem actually limits Lucrece's ability to act
precisely by celebrating her self-sacrifice: "The apparent contrast of
a silent Philomela, robbed of the potential for such an impact on the
political moment to which she belongs, effectively casts Lucretia's
suicide as the only form of political intervention available to
women." Ironically, Lucrece's rhetorical eloquence blocks the
possibility that she herself could seek out a more active, violent
retribution on Tarquin, her rapist, and the monarchical regime that he
represents. Instead, her revenge must be carried out by male agents
acting in her name, particularly Brutus, the founder of the Roman
Republic, who imitates Lucrece's self-sacrificing rhetoric as he leads
the rebellion against Tarquin's father, the king of Rome.


                              See also
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* 1594 in poetry
* 'A Lover's Complaint'


                             References
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*
*
*http://shakespearestudyguide.com/Lucrece.html


                           External links
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*
*[https://luna.folger.edu/luna/servlet/view/search?q=call_number%3D%22STC+22345+copy+3%22+LIMIT%3AFOLGERCM1~6~6
Digital Facsimile at Folger Library] *
*'The Rape of Lucrece' at
[http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/poems/poem_view.php?WorkID=rapelucrece
Open Source Shakespeare]


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