My throbbing heart shall rock thee day and night.

There shall not be one minute in an hour

Wherein I will not kiss my sweet love’s flower.’

Thus, weary of the world, away she hies,

And yokes her silver doves, by whose swift aid

Their mistress, mounted, through the empty skies

In her light chariot quickly is conveyed,

Holding their course to Paphos, where their queen

Means to immure herself, and not be seen.

THE RAPE OF LUCRECE

DEDICATING Venus and Adonis to the Earl of Southampton in I953, Shakespeare promised, if the poem pleased, to ‘take advantage of all idle hours’ to honour the Earl with ‘some graver labour’. The Rape of Lucrece, also dedicated to Southampton, was entered in the Stationers’ Register on May I594, and printed in the same year. The warmth of the dedication suggests that the Earl was by then a friend as well as a patron.

Like Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece is an erotic narrative based on Ovid, but this time the subject matter is historical, the tone tragic. The events took place in 509 BC, and were already legendary at the time of the first surviving account, by Livy in his history of Rome published between 27 and 27 5 BC. Shakespeare’s main source was Ovid’s Fasti, but he seems also to have known Livy’s and other accounts.

Historically, Lucretia’s rape had political consequences. Her ravisher, Tarquin, was a member of the tyrannical ruling family of Rome. During the siege of Ardea, a group of noblemen boasted of their wives’ virtue, and rode home to test them; only Collatine’s wife, Lucretia, lived up to her husband’s claims, and Sextus Tarquinius was attracted to her. Failing to seduce her, he raped her and returned to Rome. Lucretia committed suicide, and her husband’s friend, Lucius Junius Brutus, used the occasion as an opportunity to rouse the Roman people against Tarquinius’ rule and to constitute themselves a republic.

Shakespeare concentrates on the private side of the story; Tarquin is lusting after Lucrece in the poem’s opening lines, and the ending devotes only a few lines to the consequence of her suicide. As in Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare makes a little narrative material go a long way. At first, the focus is on Tarquin; after he has threatened Lucrece, it swings over to her. The opening sequence, with its marvellously dramatic account of Tarquin’s tormented state of mind as he approaches Lucrece’s chamber, is the more intense. Tarquin disappears from the action soon after the rape, when Lucrece delivers herself of a long complaint, apostrophizing night, opportunity, and time and cursing Tarquin with rhetorical fervour, before deciding to kill herself. After summoning her husband, she seeks consolation in a painting of Troy which is described (I373-I442) in lines indebted to the first and second books of Virgil’s Aeneid and to Book I3 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. After she dies, her husband and father mourn, but Brutus calls for deeds not words, and determines on revenge. The last lines of the poem look forward to the banishment of the Tarquins, but nothing is said of the establishment of a republic.

Like Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, initially popular (with six editions in Shakespeare’s lifetime and another three by I655), was later neglected. Coleridge admired it, and more recent criticism has recognized in it a profoundly dramatic quality combined with, if sometimes dissipated by, a remarkable force of rhetoric. The writing of the poem seems to have been a formative experience for Shakespeare. In it he not only laid the basis for his later plays on Roman history, but also explored themes that were to figure prominently in his later work. This is especially apparent in the portrayal of a man who ‘still pursues his fear’ (308), the relentless power of self-destructive evil that Shakespeare remembered when he made Macbeth, on his way to murder Duncan, speak of ‘withered murder’ which, ‘With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards his design ǀ Moves like a ghost’.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE HENRY WRIOTHESLEY, EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON AND BARON OF TITCHFIELD

The love I dedicate to your lordship is without end, whereof this pamphlet without beginning is but a superfluous moiety. The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance. What I have done is yours; what I have to do is yours, being part in all I have, devoted yours. Were my worth greater my duty would show greater, meantime, as it is, it is bound to your lordship, to whom I wish long life still lengthened with all happiness.

Your lordship’s in all duty,

William Shakespeare

THE ARGUMENT

Lucius Tarquinius (for his excessive pride surnamed Superbus), after he had caused his own father-in-law Servius Tullius to be cruelly murdered, and, contrary to the Roman laws and customs, not requiring or staying for the people’s suffrages had possessed himself of the kingdom, went accompanied with his sons and other noblemen of Rome to besiege Ardea, during which siege the principal men of the army meeting one evening at the tent of Sextus Tarquinius, the King’s son, in their discourses after supper everyone commended the virtues of his own wife, among whom Collatinus extolled the incomparable chastity of his wife, Lucretia. In that pleasant humour they all posted to Rome, and, intending by their secret and sudden arrival to make trial of that which everyone had before avouched, only Collatinus finds his wife (though it were late in the night) spinning amongst her maids. The other ladies were all found dancing, and revelling, or in several disports. Whereupon the noblemen yielded Collatinus the victory and his wife the fame. At that time Sextus Tarquinius, being enflamed with Lucrece’ beauty, yet smothering his passions for the present, departed with the rest back to the camp, from whence he shortly after privily withdrew himself and was, according to his estate, royally entertained and lodged by Lucrece at Collatium. The same night he treacherously stealeth into her chamber, violently ravished her, and early in the morning speedeth away. Lucrece, in this lamentable plight, hastily dispatcheth messengers—one to Rome for her father, another to the camp for Collatine. They came, the one accompanied with Junius Brutus, the other with Publius Valerius, and, finding Lucrece attired in mourning habit, demanded the cause of her sorrow. She, first taking an oath of them for her revenge, revealed the actor and whole manner of his dealing, and withal suddenly stabbed herself. Which done, with one consent they all vowed to root out the whole hated family of the Tarquins, and, bearing the dead body to Rome, Brutus acquainted the people with the doer and manner of the vile deed, with a bitter invective against the tyranny of the King; wherewith the people were so moved that with one consent and a general acclamation the Tarquins were all exiled and the state government changed from kings to consuls.

The Rape of Lucrece

From the besieged Ardea all in post,

Borne by the trustless wings of false desire,

Lust-breathèd Tarquin leaves the Roman host

And to Collatium bears the lightless fire

Which, in pale embers hid, lurks to aspire

And girdle with embracing flames the waist