6 Shakespearean Poetry: The Rape of Lucrece

Mr. Ditto Prasad Prasad

Storyboard

• Section 1- Shakespeare; An Introduction
  • The life of Shakespeare
  • Shakespeare’s Plays
  • Shakespeare’s Poetry
• Section 2- Shakespeare’s Sonnets; An introduction
  • Types of Sonnets
  • Shakespeare’s Sonnets
  • Shakespeare’s Sonnets- Themes and Dedications
• Section 3- Rape of Lucrece: Sources and Background 
  • Shakespeare’s source of inspiration
• Section 4- Rape of Lucrece: A critical summary
  • Summary of the Rape of Lucrece
• Section 5-The Rape of Lucrece: A critical analysis
  • Mood
  • Characterisation
•  Section 6-The Rape of Lucrece: A critical analysis (2)
  • Themes
•  Conclusion

Introduction

This lesson deals with the poetry of William Shakespeare. His poetical genius is evident in his sonnets, long poems and plays. This lesson specifically focuses on The Rape of Lucrece, a long poem. However, as Wordsworth had once remarked, “Shakespeare unlocked his heart,” in the sonnets, we shall begin with a short introduction about Shakespearean sonnets, followed by a summary and a critical analysis of The Rape of Lucrece.

Section 1- Shakespeare; a short Introduction

William Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564, in Stratford-on-Avon. The son of John Shakespeare and Mary Arden, he was educated at the King Edward IV Grammar School in Stratford, where he learned Latin and a little Greek.

Shakespeare wrote more than thirty plays. These are usually divided into four categories: histories, comedies, tragedies, and romances. His earliest plays were primarily comedies and histories such as Henry VI and The Comedy of Errors, but in 1596, Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet, his second tragedy, and over the next dozen years he would return to the form, writing the plays for which he is now best known: Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra. In his final years, Shakespeare turned to the romantic with Cymbeline, A Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest. While Shakespeare was regarded as the foremost dramatist of his time, he and his contemporaries looked to poetry, not playwriting, for lasting fame.

Shakespeare’s initial contributions to poetry, Venus and Adonis(1593) and Lucrece(1594), were dedicated to Henry Wriothesley, the third Earl of Southampton. With these two publications, Shakespeare entered the marketplace as a professional poet. The Passionate Pilgrim is a collection of twenty poems that the publisher attributed entirely to Shakespeare. However, only five works can be traced to Shakespeare: versions of sonnets 138 and 144, and three poems taken from a quarto edition of Love’s Labour’s Lost. A Lover’s Complaint was printed in 1609.

Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter. The results were plays and sonnets that had ten syllables per line and in his plays, these lines were unrhymed.

Section 2- Shakespeare’s Sonnets; An introduction

Accredited with an impressive count of 154 sonnets, Shakespeare is one of the most oft-quoted sonneteers of all ages. First published in a quarto in the year 1609 under the title “SHAKE- SPEARES SONNETS. Never before Imprinted.”, the Shakespearean sonnets envelop varying  themes from love to beauty to immortality. His sonnets were hailed as “the most precious pearls of Elizabethan lyricism, some of them unsurpassed by any lyricism,” Shakespeare is unequivocally the greatest sonneteer of his age. Written around 1594, Thomas Thorpe enrolled Shakespeare’s Sonnets in the Stationer’s Register on 20th May, 1609.

Etymologically, the term ‘sonnet’ can be traced back to the Italian word ‘sonnetto’ meaning “sound” or “strain.” Sonnets in their incipient form were short poems delivered with complementary music.

The sonnet form of verse appeared on the English literary horizon during the 16th Century, at the peak of the English Renaissance. The birth of sonnets is credited to the Italian sonneteer Giacomo Da Lentini and popularized by Petrarch, whose influence was critical and indispensible to the development of the form in England. Lost in the period post the Chaucerian age, the interest in Petrarch was revived in England by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey. In their pioneering anthology Songes and Sonettes, more popularly known anTottel’s Miscellany (1557), the Earl of Surrey modified the Petrarchan sonnet form and created and popularized the English sonnet form.

The English sonnets, more popularly known as the Shakespearean sonnets comprise of three quatrains ( three stanzas of four lines each) with a concluding couplet designed with ababcdcdefefgg rhyming scheme in iambic pentameter ( although a few sonnets have been known to be crafted in tetrameter and hexameter) . The Shakespearean sonnet is the most lucid, simple and dynamic form of all others, comprising of three quatrains with alternating rhyme schemes and a rhyming couplet. In a sonnet, the poet raises a conflict, which is explored in the three quatrains to be resolved in the final couplet. The conflict could be anything, love, lust, life, friendship, heartbreak, beauty, mortality and immortality. Sonnets since the beginning of their origin have been dedicated love poems exploring the triumphs and throes of love.

The Italian counterpart, i.e., the Petrarchan sonnets on the other hand are divided into two sections bearing two separate rhyme schemes. Petrarch wrote his sonnets to his beloved Laura, Dante to  Beatrice, Spenser his ‘Amoretti” to his beloved Elizabeth Boyle, in which he gives an account of his courting of Elizabeth.

Shakespeare’s sonnets were all dedicated to a mysterious ‘W.H’- “the only begetter” of all his sonnets. The identity of W.H has been a matter of much debate and wavering speculations. A group of critics ascribe the initials to William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, while most critics agree that W.H is likely to be an inverted initial for Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton. The first 126 sonnets are addressed to a young man, as the poet waxes about the ache of unrequited or forbidden love and waning beauty. The rest of the sonnets address an unidentified Dark Lady; in acidulous verses, the poet critiques the formidable prowess of the Dark Lady to seduce and bereft him of his love and friendship. Love and lust are the warring emotions and themes in the sonnets.

Wordsworth once said, “With this key, Shakespeare unlocked his heart,” a comment which echoes the popular sympathy which regarded the sonnets as autobiographical outlets. The sonnets are speculated to be the sole insight into the emotional crisis of the poet. The sonnets are among the most famous of Shakespeare’s works, admired for the exquisite imagery, their impeccable and inimitable style and melody. The sonnets may be divided on the basis of the thematic nature of their arrangement.

The first 17 sonnets are called ‘procreation sonnets.’ In these sonnets, the poet praises and offers his dedication to the unparalleled beauty of the addressee, a young man. However, the ephemeral nature of earthly life, and the cruel nature of time, the antagonist, who robs all of youth and beauty, prompts the poet to request and advice the young man to get married and reproduce without delay for his lineage and beauty to continue.

Sonnets 18-77 and 87-126 are known as ‘The Fair Youth Sonnets.’ In these, the poet lavishes boundless praises upon the young man, and confesses his deep and unbridled love for him. Images are drawn from earth, water and the heavens to support the weight and depth of his feelings. The themes of these sonnets are more dynamic and unpredictable than that of the procreation sonnets. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” the poet calls to the young man and offers to immortalize his youth in his eternal lyrics.

The Dark Lady sonnets extend from 127 to 154. They deal with the poet’s ambiguous relationship with his mistress. The Dark Lady sonnets are notorious for their explicit erotic subject and the transience of physical pleasure, the poet’s feeling of betrayal and jealousy as the fair youth sways towards the Dark Lady’s seduction are the predominant themes of these poems. The last two sonnets deal with Greek epigrams on Cupid, the “little love-god.”

Shakespeare’s sonnets have produced some of the most quoted love lyrics of all time. They are everlasting and evergreen for they embrace the Shakespearean characteristic depiction of human beings, their feelings and follies. They deal with all things familiar and earth-bound, making them universal and identifiable. The subject and object may vary; however, the feelings are raw and natural, making them some of the most celebrated poems of world literature.

Shakespeare’s sonnets are distilled with an enduring autobiographical tenacity. With its veiled yearning for forbidden, unrequited or even secretive love, they are fountains of raw, candid emotion. In his narrative poems, apart from the sheer power of the images his words draw, he is noted for the impressive impartiality with which he treats his subjects. He sheaths his person deep within the recesses of the self that lay buried and lost to the readers and hides himself under the shield of the history of his age.

Section 3- Rape of Lucrece; Sources and Backgrounds

In the 16th century, when England was thriving in the flourishing ambience set off by the Renaissance, the Italian legends were a prominent part of popular culture. The literature of the period drew heavily upon the Classics, and much of Shakespeare’s literary contributions followed this popular tendency.

The Rape of Lucrecewas the second and final of the long narrative poems attributed to William Shakespeare. In the poem, he breathes new life, dimensions and dramatic quality to the history of the establishment of the Roman Republic as recorded by the Roman historian Livy in History of Rome. Livy’s work inspired Ovid to craft a long poem entitledFasti (AD 1st circa.) Thus, what was first reported as history was transformed into a fable about betrayal, treachery, honour and ignominy. In Renaissance Venice, ‘ the Most Serene Republic,’ Lucretia was an icon of great significance as the harbinger of the Roman republic.

Shakespeare draws heavily upon both the texts for the composition of The Rape of Lucrece and in an introduction entitled ‘The Argument,’ he provides the backdrop of the poem, how Lucius  Tarquiniusdubbed as ‘Superbus’ for his deep-seated conceit and excessive pride, infamous for his unlawful means of conquering was consumed with the desire to physically possess Lucrece, the virtuous and adored wife of Collatinus. Tarquinius coveted and conquered what was not lawfully his, shattering the dignity and honour of an innocent Lucrece behind him. Deeply and incurably humiliated and burdened, Lucrece conveyed her lamentable plight to her beloved husband and father, before committing suicide, invoking unbridled rage and vengeance in them. With the oratory skill of Junius Brutus as their aid, they incited Rome to unite against the tyranny of Tarquinius. The Tarquins thereby exiled (509 BC), the government changed from royal reign to republic.

Section 4- Rape of Lucrece; A critical summary

The poem opens to a pregnant scene, where the warriors boast of the virtues of their wives as they repose after dinner. Of the party, Collatine’s boasts of his “faire love, Lucrece the chaste” whose virtues and beauty are at war with each other to overpower, ignite the embers of lust in Tarquin.

Tarquin’s conceit piques the desire to posses the “happy state” that Collatine enjoys, “the happiness enjoy’ but of a few.” Resolute to possess “that rich jewel” that he covets, he slyly goes to Collatium, where Lucrece dwells. At Collatium, the unsuspecting hostess welcomes the foe who feigns sincere kinship with her beloved husband who is away on a mission. Tarquin’s noble mask belies the malicious serpent overpowering his will.

Tarquin is overcome with admiration for the exquisite beauty that has no earthly parallels in words and he curses her husband who failed to do justice in his portrayal of such beauty; in her, the white  of virtue and the rose of beauty rival to overpower. In her ethereal being, virtue and beauty ‘interchange each other.’ Lucrece, naïve and unsuspecting of any evil offered reverend welcome to the devil disguised as her “princely guest” into her abode, where she is the “earthly saint” and he the devil, “false worshipper.” His “high estate” veiled his “base sin in plaits of majesty.” He lulls her into a phony sense of comfort and ease, feeding her ears with stories of her husband’s fame.

The poet here shifts the emphasis towards the impending doom, the scene enlivened by the Shakespearean crafting of a scene of omen. At night when everyone takes reprieve from the day’s strenuous labour and fights, save for thieves and troubled minds, the thin strands of self-restraint holding Tarquin back break asunder. “Now unloosened from their bond” his desire and malicious will are wide-awake and aggressive.

Tarquin realizes deep within the irrevocability and repercussion of the crime he is about to commit. He knows about the eyesore, the stain of ignominy and infamy it would leave on his “golden coat” of knighthood. He ponders over what he would win, if he were to gain the thing that he sought.

“Strong past reason’s weak removing”, reprobate with desire, Tarquin tackles the lock between her chamber and his will. As the thief creeps in, a nocturnal weasel bear sole witness to his stealthy arrival. His eyes drink in the “chaste ornaments” of the unsuspecting mistress lost in her slumber. The lust in him unbridled, he vows to “de-flower” her; no wrath of any power or god shall dissuade him. The “dove sleeps fast” all the while, to be caught in a moment by the “night-owl.”

Overcome with carnal desire for her “azure veins, her alabaster skin/ her coral lips, her snow-white dimpled chin…” like a “starving lion” he drinks in her vision. His heart thumps like a drum in a “[r]age of lust” and his hands take possession of her bosom, hitherto untainted by strangers’ touch. Fraught with fright and confusion, she cries, she wakes up into a nightmare and mistakes the horrid scene for some “ghastly sprite.” Further enflamed, without any pity he yearned to breach into her “sweet city.” He accuses her disarming beauty of being the cause of her doom. With the falchion to the aid of his intimidating person, he threatens to tarnish her clear reputation with stains of infidelity with a common slave unless she complies. The taunt and threat of posterity pointing a mocking, discrediting, and humiliating finger at her children, her beloved husband and her own stainless person, leaves her bereft with no other choice than to comply.

The “picture of pure piety” crumbles before the “rough beast” and implores in all voices pitiful and disheartening to spare her. No pleading however, provokes his mercy or pity. His ears hear her prayers but his heart does not grant them. All attempts to dissuade him are thwarted and futile, for “[m]en’s faults do seldom to themselves appear; their own transgression partially they smother: This guilt would seem death-worthy in thy brother… Their own misdeeds askance their eyes.” His eyes blind to her “chaste tears”, he robs her of “a dearer thing than life.” In addition, he gains what he would soon lose again. Like a thievish dog, he “creeps sadly,” and she like a “wearied lamb lies panting there,” her nails having torn his flesh.

As he slinks away in shame, waiting for the dawn light to drown his dark deeds of the night, the ‘hopeless castaway” hopes that another dawn wouldn’t break and expose her defiled state to the world. In “helpless shame” she pines within, praying that her pure soul would finds some “purer chest” to reside.

Lucrece, like Philomela (who was raped by her brother-in-law Tereus) share the misery of a tragic fate. Unlike Philomela whose tongue was cut by Tereus and thereby eternally silenced, Lucrece was resolute to have Tarquin’s mask shredded and his guilt laid bare before the world. Her pure soul withstands the worst of the pollution her body was forced into, both of which she had guarded for heaven and Collatine, she is a fire of vengeance now. She writes a letter to her husband, Collatine to come to her in haste from Ardea. For her “woes are tedious though [her] words are brief.”

The beloved woman that she is to her dear ones, her husband and father come to her in haste, accompanied by several lords. While she awaits their arrival Lucrece, clad in mourning black and eyes tear-stained and circled in blue, studies a painting of the end of Troy and remarks how she, like Priam, was wronged by Tarquin-like Sinon, who came to her armed and defiled her. By likening herself to Priam and Tarquin to Sinon, the image of the Trojan War is highlighted in the scene, which augers a Great War looming in the horizons. Once her father and husband arrive she informs them of how “[I]n the dreadful dead of dark midnight,/ With a shining falchion” he barged into her room and brought her down with infamy. She implores vengeance, to “let the traitor die…[t]o chase injustice with revengeful arms” and even as she tells them who it was who committed this terrible deed, with  a “harmful knife” ends her harmless being.

Astonished and stunned by the revelation and the turn of events, Lucretius and Collatine wailed “My daughter” and “my wife.” As clamours filled the air, Brutus, rises with a voice of action and vengeance. He exhorts the mourning party to “rouse [their] Roman gods with invocations” so that, the “chaste blood so unjustly stain’d” shall receive the justice it craves. His oath he seals with a kiss on the “fatal knife” urging the rest to follow his lead.

They take Lucrece’s “bleeding body” on a procession through Rome for the world to see and to publish “Tarquin’s foul offence”. With speedy diligence, the Romans united in strength and voice to give consent to Tarquin’s everlasting banishment.

In a deeply moving narration from the perspectives of both the criminal and the wronged, Shakespeare gives an account of the history of the birth of a nation; it forces one to ponder over the notions of actions and reactions, religion and discipline, justice and vengeance.

Section 5-The Rape of Lucrece: Critical analysis 

(a)   Mood

The Rape of Lucrece is an exemplary literary piece that substantiates Dr. Johnson’s appraisal of Shakespeare in Preface to Shakespeare as ‘the poet of nature’ who holds up “to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and life.”

Right from the outset of the narration, the mood is pervasively ominous and haunting, as the poet describes the “trustless wings of desire” brewing within the “lust-breath[ing] Tarquin.” The villain is set beside Collatine, the one destined to banish him and serve justice to him. By presenting the two opposing figures as kinsmen in the beginning, the poet lays the foundation for invoking a magnified sense of betrayal that Tarquin’s impending crime would incite.

(b)   Characterisation 

Samuel Johnson observes the impartial treatment of the characters by the bard. Shakespeare’s characters are earth-bound and life-like, speaking in tongues familiar to ordinary man about things familiar and universal. His characters are humans made of flesh and blood, who are as susceptible to human foibles and follies as any other man. Shakespeare, thereby, imagines the psychological turmoil the accursed criminal undergoes prior to action. He imagines in detail the mental anguish of Tarquin as he pretends or tries to to tame his raging lust, the agony of Lucrece as she pleads for mercy and her disillusionment after fate throws her into the abyss of misfortune.

Characterization in the poem falls short at certain places, when the poet raises a character to the peak of their emotion and suddenly abandons them to channel the focus to another. He centres on the guilt-ridden Tarquin as he mulls over the weight of the sin he anticipates committing, but, suddenly jumps to Lucrece’s anguish and melancholy. Neither of the characters is given a deeper individuality. Even the closing of the poem seems unresolved and somehow less satisfying; the justice to be served is narrated in fewer lines than the description of Lucrece’s beauty, banishing the prospect of a proper cathartic relief.

Shakespeare’s deep insight into the play of emotions and human ego is evident in the drawing of Lucrece’s bereavement and self-berating. Her mourning monologue and trance-like state reminds the readers of Lady Macbeth. When Lucrece’s hands quiver in her attempt to stab herself, it immediately recalls Lady Macbeth’s mourning over her “little hands” permanently stained with King Duncan’s blood. Lady Macbeth is a foil to Lucrece in most ways; while the former houses malice, avarice, the latter epitomized virtue, yet both are reduced by their circumstances to a state of utter helplessness. Neither have any choice but to find solace in death. While Lady Macbeth’s death is as ambiguous as her personality, Lucrece from the beginning to the end has clarity of existence and individuality. Her virtue defines her. Lucrece remains as the honorable and upright woman of great beauty. She is described as a perfect work of art. Tarquin’s raping her is elaborated as a fortress under attack. Lucrece thus largely becomes a political symbol.

Tarquin is fraught with distress upon imagining the tragedy that would befall him if he were to commit the crime he is plotting, the ignominy it would cast upon his reputation, the irrevocability of actions is the enduring theme of the poem. Tarquin, through his selfish act for momentary pleasure invites his own doom; he gains what he loses soon after, and robs someone of something dearer to them than their life.

Section 6-The Rape of Lucrece: Critical Analysis (2)

 Themes

Idolatry is a pervasive theme, where Shakepeare’s artisanship in casting characters dazzles the verses. Lucrece is limned out with the choicest things natural and man-made: she is likened to roses and pearls, (“pearly sweat, resembling dew”, her eyes “marigolds,” she is like a “monument.”) Her physical beauty is described with vivid dedication. The transience of carnal lust is a recurrent theme in Shakespearean poetry. The ephemeral nature of carnal pleasure, which would resound in his sonnets addressed to the Dark Lady, is heard clearly in the poem. In sonnet 129, Shakespeare reduces lust as ‘the expense of spirit in a waste of shame…[e]njoyed no sooner but despised straight,/ Past reason hunted, and no sooner had,/ Past reason hated…”. Tarquin, although conscious of this fatal fact, cannot contain his desire. And succumbs to it. Brandishing his falchion that spit fire upon the cold flint that sharpened it, like the fire from the cold flint, he is resolute to “force” Lucrece to his “desire.”

Religion is an invasive theme in the poem – Lucrece is an ideal image, pious and virtuous whose pure soul cannot bear to dwell in a body defiled by another’s sin. In the volcano of mental turmoil brewing within Tarquin, the idea of his god’s wrath is a daunting, haunting pang. “I must de-flower; the powers to whom I pray abhor this fact…” He calls on “Love and Fortune” to be his “gods.” The criminal’s desire is highlighted once again as the deadly sins of Tarquin- his lust, avarice, envy, pride.

Lucrece addresses the “injurious, shifting Time,” a personification that recurs in Shakespeare’s sonnets. “Devouring Time” (Sonnet 19) is the villain and one to blame, whose caprice and fickle nature makes “Love”, beauty and life “Time’s fool.” Time is described as an unreliable person and is a recurrent Shakespearean image. Lucrece is betrayed by the “shifting Time” and Time’s servant “Opportunity” betray the hours that give her repose and brings about her fall and “endless woes.”

With the endeavour for justice to be served to Lucrece, Rome gained the status of a republic. Lucrece, thus stands as the harbinger of the Roman republic and remained a popular figure in the Italian Renaissance.

Conclusion

Shakespeare’s long poem has consistently raised pertinent questions about the nature of women’s chastity and honour, how it connects to the men in their family and where true virtue and beauty are located for a woman. Lucrece with her determination to commit suicide, once she has been raped speaks for the millions of women through the ages who were taught to believe that their virtue and worth lay in their chastity and once that was robbed from them they were worthless, fit only for shame and death. Her father and her husband as well as the other Roman nobles who see her in a similar fashion are emblematic of patriarchy and its imperatives which necessitate vengeance upon the rapist but also can only mourn the lost virtue of the raped woman. Shakespeare explores a similar theme in the early Titus Andronicus and the late Cymbeline, speaking of cultural codes that necessitate a certain sequence once a woman has been robbed of her virtue.

Points to Ponder

• The word ‘Rape’ has an Anglo-French origin and it means ‘seize prey; abduct, take by force’. Think about Shakespeare’s Rape of Lucreceas a criticism on the violation of women’s sexuality.
• “Beauty itself  doth of  itself persuade the eyes of men without orator.” Think about Shakespeare’s perspective on the idea of ‘Beauty’. Who are the beauteous and who are the non-beauteous? What qualities constitute/ construct ‘Beauty’?
• How relevant is this long poem in the present age? Compare and contrast the difference in the treatment of women by Shakespeare and the present day poets.

Do you know?

• Venue and Adonis, the poem is dedicated to the Earl of Southampton: the dedication letter attached with the poem seemed much more personal and has led to the assumption that Shakespeare and Southampton had struck up a homosexual relationship.
• The story of the Rape of Lucrece was well known in Shakespeare’s day and it proved to be of some further inspiration to him as references to Tarquin’s stealthy nature are found in some of his other plays such as Macbeth and Cymbeline.
• The poem went through eight editions before the final version of 1641.

Reference

• Hart, Jonathan. “Narratorial Strategies in The Rape of Lucrece”. Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 32, No. 1, 1992. pp. 59-77
• Blits, Jan H.    “Redeeming Lost Honor: Shakespeare’s Rape of Lucrece”. The Review of Politics, Vol. 71, No. 3, 2009. pp. 411-427.
• Quay,    Sara E. ‘Lucrece the chaste’: The Construction of Rape in Shakespeare’s “The Rape of Lucrece”. Modern Language Studies, Vol.                25,         No.        2 1995. pp. 3-17
• Vasileiou, Margaret Rice. “Violence, Visual Metaphor, and the “True” Lucrece”. Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, Vol. 51, No 1, 2011, pp. 47-63.