The Rape of Lucrece—I have now read everything in the Shakespearean canon

1/ Published in 1594 (apparently written during a plague), The Rape of Lucrece was around the same time as Henry VI Part 1 (if we assume, as many scholars do, that it’s written after Part 2 and Part 3), Richard III, and The Comedy of Errors. Early Shakespeare. 

I can’t help wondering what a narrative poem, or epic poem, by Late Shakespeare would have been like.

One thing that fascinates me, now that I’ve read the Phaedra plays by Euripides and Racine, is that Shakespeare depicts sexual assault a few times (rape in The Rape of Lucrece and Titus Andronicus, attempted rape in The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Tempest, sexual coercion in Measure for Measure); he depicts women getting falsely accused of cheating a few times (Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale); he even depicts women sexually assaulting men a few times (Venus and Adonis, All’s Well that Ends Well and arguably Measure for Measure—the bed trick); but he doesn’t seem to have much interest in the subject of women making false rape allegations. If only! A Phaedra play written by Shakespeare would have been fascinating. 

2/ I don’t have a lot to say about The Rape of Lucrece, so I’m just gonna poke at it from different angles.

The word “black” appears a lot through the poem: “so black a deed”, “blackest sin”, “black payment”, “black lust”, “Night’s black bosom”, etc. Contrasted with that is white—the colour of chastity and innocence. 

“When at Collatium this false lord arrived,

Well was he welcomed by the Roman dame,

Within whose face beauty and virtue strived

Which of them both should underprop her fame.

When virtue bragged, beauty would blush for shame;

    When beauty boasted blushes, in despite

    Virtue would stain that o’er with silver white.

But beauty, in that white intituled

From Venus’ doves, doth challenge that fair field.

Then virtue claims from beauty beauty’s red,

Which virtue gave the golden age to gild

Their silver cheeks, and called it then their shield;

    Teaching them thus to use it in the fight,

    When shame assailed, the red should fence the white.

This heraldry in Lucrece’ face was seen,

Argued by beauty’s red and virtue’s white.

Of either’s colour was the other queen,

Proving from world’s minority their right.

Yet their ambition makes them still to fight;

    The sovereignty of either being so great,

    That oft they interchange each other’s seat.”

The odd thing—odd to me—is the coupling of the colours white and red throughout the poem. 

“O how her fear did make her colour rise!

    First red as roses that on lawn we lay,

    Then white as lawn, the roses took away.” 

Again, white and red together: 

“Her coral lips, her snow-white dimpled chin.” 

Again: 

“… But she with vehement prayers urgeth still

    Under what colour he commits this ill.

Thus he replies: ‘The colour in thy face,

That even for anger makes the lily pale,

And the red rose blush at her own disgrace,

Shall plead for me and tell my loving tale.

Under that colour am I come to scale

    Thy never-conquered fort; the fault is thine,

    For those thine eyes betray thee unto mine…’” 

 

3/ The poem is thick with comparisons to animals and birds, which we see in Homer, in Ovid, in other poets, so I’d like to draw attention instead to other metaphors and similes that I find more interesting. 

“Far from the purpose of his coming thither,

He makes excuses for his being there.

No cloudy show of stormy blust’ring weather

Doth yet in his fair welkin once appear,

Till sable Night, mother of dread and fear,

    Upon the world dim darkness doth display,

    And in her vaulty prison stows the day.”

I like this: 

“… And extreme fear can neither fight nor fly,

    But coward-like with trembling terror die.”

Lots of interesting lines in the poem: 

“Tears harden lust, though marble wear with raining.” 

This is Lucrece after the rape: 

“‘.. O hateful, vaporous, and foggy night,

Since thou art guilty of my cureless crime,

Muster thy mists to meet the eastern light,

Make war against proportioned course of time;

Or if thou wilt permit the sun to climb

    His wonted height, yet ere he go to bed,

    Knit poisonous clouds about his golden head.

‘With rotten damps ravish the morning air;

Let their exhaled unwholesome breaths make sick

The life of purity, the supreme fair,

Ere he arrive his weary noontide prick.

And let thy misty vapours march so thick,

    That in their smoky ranks his smothered light

    May set at noon and make perpetual night…’” 

All these metaphors are brilliant. The problem with Shakespeare’s depiction of Lucrece’s mind after the rape is that for some time he seems to get carried away by rhetoric, by metaphor, by language—Lucrece rails at Night, at Opportunity, at Time—that many stanzas are devoid of emotional depth and feel hollow, compared to numerous tragic passages in his plays. It gets better in the passages where Lucrece decides to kill herself: 

“My honour I’ll bequeath unto the knife

That wounds my body so dishonoured.

’Tis honour to deprive dishonoured life;

The one will live, the other being dead.

So of shame’s ashes shall my fame be bred,

    For in my death I murder shameful scorn;

    My shame so dead, mine honour is new born.”

That’s moving. But then Shakespeare gets bogged down in rhetorical digressions again when Lucrece looks at a painting of Troy—clearly inspired by the scene in the Aeneid—and compares herself to Troy and Tarquin to the brutal, treacherous Greeks (especially Sinon). It’s over-long, it’s mannered, it delays the climax. 

I like this passage though: 

“‘… Why should the private pleasure of some one

Become the public plague of many moe?

Let sin, alone committed, light alone

Upon his head that hath transgressed so;

Let guiltless souls be freed from guilty woe.

    For one’s offence why should so many fall,

    To plague a private sin in general?” 

But I shouldn’t be so negative. Colin Burrow’s introduction to The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Sonnets and Poems offers a thought-provoking analysis of The Rape of Lucrece, particularly the idea about reading (Tarquin reading/ interpreting the signs, Lucrece “reading” the painting, Lucrece imagining that strangers can read the guilt on her face, and so on) and the extent of Lucrece’s guilt (as Tarquin gives her a simulacrum of choice—either yield her body to him, or get raped, killed, placed next to the dead body of a slave, and forever defamed). The poem raises interesting questions about rape, choice, consent, and about Lucrece’s feeling of guilt and sense of inner taint. It’s also interesting because Lucrece is a victim of rape, but in choosing to name her rapist and then kill herself, she shapes the way her story will be told. 

4/ Having finished The Rape of Lucrece means I have now read everything in the Shakespearean canon. It was a good idea to save it—I understood the references to the Trojan War, and the allusions to the Aeneid. 

If I am to rank Shakespeare’s works, at the top would be most of the plays (the tragedies, then the Roman plays, then the history plays, then the comedies and romances), then the sonnets, then the narrative poems. The Rape of Lucrece I don’t like as much as Venus and Adonis—a lighter, sexier poem—but it’s definitely more sophisticated than Shakespeare’s early plays and the collaborations at the end of his career.