Missy - The Rape of Lúcrese ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Rape of Lúcrese is a narrative poem published early in Shakespeare’s career.

In it, the powerful son of a corrupt king rapes the beautiful and virtuous wife of fellow officer and aristocrat.

The beautiful and virtuous wife, Lucretia, then kills herself. Her death is the catalyst for an uprising that banishes the royal family making room for the noble Republic. 

Unlike the plays, this is a work that Shakespeare published himself. It contains his edits and his introduction. It’s his 2nd published work and one that he referred to as a grave labor. 

I like this poem. 

I listened to a full cast version today at work and had the text on my phone for reference. 

Here are my thoughts in no particular order. 

On the weird relationship between England and Rome

For no particularly good reason the English thought they were classically descended . They felt that Briton was founded by Brutus the Trojan , a descendant of Aeneas, escaping from the sack of Troy. 

This gives both Lucretia’s pondering the painting of the fall of Troy and Shakespeare’s embrace of a classical canon an interesting weight. 

There was some fellow feeling here because Mythological Rome was also founded by a descendent of Aeneas (Romulus). All of this means that when Elizabethan writers and thinkers refer to the classics they feel that they are being self referential. 

They read and write in Latin (if decreasingly) and the education standard is that of classicists. Everybody wanted to be Cicero. 

It’s worth bearing in mind when considering Shakespeare’s motivations in attempting this work. 

On Suicide

Although the Roman ideal of suicide as a noble act was the inevitable crux of the poem, it left me wondering at the English valorization of it.

This happened previously in Julius Caesar and I’d wondered the same thing.

I feel like, in the latinophile world of renaissance England, you can see the dawning of the age of reason peaking through. Shakespeare lived in a heavily Christian society in which suicide was one of the very few unpardonable sins. But everyone venerated Rome and Roman thought.  The worshipful attitude for the Greek and Roman classics were a rising tide that swept over the accustomed standards of the church, within the next hundred years or so. 

On Rape

I’m a huge fan of martial arts movies. There is this standard trope in them (and in movies generally) where an innocent woman is raped. That rape is the turning point for the hero. He must now avenge her. He must now choose violence. 

Rape is a plot device. Rape is a spectacle, often prurient.

The woman usually dies because she’s now dirty but her death redeems her. 

This is a cynical and infantilizing impulse, usually coming from men for whom rape is an abstract occurrence.

This is exactly what happens in the Rape of Lúcrese. 

It is is completely typical of stories from male dominated cultures. 

It’s not like rape can’t happen to men but let’s be honest here, it’s a lopsided representation.

Currently about 1 in 5 women vs 1 in 71 men have experienced completed or attempted rape. 

All of this to say my sympathy and patience with this plot structure is very low and the fact that it’s coming from a great writer (Shakespeare) or from canonical greatness (Virgil) doesn’t change my opinion much. 

Women are not plot devices.

A culture that treats women as inhuman can’t quite get that. 

On the Poem Itself

Shakespeare is so good at the human condition. 

He’s good here at Tarquins vacillation and rationalization. He’s good at Lucretia’s desperate arguments. 

He riles us up with her tragedy. 

The things I want to praise here are later though. 

His exploration of art as solace for pain:

That she with painted images hath spent;

Being from the feeling of her own grief brought

By deep surmise of others' detriment;

Losing her woes in shows of discontent.

It easeth some, though none it ever cured,

To think their dolour others have endured.

I also really liked the portrayal of the competitive and inappropriate impulses that can make grief especially ugly. When in their sorrow, her husband and father argue over who she meant the most to:

The one doth call her his, the other his,

Yet neither may possess the claim they lay.

The father says 'She's mine.' 'O, mine she is,'

Replies her husband: 'do not take away

My sorrow's interest; let no mourner say

He weeps for her, for she was only mine,

And only must be wail'd by Collatine.'

'O,' quoth Lucretius,' I did give that life

Which she too early and too late hath spill'd.'

'Woe, woe,' quoth Collatine, 'she was my wife,

I owed her, and 'tis mine that she hath kill'd.'

'My daughter' and 'my wife' with clamours fill'd

The dispersed air, who, holding Lucrece' life,

Answer'd their cries, 'my daughter' and 'my wife.'

On Easter Eggs

The Wikipedia article on this poem had a nice section on other works of Shakespeare that referenced this story. There are quite a few and that sort of this is always fun for me to look at. 

But the Easter Egg that I most enjoyed was the presence and moral leadership of Brutus. 

This is Lucius Junius Brutus, the ancestor of the Brutus (Marcus Junius Brutus) from Julius Caesar. 

Here he preforms the same role of galvanization and piety over a bloody knife. 

He brings the bickering family in line and rouses the people against tyranny. He causes them to kneel to the gods and he kisses the bloody dagger and swears justice. The people follow him and you can almost hear ‘Friends Roman’s Countrymen’ echoing behind him. 

The poem concludes:

When they had sworn to this advised doom,

They did conclude to bear dead Lucrece thence;

To show her bleeding body thorough Rome,

And so to publish Tarquin's foul offence:

Which being done with speedy diligence,

The Romans plausibly did give consent

To Tarquin's everlasting banishment.