The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare, 118 pages
The Rape of Lucrece is one of Shakespeare's few narrative poems, written as a complement to his earlier Venus and Adonis. Where that poem followed the comic pursuit of a beautiful young man by a lust-crazed woman, this one portrays the tragic violation of a virtuous woman by a lust-crazed man. The subject is a tale from Livy's history, which begins with Collatinus' boasts of his wife Lucrece's proven devotion which provoke the cruel desire of Sextus Tarquin, the heir to the throne. In the aftermath of his crime, Lucrece publicizes the outrage before killing herself, an act which provides the spark for the overthrow of the Roman monarchy and the institution of the Republic. Shakespeare picks up the thread with Tarquin's arrival at Collatinus' villa while the master is away at war, pretending friendship while working himself up to assault.
'Then, childish fear, avaunt! debating die!
Respect and reason wait on wrinkled age!
My heart shall never countermand mine eye:
Sad pause and deep regard beseems the sage;
My part is youth, and beats these from the stage...'
This provides Shakespeare an excellent opportunity to demonstrate both his legendary poetic gifts and keen psychological insight, and illustrates an understanding of the struggle between freedom and tyranny where freedom is oriented towards virtue while tyranny is slavery to vice, with ordered liberty opposed to lawless libertinism.
While she, the picture of true piety,
Like a white hind under the gripe's sharp claws,
Pleads, in a wilderness where there are no laws,
To the rough beast that knows no gentle right,
Nor aught obeys but his foul appetite.
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