![]() Both are dedicated to the Earl of Southampton, Henry Wriothesley. Per Bevington: This poem followed Venus and Adonis and is closely related. Overall Impression: This is well written and moving poetry. Quotations are for the most part taken from that work, as Shakespeare Updated Fourth Ed., Longman Addison-Wesley, ed. Paolo Veronese: Lucretia Stabbing Herself, 1583-84 (detail)Īcknowledgement: This work has been summarized using The Complete Works of As a result, Lucrece committed suicide.Summary by Michael McGoodwin, prepared 1999 In 509 BC, Sextus Tarquinius, son of the king of Rome, raped Lucretia (Lucrece), wife of Collatinus, one of the king's aristocratic retainers. The Romans are laying siege to Ardea, a Volscian city 20 miles south of Rome. At the beginning of the poem the Roman army is waging war on a tribe known as the Volscians, who had claimed territory south of Rome. His son, Sextus Tarquinius, heir to the throne, is the rapist of the story. Because of his arrogance and his tyranny, he is also known as Tarquinius Superbus (Tarquin the Proud). The Roman king was Lucius Tarquinus, or Tarquin. Also the story of the poem has much in common with romantic fictions. Both authors were writing a few centuries after the events occurred, and their histories are not accepted as strictly accurate, partly because Roman records were destroyed by the Gauls in 390 B.C., and the histories prior to that have been mixed with legends. ![]() ![]() The Rape of Lucrece draws on the story described in both Ovid's Fasti and Livy's history of Rome. The citizens, angered, banish Tarquin and his family. The soldiers carry Lucrece's body through the streets of Rome. His friend, Brutus, suggests that revenge is a better choice. Collatine's grief is great - he wants to kill himself, as well. She then tells her husband who did it, and she immediately pulls out a knife, stabs herself and dies. Before she tells him, Lucrece gets the soldiers, who are also there, to promise to avenge this crime. When Collatine gets home, Lucrece tells him the whole story, but doesn't say who did it. She writes a letter to her husband, asking him to come home. Lucrece is devastated, furious and suicidal. Full of shame and guilt, Tarquin sneaks away. If she would give in to him, Tarquin promises to keep it all secret. He also threatens to cause her dishonor by murdering a slave and placing the two bodies in each other's arms, and then he would claim that he killed her because he discovered them in this embrace. He tells her that she must give in to him, or else he will kill her. He reaches out and touches her breast, which wakes her up. His desire overcomes him, and he goes to Lucrece's chamber, where she is asleep. Tarquin spends the night, and is torn by his desire for Lucrece. Tarquin entertains her with stories of her husband's deeds on the battlefield. The following morning, Tarquin travels to Collatine's home. Collatine describes his wife, Lucrece, in glowing terms - she is beautiful and chaste. One evening, at the town of Ardea, where a battle is being fought, two leading Roman soldiers, Tarquin and Collatine, are talking. The rhyme scheme for each stanza is ABABBCC, a format known as "rhyme royal", which has been used by Geoffrey Chaucer, John Milton and John Masefield. The rhythm of each line is iambic pentameter. The poem contains 1,855 lines, divided into 265 stanzas of seven lines each. The dedication is followed by "The Argument", a prose paragraph that summarizes the events preceding the start of the poem, which begins in media res. The poem begins with a prose dedication addressed directly to the Earl of Southampton, which begins, "The love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end." It refers to the poem as a pamphlet, which describes the form of its original publication of 1594. Accordingly, The Rape of Lucrece has a serious tone throughout. In his previous narrative poem, Venus and Adonis (1593), Shakespeare had included a dedicatory letter to his patron, the Earl of Southampton, in which he promised to write a "graver work". The Rape of Lucrece (1594) is a narrative poem by William Shakespeare about the legendary Lucretia.
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