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Exploring Shakespeare as Poet and The Rape of Lucrece

Delve into William Shakespeare's poetry and narrative poem "The Rape of Lucrece." Learn about the sonnets and their structure, themes of idealized love, and the historical context of the plague affecting England. Discover the story of Lucrece and Tarquin, examining themes of power, desire, and consequences. Analyze the tragic events leading to Lucrece's fate and the moral complexities depicted in Shakespeare's work.

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Exploring Shakespeare as Poet and The Rape of Lucrece

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  1. HL 3030 Major Author: Shakespeare Week 2 Shakespeare as Poet, and The Rape of Lucrece

  2. William Shakespeare • William Shakespeare 1564 – 1616 • First folio 1623 (eds. John Heminges and Henry Condell) • Shakespeare’s England: • Protestant Reformation 1534 (Henry VIII) • Elizabeth I (1558 – 1603) • James VI (Scotland), later James I (1603-1625)

  3. Shakespeare as poet 154 sonnets (1609), published in a quarto.

  4. Shakespeare as poet Grouping: Sonnets 1-126: addressed to a young man Sonnets 127-152: “dark lady” sonnets Sonnets 153-154: Cupid 1640 edition

  5. Shakespeare as poet • Identifiable features: 3 quatrains Ends with a couplet Iambic pentametre (rhyme: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG) • Petrarch and Shakespeare; the perception of idealized love and its complexities (see sonnets from first series and second groupings).

  6. Rape of Lucrece Originally entitled Lucrece but retitled The Rape of Lucrecein the 1616.

  7. Rape of Lucrece • Largely accepted that the narrative poems, including The Rape of Lucrece was composed during the theatre closure. • Government ordered the closure of theatres between Dec. 1592-Dec. 1593 to prevent spread of the plague; many left London for areas that were less populated. • Players and writers had limited options during this period. Either had to depend on patronage for financial support, or find other jobs.

  8. Rape of Lucrece • The European plague physician (medieval and early modern period). • The Bubonic plague in England killed more than 10,000 in London alone. • Most who caught the disease did not survive.

  9. Titian’s Tarquin and Lucretia(ca. 1571)

  10. Rape of Lucrece The Rape of Lucretia, Hans von Aachen (German 1600)

  11. The Fury of Achilles The Fury of Achilles, Charles-Antoine Coypel (1737)

  12. Rape of Lucrece • The Argument: Tarquin’s qualities. • Surnamed “Superbus” • Responsible for the murder of ServiusTullius. • Takes over Rome without being elected. • The contrast between two forms of government: dictatorship vs. republicanism. • What types of expectations do the argument set up for readers even before the poem begins?

  13. Rape of Lucrece • Opening scene of the men’s gathering at camp. • The significance of the subject of discussion. • Contrast of martial might and chastity (uneasy). • The narrator’s interjections: Beauty itself doth of itself persuade The eyes of men without an orator; What needeth then apology be made To set forth that which is so singular? Or why is Collatine the publisher Of that rich jewel he should keep unknown From thievish ears, because it is his own? (29-35)

  14. Rape of Lucrece • In the following stanza, the description of Lucrece as something that is nearly royal. • Kingship subverted by Lucrece’s purity and virtues. • “Lucrece’s sovereignty” (36) • Male competition (“That golden hap which their superiors want” 42). • Do we describe this desire as ambition, greed, or simply the nature of political hierarchy? Or perhaps even as Tarquin’s resistance to the subversion of kingship? Rape as (enforced) ownership.

  15. Rape of Lucrece • Tarquin’s dilemma. • Tarquin’s inward mind consist of several parts. PART I • Tarquin’s “calculation”: what are the stakes in pursuing his desire (from 127). • Acknowledgement of the irrational nature of desire/ infatuation. • Are you persuaded by Tarquin’s struggle and does the end result affect the way we think about whether it is persuasive?

  16. Rape of Lucrece PART II • After he decides: “As from this cold flint I enforced this fire,/ So Lucrece must I force to my desire” (181-82). • Imagines the consequences that will follow after he commits the act of rape (from 183). • Main theme: how will people remember him? • “O what excuse can my invention make…” (225)

  17. Rape of Lucrece PART III • Rationalization • Military terms/ Colonial undertones (Conquest as justification and rationalization) • Compare “All orators are dumb when beauty pleadeth” (268) with narrator’s earlier comment about how beauty needs no orators. • Tarquin as “helpless.” Absolving his responsibility? • Images of imperial expansion, empire.

  18. Rape of Lucrece • The silencing of Lucrece (from 512); stifled and oppressed. • Silence vs. “publication.” Philomel (1079) in classical mythology. • Lucrece’s pleas: reminds Tarquin that he is not behaving honorably; “The baser is he, coming from a king, / To shame his hope with deed degenerate” (1002). • Lucrece’s pleas echo those of Tarquin’s; he had already thought about the consequences of his act. For this reason, her pleas cannot overwrite his intentions, so what is the significance of this scene? • Is this rhetorical “performance” only for the sake of exhibiting Lucrece’s distress (and thus asserting her purity), and for audience to sympathize with Lucrece, or does it tell us something about Tarquin as well?

  19. Rape of Lucrece • “Mine honor be the knife that makes my wound” (1201). • “My body or my soul, which was dearer…” (1163). Suicide as revenge or solution (1177). • The narrator holds Collatine responsible (more so than Tarquin?) • The rape of Troy (from 1366); art and life (1371) romanticized. • Identifies herself with the Trojans (1464) and Hecuba. • Cursing Paris “Had doting Priam checked his son’s desire,/ Troy had been bright with fame, and not with fire” (1490-91)

  20. Rape of Lucrece • Why does she identify herself with Hecuba and less so with Helen? • In fact, she is angry with Helen: Show me the strumpet that began this stir, That my nails her beauty I may tear. Thy heat of lust, fond Paris, did incur The load of wrath that burning Troy doth bear (1471-74) • Similar fate with Helen, praised for being the most beautiful woman in the world, only to suffer in the hands of Paris. • Martial might and restraint. “Temperance”—Spenser.

  21. Rape of Lucrece • Betrayal: Sinon, the traitor. The man who held the light to lead the Spartans into Troy (Trojan horse); Priam none the wiser (1548). • Lucrece’s confession, and her pleas to Collatine and the lords: only honor can cleanse dishonor (1681). • The force of “excuse”: “No, no,” quoth she, “no dame hereafter living By my excuse shall claim excuse’s giving” (1714-15)

  22. Rape of Lucrece • Brutus’ appearance at the end of the poem; what effect does this sudden appearance have on readers? Are we already “expecting” a Brutus character because of references to imperial conquest? • How would it have been different if the character who “takes charge” in the end were Collatine instead of Brutus?

  23. Rape of Lucrece Critical Questions • Among all of Shakespeare’s works, the word “excuse” is used most frequently in the Rape of Lucrece; are there any problems in the ways in which the word is used? (See handout for reference). • How can we compare Brutus’ display of Lucrece’s body as a political prop at the end of the play with Tarquin’s rape of Lucrece?

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