I will be presenting this paper at the "Shakespeare and Contemporary Writers Conference" which takes place in Hiroshima on Saturday 31st August.
Here is the first part of my paper:
“Thy wretched wife mistook":
During the plague years of 1592-1594, with the London theatres closed, Shakespeare turned his attention to poetry. It is during this period that his two narrative poems, Venus and Adonis, and the “graver labour”, The Rape of Lucrece were written and published.
Both poems draw heavily on Ovid, his Metamorphoses for the former and his Fasti for the latter, while Lucrece also draws on Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita.
The common theme of the poems is lust, the lust of Venus for a young man, Adonis, who prefers hunting to lovemaking, in Venus and Adonis; and the lust of Prince Tarquin for a nobleman’s wife, Lucrece, who prefers chastity to adultery in The Rape of Lucrece.
Both Adonis and Lucrece die. Adonis escapes the attentions of Venus only to be fatally gored in the groin by a boar, while Lucrece, unable to prevent Tarquin, from raping her, stabs herself after calling on her husband, her father and their friends to avenge her.
Both myths may be characterised as Aesopian fables that explain “why something came to be.” In Venus and Adonis, we learn why “love” is fraught with difficulties, for Venus curses love with a bitter prophesy that is linked directly to the death of Adonis:
“Since thou art dead, lo here I prophesy,
Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend:
It shall be waited on with jealousy,
Find sweet beginning, but unsavoury end;
Ne’er settled equally, but high or low,
That all love’s pleasure shall not match his woe.”
(Venus and Adonis, 1135-1140)
Likewise, the suicide of Lucretia, both in Ovid and in Livy, and in all subsequent treatments of the myth that I have been able to peruse, with the partial exception of Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy (c. 1517), is seen as the immediate cause of the revolution that expelled the Tarquins and replaced the monarchy with the Republic.
The Argument (Shakespeare’s Preface)
At first glance, it seems that Shakespeare follows tradition in The Rape of Lucrece. In The Argument that serves as a preface to the poem in the first quarto edition, he writes:
[Lucrece] first taking an oath of them for her revenge, revealed the actor, and whole manner of his dealing, and withal suddenly stabbed herself. Which done, with one consent they all vowed to root out the whole hated family of the Tarquins.
However, what occurs in the poem after Lucrece kills herself takes the narrative beyond anything mentioned by either Ovid or Livy, or indeed, The Argument itself. I shall discuss two unique aspects of the suicide of Lucrece in Shakespeare’s poem: the blood that gushes from her wound, and the response of Brutus.
Lucretia’s Suicide and Brutus’ Response in Livy and Ovid
Livy (c. 64-59 BC - 17 AD)
The print of a strange man, Collatinus, is in your bed. Yet my body only has been violated; my heart is guiltless, as death shall be my witness. But pledge your right hands and your words that the adulterer shall not go unpunished. Sextus Tarquinius is he that last night returned hostility for hospitality, and armed with force brought ruin on me, and on himself no less —if you are men —when he worked his pleasure with me.” They give their pledges, every man in turn. They seek to comfort her, sick at heart as she is, by diverting the blame from her who was forced to the doer of the wrong. They tell her it is the mind that sins, not the body; and that where purpose has been wanting there is no guilt. “It is for you to determine,” she answers, “what is due to him; for my own part, though I acquit myself of the sin, I do not absolve myself from punishment; not in time to come shall ever unchaste woman live through the example of Lucretia.” Taking a knife which she had concealed beneath her dress, she plunged it into her heart, and sinking forward upon the wound, died as she fell. The wail for the dead was raised by her husband and her father. Brutus, while the others were absorbed in grief, drew out the knife from Lucretia's wound, and holding it up, dripping with gore, exclaimed, “By this blood, most chaste until a prince wronged it, I swear, and I take you, gods, to witness, that I will pursue Lucius Tarquinius Superbus and his wicked wife and all his children, with sword, with fire, aye with whatsoever violence I may; and that I will suffer neither them nor any other to be king in Rome!” The knife he then passed to Collatinus, and from him to Lucretius and Valerius.
(Ab Urbe Condita, 1.58-59)
Ovid (43 BC - 17-18 AD)
What she could, she told. The end she suppressed:
She wept, and a blush spread over a wife’s cheeks.
Her husband and her father forgave her being forced:
She said: ‘I deny myself the forgiveness that you grant.’
Then she stabbed herself with a blade she had hidden,
And, all bloodied, fell at her father’s feet.
Even then she took care in dying so that she fell
With decency, that was her care even in falling.
See, the husband and father throw themselves on her body,
Regardless of appearances, grieve for their mutual loss.
Brutus approached, and at last, with spirit, belied his name,
Snatching the weapon from the dying body,
Holding the blade dripping with noble blood,
Fearlessly he uttered these menacing words:
‘I swear by this chaste blood, so courageous,
And by your spirit that will be a divinity to me,
I will be revenged on Tarquin the Proud and his lost brood.
I have concealed my virtue for too long.’
At these words, lying there, she moved her sightless eyes,
And seemed to witness the speech by a stirring of her hair.
(Fasti Book II: February 24: The Regifugium)
Variations in the Narrative: Livy, Ovid, Shakespeare
Shakespeare draws on details in Livy and Ovid, and adds some unique details concerning Brutus’ response to Lucrece’s suicide, and the blood that flows from Lucrece’s wound (neither of which are mentioned by any of the writers I have examined in preparing for this presentation).
The following chart shows the order and occurrence of the key incidents in Livy, Ovid, Shakespeare’s “Argument,” and the main body of The Rape of Lucrece:
| Livy | Ovid | Argument | Poem | ||
| 1 | Lucretia: violated body / innocent soul | 1 | Though my gross blood be stained with this abuse, / Immaculate and spotless is my mind | ||
| 2 | Lucretia demands revenge | Lucretia demands revenge | 2 | Lucrece “requests” revenge | |
| 3 | Names Sextus Tarquin as the rapist | mentions “a Tarquin” | “reveals the actor” | 4 | The men assert: Her body’s stain her mind untainted clears |
| 4 | Lucretia declared innocent by the men | Lucretia “forgiven” by her father and husband | 5 | no dame, hereafter living / By my excuse shall claim excuse’s giving | |
| 5 | “aquits” herself of sin, but refuses to live so that “no unchaste woman” shall use her as an example | denies herself forgiveness | 3 | She throws forth Tarquin’s name (246) | |
| 6 | stabs herself and dies | stabs herself and dies with decency | stabs herself | 6 | stabs herself and dies |
| 7 | Father and husband wail at her death | Father & Husband fall on her body | 7 | Father and Husband fall on her body in grief | |
| 8 | Brutus draws out the knife | Brutus “snatches” the knife | 8 | Brutus withdraws the knife | |
| 9 | 9 | black and red blood flows from Lucrece’s wound | |||
| 10 | 10 | Brutus criticises their childish humour and Lucrece’s suicide: Thy wretched wife mistook the matter so, / To slay herself, that should have slain her foe | |||
| 11 | Brutus swears on the bloody knife to expel the whole Tarquin dynasty | Brutus swears on the bloody knife to expel the whole Tarquin dynasty | 11 | Brutus swears on the bloody knife to “revenge the death of this true wife” | |
| 12 | The men swear on the bloody knife | The men vow to expel the Tarquins | 12 | The men repeat Brutus’ vow | |
| 13 | Lucretia’s eyes and hair move | 13 |
The Blood of Lucrece
When Brutus draws the knife from Lucrece’s wound, the blood that flows therefrom is described first as “purple,” then “crimson,” then as both “red” and “black”:
248
And from the purple fountain Brutus drew (8)
The murderous knife, and, as it left the place,
Her blood, in poor revenge, held it in chase;
249
And bubbling from her breast, it doth divide
In two slow rivers, that the crimson blood
Circles her body in on every side,
Who, like a late-sack'd island, vastly stood
Bare and unpeopled in this fearful flood.
Some of her blood still pure and red remain'd,
And some look'd black, and that false Tarquin stain'd. (9)
First, the blood of Lucrece is described metaphorically as flowing like a “purple fountain.” The word "fountain" suggests an abundant flow of pure and refreshing liquid, as in the “lively fountain of waters” (Revelation 7: 17) of the Geneva Bible, and while purple often connotes royalty or nobility, but can also suggest corruption and together with “crimson,” the stain of sin as any Geneva Bible reading Protestant of Shakespeare’s day would know:
though your sins were as crimson, they shall be made white as snow:
though they were red like scarlet, they shall be as wool.
(Isaiah 1: 18, Geneva Bible)
Moreover the linkage of “crimson” and “scarlet” with the colour “purple” is likely to lead our lively Protestant to a shocking though unavoidable association of the “pure” Lucrece, the “Roman dame” who lies in a “fearful flood,” with the Romish “Whore of Babylon,”:
… the great whore that sitteth upon many waters,
With whom have committed fornication the kings of the earth
…
And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet
(Revelation 17: 1, 2, 4)
As the blood flows around the corpse of Lucrece, it appears to take on a double aspect:
Some of her blood still pure and red remain'd,
There is no equivocation about the red blood of Lucrece, it “remains” uncorrupted, pure and red, but what of her black blood?
And some look'd black, and that false Tarquin stain'd. (9)
Here we find that the blood that Tarquin stained by his “load of lust” merely “look’d” black, which raises doubts as to its actual nature; is the blood really black? If it only appears to be black but is not actually so, then is it actually stained? If it only appears black, is the “stain” also an illusion or a temporary accident?
If indeed, the blood is as it looks, black, and is stained by Tarquin’s “load of lust” (through a process of humoral dyscrasia), can the body of Lucrece be purified or is as permanently corrupted as that of the Babylonish whore?
The “purple fountain” of Lucrece’s blood is the fourth and final mention of a “fountain” or “fount” in the poem, and there is a progression, beginning with Lucrece pleading with Tarquin before the rape:
Quoth she, 'Reward not hospitality
With such black payment as thou hast pretended;
Mud not the fountain that gave drink to thee;
Mar not the thing that cannot be amended;
Here, Lucrece is imploring Tarquin not to commit the irreversible act of violating her chastity, which would be a permanent stain on her honour, something that cannot be undone or amended. As yet, her fountain still runs pure.
Again, in her lament, Lucrece complains:
Why should the worm intrude the maiden bud?
Or hateful cuckoos hatch in sparrows' nests?
Or toads infect fair founts with venom mud?
Or tyrant folly lurk in gentle breasts?
Or kings be breakers of their own behests?
Now the fountain has been muddied with poison by the toad Tarquin, but cannot fountains be cleared of pollutants, or Lucrece’s body be cleared of the “compelled stain”? That is the rhetorical question that Lucrece puts to her kinsfolk:
May any terms acquit me from this chance?
The poison'd fountain clears itself again;
And why not I from this compelled stain?'
Her male kinsfolk and friends instantly affirm that she can indeed be cleared of the stain of Tarquin; indeed, it is her untainted mind that can clear the body of its stain:
With this, they all at once began to say,
Her body’s stain her mind untainted clears, (4)
Their view of the relationship between the body and the mind is similar to that of Augustine of Hippo (354-430AD), who writes:
But is there a fear that even another's lust may pollute the violated? It will not pollute, if it be another's: if it pollute, it is not another's, but is shared also by the polluted. But since purity is a virtue of the soul, and has for its companion virtue, the fortitude which will rather endure all ills than consent to evil; and since no one, however magnanimous and pure, has always the disposal of his own body, but can control only the consent and refusal of his will, what sane man can suppose that, if his body be seized and forcibly made use of to satisfy the lust of another, he thereby loses his purity?
(Augustine, The City of God, Book 1, Chapter 16)
Lucrece turns from them with a “joyless smile.” Here Shakespeare follow’s Livy by having Lucrece say.
“...no dame, hereafter living
By my excuse shall claim excuse’s giving.” (5)
| “ego me etsi peccato absolvo, supplicio non libero; nec ulla deinde impudica Lucretiae exemplo vivet.” (Livy) | “although I absolve myself of sin, I do not free myself of punishment (OR “I do not free myself from propitiation [of the gods]”); nor will any unchaste woman live after the example of Lucretia.” |
Where the Christian, Augustine, interprets the virtue of fortitude as a capacity to “endure all ills” and live, the pagan Lucretia / Lucrece interprets it in as the strength of will to die so as not to be imputed an excuse for “unchaste” women, so as to preserve her Roman honour and that of her family, and perhaps also to serve as a propitiatory sacrifice to appease the gods and dispell any shadow of Babylonish whoredom that, like the plague that was ravishing London, has infected her.
In her static “absolutism” Lucrece anticipates the absolutism of Isabella in Measure for Measure. Each runs her fixed mental algorithm, and in each case the answer that pops up is “death”; in Isabella’s case, it is the death of her brother to preserve her chastity; in Lucrece’s case, it is suicide to preserve her honour.
Her mode of suicide might be likened to a radical form of bloodletting. In stabbing herself she releases enough of the corrupted blood from her body to release her soul also, which, from a Christian perspective is a cure that is worse than the disease. In dying, Lucrece offers up her soul with sighs of contrition, a specifically Christian concept:
Her contrite sighs unto the clouds bequeathed
Her winged sprite, and through her wounds doth fly
Life's lasting date from cancell'd destiny.
Does Lucrece feel contrition for her cancel’d destiny, that is, for cutting short the natural span of her life, and quite possibly cancelling her eternal destiny to boot, or is it for her sense of inhabiting a body now impregnated with sin with no hope of redemption? If so, this mode of dying could not be more remote from that of Ovid’s Lucretia who’s only dying concern is for external appearances - to be seen to die with “decency”:
she took care in dying so that she fell
With decency, that was her care even in falling.
Perhaps this is why Shakespeare’s Brutus delivers another shock by calling Lucrece “wretched.”
To be continued…
David Hurley
#InspiredFocus
Photo: Henri Pinta, Le serment de Brutus, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
