Chastity and Unreason in Shakespeare’s
“The Rape of Lucrece”
Dr. A. JANAKIRAM
Shakespeare’s
second narrative poem “The Rape of Lucrece”, although
an early literary effort, certainly deserves study for the remarkable manner in
which it describes the guilt-ridden psyche of Tarquin
in terms of certain Elizabethan faculty-psychology concepts; it also deserves
attention for anticipating in an embryonic form certain motifs and concerns
which Shakespeare was to develop in his later plays. In another sense, it also
anticipates the version of love as a descent to the bestial level or “lust in
action” which Shakespeare has described in his celebrated sonnet (129) in
antithetical and paradoxical terms:
Past
reason hunted, and, no sooner had,
On
purpose laid to make the taker mad–
Almost every line of this sonnet is an accurate
gloss, as it were in retrospect, on Tarquin’s behaviour in the poem.
Written
in the mode of a moralistic exemplum, popular in the sixteenth century,
the Lucrece narrative may well have
been titled: “The Tragedy of Tarquin and the
Complaint of Lucrece”, as Lever has described it.1
The first part of the poem centres on the psyche of
the “Lust-breathed Tarquin”, the second part of the
poem, not so successful in aesthetic terms as the first, is mostly in the
“complaint” medium where Lucrece, more an emblem of
wounded honour and ravished chastity, functions
mostly as “a declamatory voice” on Night, Opportunity and Time. Although her
extensive monologues account for the heavy pace of the second part of the
narrative, they elaborate the ramifications of Tarquin’s
crime as an aspect of the nature of things, of a “tainted world” where
Opportunity frustrates both virtue and goodness in nature and man (“ ’Tis thou that spurn’st at right, at law, at reason”, 1.880) where Time is
in one aspect the “universal healer” and, in another, the harbinger of decay
and oblivion ravishing monuments and antiquities. Truly, the poem has much
importance as a repository or “barn” 2 for the later Shakespearean
motifs, and on that account alone remains of absorbing interest. While
Shakespeare’s interest in Tarquin’s demoniacal drive
to evil, reminds us of what he was to do later in Macbeth and Othello,
the details on the Troy cloth and the addresses to Time and Opportunity
prefigure Shakespeare’s later treatment of the themes of tragic folly, of wars
and lechery (as Julius Caesar, Hamlet and Troilus and Cressida were
to exemplify).
Whatever
shortcomings the poem may have, there is no mistaking the early Shakespeare’s
remarkable poetic prowess and ability to launch straightaway into the theme of
his choice by means of appropriate imagery and statement.” In the opening
stanza itself, the mental frame in which Tarquin
leaves the besieged Ardea to lay a different kind of
siege in Collatium, this time the citadel and “the
waist of Collating’s fair love”, is suggested by the
statement that he is being borne “by the trustless wings of false desire”
(1.2). This “false desire” is further characterized as “lightless fire” (1.4)
lurking “to aspire, and girdle Lucrece the chaste”.
3 Clearly, Tarquin right from the beginning is
shown as following a course leading to a descent rather than the usual ascent
of love, in seeking to “quench the coal which in his liver glows (1-47)”.
4
Against
this image of Tarquin as activated by “desire” is
that of Lucrece within whose face virtue and beauty
are engaged in a silent war of lilies and roses” for interchanging each other’s
seats (1.70). If Tarquin is a “devil”, she is
described as an “earthly saint” little suspecting the evil designs of her
“false worshipper.” The epithets used for Lucrece are
“chaste”, “modest”, “holy-thoughted”
(1-384). Later on, her face, asleep on the soft pillow, is compared to a
“virtuous monument” (1-391); the imagery used to describe her sleeping beauty
has a preponderance of the elements of light and white colours–“lily”,
“coral”, “ivory”, “snow-white” – making her thus a symbol of married constancy
and virtue (11. 386-399).
The
theme of burning lust and its unhappy results lends itself easily to a didactic
treatment, and Shakespeare indulges in it lavishly in his desctiption
of the inner turmoil of Tarquin and Lucrece’s complaints. After pointing out that the coveting of
greater profits only ends in the loss of the present gains for uncertain future
benefits, Shakespeare goes on to describe how the doting Tarquin
is taking such a hazard in “pawning his honour to obtain his lust” (1-156). There is even a suggestion that such a
course is a kind of self-betrayal:
And
for himself himself he must forsake;
Then
where is truth, if there be no self-trust? (11.157-58)
The
moralising manner adopted to describe the inner state
of Tarquin recalls some of the medieval allegorical
methods; those of a Gower or Lydgate. Tarquin is not
like Aaron the Moor,5 an unregenerate
villain wilfully persisting in a course; he is rather
like Macbeth, very much aware of the enormity of the sin he is going to commit.
The manner in which his psychomachy is described
makes it obvious that he is a slave of his “corrupt will” guided by his
“captain” “affection” (1.271). In terms of Renaissance faculty psychology, he
would have been recognised as having been impelled to
action by the twin alliance of will and appetitive affections against reason’s
hegemony. In the psychic turmoil, which is adequately described, the lower
faculties like will, fancy, affections and eyes, rebel against reason’s
sovereignty making her a helpless and “spotted princess.” Like the youthful
Troilus who finds that “reason and respect” make “livers pale and lustihood deject,” the equally young and rash Tarquin also scoffs at “reason” and “respect” as values
that should guide only old men, not a youth like himself:
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;
Desire
my pilot is, beauty my prize. (11. 275.80)
Since
his purpose and ends are dark and ignoble, night provides him the necessary
cover for his crime, with the uproar and tumult in his heart chiming in with
the death-boding cries of owls and wolves (night’s accomplices). One hears
similar kind of forebodings in the cries of wolves and owls in Macbeth too;
Tarquin’s situation foreshadows that of Macbeth whose
psychomachy and guilt-ridden awareness of the
enormity of his deed the mature Shakespeare would develop and describe with
greater skill and subtlety. If Macbeth knows that he, as Duncan’s host, “should
against his murderer shut the door, Not bear the knife himself” (Macbeth, I. vit. 15-16), Tarquin too is aware
that to be “a soft Fancy’s slave” is to violate the very ideals of knighthood
to which he was committed by his birth and upbringing;
O
shame to knighthood and to shining arms!
O
foul dishonour to my household’s grave!
O
impious act, including all foul harms!
A
martial man to be soft fancy’s slave! (11. 197-200)
The
debate in his
mind, on the eve of his performance of the deed, reveals his recognition that
he is selling eternity to “get a toy” (trifle):
What
win I if I gain the thing I seek?
A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy.
Who
buys a minute’s mirth to wail a week,
Or
sell eternity to get a toy? (11.211-14)
He
is conscious that he has no rational cause for the deed he is contemplating,
“this siege that hath engirt his (Collatine’s)
marriage” (1.24). In a sense, Tarquin is deliberately
and knowingly committing what the Renaissance recognised
as a sin.
Rightly,
he is described as a victim of “hot-burning will”, the conventional language
used for lust. Tarquin goes on to affirm:
My
will is strong past reason’s weak removing: (1.243)
The
function of reason–both as a directing faculty and as a counselling
power – has become too “weak” to curb strong “will”; the inversion of the
epithets “strong” and “weak” fairly indicates the psychological inversion that
has taken place in his soul. That he has dispensed with “good thoughts” and has
come to rely on “the worser sense” (or senses) is the
theme of the narrator’s comments at the end of the debate:
Thus
graceless holds he disputation
’Tween frozen conscience and hot-burning will,
And
with good thought makes dispensation,
Urging
the worser sense for vantage still; (11. 246-249)
In
contrast to this image of intemperate heat that marks the inward turmoil of Tarquin, images of quite another order, suggestive of light
and tranquillity, are used for the description of the
sleeping beauty, Lucrece, whose head resting on the
pillow is likened to “a virtuous monument” (1-391) or “an April daisy on the
grass” (1.395). Rhetoric “supervenes” as she awakes and asks him why he commits
“this ill.” Tarquin’s reply suggests that his reason
has been overpowered by his doting “will.”
“Thy
beauty hath ensnar’d thee to this night,
Where
thou with patience must my will abide,
My
will that marks thee for my earth’s delight;
Which
I to conquer sought with all my might;
But
as reproof and reason beat it dead,
By
thy bright beauty was it newly bred.” (11.485.490)
The
argument that his “will” – meaning here lust – although beaten dead by “reason”
for a while was again resurrected by her “bright beauty” only strengthens the
conclusion that reason, which ought to have held supreme, has abdicated before
the powers of the heart-will and the baser affections.
“But will is deaf, and
bears no heedful friends;
Only
he hath an eye to gaze on beauty,
And
dotes on what he looks, ’gainst law or duty.”
(495-97)
It
is as a creature at the mercy of “affections” and lawless “will” that Tarquin would project himself. He speaks as if the course
and power of affection were irresistible.
“But
nothing can affection’s course control,
Or
stop the headlong fury of his speed.
I
know repentant tears ensue the deed,
Reproach,
disdain and deadly enmity;
Yet
strive I to embrace mine infancy.” (500-04)
Summoning
reason and argument to her aid, Lucrece tries to
fortify the forces of reason in the Roman Prince who is standing menacingly
over her, sword in hand. Reminding that he is “a god, a king” and that “kings
like gods should govern (control) everything” (1. 603), she persuades him to be
himself and to rely on his princely wisdom, not vile “lust.” In other words,
she reminds him that it is his duty, to be king of his passions as well as his
subjects:
I
sue for exil’d majesty’s repeal:
Let
him return, and flattering thoughts retire,
His
true respect will prison false desire,
And
wipe the dim mist from thy doting eyne,
That thou shalt see thy state, and pity
mine. (11.640-44)
The
appeal is thus for a return of true regality in him (implicitly reason’s
regality), a sovereignty which alone will check “false desire” and remove the
“dim mist” from his “doting eyne.” Lucrece thus combines political lesson with moral
philosophy in her persuasion which, however, has no effect on Tarquin overruled by passion. Tarquin
himself describes his state of mind when he brushes aside Lucrece’s
reasonable appeals:
“Have
done”, quoth he; “my uncontrolled tide
Turns
not, but swells the higher by this let.
Small
lights are soon flown out, huge fires abide...” (645-47)
Before
accomplishing the rape, Tarquin threatens that
“enforced hate” shall “rudely tear” her if Lucrece
does not yield to his lust (668-69). It has been argued that the chaste Lucrece should have either defended herself to the death or
killed Tarquin, and that her suicide after the rape
does not altogether absolve her of complicity. D.C. Allen has stated how, for
the sixteenth century, the tragedy of Lucrece was
something of a casuistical problem and how Speron, among the other humanists, remarked that a truly
chaste woman would have died before surrendering but “Lucrece
abandoned her virtue just as a distressed ship jettisons its cargo.” Regarding
the poem in the light of the Renaissance controversy on Lucrece’s
suicide, which clearly goes against Christian ethics, Allen surmises that
Shakespeare, however much impressed by the tragic import of the story, must
have felt “that it must be glossed in terms of Christian options”.6
It must be remarked, however, that as far as Lucrece’s
surrender to Tarquin’s lust is concerned, Shakespeare
presents her as having had no other option but to surrender when Tarquin threatened that her attempts to resist would only
lead to a further defilement of her image. Brandishing his “insulting falchion
aloft”, the Roman prince warns that he would kill a slave and throw her into his
bed so that the world might think she was guilty of adulterous intentions.
There can be no mistake about the sympathetic portrayal of Lucrece’s
behaviour during this episode, however questionable
on ethical grounds, her later act of suicide might
appear.
The
moralising over the aftermath of Tarquio’s
guilty deed may sound rather too lavish and pat for modern taste. All the same,
a few details in the description of Tarquin’s psychomachy deserve attention for the light they throw on
Shakespeare’s use of the current psychological concepts. The consequences of Tarquin’s act, in moral terms, are dwelt on at length:
This
momentary joy breeds months of pain;
This
hot desire converts to cold disdain.
Pure
chastity is rifled of her store,
And
lust the thief, far poorer than before. (11.690-93)
The loss in moral terms is thus immense for it
has not only tarnished his reputation in history but even “his soul’s fair
temple.”
Besides,
his soul’s fair temple is defaced,
To
whose weak ruins muster troops of cares,
To
ask the spotted princess how she fares. (11.719-721)
The
“spotted princess” here is unmistakably Reason who is described in this period
variously as a queen, as counsellor, and a
“princess”. 7 The plight of the “spotted princess,” helpless in her
castle besieged by her subjects–passions, is further elaborated in the
following stanza which extends the meaning of the fortress consistently used in
this section of the poem:
She
says her subjects with foul insurrection
Have
batter’d down her consecrated wall,
And
by their mortal fault brought in subjection
Her
immortality, and made her thrill
To
living death and pain perpetual;
Which
in her prescience she controlled still,
But
her foresight could not forestall their will. (11.722-728)
The
princess here is a spokesman for the rational soul who in theory ought to have
ruled her subject-passions but who could not “forestall their will” or prevent
them from battering down “her consecrated wall”. She recalls to our mind
Spenser’s allegorical figure Alma (Book II, Canto 9, Faery
Queen) whose castle is also described as having been subjected to an
insurrection by the senses or passions, and who fortunately could count on King
Arthur and the temperate Guyon to quell the
insurrection. By contrast, the princess in Tarquin’s
soul is “spotted” because she has neither the help of grace nor temperance to
quell the rebellion; the narrator’s suggestion earlier on, while commenting on
the inward struggle, was;
Thus
gracelless holds he
disputation
’Tween frozen conscience and hot-burning will (11.246-47)
The
epithet “frozen” before “conscience” a word of religious import, amplifies the
meaning of another religious term “graceless” in the above passage. Lacking
grace and inherent temperance, Tarquin, the comment
suggests, has gone too far on the downward path to be able to act otherwise.
The
metaphor of the siege plays an important part in the poem, and is a natural
form of expression in an age accustomed to think of love in terms of a battle
and a siege. The idea of siege here has, however, an ironic aspect in revealing
the aggressive intention of the ravisher. It is equally ironic that while he is
attempting an attack on Lucrece’s castle of virtue, a
parallel attack on the “consecrated walls” of the inner fort of his soul is
simultaneously taking place, as is evident from the passage on the “spotted
princess” just discussed.
The metaphor of the
siege and fall gets an extended play again in the later episode of the Troy
Cloth (11.1366–1561) as well as the passage (11.1170-1176) preceding that
episode. The
For even as subtle Sinon here is painted,
So sober sad, so weary
and so mild,
… … … …
To me came Tarquin armed to beguile
with outward honesty, but
yet defil’d
With
inward vice.
As Priam him did cherish
So did I Tarquin,–so my
The comparison of Lucrece’s body to
Her (Soul’s) house is sack’d, her quiet interrupted,
Her mansion batter’d by the enemy,
Her sacred temple
spotted, spoil’d, corrupted,
Grossly engirt with
daring infamy,
Then let it not be call’d impiety,
If in this blemish’d fort I make some hole,
Through which I may
convey this troubled soul. (11. 1170-76)
The image of “Her sacred
temple spotted...corrupted, Grossly engirt with daring
infamy” is an image recalling, at once, the sacred temple of the “spotted
princess” used earlier for the inward soul of Tarquin.
The implication here is however slightly different; it is not the soul which is
“spotted” and “corrupted” but its habitat the body, which is, and must be
abandoned for that very reason. Allen has argued that while Aeneas had “divine
sapience” as his goal for abandoning
Surely, it is difficult
to imagine Lucrece as anything mort than an emblem of
Roman honour and fidelity. At the same time, I find
it difficult to go all the way with Allen in contending that Lucrece’s suicide, patently unchristian, takes something
away from her tragic stature and that “Shakespeare read the story in its
Christian context.” Curtis Brown Watson has given evidence of the fact that the
Elizabethans shared the Pagan-humanist attitude towards suicide as a means of
vindicating one’s honour and that in spite of the
Christian taboo against it, the Elizabethans had a
secret admiration for it in certain circumstances. Watson also relates the
incident of an Elizabethan soldier, as narrated in Sir Walter Raleigh’s The
Fight of the Revenge, who imitated the Roman practice in order to escape
disgrace. Is it necessary, then, to view all incidents or events involving
ethical dilemmas (like Othello’s suicide) in Shakespeare’s works strictly
within the Christian framework of values? The Elizabethan attitudes towards
such issues were ambivalent.
Lucrece’s motives for suicide are
presented in the context of the Roman concept of honour
and it is the fear of dishonour and shame that seems to
be her overriding motive for taking the course she did.
My honour
I’ll bequeath unto the knife
That wounds my body so dishonoured.
’Tis
honour to deprive dishonour’d
life;
The one will live, the
other being dead. (11.1184-87)
It is obvious that Lucrece wants to take away (“deprive”) “dishonour’d
life” so that only honour may live, “the other (i. e., dishonour) being dead.” It
is the same concern for honour as public esteem as
underlies her statement just before her suicide;
“No, no,” quoth she, “no dame hereafter living
By my excuse shall claim
excuse’s giving.” (11.1714-15.)
Considering the
importance attached to “honour” as a social virtue,
as the esteem of the community that survives one’s death, Lucrece’s
action would appear to be “rare and wonderful,” as the Renaissance understood
it, and not “a little beyond forgiveness” as Allen understands it.
Shakespeare’s portrayal of Lucrece is clearly
sympathetic as Allen himself admits. Her exit from life, like the exits of
other Roman figures in Shakespeare, has its own tragic dignity, largely
motivated by an agonising concern for honour as reputation which the Elizabethans too cherished.
In the final analysis,
Shakespeare’s Lucrece poem may be
regarded as presenting two concepts of love; love as lust or descent,
undermining the rational faculties of the soul (Tarquin),
and love as a rational concern for chastity and fidelity in marriage (Lucrece). As F. T. Prince has observed in
his excellent introduction: “Venus and Adonis treats sexual desire in
the spirit of romantic comedy; Lucrece does
so in the spirit of tragedy.” Although its spirit may be tragic, the
poem has an obsessive moral concern as is evident in the over-elaborate
addresses to Time, Night and Opportunity, and an equally elaborate description
of the episode of
“Why should the private
pleasure of some one
Become the public plague
of many more? (11. 1478-79)
These lines, although written in the sixteenth
century, have an authentic ring of universal appeal, transcending all ages, and
could have only come from Shakespeare.
l J. W. Lever
“Shakespeare’s Narrative Poems”, A New Companion to Shakespeare Studies, Eds.
Kenneth Muir and Schoenbaum. (
2 D. C. Allen, “Some Observations on The Rape
of Lucrece” Shakespeare Survey –15 ( 1962) p. 94.
3 Citations and line numbers refer to the
4 Liver as the seat of passion was a commonplace
notion of Renaissance faculty psychology. If Tarquin’s
love had been rational, its seat would not have been the liver but the mind;
likewise, he would not have placed such reliance on the evidence of eyes
unchecked by reason and other higher faculties. It was generally held that
whatever the eyes perceived as love-worthy was to be ratified by reason, the
highest and god-like faculty in the human microcosm.
5 How Tarquin
foreshadows Macbeth in some respects becomes clear when we compare him with
Aaron who is an unrepentant villain glorying in his wicked nature. Compare, for
example, Aaron’s reply to Lucius’ question, “Art thou
not sorry for these heinous deeds?”
Even now I curse the
day...
Wherein I did not some
notorious ill;
(Titus Andronicus, V. 1.123-127; the
reference here is to the Tudor Shakespeare, Ed. Peter Alexander.)
6 Shakespeare Survey–15
(1962), Pp. 90-91.
7 See C. S. Lewis, The
Discarded Image (