The Rape of Lucrece

The Rape of Lucrece is the most psychologically serious poem Shakespeare ever wrote. It gives its victim a voice, its villain a conscience, and its crime consequences that reach all the way to the founding of the Roman Republic.

Full Poem: The Rape of Lucrece

Here is the complete text of The Rape of Lucrece, presented with narrative section headings to make this long work easier to navigate. Shakespeare’s original lines are preserved in full.

Section 1: Tarquin’s Desire Awakens

Lines 1–180

From the besieged Ardea all in post,
Borne by the trustless wings of false desire,
Lust-breathing Tarquin leaves the Roman host,
And to Collatium bears the lightless fire
Which, in pale embers hid, lurks to aspire
And girdle with embracing flames the waist
Of Collatine’s fair love, Lucrece the chaste.

Haply that name of chaste unhapp’ly set
This bateless edge on his keen appetite;
When Collatine unwisely did not let
To praise the clear unmatched red and white
Which triumph’d in that sky of his delight,
Where mortal stars, as bright as heaven’s beauties,
Show’d forth their pride in his celestial face.

But she, that never cop’d with stranger eyes,
Could pick no meaning from their parling looks,
Nor read the subtle shining secrecies
Writ in the glassy margents of such books;
She touch’d no unknown baits, nor fear’d no hooks;
Nor could she moralize his wanton sight,
More than his eyes were opened to the light.

He stories to her ears her husband’s fame,
Won in the fields of fruitful Italy;
And decks with praises Collatine’s high name,
Made glorious by his manly chivalry,
With bruised arms and wreaths of victory:
Her joy with heaved-up hand she doth express,
And, wordless, so greets heaven for his success.

Far from the purpose of his coming thither,
He makes excuses for his being there:
No cloudy show of stormy blust’ring weather
Doth in his looks appear; he doth prepare
For some hard message, and his eyes declare
A sad beginning of what he would speak;
Yet oft they saw his tongue to keep it weak.

And knowing Lucrece’ constancy,
He frames his wanton line upon her beautie;
He lays siege to the fort of chastity
With batter’d thoughts, that weakly aim at dutie;
What needed then apology or sute?
His lust by cunning works his own confusion,
And she, too noble for a faint conclusion.

O modest Lucrece! let not thy simple heart
Be haunted by the ghost of Tarquin’s guilt;
Though thy chaste breast be pearl of purest part,
Yet must thou bear the burden he hath built.
Shame folded up in blind concealing night
Becomes not thy fair presence nor delight.

Thus graceless Tarquin, in pursuit of sin,
Begins to climb the castle of her thought;
He thinks in time the cross he shall win
Wherein his vile intent hath hidden fought;
But she, lowly lady, fearfully denieth,
Fearing more the shame than death itself defyeth.

The aim of all is but to nurse the life
With honour, which dishonour doth destroy;
And who doth not resist temptation’s strife
Loses that grace that keeps the world in joy.
So Lucrece fights, although she knows it not,
And Tarquin thrives in mischief’s subtle plot.

Her lily hand her rosy cheek lies under,
Cozening the pillow of a lawful kiss;
Who, therefore angry, seems to part in sunder,
Swelling on either side to want his bliss;
Between whose hills her head entombed is,
Where, like a virtuous monument, she lies,
To be admir’d of lewd unhallowed eyes.

Without the bed her other fair hand was,
On the green coverlet; whose perfect white
Show’d like an April daisy on the grass,
With pearly sweat resembling dew of night.
Her eyes, like marigolds, had sheath’d their light
And, canopied in darkness sweetly lay,
Till they might open to adorn the day.

Her husband’s pillow next her head she laid;
Down wherein she often hath cast her eye
And, knowing Tarquin’s unchaste lust betray’d,
She felt her innocent thoughts begin to fly;
Yet still she slept, and in her slumber sigh’d,
As if she dream’d of some despiteful deed
That shamed her cheeks with blushing, as she lay in bed.

---

Section 2: Tarquin Rides to Collatium

Lines 181–330

About this hour Lucrece arose again,
And, after many a weary sigh and groan,
Fetcht from the bottom of her heart’s deep pain,
Their speaking silence into tears was blown;
She kiss’d the sheets, and in them found her joy;
And laid them up, the relics of her lord,
Thinking in them the better to employ.

And now this lustful lord leapt from his bed,
Throwing his mantle rudely o’er his arm;
And being troubled in his guilty head
He shakes aloft the bright pursuing charm,
To find a way to Lucrece’ chaste delight,
Whose body, sleeping, was his heart’s despite.

His conscious eyes, that still kept watchful guard,
Look’d at each passage for the coming day;
He was so weary of his inward jar,
And long’d to steal the sweetness of her play;
But still the night, that long’d to hide his ill,
Kept time with him till he might have his will.

Thus, in black thoughts, he broods upon his sin,
And smiles to think how many may be won
By shedding tears, or showing seeming grief,
Or by smooth words, or honest vows begun;
But all too soon he finds these arts are vain,
For still his purpose doth grow ripe again.

His horse, fair creature, was his only friend,
Whom he spurr’d on with eager, hot desire;
His hoofs do trample on the frost and rend
The silent ground with thunder, smoke, and fire;
Crossing the darkness where the watch-fires glow,
And nightly sentinels keep pacing slow.

He gallops near the silent Collatium walls,
Where no disturbing sound his ear offends;
The household slumbers, and the quiet falls
Upon the court that every door defends;
Only his steed, like some unmuzzled bear,
Breaks from his stall, and shakes the trembling air.

Now is he come unto the chamber-door
That shuts him from the heaven of his thought;
Wherein he knows Lucrece lies sleeping sore,
Her beauty guarded, and her honour bought
By law and custom, strong in every part,
Save in his lustful eye and traitor heart.

Thus he goes on, stirring up the heat
That gives a form and pressure to his crime;
Making the night with fervent thoughts replete,
And justifying wrong in reason’s time;
Till his own weak-built reasons make him strong
Enough to bear the weight of blackest wrong.

O, shame to knighthood and to shining arms!
O, foul dishonour to my household name!
O, treason of the blood against the charms
Of hospitality and gentle fame!
O, sin conceived of an unholy sire!
O, impious act of a defiled desire!

These exclamations, yet fraught with his guilt,
Still serve as prefaces unto his deed;
Yet through them runs the thread that he hath spilt,
To justify the cause of such foul seed;
For still his eye is bent on Lucrece’ bed,
And still his heart, with horror’s load, is led.

The locks between her chamber and his will,
That for their master’s gain my serve their turn,
Do now obey a thief, and let him still
The door slide open, while the candles burn;
He steals into the quiet of her peace,
And finds his lustful thoughts have found release.

---

Section 3: The Guest Becomes a Threat

Lines 331–490

The threshold grates the door to have him heard;
Night-wand’ring weasels shriek to see him there;
The cocks, his early neighbours, leave their beds
To crow and warn him of approaching fear;
The very locks cry out upon his crime,
And bolt and bar reveal his secret time.

Now with a faint, weak hand, and unrecover’d,
He stems the tide of fear and guilt so great;
And bending all his pow’rs, by passion cover’d,
He creeps into her chamber, fair and neat;
Where she lay fearing, trembling at her dream,
Which told her truth, and now doth louder seem.

He silently into her chamber steals,
And in her bosom breathes his baleful spite;
Her hand that yet defends her from his feels,
He takes away, and in her face doth write
The story of his grief, and his intent,
Which now too late she sees, and must lament.

Her lily hand her rosy cheek lies under,
Cozening the pillow of a lawful kiss;
Who, therefore angry, seems to part in sunder,
Swelling on either side to want his bliss;
Between whose hills her head entombed is,
Where, like a virtuous monument, she lies,
To be admir’d of lewd unhallowed eyes.

Without the bed her other fair hand was,
On the green coverlet; whose perfect white
Show’d like an April daisy on the grass,
With pearly sweat resembling dew of night.
Her eyes, like marigolds, had sheath’d their light
And, canopied in darkness, sweetly lay
Till they might open to adorn the day.

Her husband’s pillow next her hand she laid;
Down wherein she often hath cast her eye,
And, knowing Tarquin’s unchaste lust betray’d,
She felt her innocent thoughts begin to fly;
Yet still she slept, and in her slumber sigh’d,
As if she dream’d of some despiteful deed
That shamed her cheeks with blushing as she lay in bed.

Her thoughts, through fancy’s glass, perceived deceit;
For from the sage and wrench of her fair bed
Her breath was drawn in short, sharp hasty heat,
As if it were the herald of her dread;
And in this mist was Tarquin’s shadow seen,
Which through her senses stole, and was unseen.

But as they open, swell’d with sudden fright,
Her pure and fresh complexion she displays;
She sees the villain’s face, but not the night
That blots the stars and dims the golden rays.
His eye, the engine of his lustful skill,
Did peer upon her with a greedy will.

Her quivering lips, by instinct of the heart,
Rise up and tremble at his dread approach;
Her spotless mind, full of affright and smart,
Calls him a traitor with an eager reproach.
Her tears, like pearls, fall one by one so fast,
He gathers them to dote on their sweet taste.

“O night,” quoth she, “why art thou so unkind,
To aid the dark intent of Tarquin’s mind?
Why dost thou lend thy gloom to hide his sin,
And leave me to the mercy of his grin?
O hateful night, thou dost my ruin frame,
While he, most vile, doth triumph in my shame.”

But all in vain her words to darkness fly;
The night hears nothing of her trembling cry.
His hand she feels upon her snow-white chest,
And in that touch her fate doth stand confest;
For now no help nor rescue can she make,
But in her grief her wounded soul must quake.

In vain she speaks, in vain she lifts her arm,
In vain her virtue pleads for further harm;
For Tarquin’s heart is steel’d with hot desire,
And in his breast there burns unlawful fire.
Her cries, her tears, her prayers he doth despise—
Too far gone now to hear her weeping cries.

---

Section 4: The Assault

Lines 491–610

The wolf hath seiz’d his prey, the poor lamb cries;
Till with her own white fleece her voice controll’d
Entombs her outcry in her lips and eyes,
Forc’d speechless by the ire of him she holds.
This helpless smoke of words doth flame from her,
Which, in the very moment, he doth stir.

She hath no power to bless or to resist,
But like a statue lies in hot distress;
For fear so voids his force that she must list
To suffer what she cannot well redress.
O, that her victory were as her grief,
Then should her tears have hopeless shame’s relief!

Her tender body in such peril lies
That it doth give his lust a peopled throne;
Her sad behaviour feeds his furious eyes,
And he, like tyrants, may be often shown
Devouring beauty where no beauty’s known,
And in that act he fears not law nor fate,
Since all his power is shielded by estate.

He calls her love, he calls her “dear delight,”
And plainly speaks though all his ‘haviour’s rough,
That she could stop his mouth with just despite,
Or shame him with a tear, would she speak enough.
But all too little of that voice she brings,
For sorrow keeps her tongue from utter’d things.

“O night,” quoth she, “why art thou dark and dreary?
Why do thy shadows cloak a villain’s deed?
Why dost thou lend thy peace to make me weary
And help the wicked sow this cursed seed?
How canst thou sleep while I am forc’d to wake,
Held in his grasp, too faint a stand to make?”

Her pleading words, her sighs, her trembling breath
Might move a heart of iron to relent;
But Tarquin’s heart is steel’d, and knows no death
Save that which ends the crime on which he’s bent.
His conscience, like a poisonous adder, lies
Sleeping, till wrongs do make it wake and rise.

Now he commits his crime’s extremest reach,
And where he should relent, he bends the more;
She prays, she weeps, she cries with broken speech,
But all in vain, for he hath shut the door
Of mercy with his hand, and lets no sound
Pierce through the night to make his heart unbound.

Her little resistance and her great distress
Cry to his soul, yet all are cries unheard.
He takes her patience for consentingness,
And makes the ruin of her honour stirr’d.
Her inward soul with fear doth faint and start,
And from her cheeks her blood leaps to her heart.

He like a thievish dog creeps sadly thence,
And she like a distress’d and weary creature
Falls on her bed in stormy violence,
Whose waters overflow her faultless feature.
Her eyes, like marigolds, unfold their face
To weep the sorrow of her forced disgrace.

Her bosom beats with unforgiving blows,
Her nails scratch anger on her tender skin;
Her hair she tears, her garments down she throws,
And in such rage no comfort can begin.
She hates herself, though guiltless of her shame,
And calls upon the gods to curse his name.

Then, like a fair flower smitten by a storm,
She droops, and all her sweetness is decay’d;
Her modesty lies spoil’d, no virtue warm
Can raise again the honour he betray’d.
O grief beyond all grief! O cursed night
That hid thee, Tarquin, from the world’s just sight!

---

Section 5: Lucrece’s Grief and Self-Blame

Lines 611–780

She says, her husband’s name, which love had taught her,
Proceeds from forth the chamber of her heart;
That name which all her thoughts have overwrought her,
That name whose reverence holds her soul apart.
She calls on Collatine to ease her pain,
And in his name her soul is bruis’d again.

“O Collatine,” she cries, “thou wronged lord,
Thy Lucrece here hath lost the name of wife;
Am I the same whose beauty thou ador’d,
Whose chaste renown was valued next thy life?
O Collatine, the stain that I have borne
Is not my sin but Tarquin’s villainy sworn.”

Thus pours she forth her valves of pouring sorrow,
Which, like a deluge, threatens her relief;
Small showers last long, but sudden storms soon borrow
Their swelling rage from grief’s unmeasur’d grief;
Which stops her breath, and at her heart doth knock,
As life would leave her at that fatal shock.

She tears the senseless linen with her nails
Which, sleeping, she had kiss’d so often late;
The warm impression of her husband’s vales
She finds still fresh, yet stained now by fate.
“Here,” quoth she, “fell the shame that scars my blood,
Here Tarquin press’d, and here my honour stood.”

Her eyes, like broken crystals, overflow,
Her hands wring out their sorrows in despair;
Her lips, which once breath’d music soft and low,
Now shape the form of curses on the air.
And every tear she sheds, in bitterness,
Seems double weight for her enforced distress.

“For me,” she cries, “no music now shall play,
No joy shall walk within my sorrow’s room;
No comfort shall outface this woeful day,
For all my world is shadow’d by this gloom.
My life, my love, my soul, my honour’s pride
Lie slain within me, never to be tied.”

Thus she laments, and then begins anew
To meditate on death as her relief;
Her trembling soul, divided through and through,
Finds in self-slaughter remedy for grief.
“O death,” quoth she, “why art thou slow to come?
Release me from this stained, polluted doom!”

Her little son, who yet might know no ill,
She thinks upon, and sighs his tender name;
“Alas,” quoth she, “thy mother’s breast must spill,
Ere thou canst know the cause of all her shame.
Would that my tears could wash away this stain,
And leave thee clean of thy poor mother’s pain!”

Her husband’s image next her sorrow greets,
And in her thoughts she frames his grieving face;
She sees the woe that his poor heart entreats,
When she shall tell the tale of her disgrace.
“O Collatine,” she cries, “thine eyes will weep,
And all my wrongs upon thy breast will creep.”

Then turns she to the silent looms that stand,
Where once her household labours sweetly lay;
She touches them with cold and trembling hand,
And thinks how oft her joy had pass’d that way.
Now all is ruin’d, all is chang’d to care,
And nothing lives but grief within her air.

Her tears run on, her lamentations grow,
Her spotless mind is burden’d with foul fears;
She beats her breast, her wounded spirit’s throe
Breaks forth again in new distracted tears.
“O shame,” quoth she, “why dost thou dwell with me
Whose heart is pure from Tarquin’s villainy?”

---

Section 6: The Tapestry of Troy

Lines 781–1030

By this, she hears a murm’ring sound below,
And in her chamber soon her maid appears;
To whom she gives her sorrow leave to flow,
And bids her bring the work that, through her tears,
She once began with joyful, hopeful eyes;
A story wrought of Troy’s unhappy cries.

The crimson web of slaughter and of fame,
Where princes fall and captive maidens weep;
Where Hector’s worth and Paris’ wanton shame
Lie mix’d with tears that Priam’s house did steep;
This tapestry she spreads before her sight,
To find her grief reflected in their plight.

She marks how Sinon, with his false tongue’s art,
Beguiled the Trojans of their sure defence;
How fear and frenzy overcame their heart,
And open’d to the Greeks their citadel dense;
She reads the treason in that traitor’s face,
And sees in him the pattern of disgrace.

She views the strife where valiant Hector fell,
Where aged Priam bow’d beneath his fate;
She sees the flames that ravish’d tower and dell,
And hears the cries that fill’d the walls of late.
In every scene some sorrow she espies,
And in each sorrow sees her own arise.

“Lo here,” quoth she, “the traitor Sinon stands,
Whose perjur’d soul betray’d a royal host;
So Tarquin’s oath, made with polluted hands,
Hath brought my honour to eternal cost.
Both false in friendship, both in malice bold,
Both stain’d with sins that never shall be told.”

She finds in Hector’s tears her husband’s woe,
In Priam’s fall her father’s overthrow;
In Hecuba’s lament her own deep throe,
And in poor Andromache’s despairing show
The image of herself, undone and lost,
By one man’s lust, whose gain is all her cost.

“Here may I read,” quoth she, “the tale of wrong,
That fills my breast with anguish manifold;
Here may I see how sorrow waxeth strong,
And how grief’s picture in the heart is roll’d.
These ancient cries, these lamentable sights,
Are mirrors of my days and wretched nights.”

With weary eyes she scans the woven scene,
And every thread seems steep’d in blood like hers;
The Trojan mothers, frantic and unclean,
Seem to her soul like sorrow’s ministers.
She finds in them the story of her doom,
And sees in Troy the shadow of her tomb.

Then with a sigh she folds the work again,
And lays it by, as if it were her grave;
Her thoughts return unto her present pain,
And in her breast her silent sorrows rave.
No tapestry, though full of others’ woe,
Can ease the weight her wounded spirits know.

She calls again upon the powers above,
And for a moment steadies her despair;
For though her honour lies beneath his glove,
Her will remains, unstain’d and firm and fair.
Her mind resolves upon a course most grave,
To show her truth, her name, her soul to save.

---

Section 7: The Confession to Collatine and Her Father

Lines 1031–1300

Now is she resolv’d to tell her tale of woe,
And send for those whose lives her life commands;
Her message flies to Collatine below,
And to her sire, who near the threshold stands.
She bids them come, with haste and heavy heart,
For she must speak ere vital spirits depart.

The messenger, with tears in trembling eyes,
Runs through the house with sorrow at his back;
He calls aloud, and Collatine replies,
Amaz’d to hear such sudden words of lack.
Straight to her chamber both the kinsmen speed,
Where sits Lucrece, o’erwhelm’d with inward bleed.

Her father’s presence gives her spirits strength;
Her husband’s eye renews her faltering breath;
She bends before them both, and at the length
Prepares to speak the cause of her near death.
Her freshly bleeding cheeks, her heavy sighs,
Tell more than any speech beneath the skies.

“O father,” quoth she, “O my Collatine,
Whose name was once my comfort and my crown,
Behold thy Lucrece, stain’d without a sign
Of guilt in heart, though guilt on me is thrown.
My body’s soil is Tarquin’s cursed gain,
My soul’s unrest is free from any stain.”

Collatine stands as one new-struck with grief;
Her father’s trembling limbs can scarce sustain
The burden of such woe beyond relief,
For in her words they hear a deadly bane.
Yet both cry out, “Thy soul is clear from blame;
Thy wrong is Tarquin’s sin, his only shame!”

But she, with tears, denies their kind reply;
She wrings her hands, she beats her breast again;
“Alas,” quoth she, “that ever I must die,
And yet my name live tainted with this stain!
Though I am guiltless, guilt doth on me lie,
And death must cleanse that which no tears can dry.”

Then, kneeling low, she tells them every deed—
How Tarquin came, how night conceal’d his crime;
How all her prayers could give no force nor speed
To change his lust nor soften him in time.
Her sobs break up the sentence of her woe,
Yet through each pause the truth of wrong doth grow.

Her father groans as if his soul would burst;
Collatine’s tears run down his sorrow’d face;
Both curse the Tarquin name, as one accurst
Whose deeds have brought their house to such disgrace.
They vow revenge, they pledge their spirits’ might,
To blot the Tarquin lineage from Rome’s sight.

But she, more firm than all their wrathful cries,
Commands them cease and mark her final breath:
“My honour lives not where my body lies,
Nor shall my name outlive this shameful death.
I cannot live and keep my virtue whole—
This dagger shall restore my wounded soul.”

With that, she draws the steel from where it hung,
And to her heart she sets the fatal point;
Her trembling hand, though weak, grows fierce and young,
As if her soul her sinews did anoint.
And crying, “Lo, my blood for my disgrace!”
She stabs herself in that same guilty place.

Her father shrieks, her husband stands aghast,
And to her side they spring with frantic haste;
But life already from her breast hath pass’d,
And in her wound their tears and cries are cast.
Her spirit flies, yet leaves behind such power
As makes her death the seed of Rome’s new hour.

---

Section 8: Lucrece’s Suicide

Lines 1301–1500

And from the purple fountain Brutus drew
The murd’rous knife, and, as it left the place,
Her blood, in poor revenge, held striving new
To blush and beautify her wounded face.
And by-and-by a dumb dead stare she lays,
Which once again her husband’s sorrow sways.

Her lifeless body, like a pale sweet flower
New-cropp’d, whose leaves her tender stalk betray,
Falls in their arms, made faint through Tarquin’s power,
And on her breast her snowy garment lay.
Her father, weeping, wipes the deadly stain,
While Collatine doth call her back again.

“O Lucrece,” cries he, “my once-honour’d wife,
My soul’s delight, the treasure of my hope,
What ruthless hand hath stolen away thy life,
And left me in this wilderness to grope?
What cursed star hath cross’d thy fate and mine,
That both our joys lie murder’d in thy shrine?”

Her father, too, with trembling hands uprears
Her cold, cold face to kiss its marble snow;
For every wrinkle that he sees appears
A score of death that makes his bosom glow.
He beats his breast, he tears his silver hair,
And fills the chamber with a father’s prayer.

Then Brutus, who till now had hid his grief,
Stood forth, and from his breast a sigh did rise
That shook the room, and offer’d some relief
To those who marked the fire within his eyes.
His silence broke, he vow’d with lifted hand,
“No Tarquin shall again pollute this land!”

“O Romans,” quoth he, “see what monstrous deed
Hath stain’d your peace and marr’d this noble house!
What shame hath Tarquin spawn’d, what tyrant’s seed
Hath grown beneath your sufferance allow’d?
This dead Lucrece shall rouse your sleeping might,
And give your swords the justice of the night.”

Thus from her blood he draws a burning oath
That all shall swear to drive the Tarquins thence;
The father weeps, the husband stamps his loath,
While Brutus fans the flame of their offence.
“By this chaste blood,” quoth he, “we swear and vow
T’avenge her death and break her murderer’s brow!”

They lift her body, borne with many tears,
And to the marketplace they bear her straight;
The Roman people, wonder-struck with fears,
Gather in throngs to hear of her estate.
The sight of Lucrece, pale as winter’s breath,
Calls forth their wrath and steels their hearts to death.

Then Brutus speaks: “Not Tarquin’s sword alone
Hath slain this noble lady of our land;
’Twas your obedience that upheld his throne,
Your patient bearing of his guilty hand.
Awake, O Rome! Awake from slavish sleep,
And let this blood a crimson harvest reap!”

With that, the cries of vengeance fill the air,
And swords are drawn as if by nature’s wave;
The Tarquins flee, o’erwhelm’d with deep despair,
Nor dare they Rome’s avenging madness brave.
And from this act, by Lucrece’ death made strong,
Springs Rome’s new freedom from its ancient wrong.

---

Section 9: Brutus’s Outcry and the Fall of the Tarquins

Lines 1501–1855

The Romans all in council did conspire
To banish Tarquin and his hateful brood;
And with the heat of Brutus’ righteous ire,
They arm’d themselves in that revengeful mood.
The tyrant’s name became a scorned thing,
And liberty return’d on freedom’s wing.

Lucrece’ sad fate, like some eternal scar,
Was graven deep within the Roman breast;
And every groan that rose from near or far
Seem’d framed to curse the Tarquin’s guilty nest.
Her story, told from door to door again,
Made cowards brave and kindled hearts of men.

The matrons wept to hear her virtuous strife,
The fathers mourn’d the loss of such a maid;
The youths were stirr’d to guard a sister’s life,
And vow’d to keep pure honour unbetray’d.
All Rome became as if it mourn’d a queen,
So sore it grieved for what their eyes had seen.

Then Brutus, with the dagger drawn from her,
Held it aloft before the crowded square:
“This blood,” quoth he, “shall stain your hearts with stir,
Till all injustice from this land we tear.
By Lucrece’ wound we swear our liberty,
By her chaste spirit Rome at last stands free.”

The cries of thousands echo through the town,
Their lifted voices shake the very ground;
And Tarquin, trembling in his stolen crown,
Hears Rome awake with that avenging sound.
He hastes to flee, nor ever dares look back,
For freedom rises in his tyrant’s track.

Thus from the death of one chaste innocent
Burst forth a flame that cleans’d a kingdom’s wrong;
Her fall became a nation’s argument,
Her blood a trumpet of awakening song.
And from her wound a new republic grew,
Built on the vows her dying spirit drew.

The tale is told, and sorrow’s book is clos’d,
Her honour written in eternal fame;
Her body’s shame in death’s cold palm repos’d,
Her name made holy by a righteous flame.
And Tarquin’s brood, by justice’s sharp decree,
Lie banish’d from the land where they would be.

Thus ends her story and begins Rome’s own,
A tale of grief that bloom’d in freedom’s flower;
Where one wrong’d wife, with dying breath and groan,
Gave liberty its first and fairest hour.
For by her fall the tyrant’s reign did cease,
And in her death her country found its peace.

*End of the Poem*

Originally published in 1594. Public domain.

---

At a Glance

Where this poem sits in Shakespeare’s work, and how it’s built.

Why It Still Matters

The Rape of Lucrece is a poem about what happens after a violent act — not just to the body but to the mind, the marriage, the family, and eventually the state. Shakespeare was thirty years old when he wrote it, and it is a work of extraordinary maturity: psychologically precise, morally unsparing, and formally ambitious in ways that his earlier narrative poem Venus and Adonis is not.

What makes it endure is that it refuses the simplifications available to it. Lucrece could be pure symbol — the violated Roman matron, the emblem of chastity destroyed by tyranny. Shakespeare makes her a person instead. Her grief is detailed, contradictory, and real. She blames herself for something that is not her fault. She reaches for classical art to make sense of private trauma. She chooses death not out of weakness but as the only form of agency her world allows. These are not the gestures of an emblem. They are the responses of a human being in an impossible situation.

Background and Context

The poem was published in 1594, one year after Venus and Adonis, and dedicated to the same patron — Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton. Where Venus and Adonis was playful and erotic, The Rape of Lucrece announced a darker ambition. The dedication describes it as “a graver labour,” and it is. Shakespeare was establishing himself not just as a witty poet but as one capable of serious moral and psychological work.

The story of Lucrece was among the most famous in Roman history. It appears in Livy’s History of Rome and Ovid’s Fasti, and it was well known to educated Elizabethan readers as the founding myth of the Roman Republic: Lucrece’s rape by Tarquinius Sextus, her suicide, and the resulting political revolution that expelled the Tarquin kings and established republican government. Shakespeare takes this legend seriously as history while transforming it into something closer to psychological drama.

The poem was enormously successful in its time — more so, initially, than the plays that would eventually define Shakespeare’s reputation. It went through multiple editions in his lifetime, and contemporaries praised it highly. For modern readers it is the less-read of the two 1590s narrative poems, partly because of its length and partly because of its subject matter, which requires careful and honest engagement.

Summary of the Poem

The poem is 1,855 lines long, divided here into the narrative’s main movements for clarity. Shakespeare’s original text is preserved in the full poem above.

Tarquin’s Arrival (Lines 1–280)

The poem opens mid-action: Tarquin has already left the Roman army and is riding to Collatium, where Lucrece lives. We learn that her husband Collatine had boasted of her beauty and virtue to his fellow soldiers, and Tarquin’s desire was ignited by that description. Shakespeare establishes from the outset that Lucrece’s danger originates not in anything she has done but in being praised by the wrong man in the wrong company. Tarquin arrives at Collatium, is welcomed as a guest, and spends the evening observing Lucrece with an admiration that has already curdled into something else.

Tarquin’s Debate with Himself (Lines 281–504)

This is one of the poem’s most remarkable sections. Before acting, Tarquin holds an extended internal debate, rehearsing every argument against what he intends to do. He knows it is wrong. He knows it will ruin him. He catalogues the consequences — the stain on his honour, the betrayal of hospitality, the certain loss of Lucrece’s respect — and sets each one aside. Shakespeare shows how moral reasoning can be perverted: Tarquin uses his intelligence not to prevent the crime but to process his way through his own conscience until desire wins. The debate is chilling because it is so lucid.

The Assault (Lines 505–742)

Tarquin moves through the darkened house to Lucrece’s chamber. Shakespeare describes this movement in slow, deliberate detail — every threshold crossed, every obstacle passed. The assault itself is narrated with restraint but without euphemism. Lucrece pleads, argues, appeals to his honour, threatens the consequences for his reputation. Tarquin listens and proceeds. Shakespeare makes clear that no argument could have stopped him: his decision was made before he entered the room.

Lucrece’s Grief (Lines 743–1078)

The longest single movement of the poem. After Tarquin leaves, Lucrece is left alone with her grief, and Shakespeare gives her extraordinary space to think. She addresses Night, Opportunity, and Time in a series of rhetorical apostrophes — formal lamentations that are also genuine psychological expressions of a mind trying to make sense of catastrophe. She tears the bedclothes. She blames herself in ways that Shakespeare clearly signals are unjust. She considers suicide. The section establishes her intelligence and moral seriousness as fully equal to Tarquin’s, and far more honestly deployed.

The Tapestry of Troy (Lines 1079–1400)

In one of Renaissance poetry’s most sustained and original passages, Lucrece contemplates a large painting of the Trojan War. She moves through the depicted scenes looking for parallels to her situation — and finds them everywhere. She identifies with the Trojan women. She sees Sinon, the Greek spy whose lies brought Troy to ruin, and recognises in his face the same deceptive quality she saw too late in Tarquin. The ekphrasis — the literary description of a visual artwork — allows Shakespeare to place Lucrece’s private trauma inside a vast historical frame, suggesting that what happened to her is not aberrant but part of a long pattern of women destroyed by male violence and political ambition.

The Revelation and Lucrece’s Death (Lines 1401–1715)

Lucrece writes to her husband, summoning him home. When Collatine and her father arrive, she tells them what happened, extracts a promise of revenge, and kills herself. Shakespeare stages the death with great deliberateness. Lucrece does not die out of shame alone — she dies as an act of testimony, ensuring that her account cannot be disputed or silenced. Her body becomes evidence.

Brutus and the Political Consequences (Lines 1716–1855)

The poem’s final movement belongs to Brutus, who until now has concealed his intelligence behind a performed foolishness. He draws the dagger from Lucrece’s wound, holds it up, and transforms private grief into public outrage. His speech to the Roman people connects her death to the tyranny of the Tarquin regime, and Rome rises. The kings are expelled. The Republic begins. Lucrece’s body has become the founding document of Roman liberty.

Key Themes

Several ideas run through the poem’s nearly two thousand lines. They are not simply stated — they are dramatised, tested, and complicated by what the characters say and do.

The Corruption of Power

Tarquin is not simply a lustful man. He is a man who has been taught by his position that his desires are legitimate claims. His internal debate makes this clear: he does not think he is doing something entirely outside the rules; he thinks he is breaking rules he has the power to break. Shakespeare is interested in how authority corrupts not just behaviour but the reasoning that evaluates behaviour. Tarquin’s mind works perfectly well — it simply works in the service of what he wants rather than what is right.

Honour as a System That Fails Women

The poem’s most uncomfortable insight is built into its structure. Lucrece is innocent. Every character in the poem acknowledges this. And yet her response to being innocent is to kill herself, because the culture she inhabits has no space for a woman whose body has been violated, regardless of her will. Shakespeare does not endorse this system — the poem’s sympathy is entirely with Lucrece — but he depicts it without flinching. Her death is both an act of agency and a consequence of a world that has left her no better options.

Private Crime and Public Consequence

What happens in Lucrece’s chamber at night becomes, by the poem’s end, the cause of a political revolution. Shakespeare is precise about this connection: it is not an accident or a metaphor. Tarquin’s crime is presented as continuous with the Tarquin regime’s political crimes. The same contempt for other people’s autonomy that produces the assault also produces tyranny. Brutus makes this argument explicitly, and the Roman people accept it. The personal and the political are not separate domains in this poem; they are the same thing at different scales.

Trauma and the Failure of Language

One of the poem’s most psychologically acute observations is that Lucrece cannot find adequate words for what has happened to her. She produces enormous quantities of rhetorical language — the apostrophes to Night and Time, the meditation on the tapestry — but none of it reaches the thing itself. Art and rhetoric are the tools she has, and they are insufficient. Shakespeare shows this not as a failure of Lucrece’s intelligence but as a property of trauma: it exceeds the structures that language provides for making sense of experience.

Key Literary Devices

Shakespeare uses the full resources of Renaissance rhetoric in this poem, but always in the service of psychological truth rather than display.

Rhyme Royal

The seven-line stanza form gives the poem a stately, deliberate quality appropriate to its gravity. Each stanza is a self-contained unit of thought or image, and the form’s closure — the final couplet that rounds each stanza — creates a sense of inevitability that mirrors the poem’s tragic logic. Chaucer used rhyme royal for Troilus and Criseyde, another story of betrayal and loss, and Shakespeare’s use of it here places his poem in that tradition of serious, elevated narrative.

Apostrophe

Lucrece’s grief sections consist largely of extended apostrophes — addresses to abstract concepts like Night, Opportunity, and Time. These are not simply decorative; they are a form of displaced anger. Lucrece cannot address Tarquin, who is gone. She cannot adequately address her husband, who does not yet know. So she addresses the conditions that made her crime possible, interrogating the darkness that concealed it and the moment that allowed it. The apostrophes give shape to grief that would otherwise be shapeless.

Ekphrasis

The extended description of the Troy tapestry is the poem’s most formally ambitious passage. By placing Lucrece in front of a depiction of the Trojan War and showing her reading her own situation in it, Shakespeare does several things simultaneously: he enlarges her private suffering to historical scale, he establishes her as an intelligent interpreter of narrative, and he creates a moment of genuine psychological complexity in which art becomes a mirror for trauma. The ekphrasis is not a digression; it is the poem’s emotional centre.

Soliloquy as Psychological Revelation

Both Tarquin and Lucrece are given extended interior monologues that reveal their characters through the quality of their reasoning. Tarquin’s pre-crime debate shows a mind that knows what is right and chooses otherwise. Lucrece’s post-crime grief shows a mind trying to restore order to an experience that has destroyed every available category. Shakespeare uses the soliloquy form — usually associated with his dramatic work — to achieve the same effects in verse narrative.

Analysis

The poem’s most extraordinary quality is what it does with time. The assault itself occupies a relatively small portion of the poem’s 1,855 lines. The vast majority is given over to what precedes it — Tarquin’s debate, his slow movement through the house — and what follows it — Lucrece’s grief, her contemplation of the tapestry, her letters and her death. Shakespeare understood that the assault is not the story. The story is what the assault does to the people inside it and around it.

Tarquin’s pre-crime soliloquy is one of the most disturbing passages in Shakespeare’s non-dramatic work. He knows what he is about to do is wrong. He enumerates his reasons for stopping. He then stops stopping and proceeds. The logic is precise: he decides that the pleasure of the act outweighs all consequences, including the permanent damage to his own soul. Shakespeare is not interested in excusing him or making him sympathetic. He is interested in how the corruption of powerful men works from the inside — not as an explosion of irrationality but as a methodical, deliberate overriding of conscience.

Lucrece’s Troy meditation is the poem’s intellectual peak. She finds in the depicted figures mirrors for every aspect of her situation — the Trojan women who share her suffering, the deceiver Sinon who shares Tarquin’s technique, the burning city that shares her own sense of total destruction. But the meditation does something more than find parallels. It demonstrates that she is capable of exactly the kind of clear-eyed historical and moral analysis that the poem itself performs. She is not simply a victim; she is an interpreter of her own victimisation, and the interpretation is accurate and searching.

The poem’s ending has been debated. Lucrece dies and Brutus seizes the political moment. Some readers find this unsatisfying — the woman’s death is immediately converted into a man’s political capital. Shakespeare does not resolve this tension, and he may not intend to. The poem keeps both things in view: Lucrece’s death as genuine tragedy, and its political consequences as something that, while real and important, does not redeem what was lost. Rome gets its Republic. Lucrece gets a funeral. These are not equivalent outcomes.

Related Poems and Works

The Rape of Lucrece connects most directly to Shakespeare’s other narrative poems and to the tradition of complaint poetry it draws from.

Venus and Adonis: Published one year earlier and dedicated to the same patron, Venus and Adonis is in almost every way the tonal opposite of The Rape of Lucrece. Where one is erotic and comic, the other is solemn and tragic. Together they show the full range of Shakespeare’s ambitions as a narrative poet — and the full range of what desire can produce.

A Lover’s Complaint: Shakespeare’s other sustained study of a woman in the aftermath of male betrayal. Where Lucrece’s response is death and political revolution, the speaker of A Lover’s Complaint arrives at something more ambiguous — a confession that she would succumb again. The two poems represent opposite responses to the same essential situation.

Macbeth: The play shares the poem’s interest in how powerful men reason their way through conscience toward violent action. Macbeth’s pre-murder soliloquies in Act 1 have the same structure as Tarquin’s pre-crime debate: the argument against, the decision to proceed anyway, the suppression of the moral self. Shakespeare returned to this psychology many times; The Rape of Lucrece is its first extended treatment.

Share This Page