Revenge, Rhetoric, and Recognition in "The Rape of Lucrece"

Abstract

Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance vol. 12 (27), 2015; DOI: 10.1515/mstap-2015-0003 Throughout his career, Stephen Greenblatt (Will in the World, 388) tells us, William Shakespeare was fascinated by exotic locations, archaic cultures, and larger-than-life-figures. His usual practice is to place imaginative encounters with ethnic, religious, or political others in far-away locales. Shakespeares brothels are in Vienna, his Moors camped out on Cyprus, his Jews safely stowed away in Venice. But Shakespeare, like many of his contemporaries, also exoticized the past. Rome is often the ideal against which primitive Britain is measured, but Rome itself can be terra incognita. The crime at the heart of The Rape of Lucrece complicates further Shakespeares engagement with Roman otherness by inviting author, narrator, and readers opportunities for cross-gendered identification that aligns them at once with both victim and perpetrator in the rape that underwrites nation-building in this episode from Roman history. The Rape of Lucrece explores the violation and subsequent suicide of a virtuous matron who has suffered a brutal acquaintance rape at the hands of her husbands friend and martial comrade, Tarquin. The poem not only records in detail the act of rape, but explores subsequently the victims physical and emotional trauma, her eloquent exploration of the moral dilemma in which she finds herself, and her public confession and death. After the crime is committed, the rapist slinks away like a dog and eventually is doomed by the Romans to everlasting banishment (l. 1855). The poems prefatory Argument informs us further that all of the Tarquins are banished and that the Roman monarchy is succeeded by a republican government, with kings being replaced by consuls. From the perspective of national history, innocent Lucrece has necessarily sufferedindeed, been sacrificedfor the good of Rome. Framed this way, The Rape of Lucrece sounds very much like a story of individual and community wrongs corrected by just retribution against the wrongdoer and a subsequent renewal of the state. As Heather Dubrow argues, however, Lucrece is governed by syneciosis, the trope by which logical and moral antitheses collapse continually into oxymoron. Dubrow (164) sees the conflict between the Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Georgia, USA. Christy Desmet Revenge, Rhetoric, and Recognition in The Rape of Lucrece 28 Christy Desmet providentially framed prose Argument and emotionally charged poem in light of the Renaissance debate between History and Poesy as methods for capturing events from the distant past, although she also recognizes that the overriding logic of syneciosis forestalls such neat binaries. To achieve a rapprochement with Shakespeares Lucrece as exotic other from an archaic past, we need to resist epic historys teleological imperative and explore instead the poetic byways of thought and emotion the poem and its heroine offer up for our consideration. Revenge as Justice The Rape of Lucrece begins, in its prose Argument, with an emphasis on public injustice. The Argument passes quickly over the private crime lying behind this slice of historythe cruel murder of his father-in-law by Tarquins father Luciusin favor of dwelling on the paters public crime: possessing himself of the Roman kingdom, in contradiction to Roman laws and customs, without the peoples suffrage or consent (Rape of Lucrece, Argument). Public justice is restored when Tarquins offense is published and the Romans, their suffrage restored, give consent to his everlasting banishment (ll. 1852, 1854-55). Yet once the poem proper has commenced, questions of public justice and the peoples rights recede into the background. Lust-breathed Tarquin (l. 3) considers almost exclusively the rapes consequences for himself: at risk are his martial honor (O shame to knighthood and to shining arms); his family name and tomb (O foul dishonor to my households grave); his Roman piety (O impious act including all foul arms); and his more literally embodied manhood (the specter of [a] martial man [made] soft fancys slave, ll. …