'Silence, like a Lucrece knife': Shakespeare and the Meanings of Rape

Abstract

Brief allusions to rape occur throughout Shakespeare's work, combining maximum effect with minimum critical perturbation. Issues often appear reassuringly simple: Macbeth's vision of'wither'd murder' (II. 1.52) stealing with 'Tarquin's ravishing strides' (1. 55) depicts rape as an act of unmitigated evil, inflicting irreversible damage on helpless innocence; The Tempest offers no reason for the audience to wish Caliban's attempt on Miranda had succeeded. Complexities are also part of the act; when Henry V threatens the maidens of Harfleur with.'hot and forcing violation' (II. 3. 21), his speech may sound like fair warning from a just prince or a reminder of the moral degradation war can inflict on victors; either way, Shakespeare is in charge. Titania's hint to Bottom that the flowers are 'lamenting some enforced chastity' (A Midsummer Night's Dream, III. 1.209) strikes a subtler chord. Sexual aggressors posing as defenceless targets cut a comic figure, yet Titania retains a half-contemptuous, half-sympathetic awareness that in some quarters, rape is a serious matter. These are still Shakespeare's ironies. He even copes elegantly with non-events, making it clear that Helen's 'fair rape' (Troilus and Cressida, 1. 2. 148) is only seduction. Shakespeare's detailed treatments of rape are less satisfactory. Responses to The Rape of Lucrece and Titus Andronicus suggest he has failed to take intellectual and artistic control. Titus's daughter Lavinia is raped by Demetrius and Chiron, who cut off her hands and tongue, then subject her to a barrage of sick humour. Titus avenges this and other atrocities by killing the rapists and serving their flesh to their mother, Tamora, and stepfather, the Emperor Saturninus, in a pie. During the table-talk, Titus elicits from Saturninus the opinion that a father is justified in killing his ravished daughter. Titus thereupon kills Lavinia; the play moves swiftly to its close with the deaths of Tamora, Titus, and Saturninus, and the election of Lucius Andronicus as Emperor of Rome. Lavinia's prolonged sufferings and perfunctory death make an uncomfortable spectacle. Rather than contemplating Lavinia herself, critics and directors prefer to make her a symbol of 'the destruction of the Roman political order'.' With Lucrece, Shakespeare's own vision seems to falter; it gives Ian Donaldson 'a sense so rare in