Lucrece Appendix

Japanese Translation

https://davidhurleyinjapan.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/「不幸なる妻の誤解」：シェイクスピアのブルータスとルクレースの自害.pdf

Appendix pdf

https://davidhurleyinjapan.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Appendix_-Lucrece-Google-Docs.pdf

The Rape of Lucrece, Online

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.03.0062%3Asection%3DThe+Rape+of+Lucrece

The Plot, According to Livy

During the siege of Ardea, Sextus Tarquinius, son of King Tarquin the Proud, hosted a drinking party with other Roman nobles, including Collatinus. To settle a debate about their wives’ beauty and virtues, they rode back to Rome and visited their homes at night. Lucretia, Collatinus’s wife, was found among her maids, spinning wool, while the other wives were feasting. Impressed by her virtue and beauty, Sextus Tarquinus later returned alone, threatened her with violence and dishonor if she resisted, and raped her. The next day, Lucretia called her husband Collatinus, her father Lucretius, and their friends Brutus and Publius Valerius. She revealed what had happened, then stabbed herself and died. Outraged, the Romans, led by Brutus, rebelled against the Tarquins, overthrew the monarchy and established the Roman republic.

A Simplified Family Tree of the Tarquin Dynasty

Demaratus

       ___________________________|__ _____________

      |                                                                                      |

Arruns                                                                 Tarquinius Priscus

      |                                                            _____________|____

      |                                                           |                                   |

Egerius                                             Tarquinia          Tarquinius Superbus

      |                                       __________|___              (Tarquin the Proud)

      |                                      |                           |                            |

      |             Lucretius = Junia                  Brutus        Sextus Tarquinius

      |                     |

Collatinus = Lucretia

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarquinia_gens

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)

Lucretia in Roman, Medieval, and Renaissance Literature

Artists who painted the Rape of Lucretia

  • Botticelli, Story of Lucretia (1496-1504) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Lucretia_(Botticelli)
  • Raphael – The Suicide of Lucretia (c. 1510-1515) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucretia_(Raphael)
  • Albrecht Dürer – Lucretia (1508, 1518) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Suicide_of_Lucretia_(D%C3%BCrer)
  • Domenico Beccafumi – The Story of Lucretia (c. 1519) https://www.italianartsociety.org/2015/09/amamblog-new-on-view-this-painting-by-domenico-beccafumi-was-recently-installed-in-our-east-gallery/
  • Lucas Cranach the Elder – Lucretia (several paintings, 1525-1530)
  • Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of a Woman Inspired by Lucretia (1533) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_a_Woman_Inspired_by_Lucretia
  • Titian, Tarquin and Lucretia (1571) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarquin_and_Lucretia
  • Joachim Wtewael – The Rape of Lucretia (c. 1600)
  • Artemisia Gentileschi, “Lucretia” (1642) Gentileschi herself was raped by Agostino Tassi (who was influenced by Caravaggio) and tortured to check her evidence.
  • Rembrandt – Lucretia (1664 and 1666)

Occurrences of Wretch(ed)(ness)  in Lucrece

1. miserable, very unhappy: 161, 1136, 1501, 1662

2. sorry, paltry, contemptible –

3. hateful, abominable: 1001

[Alexander Schmidt, Shakespeare Lexicon]

1. stanza 23, line 161 (Narrator about Tarquin)

When shall he think to find a stranger just,

When he himself himself confounds, betrays

To slanderous tongues and wretched hateful days?

2. stanza 39, line 269 (Tarquin)

‘Why hunt I then for color or excuses?

All orators are dumb when beauty pleadeth;

Poor wretches have remorse in poor abuses;

Love thrives not in the heart that shadows dreadeth:

Affection is my captain, and he leadeth;

And when his gaudy banner is display’d,

The coward fights and will not be dismay’d.

3. stanza 129, line 900 (Lucrece on “Opportunity”)

‘When wilt thou be the humble suppliant’s friend,

And bring him where his suit may be obtain’d ?

When wilt thou sort an hour great strifes to end?

Or free that soul which wretchedness hath chain’d?

4 & 5. stanza 143, line 1,001 (Lucrece on “Time”)

‘O Time, thou tutor both to good and bad,

Teach me to curse him that thou taught’st this ill!

At his own shadow let the thief run mad,

Himself himself seek every hour to kill!

Such wretched hands such wretched blood should spill;

For who so base would such an office have

As slanderous deathsman to so base a slave? [slanderous here = “disgraceful, scandalous]

6. stanza 163, line 1136 (Lucrece to “Philomel”)

‘And whiles against a thorn thou bear’st thy part,

To keep thy sharp woes waking, wretched I,

To imitate thee well, against my heart

Will fix a sharp knife to affright mine eye;

Who, if it wink, shall thereon fall and die.

7. stanza 215, line 1501 (Narrator on Lucrece and “Sinon”)

She throws her eyes about the painting round,

And whom she finds forlorn she doth lament.

At last she sees a wretched image bound,

That piteous looks to Phrygian shepherds lent:

His face, though full of cares, yet show’d content;

Onward to Troy with the blunt swains he goes,

So mild, that Patience seem’d to scorn his woes.

8 & 9. stanza 238, line 1662 (Narrator about Collatine)

Lo, here, the hopeless merchant of this loss,

With head declined, and voice damm’d up with woe,

With sad set eyes, and wretched arms across,

From lips new-waxen pale begins to blow

The grief away that stops his answer so:

But, wretched as he is, he strives in vain;

What he breathes out his breath drinks up again.

10. stanza 261, line 1826 (Brutus)

‘Why, Collatine, is woe the cure for woe?

Do wounds help wounds, or grief help grievous deeds?

Is it revenge to give thyself a blow

For his foul act by whom thy fair wife bleeds?

Such childish humour from weak minds proceeds:

Thy wretched wife mistook the matter so,

To slay herself, that should have slain her foe.

Occurrences of “Wretched” in the Geneva Bible

I checked the Geneva Bible for occurreces of the word “wretched” and there are only two:

The first one is the well know lamentation of Saint Paul:

O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death!

Romans 7: 24

The second is found in Revelation:

For thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing, and knowest not how thou art wretched and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.

Revelation 3: 17

Next, I checked the Vulgate Latin version of those texts and they make clear the distinction between the two senses of “wretched”:

Infelix ego homo, quis me liberabit de corpore mortis hujus?

Romanos 7:24

quia dicis: Quod dives sum, et locupletatus, et nullius egeo: et nescis quia tu es miser, et miserabilis, et pauper, et caecus, et nudus.

Apocalypsis 3:17

For the purposes of my paper, it is Paul’s lamentation that is the more pertinent of the two. Lucrece is “infelix” rather than “miser,” laments her fate, and seeks to deliver herself (through self-murder) from her “body of this death.”

Lucrece and Isabella

In her static “absolutism” Shakespeare’s Lucrece anticipates the absolutism of Isabella in Measure for Measure. Each runs her pious 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, she resolves her aporia through her decision to kill herself; she frames her intended suicide as a means to restore her honour, incite revenge, and through her resolve converts her shame into fame (i.e. “her own glory”):

…let it not be called impiety,
    If in this blemished fort I make some hole
    Through which I may convey this troubled soul.

“Yet die I will not till my Collatine
Have heard the cause of my untimely death,
That he may vow, in that sad hour of mine,
Revenge on him that made me stop my breath.
My stained blood to Tarquin I’ll bequeath,
    Which by him tainted shall for him be spent,
    And as his due writ in my testament.

“My honour I’ll bequeath unto the knife
That wounds my body so dishonoured.
’Tis honour to deprive dishonoured life;
The one will live, the other being dead.
So of shame’s ashes shall my fame be bred,
    For in my death I murder shameful scorn;
    My shame so dead, mine honour is new born.

“Dear lord of that dear jewel I have lost,
What legacy shall I bequeath to thee?
My resolution, love, shall be thy boast,
By whose example thou revenged mayst be.
How Tarquin must be used, read it in me;
    Myself, thy friend, will kill myself, thy foe,
    And for my sake serve thou false Tarquin so.

(168-171)

Bibliography

Primary Sources

  • William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Cambridge University Press, 1980

Rape of Lucrece, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.03.0062%3Asection%3DThe+Rape+of+Lucrece

  • Titus Livius, Ab Urbe Condita (History of Rome) Book 1, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0151%3Abook%3D1%3Achapter%3D57
  • Ovid, Fasti, Book 2, https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/OvidFastiBkTwo.php
  • Geneva Bible, http://www.genevabible.org/Geneva.html http://www.genevabible.org/files/Geneva_Bible/6_Version_Comparison.pdf
  • Niccolo Machiavelli, Il Principe e Discoursi, Ed. Sergio Bertelli, Feltrinalli, 1977

Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield & Nathan Tarcov, University of Chicago, 1996

Secondary Sources

  • Catherine Belsey, A Modern Perspective: Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/lucrece/a-modern-perspective-venus-and-adonis-and-lucrece/
  • Kirsten Dey, Petrarchism Demonised: Defiling chastity in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Rape of Lucrece and Titus Andronicus, https://www.proquest.com/docview/2135080115?sourcetype=Scholarly%20Journals
  • Eugine Garver, Machiavelli and the History of Prudence, University of Wisconsin Press, 1987
  • James Hankins, Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy, Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press (December 17, 2019)
  • Ted Hughes, Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being, Faber & Faber, 1992
  • Richard A. Lanham, The Motives of Eloquence, Yale, 1976
  • Harvey Mansfield, Machiavelli’s Virtue, University of Chicago, 1996
  • Joesph Pearce, Shakespeare vs. The Puritans: The Malevolence of Malvolio
  • https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2018/05/shakespeare-versus-puritans-part-two-malvolio-joseph-pearce.html
  • Peter Robinson, Talking Yourself to Death: The Rape of Lucrece,
  • https://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2433/135249/1/ebk00061_001.pdf
  • John Roe

Shakespeare and Machiavelli, D. S. Brewer, Cambridge, 2002

Pleasing the Wiser Sort: Ethics and Genre in Lucrece and Hamlet – https://www.enotes.com/topics/rape-lucrece/criticism/rape-lucrece-vol-43/overviews/john-roe-essay-date

  • Stephanie M. Schnabel, The Theme of Rape in Elizabethan and Jacobean Literary Texts, 2006, https://www.grin.com/document/70037 
  • Harvey Wiltshire, “Ere She with Blood had Stained her Stained Excuse”: Graphic Stains in Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece and Middleton’s The Ghost of Lucrece, https://journals.openedition.org/episteme/2253
  • Yves Winter, 

Machiavelli and the Orders of Violence, Cambridge University Press, 2018

Machiavelli and the Rape of Lucretia https://www.academia.edu/70175320/Machiavelli_and_the_rape_of_Lucretia