The Rape of Lucrece - "with swift intent he goes to quench the coal which in his liver glows."

The Rape of Lucrece - “… with swift intent he goes

To quench the coal which in his liver glows.”

Shakespeare wrote this poem either slowly over the last few months of 1593 while the theatres were still closed in London due to the Plague or he quickly churned out this long narrative poem in a couple of weeks early in 1594. Either way, this ‘graver work’, is a masterful piece of poetic writing compared to ‘Venus and Adonis’ and, like this previous narrative poem, was dedicated (and hopefully paid for) by the earl of Southampton. While it lacks the humour and irony of ‘Venus and Adonis’, it is a powerful poetic piece.

After hearing about the beauty and chastity of Collatine’s wife, Lucrece, late at night on the battlegrounds of Ardea, Tarquin decides to sneak away to Collatium to ravish Lucrece. He tries to validate his lust-driven actions through telling himself that Collatine should never have bragged about his wife Lucrece. So Tarquin goes:

“… with swift intent he goes

To quench the coal which in his liver glows.”

When he arrives at Collantine’s house, he is welcomed since Tarquin is of noble birth and they think he brings news of the men in the war. He realizes that Collantine has used gross understatement to describe Lucrece who is:

“Argued by beauty's red and virtue's white…”

Tarquin seems the perfect guest. He “…decks with praises Collantine’s high name …” and pretends to be tired and goes to bed.

Lying awake, Tarquin weighs up the “… sundry dangers of his will’s obtaining…” His contemplations are bizarre as Shakespeare lets us into the mind of someone who wants to justify his violent lustful intents. He wonders whether he will be “… pawning his honour to obtain his lust …”

Like something out of John Fowles’ ‘The Collector’, we get inside the mind of a criminal psychopath and see the battle between "… frozen conscience and hot-burning will… ".

Slowly but surely, Tarquin allows desire to become his “pilot” and he lets “heedful fear” become choked by “unresisted lust”. So he makes his way to Lucrece’s room and “his guilty hand” plucks “up the latch”. His resolution grows as “His drumming heart cheers his burning eye…” and as he stares at Lucrece sleeping, he decides that he cannot be judged for his actions because only "Love and Fortune be my gods …".

Tarquin’s hand “smoking with pride” touches her breast. Lucrece now wakes in fright “…wrapp’d and confounded in a thousand fears…” and she questions why he is there. He tells her that her beauty is to blame and proclaims that,”…nothing can affection’s course control…” and tells her to either give in or he will kill her and one of her slaves claiming that he killed them when he discovered them in bed together.

Lucrece “…pleads, in a wilderness where are no laws…” Tarquin disregards her pleas which seem to further feed his “vulture folly”. She tries to appeal to his sense of honor, his respect for her as a hostess, his friendship for her husband, his sense of shame and his sense as a man and a noble to keep his passions in check. Tarquin is deaf to Lucrece’s entreaties.

“For with the nightly linen that she wears

He pens her piteous clamours in her head;

Cooling his hot face in the chastest tears

That ever modest eyes with sorrow shed.

O, that prone lust should stain so pure a bed!

The spots whereof could weeping purify,

Her tears should drop on them perpetually…

She has lost a dearer thing than life,

Chastity, and Lust is no richer for the theft…

She is thrall now to living death and perpetual pain…

Tarquin creeps away like a dog into the night while Lucrece prays to never to see the light of day again. She ironically thinks about sparing her husband the shame of this all by committing suicide then and there but then she imagines what she should say to him. The dawn of day seems to mock and torment her. She wonders whether her suicide would pollute her soul as much as the rape has polluted her body. 

“To kill myself,' quoth she, 'alack, what were it,

But with my body my poor soul's pollution?”

She blames Time for her defilement and hopes Time catches up with Tarquin to punish him too. Lucrece then draws up a letter to her husband begging him to come quickly:

“… If ever, love, thy Lucrece thou wilt see--

Some present speed to come and visit me…”

As she waits for her husband, the walls close in on Lucrece and she sees in a tapestry showing the Fall of Troy, a metaphor for her own rape.

“To this well-painted piece is Lucrece come,

To find a face where all distress is stell'd.

Many she sees where cares have carved some,

But none where all distress and dolour dwell'd…”

The messenger, brings home her lord and “other company”. They hear the story of her violation or “foul enforcement”. Collatine cannot speak and his sorrow seems to fuel her to demand revenge against her attacker, who, as yet, she has not named. She pleads with them to, “With swift pursuit to venge this wrong of mine…” Lucrece sadly asks, “How may this forced stain be wiped from me?” As Lucrece, finally “throws forth Tarquin’s name”, she guides an unsheathed knife into her own “harmless breast” and with this she “cancels destiny”.

Lucrece’s body is now drowned in a pool of blood. Her father mourns her death; while Collatine falls down into her blood, but rises to swear vengeance. Brutus asks them all to kneel and pledge themselves

“By all our country rights in Rome maintain'd,

And by chaste Lucrece' soul that late complain'd

Her wrongs to us, and by this bloody knife,

We will revenge the death of this true wife.”

Lucrece’s body is then taken to Rome and the justice of “everlasting banishment” is enacted on Tarquin.