009 Roman Psycho: The Rape of Lucrece

If the title isn’t content warning enough… CW: sexual assault and suicide

Another narrative poem from the master playwright. A tale of the sex scandal that undid the Roman monarchy. And also a ten-page description of a painting…

 

Yes, the poem is salacious, but Shakespeare isn’t just slapping together a potboiler. Expanding a three page story from Livy’s History of Rome to one-hundred pages, Shakespeare gives us his famous psychological monologues. Here we have early glimpses of the pen that would bring us Brutus and Hamlet’s soul searching.

 

Sources

The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Sonnets and Poems

The History of Rome, by Titius Livius

Fasti, by Ovid