—lines 1-3
The year, according to legend, is 509 b.c., and Rome is still no more than a city-state. It had been founded about two and a half centuries before (753 b.c. is the traditional date) and has been governed by a line of kings. Ruling in the city now is the seventh king to sit on the Roman throne. His name is Lucius Tarquinius (better known in English as Tarquin) and he has been given the surname Superbus, meaning "proud," because of his arrogant tyranny.
Tarquin forced the senatorial aristocracy into submission by executing some on trumped-up charges and by refusing to replace those who died a natural death.
He kept himself in power by gathering an armed guard about himself, and ruled as a military despot. Nevertheless, he maintained a kind of popularity with the common people by a program of public works and by an aggressive foreign policy that brought in loot from surrounding tribes.
The aristocracy could only wait and hope that some particular event would take place to alienate the populace generally from the despotic monarch.
It is not, however, King Tarquin who is referred to in the third line of the poem, but his son, Tarquinius Sextus, the heir to the throne.
The Roman army is engaged in a war against the Volscians, a tribe who occupied territory just south of Rome. The Romans were at this time laying siege to Ardea, one of the Volscian cities, just twenty miles south of Rome, and it is from this siege that Tarquin Sextus is hurrying.
The incident Shakespeare is about to relate is to be found in the first book of the History of Rome by Titus Livius (better known as Livy to English-speaking people), and also in the Fasti (Annals), written by Shakespeare's favorite ancient writer, Ovid.
Despite the fact that the incident is taken from ancient writers, it is not at all likely that it is historically accurate. In 390 b.c., a little over a century after the time of Tarquin, Rome was taken and sacked by the barbarian Gauls and the historical records were destroyed. All of Roman history prior to 390 b.c. is a mass of legends based on uncertain kernels of fact.
The legends narrated by Livy and others were, however, accepted as sober fact right down to modern times, and certainly Shakespeare accepted this tale as such. He goes on for the remainder of the first verse to tell the reason for the prince's haste:
—lines 4-6
Prince Tarquin has a cousin, also named Tarquin, whose estates are near Collatia (which Shakespeare calls "Collatium"), a small town ten miles east of Rome. He was therefore Tarquin of Collatia, or in Latin: Tarquinius Collatinus. In order to distinguish him from Tarquinius Superbus, the King, and from Tarquinius Sextus, the prince, he may be called simply Collatinus, or, in English, Collatine.
At the siege of Ardea (and a siege is usually a boring occupation) the Roman aristocrats, it seems, fell to discussing their wives, each boasting of the virtue and chastity of his own. This is the sort of thing one would scarcely think men would seriously do, yet it is common in romances. Shakespeare uses such a discussion as the mainspring of part of the action in Cymbeline (see page II-58), for instance.
In fact, the unreal romanticism of this discussion is part of what causes historians to suspect the account of the Rape of Lucrece to be a fable. It is very likely a tale made up long after Tarquin's reign to account for the establishment of the Republic; a historical romance, to begin with, later taken as sober history.
But, history or fiction, this is the tale. Of the Roman aristocrats, Collatine was most emphatic in maintaining the chastity and sobriety of his wife, Lucretia, a name of which Lucrece is a shortened version.
It came down to a wager eventually, and the Romans decided to leave the siege temporarily so that they might dash home to Rome to check on their wives' activities. Doing so, they found that all the wives but Lucrece were having a good time; dancing, laughing, gossiping, feasting. Lucrece, however, was at home, alone except for her maids, and was gravely engaged in the housewifely task of spuming.
Collatine had won his wager, but in a deeper sense, he had lost, for Prince Tarquin, having seen Lucrece's beauty and chastity, conceived a powerful desire to make love to her. Once all the aristocrats were back at the siege, he left again, this time alone, in order to gratify that desire.
Tarquin is not at ease. He is not an utterly abandoned villain and he feels the guilt and disgrace of the reprehensible thing he is doing-yet he cannot help himself. After having arrived, he is treated as a welcome guest and Lucrece asks for news of her husband. Tarquin muses on her beauty and says to himself that, on hearing her husband was well
—lines 264-66
Narcissus is the young man in Greek myths who loved only himself, and drowned trying to kiss his reflection in water (see page I-10).
When night comes, Prince Tarquin invades Lucrece's bedroom and tells her that if she will not yield, he will take her anyway and kill a slave, whom he will accuse as her lover. The situation paralyzes Lucrece with horror, which the poem indicates by stating:
—lines 540-4l
Tarquin's words have the effect on her that a cockatrice's eye would have. The legendary cockatrice, the infinitely poisonous snake, kills with a mere glance (see page I-150).
A similar metaphor from the other direction is then used:
—lines 552-53
The reference is to Orpheus' descent into the underworld to win back his wife Eurydice (see page I-47). His music charmed even Pluto, and as the harsh king of the underworld was made captive by beauty, so chaste Lucrece was paralyzed by evil.
Tarquin rapes Lucrece, then hastens away, miserable and guilty, leaving her behind, miserable and innocent.
To Lucrece, all the world is now fit only for cursing. There is no comfort anywhere or in anything. What good is wealth, for instance? The aged miser, having accumulated his hoard, finds his health gone, and cannot buy youth back with his gold: