and the truly beautiful and virtuous woman seemed to
actually shine. As the scholar Nancy Vickers points
out, Shakespeare uses a BLAZON when describing Luc-
rece’s beauty. The blazon was a fi gure that was used to
describe the device on a hero’s shield. Shakespeare
describes Lucrece using this fi gure as though she were
an object, the shield with which to defend her virtue
against Tarquin’s attack.
As the attacker, Tarquin is described as dark and
black (evil), the opposite of the light and white (pure)
Lucrece. It is important to remember that, during the
early modern period, devils were perceived to be black.
The normal arrangement of red and white on Lucrece’s
face would confi ne the red to her lips and cheeks and
the white to the rest of her complexion. Yet in the
course of her negotiations with her rapist, the act itself,
and her subsequent behavior, the colors exceed their
normal bounds and her face becomes completely white
with fear or red with shame. The color coding appears
even as Tarquin uncovers Lucrece’s body just prior to
the rape. In addition to commenting on her face, he
looks at her white breasts, like globes, with blue veins
running around them like rivers. Here begins the met-
aphor of Lucrece’s body as a land newly discovered by
Tarquin, soon to be its conqueror. The woman is again
an object, one that is designed to be conquered by
men, just as the NEW WORLD was being explored and
conquered by England. Tarquin’s hand on Lucrece’s
breast is a sign of the power of his conquest of her
body as though it were a new piece of real estate. This
idea of conquest reinforces how the Tarquins came to
power in Rome and acts as a precursor to how they lost
power.
While waiting for her husband to return to Rome,
Lucrece meditates on a picture of the fall of Troy,
which serves to call attention to both her rape and the
forthcoming change in Roman government. The Tro-
jan War began because Paris, a son of Priam, king of
Troy, “raped” Helen, wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta.
In this sense, rape means “carried off.” The kings of the
Grecian city-states supported Menelaus in his war to
regain Helen, and many died on both sides. The Greeks
won by using a wooden horse to enter Troy and burn-
ing the city to the ground. According to Roman myth—
recounted by Virgil in The Aeneid—the Trojan prince
Aeneas escaped the burning city and eventually
founded Rome. Thus, Helen’s “rape” foreshadowed the
founding of Rome itself, while Lucrece’s rape foreshad-
ows the expulsion of the tyrant Tarquin and the found-
ing of the Roman Republic. Perhaps not as many will
die in this endeavor as did in the Trojan War, but Luc-
rece presciently connects herself with Helen as a
“cause,” while rejecting any connection between her-
self and the “strumpet” Helen. While Tarquin claimed
a new land in Lucrece’s body, that very body will be
used to claim a new body politic in the Roman repub-
lic to come.
Lucrece is also concerned with other possible conse-
quences of her rape, especially how to protect her hus-
band’s honor as regards any children she has or might
have. According to early modern law, any child born to
a woman while she was married was legally her hus-
band’s child. If Lucrece became pregnant by Tarquin,
people would scorn Collatine for raising his wife’s rap-
ist’s child as his own. And if Lucrece were in the early
stages of pregnancy before the rape—or became preg-
nant by her husband after the rape—people would still
believe the child to be Tarquin’s, thus again compro-
mising her husband’s honor. The paternity of any
existing children would also be suspect: If Lucrece
were raped by Tarquin, she may have been raped ear-
lier by someone else, a standard perception for a cul-
ture that saw women as basically dishonorable and
lustful.
Suicide was an honorable way for Romans to end
their lives or protect their honor. Thus, even though
Collatine and Lucretius, her father, mourn Lucrece’s
death, they laud her for protecting their collective
honor in the ultimate way. Despite the Rome-England
connection in this poem, suicide in early modern Eng-
land was not viewed in the same way; it was a major
sin. Indeed, those who committed it were guilty of the
cardinal sin of despair. Similarly, the Christian view
held Lucrece sinless—blameless—for the rape,
although socially she was condemned. By Roman law,
she was guilty because she invited Tarquin in.
Thus, some sort of stain can be perceived in Lucrece.
After her death, when her blood pours out of her body,
it separates into the red of true blood and the black
matter of a stain, fi nally leaving her now-bloodless bodyRAPE OF LUCRECE, THE 339