Shakespeare's 'Rape of Lucrece': A new myth of the founding of the Roman Republic (William Shakespeare)

Not since Socrates banished the poets from the city has the quarrel between politics and poetry been more contentious, yet less concerned with what prompted it: character formation. Contributing to this quarrel are the prevailing notions about what poetry and politics are. Once liberated from the teleological concern for character formation, poetry becomes the subjective expression of individual passions; politics, the objective imposition of omnipotent will. Poetry so understood endeavors to express the true, natural, passionate self. Politics, in contrast, strives to suppress the individual through the rationalistic and artificial construct of the state that conditions its members without regard for justice.; My dissertation is an interdisciplinary examination of Shakespeare's Rape of Lucrece, addressing in particular the divergence between the classical and prevailing conceptions of the role Lucretia plays in the founding of the Roman Republic, conceptions which arise from the corresponding views of the relationship between poetry and politics. Shakespeare's Rape of Lucrece shows us as only poetry can that beneath the external forms of foundings—institutions, offices, laws—there is a hidden and prior founding, which, in the case of the Roman Republic, is revealed within what Shakespeare calls the “citizen” heart of ravaged Lucrece.; After examining his innovations to the story of Lucretia's rape by Sextus Tarquinius, I conclude that Shakespeare creates a new myth of the birth of the Roman Republic. He begins by questioning the veracity of conventional interpretations of this founding. In so doing, Shakespeare suggests that it makes little sense for the founding of a republic devoted to honor to be indebted to the vice of a prince. Likewise, Shakespeare challenges the Machiavellian notion that prudence and political power must come at the expense of virtue. For this reason, Shakespeare's Lucrece never submits to Tarquin. Though overpowered by him, Lucrece endeavors to transform her defense of her virtue into a triumphant defense of Roman virtue. Thus the Roman Republic is born from the preserved union of honor and virtue residing within what Shakespeare calls the “citizen” heart of his irreproachable Lucrece.