William Shakespeare

The Rape of Lucrece Annotated William Shakespeare

The Rape of Lucrece is an account sonnet by William Shakespeare about the amazing Lucretia. In his past story sonnet, Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare had incorporated a dedicatory letter to his benefactor, the Earl of Southampton, in which he vowed to compose a graver work. In like manner, The Rape of Lucrece does not have the hilarious tone of the previous sonnet. Lucrece draws on the story portrayed in both Ovid's Fasti and Livy's set of experiences of Rome. In 509 BC, Sextus Tarquinius, child of Tarquin, the lord of Rome, assaulted Lucretia, spouse of Collatinus, one of the ruler's distinguished retainers. Subsequently, Lucrece ended it all. Her body was strutted in the Roman Forum by the lord's nephew. This impelled a full-scale rebel against the Tarquins drove by Lucius Junius Brutus, the expulsion of the imperial family, and the establishing of the Roman republic.