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