Rape of Lucrece - Soul and Body, pt. 2

For me, I am the mistress of my fate,
And with my trespass never will dispense,
Till life to death acquit my forced offence.
(1120-1122)


In my last post on this poem, I looked at the relationship between the soul and the body - are they divided or united? -  in reference to Tarquin. However, there's also quite a bit of discussion about this in the poem surrounding the character of Lucrece.


We hear about both her wondrous beauty (body!) and her nobility and virtue (mind and soul!) - both of which, united, seem to fascinate Tarquin. Yet Lucrece, while acknowledging that her body is separate on some level from her spiritual and intellectual identity, in practice perceives her body and soul as irrevocably intertwined.

'My body or my soul, which was the dearer,
When the one pure, the other made divine?
Whose love of either to myself was nearer,
When both were kept for heaven and Collatine?
Ay me! the bark peel'd from the lofty pine,
His leaves will wither and his sap decay;
So must my soul, her bark being peel'd away.

(1223-1220)


This unity leads her to a rather terrible logical position: the body being defiled, all - virtuous mind, innocent soul - must go, discarded with her self-slaughtered corpse. Interestingly, this position - that the body is so linked to the mind and soul as to warrent suicide when the body is compromised against the will of the mind - is not shared by Lucrece's husband and the other men of Rome who hear of the case:

With this, they all at once began to say,
Her body's stain her mind untainted clears...
(1759-1760)


Yet, as is seen by the opening quotation, Lucrece makes an independent decision - she will keep control of the destiny of her body in her death, as she could not in her life. Lucrece's "I am the mistress of my fate" rings somewhat hollow for me, however, as this desperate assertion of control reveals how profoundly her fate has been shaped by an outsider - Tarquin has hijacked Lucrece's destiny so completely that she can only regain some agency by annihilating herself! Controlling your fate by disallowing any fate because you're dead doesn't seem like the perfect solution.


This situation, and the wording of the opening quotation, immediately called to mind for me a poem that I have always disliked, William Ernest Henley's Invictus, which famously ends with the words "I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul." I don't like this sentiment for the same reason I don't like Lucrece's suicide - sometimes things happen that are out of the "captain's" control. What then? We have Lucrece's answer.

The Rape of Lucrece - Soul and Body

My heart shall never countermand mine eye:
Sad pause and deep regard beseem the sage;
My part is youth, and beats these from the stage...
(The Rape of Lucrece, 227-229)

A lot of the discussion in the poem The Rape of Lucrece has to do with the differences and conflicts between one's body and the other aspects that we look on as making up the personality - the soul, the heart, the mind. Are these all one? Is the condition of one's mind and soul dependent on the desires or experiences of the body, or can the soul and mind exist on a different sort of plane altogether than the body? As we see from the opening quotation, Tarquin rejects his mind's reason and the his heart and soul's concience that urge him not to commit this crime  - rather, he chooses to follow his eye, the desires of the body. We then see a very stark comparison between Tarquin and Lucrece - he all body, she all soul:

So o'er this sleeping soul doth Tarquin stay,
His rage of lust by gazing qualified...
(474-475) 

But the poem goes on to deal a bit with the state of Tarquin's soul - just because you ignore your soul doesn't mean it goes away!

Besides, his soul's fair temple is defaced;
To whose weak ruins muster troops of cares,
To ask the spotted princess how she fares.
(770-773)

Rape of Lucrece - Night

Now leaden slumber with life's strength doth fight;
And every one to rest themselves betake,
Save thieves, and cares, and troubled minds, that wake.
(The Rape of Lucrece, 175-177)

In this poem, night is definitely a time where bad things happen - the darkness of the world without the light of the sun reflects or enables DARK DEEDS. Night is likened to a theater where actors perform wickedness:

'O comfort-killing Night, image of hell!
Dim register and notary of shame!
Black stage for tragedies and murders fell!
(815-817)

There is a suggestion in the opening quotation that night is the time for sleep, and those who aren't following this pattern are going against nature for a variety of regrettable reasons. The bad position that Tarquin is putting himself in by sneaking around at night, plotting, etc. rather than sleeping, is accentuated by the company he finds himself keeping - EVIL NIGHT ANIMALS!

No comfortable star did lend his light,
No noise but owls' and wolves' death-boding cries...
(215-216)

Night-wandering weasels shriek to see him there...
(358)

Alas, though Tarquin is up to no good in his staying up late, there's something that rings very true in the descriptions in this poem of the nightmarishness of it all - the isolation of staying up in the dark, the exaggeration of all sounds, and just the unnatural weariness of staying up when you should be in bed. I myself have to work at night, and several people in my family have night jobs as well. Though my working life does not quite involve having a night-wandering weasel shriek at me (not EXACTLY), I completely agree with Shakespeare on this one - there's something rather horrible about living in the night as if it were the day. Don't stay up at night! Go to sleep - only thieves and troubled minds wake.

The Rape of Lucrece

This earthly saint, adored by this devil,
Little suspecteth the false worshipper;
For unstain'd thoughts do seldom dream on evil;
Birds never limed no secret bushes fear:
So guiltless she securely gives good cheer
And reverend welcome to her princely guest,
Whose inward ill no outward harm express'd:

For that he colour'd with his high estate,
Hiding base sin in plaits of majesty;
That nothing in him seem'd inordinate,
Save something too much wonder of his eye,
Which, having all, all could not satisfy;
But, poorly rich, so wanteth in his store,
That, cloy'd with much, he pineth still for more.

(The Rape of Lucrece, 136-149)

We continue with Shakespeare's exploration of the theme of unrequited desire turning to force with another narrative poem, The Rape of Lucrece. (See my post on Titus Andronicus for a rationale as to the value of works dealing with this ghastly and shocking theme of violence against women.) Lucrece is even longer than Venus and Adonis, but whereas...

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