SOURCE: "Lucrece's Re-Creation," in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 2, Summer, 1983, pp. 200-11.

In the essay below, Bromley claims that, as a figure of her time, Lucrece successfully represents honor and integrity, rather than symbolizing a passive submission to the will of others.

Lucrece presents some special problems for modern readers because it is about a chaste woman who, having been forcibly raped by the king's son, a friend and comrade of her husband, concludes that she is impure and that she must therefore kill herself. A considerable amount of critical energy has been expended in trying to determine whether Lucrece was defiled and whether she should have reacted differently. It is difficult for many readers to forgive Shakespeare and Lucrece for what they take to be the creation of a false dilemma from which the only release is self-destruction.

It seems to me that Lucrece's corruption by Tarquin's act...