SOURCE: Introduction to The Poems: Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, The Phoenix and the Turtle, The Passionate Pilgrim, A Lover's Complaint, by William Shakespeare, edited by John Roe, Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 22-41.

In the following excerpt, Roe looks at the range of interpretations—from Christian to feminist—of The Rape of Lucrece, cites several sources for the poem, and assesses Shakespeare's relationship to his patron, Southampton, for whom he wrote the poem.

The Poem and Interpretation

The Rape of Lucrece is the antithesis of Venus and Adonis. Sexual desire, which aggressively yet also touchingly and humorously characterised Venus, returns to its familiar role as the preoccupation of the male; chastity, so ill-suited to the improbably coy Adonis, recovers its conviction in the person of Lucrece. Venus and Adonis is a poem of the fresh outdoors, which salutes procreative energy even as it recognises its inevitable...