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LUCRECE
characterizes the second poem of *Lucrece* as compared with *Venus and Adonis*, its predecessor, showed that Shakespeare had faithfully carried into effect the promise that he had given to his patron of offering him ‘some graver labour’.
*General character of Lucrece.*
*Lucrece* with its 1855 lines is more than half as long again as *Venus and Adonis* with its 1194 lines. It is written with a flowing pen and shows few signs of careful planning or revision. The most interesting feature of the poem lies in the moral reflections which the poet scatters with a free hand about the narrative. They bear witness to great fertility of mind, to wide reading, and to meditation on life’s complexities. The heroine’s allegorical addresses (ll. 869–1001) to Opportunity, Time’s servant, and to Time, the lackey of Eternity, turn to poetic account philosophic ideas of pith and moment.
In general design and execution, *Lucrece*, despite its superior gravity of tone and topic, exaggerates many of the defects of its forerunner. The digressions are ampler. The longest of them, which describes with spirit the siege of Troy, reaches a total of 217 lines, nearly one-ninth of the whole poem, and, although it is deserving of the critic’s close attention, it delays the progress of the story beyond all artistic law. The conceits are more extravagant and the luxuriant imagery is a thought less fresh and less sharply pointed than in *Venus and Adonis*. Throughout, there is a lack of directness and a tendency to grandiose language where simplicity would prove more effective. Haste may account for some bombastic periphrases. But Shakespeare often seems to fall a passing victim to the faults of which he
to be sold by *Edward White & Thomas Millington*, at the little North door of Paules at the signe of the Gunne. 1594.’ This volume was on sale on the London bookstalls at the same time as the 1594 edition of *Lucrece*. The story of Lucrece is twice mentioned in *Titus* (il. I. 108 and iv. I. 63).
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