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LUCRECE
It is pretty certain that the work of other contemporary English poets offered Shakespeare's imagination material sustenance while he was developing the Roman legend. Several phrases come almost literally from Constable's *Diana*, of which the first edition was in 1594 two years old, and the second was just published.
The debt to Daniel's *Rosamond* (1592).
But the closest parallels with Shakespeare's *Lucrece*, alike in phrase, episode, and sentiment, are to be found in Daniel's contemporary narrative poem, entitled *The Complaint of Rosamond*. This poem was appended in 1592 to a second
'When Tarquin (477–9) describes Lucrece's complexion—
That even for anger makes the lily pale,
And the red rose blush at her own disgrace,
he echoes Constable's description of his mistress (1st edit. Sonnet xvii)—
My Ladle's presence makes the roses red,
Because to see her lips they blush for shame.
The Lily's leaves, for envy, pale became,
And her white hands in them this envy bred.
In the preceding stanza the impression of 'whiteness' which the sleeping Lucrece gives Tarquin seems derived from Constable's description in Sonnet iv (edit. 1592) of his mistress in bed. Constable's 'whiter skin with white sheet' anticipated Shakespeare's line (472), 'o'er the white sheet peers her whiter skin.' In the reference in *Lucrece* to Narcissus (265–6) Shakespeare echoes his own poem of *Venus and Adonis*. The allusion ultimately came from Marlowe's *Hero and Leander*. In *Venus and Adonis* (161–2) Shakespeare wrote:—
Narcissus so himself himself forsook,
And died to kiss his shadow in the brook.
In *Lucrece* (265–6) Tarquin reflects on Lucrece's beauty—
That had Narcissus seen her as she stood,
Self-love had never drowned him in the flood.
The classical story of Narcissus, as told by Ovid, *Metamorphoses*, iii. 407 sq., tells of his metamorphosis into a flower, and not of his death by drowning. Marlowe set Shakespeare the example of adopting a post-classical version, and related in his *Hero and Leander*, Sestiad i, ii. 74–6, how the Greek boy
Leapt into the water for a kiss
Of his own shadow, and despising many,
Died ere he could enjoy the love of any.
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