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- 1 This piece is printed in a rare volume called *Les Théâtres de Gaillon*, A French tragedy by the well-known dramatist, Alexandre Hardy, written a little later, bears the title ‘Lucrece, ou l’adulteur puni’, but this play does not deal with the story of the Roman matron, but with an imaginary adulteress of Spain. Hardy’s tragedy was first published in 1616.
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# LUCRECE
A further proof of the complete naturalization of the story in sixteenth-century England is to be deduced from the fact that one of the earliest printers of repute, Thomas Berthelet, took a figure of the Roman wife for the sign of his business premises, and that his successors in trade through Shakespeare's lifetime continued to employ the same device. From 1523 to 1562 the sign of ‘Lucretia Romana’ or ‘Lucrece’ (as it was commonly called) hung before Berthelet’s house near the conduit in Fleet Street. In 1562 the well-known Elizabethan ‘stationer’, Thomas Purfoot, placed the same sign over his printing-office in St. Paul’s Churchyard’, and when in 1578 he removed his press to a new building ‘within the New Rents of Newgate Market’ he carried the sign with him. It was announced on the title-pages of almost all the numerous volumes that Berthelet and Purfoot undertook that they were printed ‘at the sign of Lucrece’. When Purfoot retired from active work his son and successor, Thomas Purfoot, junior, continued the concern under the same symbol in Newgate Market until 1640. Another use to which the figure of the Roman matron was commonly put is illustrated by Shakespeare himself, when he represents Olivia in *Twelfth Night* (ii. 5. 104) as employing a seal with the figure of Lucrece engraved upon it.
Shakespeare was continuing a long chain of precedents in choosing the story of Lucrece for his new poem. Authorities abounded in his own and other languages, and after his wont he used or adapted them with much freedom. Despite his tendency to amplify details, he adheres to the main lines of
1. Purfoot permitted one of the chief Italian teachers of Shakespeare’s day, Claudius Hollyband, to advertise from 1575 on the title-pages of his philological handbooks that he was ‘teaching in Poules Churchyarde at the signe of the Lucrece’. Cf. Hollybande’s *Pretie and Witte Historie of Arsali and Lucenda*, 1575.
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the story as laid down by Ovid and Livy, and first anglicized by Chaucer, who frankly acknowledged his indebtedness to the two Latin writers. It is clear that Shakespeare studied the work of these three authors. Their narratives so closely resembled one another that it is not always easy to state with certainty from which of the three Shakespeare immediately derived this or that item of information.
Like Chaucer Shakespeare holds up Lucrece to eternal admiration as a type of feminine excellence—a type of ‘true wife’ (l. 1841); Chaucer had similarly celebrated her (l. 1686) as
The verray wyf, the verray trewe Lucrece.
But, generally speaking, Shakespeare’s poem has closer affinity with Ovid’s version (in the *Fasti*) than with that of any other predecessor. Like Ovid Shakespeare delights in pictorial imagery, and occasionally in *Lucrece* he appears to borrow Ovid’s own illustrations. Chaucer had already adapted some of the Ovidian similes which figure in Shakespeare. But Shakespeare seems to owe more suggestion to Chaucer’s source of inspiration than to Chaucer himself. The three poets, for example, compare Lucrece, when Tarquin has forcibly overcome her, to a lamb in the clutch of a wolf. Ovid writes (*Fasti*, ii. 799–800):—
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