The Rape of Lucrece

Rape of Lucrece, The,
a poem in rhyme-royal by Shakespeare , published 1594 and dedicated to Henry Wriothesley, earl of Southampton. It is presumably the ‘graver labour’ which he promised to the earl in the dedication of Venus and Adonis the previous year. It is a highly rhetorical expansion of the story as told by Livy . See Lucretia .