Heralding the Commonplace: Authorship, Voice, and the Commonplace in Shakespeare's Rape of Lucrece

Scholars have long read The Rape of Lucrece (1594) as an expression of Shakespeare's ambitions as a rising poet and playwright.¹ Writing when the plague had closed London's theaters, Shakespeare dedicated Lucrece and its sister poem, Venus and Adonis (1593), to the young but powerful Earl of Southampton in a bid for patronage and status. They are the first works to which Shakespeare would attach his name.² Richard Lanham describes the poems as "masterpieces in the old sense of the word—pieces made by an artist to prove he is a master."³ Lucrece presents itself as the more serious of the two, the "graver labour" that Shakespeare promised would honor Southampton in the preface to Venus and Adonis (l. 6).⁴ Lucrece was also Shakespeare's first work "printed with commonplace markers," a practice traditionally reserved for classical texts, thus setting Shakespeare's poem apart as a significant literary undertaking.⁵ Indeed, as Gabriel Harvey famously quipped, "The younger sort takes much delight in Shakespeares Venus, and Adonis: but his Lucrece, and his tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke, haue it in them, to please the wiser sort."⁶ To mention Lucrece and Hamlet in the same breath might puzzle a modern reader for whom the poet has been eclipsed by the playwright, but a growing body of scholarship suggests the importance of the two narrative poems in establishing Shakespeare's reputation among his contemporaries.

There is a paradox in this growing reputation, however, illustrated in Lucrece's prominent aphorisms. As the conventional trappings of classical texts, the aphorisms trumpet Shakespeare's literary aspirations. But to modern ears they strangely mute them, announcing not the singular creativity of the master marked for greatness but the banal wisdom of a purveyor of commonplaces: not Hamlet, but Polonius.

Critical readings of Lucrece that focus on Shakespeare's ambitions attend to the ways it celebrates and elevates the creative author.⁷ In an influential essay on the rhetoric of heraldry and blazon in the poem, Nancy Vickers argues that "Shakespeare's encomium of Lucrece—his publication of Lucrece—stands as a shield, as an artfully constructed sign of identity, as a proof of excellence."⁸ Focusing on the poetic and theatrical aspects of the poem, Patrick Cheney asserts in the poem's conclusion that "we see an etiology not so much about the formation of the Roman Republic as about the printing of the national poet-playwright."⁹ Amy Greenstadt has proposed that Lucrece's chastity, even after her rape, is a metaphor for Shakespeare's inviolate authorial will.¹⁰ Although these readings vary greatly, each fits into a familiar account of the rise of the author in the early modern period.¹¹ In each case, Shakespeare is privileged as the singular creator and owner of the poem. Yet all readings seem strangely at odds with Shakespeare's pervasive use of the commonplace throughout the poem.

In this essay, I explore the vision of authorship that emerges from Lucrece when we turn our attention to Shakespeare's deployment of the commonplace.

In this view, Shakespeare serves as a conduit of received wisdom. His authority derives not from his role as the original creator of the poem but as the channel for a public voice that flows through him. This is not to suggest that Shakespeare did not write the poem, that he did not prominently attach his name to it, or that it was composed collaboratively. Rather, I maintain that what justified Shakespeare's ambitions and made them legible to his contemporaries were not his self-aggrandizing gestures, but his circulation of commonplace ideas, authoritative exactly in their lack of originality. Even his rhetorical flourishes, which advertise his skill as a literary craftsman, are framed and contained by the humble and self-effacing humanist rhetoric of the aphorism. I explore strange authorship—self-effacing ambition. I hope to reveal ways in which it challenges our current critical accounts of authorship in the period.

In the first half of this essay, I survey the role...