Epic Poems

Shakespeare 's Poems "Adonis & Venus" and "The Rape of Lucrece" are no doubt epic in length and however I find "The Rape of Lucrece" also to be epic in the subject matter. The title kind of spoils it, but it doesn't prepare you for what is about to come. What is so disturbing is the blend of Shakespeare's language and the rapist Tarquinius's thoughts. The thoughts of Tarquinius are no doubt dark and vile. Giving you a creepy all over feeling. You become privy to thoughts that are unnerving, his motive, his desire, his plan. All the while innocent and chaste Lucrece sleeps comfortably in her bed. Now forgive me if I offend, but despite the prospect of rape, the scene leading up to the act is some what erotic. As text it is surely erotic, however I never thought that I would become some what 'aroused' by the voyeurism of the sleeping Lucrece and Shakespeare's detailed descriptions e.g. The blue veined alabaster breasts. Again these feeling are just my own, and are just evidence of the power of words to produce a emotive as well as physiological response in the reader.

Similarly I also felt stirred in certain ways when it came to the poem of "Adonis and Venus" Shakespeare has a way with words. His description of lust for instance has tremendous beauty metaphorically and a very carnal and tactile nature. You can get hot under the collar just reading. Again this may be and probably is isolated to my own experience. Regardless this is great stuff. I have always been stuck reading the same old same old of Shakespeare since middle school so it is refreshing to read pieces that I have not had the pleasure of reading before.

Shakespeare speaks in a whole other language, and by this I am not referring to the vernacular of the period but the way in which Shakespeare describes and relates things. The man has a style that seems all his own. He writes in metaphors and simile, he personifies, hyperbolizes. It is funny because in oral traditions with Dr. Morgan we looked at a the beginning of Shakespeare's Sonnet 73:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

And what is so wonderful is that Shakespeare is writing "I am old." Yet his way of putting it is so much more enthralling to read. I used this example because it is fresh in my mind, but I have no doubts that there are many others that come to mind.