Rape of Lucrece: painting
Nigel Davies
ever been identified or a candidate suggested please?
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Nigel....@BTInternet.com
Robert Stonehouse
>Does anyone know whether the painting of Priam's death referred to in RoL has
>ever been identified or a candidate suggested please?
Lines 1366-1568. The New Cambridge editor (John Roe) refers to
discussions of whether this is a painting or a tapestry or has a
purely literary origin, which suggests no particular artefact has
been identified. He mentions fictitious paintings in The Fairy
Queen, indicating they were part of the literary atmosphere of the
time, and the series of paintings in the temple of Juno at Carthage
in Virgil, Aeneid 441-493 representing the Trojan War - also of
course fictitious.
The Lucrece painting is perhaps also meant to be a series, showing
different stages like Mantegna's paintings of Caesar's triumph, or a
modern comic strip. It has very little in detail in common with
Virgil - some of the names, the death of Troilus. But it would be
typical Shakespeare (as I see him) to take the idea out of Virgil
and then do the whole thing his own way.
Similarly for the Player's Speech in Hamlet he could have quoted
Marlowe (Dido Queen of Carthage, Act 2 scene 1, 182-264). Instead he
takes Marlowe's scene, his incidents and some of his words and
writes a new piece, imitating Marlowe's style though (since he is
Shakespeare) it comes out more flowery.
This is a closer copy because he wants a Marlovian passage, which
will contrast sufficiently with the style of the surrounding scene
in Hamlet. In Lucrece he wants only the idea of such a picture to do
his own thing with.
ew...@bcs.org.uk