ABSTRACT
Throughout Shakespeare is expanding Ovid's brief account, swelling 73 lines into 1855, and filling out the outline of the Roman's sophisticated simplicity with long disquisitions on the physical and emotional states of the two main figures as they occur, disquisitions conducted with ritualistic stylization as the contrast between virtue and vice, innocence and lust, hospitality and betrayal, is enforced with rhetorical antithesis and paradox. Lucrece is presented as 'This earthly saint adored by this devil' (85), and we see Tarquin 'Hiding base sin in plaits of majesty' (93). Her innocence could not 'moralize his wanton sight' (104), i.e. interpret his desirous looks, but Shakespeare moralizes always, e.g. when Tarquin lies waiting for dead of night, 'Pawning his honour to obtain his lust' (156). When Tarquin tries to control 'his thoughts unjust' he does so in set debate as reason fights will, desire opposes dread, in terms developed from Ovid, 779-83, who succinctly suggests antitheses, e.g.
