ABSTRACT
Thomas Heywood's The Rape of Lucrece is indebted to William Shakespeare's poem of the same title, particularly in its characterization of a complex and conflicted Sextus Tarquinius, but it also draws heavily from Livy; it is considerably broader than Shakespeare's poem in its historical scope. Heywood was undeniably conscious of the didactic and political uses of drama, as his 1612 Apology for Actors indicates. Heywood deviates significantly from his non-dramatic sources as he explores the potential of popular entertainment as a mask for political commentary. Heywood's Lucrece is a thin stereotype of virtue. The bawdy song that follows is surely one of the things that led Baldwyn to suspect Heywood of writing Lucrece under the influence of alcohol, but the dissonance between the song and the seriousness of the occasion is deliberate. Heywood presents the subtle flouting of authority embedded in Valerius's songs as a legitimate alternative to open defiance.
