Note: In July of 2001 after finishing my MA in English at Bob Jones University, my parents sponsored my attendance at Cambridge University’s International Shakespeare Summer Program, a non-credit continuing education program for anyone above 18. There I had the privilege and delight of learning from a brilliant scholar-teacher, Charles Moseley. Dr. Moseley fit every ideal I had for the perfect literary scholar–breadth of learning, erudition, stylish good looks (complete with coat and tie and a white goatee), and a British accent. It was like learning from someone from the same circle as Tolkien and Lewis, and it was mesmerizing. He said kind words during our interactions about my suitability for doctoral study and validated the quality of the literary education I had received at BJU that left a lasting mark of encouragement. I wrote this paper for his three-week class on Shakespeare’s poetry. A major portion of the argument is a direct response to something he had said in class about the structure of Shakespeare’s Rape of Lucrece. The paper was written with him as the primary audience. Looking back, it is typical of an approach I used often in my literary analyses–direct analysis of the structure and purpose of the text, a method similar to that used in explicating the meaning of the Bible. (DL, Sept. 19, 2021)

To discuss the importance of form and structure[1] in The Rape of Lucrece we have to know what we mean by “importance.”For our purposes here, importance signifies how large a role form and structure play in getting the poem to do what Shakespeare wanted it to do; it is a measure of how integral they are to the poem’s success as Shakespeare would have defined success. I begin, therefore, with a brief statement of what Shakespeare wanted Lucrece to do.

It is clear from the poem’s dedicatory epistle and from the historical context surrounding the poem’s composition that Shakespeare wrote Lucrece to impress an educated, courtly audience already very familiar with his subject matter—to impress them with his skill as a poet. In addition, it is reasonable to assume based on the Renaissance uses for poetry and modes of reading poetry that Shakespeare was also trying to say something significant. If accomplishing these two goals is taken as the measure of the poem’s success, it is to be expected that form and structure will be important insofar as they are avenues for impressive technical display and/or communicative tools.