Baring her soul for the Bard - The Rape of Lucrece an ’intense’ experience

Camille O’Sullivan tells Jo Kerrigan about the intense experience of ’The Rape of Lucrece’.

SHAKESPEARE wrote the narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece in 1594 in response, apparently, to a request by his patron, the Earl of Southampton, for a serious subject.

That subject was rape, and who better to write about it than William Shakespeare, who so intuitively understood the human condition. It’s an old story, that of Lucrece or Lucretia — Ovid recorded it, as did Livy, both detailing the shameful attack on an aristocratic lady of Rome by Tarquin, the king’s son.