The Rape of Lucrece foretells Shakespeare’s use of the emerging era of coal in England as the fundamental historical fact informing his work

1. “Black stage for tragedies..”: the Artful
Anti-coal Allegory in The Rape of Lucrece
Becomes a Model Shakespeare Used Again
Now the world mainly runs on fossil fuels―oil and coal―not the sun, but it wasn’t
always that way. The first country to make the transition from the sun economy to one
primarily powered by fossil fuels was England, and in the case of England, the transition
occurred around 1625, according to E.A. Wrigley, quoted by Richard Jones, Professor of
Physics at Sheffield University:1
What’s apparent, and perhaps surprising, from a plot of the
relative contributions of coal and firewood to England’s energy
economy, is how early in history the transition from biomass
to fossil fuels took place. Using estimates quoted by Wrigley (a
compelling advocate of the energy revolution position), we see
that coal use in England grew roughly exponentially (with an
annual growth rate of around 1.7%) between 1560 and 1800.
The crossover between firewood and coal happened in the
early seventeenth century, a date which is by world standards
very early – for the world as a whole, Smil estimates this
crossover only happened in the late 19th century.
1 http://www.softmachines.org/wordpress/?p=1740

2. Estimated consumption of coal and biomass fuels in England and Wales; data from
Wrigley – Energy and the English Industrial Revolution.
Jones adds:
…..the industrial revolution had already gathered much
momentum before the steam engine made a significant
impact. But coal was central to driving that early
momentum; its use was already growing rapidly, but the
dominant use of that coal was as a source of heat energy in
a whole variety of industrial processes, not as a source of
mechanical power. The foundations of the industrial
revolution were laid in the diversity and productivity of
those industries propelled by coal-fuelled process heat: the
steam engine was the last thing that coal did for the
industrial revolution, not the first.2
It was this momentum, this heavy, underlying use of coal as fuel for heat energy, that
prompted J.U. Nef, in the Rise of the British Coal Industry, to call “the change which
overtook English economic life between the early sixteenth and late seventeenth centuries”
“an early Industrial Revolution” (Nef, 165). Nef adds:
2 http://www.softmachines.org/wordpress/?p=1740

3. Scholars are aware that Elizabeth’s reign marks the
beginning of an epoch in the history of British coal mining.
Yet they rarely appear to appreciate how rapid was the
expansion of the industry between the accession of Elizabeth
and the Revolution of 1688. Nor do they seem to realize what
an extensive influence coal had upon the industrial, the
commercial, the social, and even the political development of
England and Scotland before the Industrial Revolution (Nef,
14)
The polluting effects of this change are documented in the history of Britain around
this time; for example, in 1603, a man named Hugh Platt (inexplicably, since his idea was
useless) proposed in a new book that his recipe for coal briquettes mixed with soil would
solve the problem of coal smoke pollution. In this book, A new, cheape, and delicate Fire of
Cole-balles, wherein Seacole is by mixture of other combustible bodies both sweetened and
multiplied, he noted that “coal smoke was damaging the buildings and plants of London,
and he does not treat the problem as a particularly new one.” (Freese, 34) Earlier, in 1578,
“it was reported that Elizabeth I was greatly grieved and annoyed with the taste and
smoke of sea-coles” (Freese, 34).
Although there clearly were negative aspects to coal, such as its thick and unhealthy
smoke, coal (and later petroleum, another fossil fuel) obviously prevailed in the culture of
early modern England and its successor cultures. Barry Lord, in Art & Energy: How
Culture Changes, notes that “energy is a keystone industry on which our entire material
culture and economic structure depend” (Lord, 5). Echoing the theme of change in Nef’s
text above, Lord writes that because of the fundamental position energy has in a society,
energy transitions bring “cultural change” (Lord, 6): “New energy sources bring new values
and meanings with them. These must be accepted to some extent by everyone because of
the ubiquity of energy and our dependence on it to sustain our cultures. The values
associated with formerly dominant sources of energy begin to be perceived as old-fashioned
or conservative” (Lord, 6).
In other words, “each energy source requires us to adopt certain values, set priorities
or make sacrifices in order to access, deliver and use that source in sufficient volume to
meet our needs” (Lord, 4), therefore if an energy transition occurs, it may be necessary for
some cultural values to be “suppressed” (Lord, 6) while others are “prioritized” (Lord, 6).
Emphasis on money, profits, and financial success became some of the values that were
prioritized as the “new epoch” of the coal industry opened as Elizabeth’s reign began. Nef
confirms this:

4. The change which overtook English economic life
between the early sixteenth and the late seventeenth
centuries needs no emphasis. A diarist in the reign of
Henry VIII would hardly have thanked God with the
same assurance as Pepys for the monthly evidence of his
advancing fortune, measured in cold hard cash. (Nef,
165)
William Shakespeare was in London in the late 1500s and early 1600s, just as British
coal mining and consumption was beginning its “new epoch”. I make the rather radical
claim that Shakespeare, surveying the changes in his society, decided that they were
unfortunate and unsustainable. However, given the “difference of atmosphere” (Nef, 165)
occurring, the old cultural values that belonged to the sun economy were obviously no
longer in fashion. As an artist, he realized that if he wished to support the dying (but
always latent) sun economy (what we call renewable energy today), he would need to
disguise his message and hope that future generations would appreciate it more.
His attitude towards coal’s dominance is covertly and most autobiographically
expressed in Hamlet, where a witty and iconoclastic prince, who often mentions the sun (to
the great puzzlement of those in the court), seeks to take revenge on a usurping king
(Claudius) who says his own offense “smells to heaven” (mirroring coal smoke ascending to
the sky) and calls his bosom “black as death” (the color of coal smoke) and his soul “limed”
(recalling the lime kilns, an early industry where coal was often burned). The dead king
(the sun economy) is associated with Hyperion, a sun god, while hapless Gertrude,
analogous to British society which, without any forethought, made the switch from one
energy source to another, must marry the new guy because the old one is dead.3
This paper will cover an earlier work which Shakespeare wrote, The Rape of Lucrece
(1593-4). I have found that this long poem is also part of Shakespeare’s literary project to
lament the ascendance of fossil fuels in public but covertly, through allegory and strategic
use of imagery. The Rape of Lucrece has many interesting features, but one thing that is
particularly interesting about it is the way that Tarquin is a precursor to two important
later tragic heroes: Othello and Macbeth (these plays are also allegories about the loss of
3 Kimura, Marianne, “’Stand and Unfold Yourself ’: Prince Hamlet Unmasked” (March
2014, Tsukuba University Area Studies Journal) (This paper was also given as a
presentation at Shakespeare 450, an academic conference sponsored by the Societe
Francais Shakespeare, in Paris, April 24, 2014.)
https://www.academia.edu/6937932/_Stand_and_Unfold_Yourself_Prince_Hamlet_Unm
asked

5. the sun economy as Othello and Macbeth, allegorically representing mankind, take steps
to destroy it (in their respective plays, represented by Desdemona and Duncan) because of
the choice to use coal instead.)
Each successor culture of this early modern English culture has also ‘lost its sun’ in
turn and turned, one by one, towards coal and capitalism. (“One of the crucial features
common to these successor cultures is the way individuals and institutions must
constantly adapt to the exigencies of a market economy” (Bristol, xii)) ‘Losing its sun’
means that now each country in the world has its own graph of when fossil fuels became
its main source of fuel and the sun became, in a sense, ‘dead’ to it, but this happened in
England first and though Shakespeare (1564-1616) had been dead for 9 years by 1625, he
was clearly able to see the writing on the wall even in the early 1590s. The loss of the sun
provides the basic plot movement for the poems: that is, the rape of Lucrece represents the
destruction of the sun economy by a man.
The Rape of Lucrece
The Rape of Lucrece is a narrative poem based on Ovid’s Fasti and Livy’s history of
Rome. Published 13 months after its predecessor, Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece
was printed by Richard Field and is dedicated to the Earl of Southampton. It proved to be
popular and went through six editions during Shakespeare’s lifetime.
The opening stanza of The Rape of Lucrece, like the opening lines of Shakespeare’s
works in general, tell in a coded, careful and concise way what the theme of the work is. In
Venus and Adonis, the focus was on the sun―in particular on the death of the sun economy,
or the capitulation or exit of this organic economy―so the first two lines echo this theme:
“Even as the sun with purple-color’d face/ Had ta’en his last leave….”(1-2)(my emphasis).
However, the focus of The Rape of Lucrece is not on this capitulation, or the exit, of the
sun economy, but instead it is on the other necessary actor in the drama: mankind, with its
defiant, hubristic, tragic decision to choose coal, a finite and polluting but powerful fuel.
The basic action of The Rape of Lucrece is the arrival of coal on the scene and its harmful
effects. The first stanza is full of images of fire, and producing fire was the raison d’etre of
coal, a fuel:
From the besieged Ardea all in post,
Borne by the trustless wings of false desire,
Lust-breathed Tarquin leaves the Roman host,
And to Collatium bears the lightless fire

6. Which, in pale embers hid, lurks to aspire
And girdle with embracing flames the waist
Of Collatine's fair love, Lucrece the chaste. (1-7) (my emphasis)
Tarquin will leave from one place and go to another: this is the fundamental movement of
this poem which allegorizes the transition of the British society from the sun economy to a
coal-based one. Moreover, he “bears a lightless fire” which is said to be “in pale embers hid”.
(In contrast to wood which burns with crackling, tall yellow flames and bright sparks, coal
burns in a ‘lightless’ way, since the flames are low and dark blue, with the fire burning from
the undersides of the pieces of black coal, and produces pale embers.4) (Later, as Tarquin
sharpens his sword on a piece of flint before he goes to Lucrece’s bedroom, he says “As from
this cold flint I enforce’d this fire/ So Lucrece must I enforce to my desire” (181-2)).
The word “hid” is very interesting: not only does it describe the way Tarquin conceals his
true purpose from Lucrece when he visits her, but it also secretly announces Shakespeare’s
own Hermetic intentions to artfully disguise his ecological theme. (Similarly, early in Venus
and Adonis, Venus tells Adonis, “A thousand honey secrets shalt thou know” (16), also hinting
at some secret in the text.) In Hamlet (“Never to speak of this that you have seen, Swear by
my sword”) and Twelfth Night (“What I am and what I would are as secret as maidenhead: to
your ears, divinity, to any other’s profanation”) similar hints of Hermeticism exist. And in
other plays as well.
In the cloaked allegory, in The Rape of Lucrece, Lucrece is the sun, and in the very next
stanza, she gets heavily associated to with the heavens and the sky:
Haply that name of 'chaste' unhappily set
This bateless edge on his keen appetite;
When Collatine unwisely did not let
To praise the clear unmatched red and white
Which triumph'd in that sky of his delight,
Where mortal stars, as bright as heaven's beauties,
With pure aspects did him peculiar duties. (8-14) (my emphasis)
The sun looks red at dawn or sunset and white is the bright color of the shining aura
around the sun. ‘Sky’, ‘stars’, ‘bright’, and ‘heaven’ all contribute to associating Lucrece with
4 Here is a YouTube video of coal burning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKBCMJcabZI)

7. something cosmic: it is definitely the sun.
Stanzas three and four are extremely important, since they summarize, in a coded but
nevertheless precise way, the process of transitioning to the coal economy in more detail:
For he the night before, in Tarquin's tent,
Unlock'd the treasure of his happy state;
What priceless wealth the heavens had him lent
In the possession of his beauteous mate;
Reckoning his fortune at such high-proud rate,
That kings might be espoused to more fame,
But king nor peer to such a peerless dame.
O happiness enjoy'd but of a few!
And, if possess'd, as soon decay'd and done
As is the morning's silver melting dew
Against the golden splendor of the sun!
An expired date, cancell'd ere well begun:
Honour and beauty, in the owner's arms,
Are weakly fortress'd from a world of harms. (15-28)
The third stanza contains a number of words (priceless, wealth, reckoning, fortune, rate)
which belong to the world of finance and money. As I show above, as coal use progressed,
values emphasizing money, financial status and wealth took precedence. These values
undercut and weakened the sun economy, which stressed different values (“honour”,
mentioned in the fourth stanza, may be one of these older values which were cast aside).
The fourth stanza mentions the sun: “the golden splendor of the sun”. Lucrece is
rhetorically associated with the ephemeral “morning’s silver melting dew”, which is reflecting
(“silver”) the sun and paired with the sun, since it is born in the “morning” as the sun rises.
The word “sun” and the sparkling image of lovely dew shining in the morning provide a sort of
sub-conscious association with Lucrece as a locus of gorgeous natural and cosmic beauty, both
a process and a phenomenon: this is the sun and its effects upon the earth.
However, such things of ‘beauty’ (including the sun, not just the dew, which needs the sun
if it is to sparkle beautifully and create the image in the poem) are vulnerable―“weakly
fortress’d from a world of harms”. Shakespeare’s opinion is that nature and the sun economy
(what Wrigley calls the “organic economy”5) were quite fragile in the face of a substance like
5 “In organic economies, not only was the land the source of food, it was also the

8. coal.
So, within the first four stanzas (or 28 lines), Shakespeare has successfully snuck in the
two main, contrasting and important elements: “coal” (stanza one) and “sun” (stanza four) and
managed also to associate the first one with Tarquin and the second one with Lucrece.
Shakespeare’s intention is not to overtly draw attention to the associations, but to lightly
but indelibly print them in the mind. A game or puzzle occurs, where the reader/audience
finds some hints of a pattern but cannot get to the bottom of the puzzle unless Shakespeare’s
concerns are already understood. Similarly, Stephen Booth who, speaking at the Shenandoah
Shakespeare’s Conference at Blackfriars in October 2001, pointed to “the experience of
virtually muffled wordplay and of patterning that does not obtrude upon one’s consciousness”
(Rosenbaum, 456) in Shakespeare.
Looking at stanza seven, the word ‘coal’ appears again:
But some untimely thought did instigate
His all too timeless speed, if none of those:
His honour, his affairs, his friends, his state,
Neglected all, with swift intent he goes
To quench the coal which in his liver glows.
O rash false heat, wrapp'd in repentant cold,
Thy hasty spring still blasts, and ne'er grows old! (43-9) (my emphasis)
The coal is burning (i.e. glowing) in his liver and causing a sort of compulsive disease. (In
the Elizabethan era, the liver, one of the three main organs, along with the heart and brain,
was considered the great blood-forming nutrition-giving organ from which the four humours
and natural spirits arose.6) This disease is not to be found in medical textbooks, of course,
even those from in the Elizabethan era; it is a poetic and figurative disorder which is
characterized by rash action and compulsive behavior which is based on neglecting those very
things which are important (‘honour’, ‘friends’, ‘state’ (‘state’ can mean country but it can also
mean his true condition)). Once again, and still soon into the poem, Tarquin is associated with
coal and with fire.
Planning to rape Lucrece later that night, Tarquin visits her in her house while her
husband is away. She does not suspect his true intentions―”little suspecteth the false
source, directly or indirectly, of all the material products of use to man…Thus the
production horizon for all organic economies was set by the annual cycle of plant
growth.” (E.A. Wrigley, Energy and the Industrial Revolution, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press). 2010. p.9
6 http://digilander.libero.it/mgtund/elizabethan_beliefs.htm

9. worshiper…birds never lim’d no secret bushes fear” (86, 88). Lime kilns were one of the major
uses of coal in the Elizabethan era, so the word “lim’d” Hermetically references coal as well as
secretly giving the emerging coal era an ominous aura of being a secret villain.
Tarquin waits until Lucrece is asleep before going to her chamber. On his way there, he
repeatedly gets associated with images of heat, burning and smoking: “The wind wars with
with his torch to make him stay/And blows smoke of it into his face (311-2); “Anon his beating
heart…gives the hot charge” (433-4); His hand….smoking with pride (437-8);
He wakes her up by placing his hand on her breast and explains that he means to rape
her, and that if she will refuse he will kill her and a servant and place them in a position to
make it seem that Lucrece and the servant were engaged in sexual activities. She pleads and
for just a moment, he “makes a pause” (541), giving the impression that he may change his
mind. This moment, offering a tiny hope for Lucrece, is described using the metaphor of “a
black cloud” with “pitchy vapors”, which are hiding “the aspiring mountains” and are
momentarily blown away:
But when a black-faced cloud the world doth threat,
In his dim mist the aspiring mountains hiding,
From earth's dark womb some gentle gust doth get,
Which blows these pitchy vapours from their bidding,
Hindering their present fall by this dividing;
So his unhallow'd haste her words delays,
And moody Pluto winks while Orpheus plays. (547-553)
The black cloud and pitchy vapors are references to coal smoke and Shakespeare wishes to
state that coal “the world doth threat”. “Unhallow’d”, like “false worshiper” above, implies that
there is something religiously wrong in burning coal, that using fossil fuels does not respect
the sacredness of the earth and nature.
The actual moment of the rape is also characterized in terms which can imply the sun
(“the light”) being violated by some sort of darkness: “This said, he sets his foot upon the light/
For light and lust are deadly enemies” (673-4). Similarly, in Othello, Othello enters the bed
chamber of the sleeping Desdemona to kill her and the word “light”―and its extinguishment
―is used again and again:
Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men.
Put out the light, and then put out the light:
If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,
I can again thy former light restore,

10. Should I repent me: but once put out thy light,
Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature,
I know not where is that Promethean heat
That can thy light relume. (V.ii.6-13)
Analogous to Lucrece’s role in The Rape of Lucrece, Desdemona plays the sun in the
hidden allegory against coal in Othello. Obviously, for Shakespeare there is quite a bit of
artistic development occurring between The Rape of Lucrece (1594) and Othello (1604);
Othello is absolutely tormented by his decision, showing how Shakespeare could better depict
how people had been placed in a rough position, cosmically speaking. Tarquin also wavers and
goes through a lot of rhetoric debating his decision to rape Lucrece, but it’s much less
emotional and piercing, though it does make use of extensive light/dark imagery: “fair torch,
burn out thy light and lend it not to darken her whose light excelleth thine” (190-1); “so black
a deed” (225), “mine eyes forego their light” (228).
After the rape, Tarquin leaves Lucrece alone to lament over his deed. Her lamentation
occupies a string of sequential stanzas which contain many, many metaphors which refer to
the problems of coal. The string starts off with a reference to “the secrecy of night”, which is a
Hermetic (i.e. “secret”) reference to coal, since coal causes dark smoke that resembles night.
(In Macbeth, Shakespeare was later to refine and heighten his usage of the word “night” as a
horrific symbol of “coal”, and to use the night as cover for another murder, when Macbeth kills
Duncan, who is also the sun figure, in bed.)
It is possible to say that the interesting line: “black stage for tragedies and murders fell”
foretells Shakespeare’s decision to use the new emerging era of coal in England as the
fundamental historical fact informing his work.
The underlined phrases and words refer to various aspects of coal and coal smoke (it
caused disease, it was burned in furnaces, it had dark smoke): “vaporous”, “poisonous clouds”,
“rotten damps”, “exhaled unwholesome breaths”, “misty vapors”, “smoky ranks”, “smother’d
light”, “furnace of foul-reeking smoke”:
Frantic with grief thus breathes she forth her spite
Against the unseen secrecy of night:
'O comfort-killing Night, image of hell!
Dim register and notary of shame!
Black stage for tragedies and murders fell!
Vast sin-concealing chaos! nurse of blame!
Blind muffled bawd! dark harbour for defame!

11. Grim cave of death! whispering conspirator
With close-tongued treason and the ravisher!
'O hateful, vaporous, and foggy Night!
Since thou art guilty of my cureless crime,
Muster thy mists to meet the eastern light,
Make war against proportion'd course of time;
Or if thou wilt permit the sun to climb
His wonted height, yet ere he go to bed,
Knit poisonous clouds about his golden head.
'With rotten damps ravish the morning air;
Let their exhaled unwholesome breaths make sick
The life of purity, the supreme fair,
Ere he arrive his weary noon-tide prick;
And let thy misty vapours march so thick,
That in their smoky ranks his smother'd light
May set at noon and make perpetual night.
'Were Tarquin Night, as he is but Night's child,
The silver-shining queen he would distain;
Her twinkling handmaids too, by him defiled,
Through Night's black bosom should not peep again:
So should I have co-partners in my pain;
And fellowship in woe doth woe assuage,
As palmers' chat makes short their pilgrimage.
'Where now I have no one to blush with me,
To cross their arms and hang their heads with mine,
To mask their brows and hide their infamy;
But I alone alone must sit and pine,
Seasoning the earth with showers of silver brine,
Mingling my talk with tears, my grief with groans,
Poor wasting monuments of lasting moans.
'O Night, thou furnace of foul-reeking smoke,
Let not the jealous Day behold that face

12. Which underneath thy black all-hiding cloak
Immodestly lies martyr'd with disgrace!
Keep still possession of thy gloomy place,
That all the faults which in thy reign are made
May likewise be sepulchred in thy shade! (762-805) (my emphasis)
The italicized words (eastern light, supreme fair, golden head, etc.) in the stanzas above
refer poetically to the sun. It’s clear in these lines how often we see the sun covered up or
smothered or thwarted or somehow countered by the poisonous clouds of coal: these are all
metaphors for the basic action of coal smoke wafting into the air and blocking the sun’s rays
from reaching the earth or, on a larger scale, this action can also be the replacement of the sun
economy by the coal economy.
Lucrece makes up her mind to first reveal the name of her rapist to her husband and then
immediately afterwards to commit suicide. To carry out this plan, she needs to write a letter
to her husband and ask him to return home to her, so she calls her maid to ask for paper and
a pen. The three stanzas which describe the maid’s entrance contain four instances of the
word “sun”/”suns”:
This Plot of death when sadly she had laid,
And wiped the brinish pearl from her bright eyes,
With untuned tongue she hoarsely calls her maid,
Whose swift obedience to her mistress hies;
For fleet-wing'd duty with thought's feathers flies.
Poor Lucrece' cheeks unto her maid seem so
As winter meads when sun doth melt their snow.
Her mistress she doth give demure good-morrow,
With soft-slow tongue, true mark of modesty,
And sorts a sad look to her lady's sorrow,
For why her face wore sorrow's livery;
But durst not ask of her audaciously
Why her two suns were cloud-eclipsed so,
Nor why her fair cheeks over-wash'd with woe.
But as the earth doth weep, the sun being set,
Each flower moisten'd like a melting eye;
Even so the maid with swelling drops gan wet

13. Her circled eyne, enforced by sympathy
Of those fair suns set in her mistress' sky,
Who in a salt-waved ocean quench their light,
Which makes the maid weep like the dewy night. (1212-1232)
Lucrece’s cheeks (wet with tears) are like “winter meads when the sun doth melt their
snow”; Lucrece’s eyes are like “two suns” that are “cloud-eclipsed” or “set in (Lucrece’s) fair
sky”. The maid starts to weep as well, and this is compared to the situation when the “sun
being set” causes wet dew (“each flow’r moistened”).
Here, Shakespeare allegorizes the action of those people of his era who understood that an
era was over, that the sun ‘has set’ on the sun economy. These people cry and mourn for the
end of the era of the sun and this organic economy. Lucrece’s maid does not understand that
Lucrece will die, just as people in the Elizabethan era in Britain may not have been clear
about the ultimate outcome of burning fossil fuels, but the progress of early capitalism,
polluting and so obviously unsustainable, was a source of sadness for many people, and not
just for Shakespeare.
Having sent off the letter, Lucrece must wait for her husband to return and she decides to
pass this time by looking at a painting of the Trojan War. The violence and death depicted is
ominous and foreboding, since Lucrece has already made up her mind to kill herself. Not
surprisingly, coal (and coal ash, coal’s waste product) is implicated again, in a horrible image
of death:
A thousand lamentable objects there,
In scorn of nature, art gave lifeless life:
Many a dry drop seem'd a weeping tear,
Shed for the slaughter'd husband by the wife:
The red blood reek'd, to show the painter's strife;
And dying eyes gleam'd forth their ashy lights,
Like dying coals burnt out in tedious nights. (1373-9)
It is worth noting that this painting is not in the original source material, Ovid’s Fasti,
Book II: The Regifugium7. The addition of this painting, 28 stanzas of description including
Lucrece’s reaction to it, is then Shakespeare’s own artistic decision and would later influence
the way he wrote Hamlet.
7http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/OvidFastiBkTwo.htm

14. Lucrece contemplates the painting of Troy for 196 lines and she finds many parallels
between her own situation and the scenes and characters depicted in the work of art. She is
particularly drawn to Hecuba:
To this well-painted piece is Lucrece come,
To find a face where all distress is stell'd.
Many she sees where cares have carved some,
But none where all distress and dolour dwell'd,
Till she despairing Hecuba beheld,
Staring on Priam's wounds with her old eyes,
Which bleeding under Pyrrhus' proud foot lies.
In her the painter had anatomized
Time's ruin, beauty's wreck, and grim care's reign:
Her cheeks with chaps and wrinkles were disguised;
Of what she was no semblance did remain:
Her blue blood changed to black in every vein,
Wanting the spring that those shrunk pipes had fed,
Show'd life imprison'd in a body dead. (1443-56)
In Hecuba’s suffering, Lucrece sees her own sad situation reflected. Later on, seeing Sinon
in the painting, she imagines that his “secret evil” (1515) makes him a character who reflects
Tarquin:
But, like a constant and confirmed devil,
(Sinon) entertain'd a show so seeming just,
And therein so ensconced his secret evil,
That jealousy itself could not mistrust
False-creeping craft and perjury should thrust
Into so bright a day such black-faced storms,
Or blot with hell-born sin such saint-like forms.
The well-skill'd workman this mild image drew
For perjured Sinon, whose enchanting story
The credulous old Priam after slew;
Whose words like wildfire burnt the shining glory
Of rich-built Ilion, that the skies were sorry,

15. And little stars shot from their fixed places,
When their glass fell wherein they view'd their faces.
This picture she advisedly perused,
And chid the painter for his wondrous skill,
Saying, some shape in Sinon's was abused;
So fair a form lodged not a mind so ill:
And still on him she gazed; and gazing still,
Such signs of truth in his plain face she spied,
That she concludes the picture was belied.
'It cannot be,' quoth she,'that so much guile'--
She would have said 'can lurk in such a look;'
But Tarquin's shape came in her mind the while,
And from her tongue 'can lurk' from 'cannot' took:
'It cannot be' she in that sense forsook,
And turn'd it thus,' It cannot be, I find,
But such a face should bear a wicked mind.
'For even as subtle Sinon here is painted.
So sober-sad, so weary, and so mild,
As if with grief or travail he had fainted,
To me came Tarquin armed; so beguiled
With outward honesty, but yet defiled
With inward vice: as Priam him did cherish,
So did I Tarquin; so my Troy did perish. (1513-1547) (my emphasis)
Lucrece sees an analogy between her own “Troy” and the city that fell so tragically, and
this lengthy exposition of an artwork helps us to understand the role of art in Shakespeare’s
own mind: art can reflect a real situation of real suffering, piece by piece, in an allegorical
way.
Later on, in Hamlet, the players recite some lines also about the Hecuba, Priam and the
Trojan war and the suffering and violence that they describe, also the death of a king, the
grief of a queen, all are reflected in the situation in the Danish court, but not just in the
Danish court: the situation is to be found in the real world where coal has lamentably usurped
the sun economy.
After Lucrece kills herself, Collatine (Lucrece’s husband) and Lucrece’s father are arguing

16. unproductively about who has the most cause for mourning her death. Watching them,
Brutus, who has apparently been hiding his brilliance and playing somewhat the role of a fool
decides to reveal his true nature and “throw that shallow habit by” (1814) or “bury” in
Lucece’s wound “his folly’s show” (1810) by rallying them and others there to active revenge.
Brutus’ call for revenge also uses the image of the sun:
'Now, by the Capitol that we adore,
And by this chaste blood so unjustly stain'd,
By heaven's fair sun that breeds the fat earth's store,
By all our country rights in Rome maintain'd,
And by chaste Lucrece' soul that late complain'd
Her wrongs to us, and by this bloody knife,
We will revenge the death of this true wife.' (1835-41)
(my emphasis)
This time the sun is “heaven’s fair sun that breeds the earth’s fat store”. It’s quite a
positive image and combines a religious implication (heaven’s fair sun) with an economic one
(fat earth’s store) which must mean that Shakespeare is encoding the moment, as he also
would in various ways in later tragedies, when the fossil fuel economy and capitalism began to
fail.
This failure means that the sun economy would be needed again and would, in fact, make
something of a return, culturally as well.
In this scenario, future people are confused and arguing and fighting (Collatine and
Lucrece’s father) and only a former fool (Brutus) is revealed to suddenly be the wisest one, and
moreover, to be a supporter of the sun economy (in an Hermetic way here in the poem) and
even, perhaps, of a sun religion.
What has Shakespeare revealed, if a bit surreptitiously?
That is, who is Brutus in the allegory?
Brutus may be Shakespeare himself; his works seem like mere entertainments, but are
instead shown to be hiding wisdom and support for the sun.
Finally, as long as we are on this theme of outing the author, let’s examine some absolutely
brilliant lines that occur as Tarquin is walking to Lucrece’s chamber and ruminating on his
decision to violate her. In his speech, below, it’s necessary, especially, to focus on the
capitalized word “Will” and what follows this word:

17. 'I see what crosses my attempt will bring;
I know what thorns the growing rose defends;
I think the honey guarded with a sting;
All this beforehand counsel comprehends:
But Will is deaf and hears no heedful friends;
Only he hath an eye to gaze on beauty,
And dotes on what he looks, 'gainst law or duty.
'I have debated, even in my soul,
What wrong, what shame, what sorrow I shall breed;
But nothing can affection's course control,
Or stop the headlong fury of his speed.
I know repentant tears ensue the deed,
Reproach, disdain, and deadly enmity;
Yet strive I to embrace mine infamy.' (491-504) (my emphasis)
“Will” may be Shakespeare himself ‘peeping out’ a bit secretively to explain his own
motivations. It’s a rhetorical act, however, not a ‘straight’ confession, as Shakespeare did not
have any doubts about where he stood vis a vis the issue of coal.
However, he may have wished to code in a playful greeting to future generations, and this
is it.
He, like many environmentalists of today, stands at odds with the prevailing ideas which
are promoting “economic growth” (which is only possible with capitalism and fossil fuels) so he
can expect “reproach, disdain and deadly enmity” when his real sympathies are known.
“An eye to gaze on beauty” is Shakespeare’s constant project to extol the beauty of nature
before it is polluted and destroyed by fossil fuels and the various vectors that fossil fuels use
as they slowly take over the planet.
References:
Bristol, Michael. Big-Time Shakespeare. (New York: Routledge) 1996.
Evans, G. Blakemore. The Riverside Shakespeare (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.) 1974
Freese, Barbara. Coal: A Human History. (London: Penguin Books) 2003.
Jones, Richard. Soft Machines (blog). http://www.softmachines.org/wordpress/
Lord, Barry. Art&Energy: How Culture Changes. (Washington, D.C.: American Alliance of

18. Museums Press). 2014.
Nef, J.U. The Rise of the British Coal Industry. Volume I. (Oxon: Frank Cass & Co.). 1966.
Rosenbaum, Ron The Shakespeare Wars. (New York: Random House). 2006.