800 lines in length. It tells the old legend, found at the
beginning of all Roman histories, how Sextus Tarquin ravished Lucrece,
the pure and beautiful wife of Collatine, one of the Roman nobles; how
she killed herself rather than survive her shame; and how her husband
and friends swore in revenge to dethrone the whole Tarquin family.
This poem, as compared with _Venus and Adonis_, shows some traces of
increasing maturity. The author does more serious and concentrated
thinking as he writes. Whether or not it is a better poem is a
question which every man must settle for himself. Its best passages
are probably more impressive, its poorest ones more dull.

{63}

The form of stanza used here is known as "rime royal," which had become
famous two centuries before as a favorite meter of the first great
English poet, Geoffrey Chaucer. This stanza contains seven lines
instead of six: the rime-scheme is as follows: _a, b, a, b, b, c, c_.
The following is a specimen stanza from the poem:--

"Now stole upon the time the dead of night, (_a_)
When heavy sleep had closed up mortal eyes. (_b_)
No comfortable star did lend his light, (_a_)
No noise but owls' and wolves' death-boding cries; (_b_)
Now serves the season that they may surprise (_b_)
The silly lambs. Pure thoughts are dead and still, (_c_)
While lust and murder wakes to stain and kill." (_c_)

A significant fact about both of these poems is that they were
dedicated to Henry Wriothesley (pronounced Wrisley or Rot'-es-ly), Earl
of Southampton, who has already been mentioned as a friend and patron
of Shakespeare. The dedication at the beginning of _Venus and Adonis_
is conventional and almost timid in tone; that prefixed to the Lucrece
seems to indicate a closer and more confident friendship which had
grown up during the intervening year. Dedications to some prominent
man were frequently prefixed to books by Elizabethan authors, either as
a mark of love and respect to the person addressed, or in hopes that a
little pecuniary help would result from this acceptable form of
flattery. In Shakespeare's case it may possibly have fulfilled both of
these purposes.

+The Sonnets+.--Besides these two narrative poems Shakespeare wrote
numerous sonnets. In order to {64} understand his accomplishment in
this form of poetry, some account of the type is necessary.

The sonnet may be briefly defined