<p>The Rape of Lucrece William Shakespeare - The Rape of Lucrece is a narrative poem by William Shakespeare about the legendary Lucretia. In his previous narrative poem, Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare had included a dedicatory letter to his patron, the Earl of Southampton, in which he promised to write a graver work. Accordingly, The Rape of Lucrece lacks the humorous tone of the earlier poem. Lucrece draws on the story described in both Ovid's Fa...