Wherefore Art Thou Tereu? Juliet and the Legacy of Rape

Abstract

Commentators on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet — perhaps mesmerized by the play’s reputation as an exemplar of pure love — have overlooked its references to the most notorious rapists of classical culture: Tereus, Hades, Tarquin, and Paris. Our point is not to accuse Romeo, but instead to demonstrate that Shakespeare characteristically hints at crimes that only flicker through the minds of potential perpetrators and victims, who must draw on a collective cultural legacy to judge, articulate, and control those possibilities. Reducing the play’s spectrum of sexual aggression (including voyeurism, insincere seduction, displaced phallic violence, angry possessiveness, and forced marriage) into a neat binary of rape and consent may be socially desirable, but it erases the ethical and psychological complexity of adolescent courtship. Ignoring the ancient specter of rape haunting this story also precludes recognizing what Juliet does heroically to exorcise it.