I consider Hecuba and describe her.

1. “Conceit deceitful”: the painting of
Troy in The Rape of Lucrece and its
implications for Hamlet
After she is raped by Tarquin, Lucrece sends off a letter to her husband, Collatine, asking
him to return home. Her plan, which she later carries out, is to tell him about the rape, reveal
the name of her attacker to him and then commit suicide.
However, she must wait for a while before he gets home and she starts to get bored: “the
weary time she cannot entertain/ For now t’is stale to sigh, to weep and groan” (1361-2).
Lucrece, looking “for means to mourn some newer way” (1365), recollects the painting of the
fall of Troy hanging in her house and decides it will be the perfect way to pass the time:
At last she calls to mind where hangs a piece
Of skilful painting, made for Priam's Troy:
Before the which is drawn the power of Greece.
For Helen's rape the city to destroy,
Threatening cloud-kissing Ilion with annoy;
Which the conceited painter drew so proud,
As heaven, it seem'd, to kiss the turrets bow'd. (1366-1372)
The penultimate line in the stanza above, “Which the conceited painter drew so proud”, is
interesting because the word “conceit” can mean “proud” (a word that appears in the same
line) or it can also refer to:
an extended metaphor with a complex logic that governs a poetic
passage or entire poem. By juxtaposing, usurping and manipulating
images and ideas in surprising ways, a conceit invites the reader
into a more sophisticated understanding of an object of comparison.
Extended conceits in English are part of the poetic idiom of
Mannerism, during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth
century….Helen Gardner observed that "a conceit is a comparison
whose ingenuity is more striking than its justness" and that "a

2. comparison becomes a conceit when we are made to concede likeness
while being strongly conscious of unlikeness."1
Shakespeare liked conceits and wrote them often. For example, Romeo and Juliet is
referred to as “An Excellent Conceited Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet” on its original cover
printed in 1597 and as for its conceit, the play is an extended comparison between
mankind and the sun (through our long history on planet Earth) and two lovers named
Romeo and Juliet over a period of a few days in Verona, Italy.
Shakespeare’s works (all that I have examined anyway) are all such conceits, or
allegories: Macbeth, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello, As You Like It,
Julius Caesar, Anthony and Cleopatra, Venus and Adonis, Measure for Measure, The
Merchant of Venice, King Lear, The Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing,
Hamlet and The Tempest plus his Sonnets.
However, just seven stanzas after the line about the “conceited painter” occurs,
another instance of the word “conceit” occurs, and this one, “conceit deceitful”, is rather
interesting because this word “deceitful” implies that the artist may not have been totally
forthcoming:
For much imaginary work was there;
Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind,
That for Achilles' image stood his spear,
Griped in an armed hand; himself, behind,
Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind:
A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head,
Stood for the whole to be imagined. (1422-1428) (my emphasis)
It’s a small clue that Shakespeare meant to hint that there was a hidden conceit in the
poem. My interpretation of the poem as a cloaked indictment of the burgeoning coal-fueled
economy that was putting an end to the organic sun economy can certainly be further
validated by this small clue. And if Shakespeare hints that he was deceitful and purposely
hid one allegory vilifying coal, it becomes more possible that he hid others in his other
works too.
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceit

3. Amid all his works, so full of conceit and deceit, it’s fascinating to find one long scene
where Shakespeare actually shows a character clearly interpreting a piece of art in an
allegorical fashion: Lucrece consciously engages in interpreting an artwork using a conceit
and knowingly explains this conceit.
This brings me back to the painting of the fall of Troy, which Lucrece spends 26
stanzas (182 lines) observing and contemplating. The conceit which she comes up occurs
near the end of these 26 stanzas. She finds a character depicted in the painting who
corresponds to herself―this is Priam who was too “credulous” (1522). Another character,
“perjur’d Sinon” (1521), corresponds to Tarquin, the man who has ruined her life (“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” 1541-1546)) Finally, she compares the fall of Troy to her
own disastrous rape: “so my Troy did perish” (1547).
'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. (1541-1547)
Lucrece’s reaction to the painting, the process whereby she develops a “conceit” of her
own tragic story using the plot and characters of the painting, should be seen as revealing
of Shakespeare’s own aesthetic strategy to also develop his own conceits or allegories
using classical or historical plots and stories that were already in circulation. The Rape of
Lucrece was written in 1593-4, before all of Shakespeare’s major dramatic works, and in
my opinion, since he was still a younger artist, he was interested artistically in setting
forth his philosophy and approach in a rather formal way, and without worrying too much
that he would divulge his secrets.
Whereas Lucrece is interested in her own tragedy, Shakespeare was similarly
fascinated, throughout his career, with one topic: the loss of the sun economy due to
structural changes in the economy due to coal consumption. Actually, Lucrece’s rape and

4. death and the loss of the sun economy are one and the same (in that the first is a conceit
for the latter).
Besides the important notion of the conceit, Shakespeare introduces, in these lines
about Lucrece observing the Trojan painting, other aspects of his aesthetic philosophy,
including the motivation of the artist in the creation of art. The topic of artistic motivation
is formally taken up in the lines where Lucrece looks at 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.
On this sad shadow Lucrece spends her eyes,
And shapes her sorrow to the beldame's woes,
Who nothing wants to answer her but cries,
And bitter words to ban her cruel foes:
The painter was no god to lend her those;
And therefore Lucrece swears he did her wrong,
To give her so much grief and not a tongue.
'Poor instrument,' quoth she,'without a sound,
I'll tune thy woes with my lamenting tongue;
And drop sweet balm in Priam's painted wound,
And rail on Pyrrhus that hath done him wrong;
And with my tears quench Troy that burns so long;

5. And with my knife scratch out the angry eyes
Of all the Greeks that are thine enemies.
'Show me the strumpet that began this stir,
That with my nails her beauty I may tear.
Thy heat of lust, fond Paris, did incur
This load of wrath that burning Troy doth bear:
Thy eye kindled the fire that burneth here;
And here in Troy, for trespass of thine eye,
The sire, the son, the dame, and daughter die.
'Why should the private pleasure of some one
Become the public plague of many moe?
Let sin, alone committed, light alone
Upon his head that hath transgressed so;
Let guiltless souls be freed from guilty woe:
For one's offence why should so many fall,
To plague a private sin in general?
'Lo, here weeps Hecuba, here Priam dies,
Here manly Hector faints, here Troilus swounds,
Here friend by friend in bloody channel lies,
And friend to friend gives unadvised wounds,
And one man's lust these many lives confounds:
Had doting Priam cheque'd his son's desire,
Troy had been bright with fame and not with fire.'
Here feelingly she weeps Troy's painted woes:
For sorrow, like a heavy-hanging bell,
Once set on ringing, with his own weight goes;
Then little strength rings out the doleful knell:
So Lucrece, set a-work, sad tales doth tell
To pencill'd pensiveness and colour'd sorrow;
She lends them words, and she their looks doth borrow. (1443-98)
Lucrece is primarily motivated by righteous anger: “why should the private pleasure
of some one/ Become the public plague of many moe?” (1478-9) This situation can apply

6. to Tarquin’s rape of her, of course, but she is mainly characterizing Paris’ lustful
transgression as the event that started the Trojan War. However, “why should the
private pleasure of some one/ Become the public plague of many moe” can also describe
the situation surrounding coal consumption, whereby heat was enjoyed by the person
who lit the coal fire while the coal smoke was emitted into the air and caused health
problems for many.
Lucrece vows to give a voice to the voiceless, suffering Hecuba: “'Poor instrument,'
quoth she,'without a sound, I'll tune thy woes with my lamenting tongue” (1464-5).
Hecuba, a painted figure, of course makes no sound. However, the aesthetic implication
is that the artist should lend his voice to the voiceless, the oppressed whose voices have
been silenced by the situation that surrounds them.
Furthermore, Lucrece’s “sad tales” that she “doth tell”, along with the phrase that
she “set a-work”, imply that she takes on the workmanlike role (metaphorically) of a
creator-artist. She tells these sad tales to “pencill’d pensiveness and colour’d sorrow”, and
these phrases indicate the painting, sketched in pencil and then colored, but the word
“pencill’d” can’t help but slightly hint that Lucrece may need a pencil herself if her “sad
tales” require a hard copy.
So for Shakespeare, an artist is someone motivated by and inspired by, above all, a
sense of social justice―someone giving a voice to those who are suffering and have no
voice of their own, having been systematically silenced―and also an artist is someone
who may use allegories and conceits.
This label would exactly fit him.
Fossil fuels and the capitalistic market-based economy that they engendered brought
about many sufferers who had no voice. These would include indigenous people
everywhere, colonized and oppressed peoples whose lands were exploited to provide
resources to wealthy fossil-fuel-rich imperial countries, and also of course natural
creatures such as animals and plants whose habitat was exploited and ruined for the
sake of economic growth, and many others to various degrees. Of course, Shakespeare
also gave a voice to the ideas of Giordano Bruno who was executed by the Roman
Inquisition in 1600 and whose books were placed on the Codex (the list of banned books).
Bruno’s voice was very much silenced through his trial, his execution and following this
event, but Shakespeare publicly coded Bruno into many of his plays, in a disguised way

7. (again, using the concept of the conceit) in order to express solidarity with Bruno and in
order to defend him.2
Interestingly, the sufferers of the new fossil fuel order can also include the very people
who are the perpetrators of it. This should really be no surprise, since later
Shakespearean tragic heroes, who are all suffering (behind their conceits) from being
perpetrators of fossil fuels and against the sun economy (whom in allegory they kill or
reject), like Macbeth, Othello, King Claudius and King Lear, all are portrayed with some
sympathy.
Sinon, the character who cunningly deceives the Trojans, and to whom Lucrece
compares Tarquin, is described at length, for 6 stanzas (42 lines), and the description is
complex, deep and quite sympathetic, with the notion that Sinon is “bound”, not free but
somehow locked into his situation. Also the word “wretched” is used to describe Sinon, and
“full of cares”, “a humble gait” and “seem’d to welcome woe”, that is to say a person who
does not expect much good and has suffered a bit. Although Sinon is also described as “like
a constant and confirmed devil”, he is not only a devil, but one for whom the narrator feels
a certain amount of pity or compassion:
She throws her eyes about the painting round,
And whom she finds forlorn she doth lament.
At last she sees a wretched image bound,
That piteous looks to Phrygian shepherds lent:
His face, though full of cares, yet show'd content;
Onward to Troy with the blunt swains he goes,
So mild, that Patience seem'd to scorn his woes.
In him the painter labour'd with his skill
To hide deceit, and give the harmless show
An humble gait, calm looks, eyes wailing still,
A brow unbent, that seem'd to welcome woe;
Cheeks neither red nor pale, but mingled so
That blushing red no guilty instance gave,
Nor ashy pale the fear that false hearts have.
2 https://www.slideshare.net/Fantasia47/the-heretic-hiding-in-shakespeares-plays

8. But, like a constant and confirmed devil,
He 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,
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. (1499-1540)

9. All the conceits in Shakespeare’s works are deployed in the service of the sun, against
coal, and so it is no coincidence that as Lucrece first turns her gaze on the painting, the
word “coals” appears in conjunction with dead and dying bleeding bodies:
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) (my emphasis)
So the word “coals” importantly stands in the first stanza of the whole 26-
stanza-long Trojan painting passage and it does―though it is also a bit “deceitful”
because the word “coals” is just treated as part of a casual simile― announce the
topic as a theme of tragedy worthy of art, which it is, since the sun and human’s
relationship to the sun is also part of our relationship to the cosmos. At the end of
the passage, the topic of coals is again hinted at as “fire” is mentioned again and
again, with references to the way that coal burns (it burns in lightless way, that is it
gives off only a small blue flame unlike the rich yellow blaze of a wood fire):
'Look, look, how listening Priam wets his eyes,
To see those borrow'd tears that Sinon sheds!
Priam, why art thou old and yet not wise?
For every tear he falls a Trojan bleeds:
His eye drops fire, no water thence proceeds;
Those round clear pearls of his, that move thy pity,
Are balls of quenchless fire to burn thy city.
'Such devils steal effects from lightless hell;
For Sinon in his fire doth quake with cold,
And in that cold hot-burning fire doth dwell;
These contraries such unity do hold,
Only to flatter fools and make them bold:
So Priam's trust false Sinon's tears doth flatter,
That he finds means to burn his Troy with water.'

10. It is worth noting that this painting (naturally) is not in the original source material,
Ovid’s Fasti, Book II: The Regifugium3. The addition of this painting, 26 stanzas long, is then
Shakespeare’s own artistic decision and would later influence the way he wrote Hamlet.
Seven or so years after he finished The Rape of Lucrece, Shakespeare wrote Hamlet (1601).
Interestingly, in Act II, scene 2 of Hamlet there is a section about Hecuba and the Trojan
War. This section, of about 80 lines, shares some similarities with the 182 lines about the
Trojan painting in The Rape of Lucrece. First, the source material of both is Book II of Virgil’s
Aeneid. Second, both sections stand thematically apart as moments of respite from the main
action (the court at Elsinore, and Lucrece’s rape, respectively)ーthese sections don’t further the
main action in other words. Third, we can also say that both sections touch self-consciously on
the topic of aesthetics since one is about a painting while the other is seemingly a section of
text from a play.
Since the Trojan painting section in The Rape of Lucrece sets forth Shakespeare’s ideas
about art and the role of the artist, it is logical to wonder if the Trojan War play, also a sort of
separate ‘set piece’, in Hamlet does something similar. Or does its mere existence pay homage
to Shakespeare’s earlier artistic self, since Hamlet is an allegory all about Shakespeare’s own
artistic journey as a fighter for the organic sun economy against fossil fuels?4 To understand
the role of this section, we first need to look at it.
The whole passage is given below:
Hamlet: I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was never acted;
or if it was, not above once; for the play, I remember, pleas'd
not the million, 'twas caviary to the general; but it was (as I
receiv'd it, and others, whose judgments in such matters cried in
the top of mine) an excellent play, well digested in the scenes,
set down with as much modesty as cunning. I remember one said
there were no sallets in the lines to make the matter savoury,
3http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/OvidFastiBkTwo.htm
4 https://www.slideshare.net/Fantasia47/hamletsun-26724500

11. nor no matter in the phrase that might indict the author of
affectation; but call'd it an honest method, as wholesome as
sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. One speech in't
I chiefly lov'd. 'Twas Aeneas' tale to Dido, and thereabout of it
especially where he speaks of Priam's slaughter. If it live in
your memory, begin at this line- let me see, let me see:
'The rugged Pyrrhus, like th' Hyrcanian beast-'
'Tis not so; it begins with Pyrrhus:
'The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms,
Black as his purpose, did the night resemble
When he lay couched in the ominous horse,
Hath now this dread and black complexion smear'd
With heraldry more dismal. Head to foot
Now is be total gules, horridly trick'd
With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,
Bak'd and impasted with the parching streets,
That lend a tyrannous and a damned light
To their lord's murther. Roasted in wrath and fire,
And thus o'ersized with coagulate gore,
With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
Old grandsire Priam seeks.'
So, proceed you.
Polonius. Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good accent and good
discretion.
 First Player. 'Anon he finds him,
Striking too short at Greeks. His antique sword,
Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
Repugnant to command. Unequal match'd,

12. Pyrrhus at Priam drives, in rage strikes wide;
But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword
Th' unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium,
Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top
Stoops to his base, and with a hideous crash
Takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear. For lo! his sword,
Which was declining on the milky head
Of reverend Priam, seem'd i' th' air to stick.
So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood,
And, like a neutral to his will and matter,
Did nothing.
But, as we often see, against some storm,
A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,
The bold winds speechless, and the orb below
As hush as death- anon the dreadful thunder
Doth rend the region; so, after Pyrrhus' pause,
Aroused vengeance sets him new awork;
And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall
On Mars's armour, forg'd for proof eterne,
With less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword
Now falls on Priam.
Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune! All you gods,
In general synod take away her power;
Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,
As low as to the fiends!
Polonius. This is too long.

13. Hamlet. It shall to the barber's, with your beard.ー Prithee say on.
He's for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps. Say on; come to
Hecuba.
First Player. 'But who, O who, had seen the mobled queen-'
Hamlet. 'The mobled queen'?
Polonius. That's good! 'Mobled queen' is good.
First Player. 'Run barefoot up and down, threat'ning the flames
With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head
Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe,
About her lank and all o'erteemed loins,
A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up-
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd
'Gainst Fortune's state would treason have pronounc'd.
But if the gods themselves did see her then,
When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
In Mincing with his sword her husband's limbs,
The instant burst of clamour that she made
(Unless things mortal move them not at all)
Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven
And passion in the gods.'
Polonius. Look, whe'r he has not turn'd his colour, and has tears in's
eyes. Prithee no more!
Hamlet. 'Tis well. I'll have thee speak out the rest of this soon.-
Good my lord, will you see the players well bestow'd? Do you
hear? Let them be well us'd; for they are the abstract and brief
chronicles of the time. After your death you were better have a

14. bad epitaph than their ill report while you live. (II.ii.433-526)
If this is an allegory, the question is who is Pyrrhus, and who is Priam? The most likely
answer is that Pyrrhus, who is associated with “night” and who has “sable arms/ Black as his
purpose” is coal, the usurper, or Claudius. Pyrrhus is also compared to a “painted tyrant”, not a
pleasant image, and it echoes the image we have of Claudius and fossil fuels. Priam would
then be the old order, the sun economy, (old Hamlet) and Hecuba is the queen who depends on
him, as Gertrude depended on old Hamlet.
As the First Player recites the lines about Hecuba’s suffering, Polonius remarks “Look
whe’er he has not turn’d his color and has tears in his eyes”, and soon after this everyone else
leaves and Hamlet, now alone, speaks. This is the famous “rogue and peasant slave”
monologue, and it is interesting that the word “conceit” occurs twice in it, right away:
Now I am alone.
O what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That, from her working, all his visage wann'd,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears.
Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing! (II.2.549-569) (my emphasis)

15. Knowing what we know about the importance of the word “conceit” in the lines about the
Trojan War painting in The Rape of Lucrece, we can guess that these instances of the word
“conceit” in Hamlet are clues that the Trojan War play, which has the same source and the
same theme, is also a conceit and by extension, Hamlet itself is another conceit, or allegory.
The First Player has apparently performed the lines with great emotion, and from this,
Prince Hamlet gives us a hint at how to understand the conceit of both the Trojan War play
and the one in Hamlet in general. As Lucrece becomes a sort of ‘artist’ giving a voice to Hecuba
in the Trojan War painting, the First Player is also a sort of artist, who stands in relation to
the characters he tells of as Hamlet does to his own family (Old Hamlet/Priam,
Claudius/Pyrrhus, Gertrude/Hecuba) situation: hence Hamlet asks rhetorically, “what would
(the player) do had he the motive and the cue for passion that I have?” Although these lines
seem to be some sort of spontaneous cry of emotion, they are actually revealing the conceit that
is present in the Trojan War play.
By extension, Shakespeare, the artist, stands in relation to the coal/usurper (Pyrrhus) and
to British society (Hecuba) and the sun economy (Priam) and he obviously felt that he did have
a “motive” and a “cue for passion”, as he watched the coal economy slowly, or rather quickly
even, killing off the sun economy. ‘Hecuba’ would have been not just society in general, but
particularly, the people who suffered as the new energy regime became dominant, the people
who suffered silently as the market economy took hold and as pollution increased quickly.
In The Rape of Lucrece as in the unnamed Trojan War play in Hamlet, Hecuba is that
silent group of suffering creatures, animals and people (fish, sparrows, swallows, bees, trees,
whales, dolphins, tigers, and many other species), those people who call for renewable energy
sources and oppose fossil fuels, those, in short, who need this artist, more than ever, to voice
our sorrows.