>>5570267Well rape and mutilation was a source of fascination in literature since at least Philomel, endless idolised artwork of that scene repeated throughout history, Shakespeare amplified it by combining it with Lavinia tongueless hand-stump amputation in Titus Andronicus. Pic related is some theatre performance but I can recommend the thoughtful Anthony Hopkins / Julie Taymor film adaptation Titus (1999) incidentally I believe Steve Bannon financed that film during his investment banking days, hehe
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/11/29/titus-in-space/I think I discussed and analysed the notorious Titus Shakespeare rape scene on qtg before, so instead here is Henry V at his most heroic or possibly questionable moment threatening the helpless innocent French townswomen of Harfleur with ravishings despoilment and infant slaughter, to the delight of the Elizabethan audience
KING HENRY V:
(...)
Therefore to our best mercy give yourselves;
Or like to men proud of destruction
Defy us to our worst: for, as I am a soldier,
A name that in my thoughts becomes me best,
If I begin the battery once again,
I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur
Till in her ashes she lie buried.
The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,
And the flesh'd soldier, rough and hard of heart,
In liberty of bloody hand shall range
With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass
Your fresh-fair virgins and your flowering infants.
What is it then to me, if impious war,
Array'd in flames like to the prince of fiends,
Do, with his smirch'd complexion, all fell feats
Enlink'd to waste and desolation?
What is't to me, when you yourselves are cause,
If your pure maidens fall into the hand
Of hot and forcing violation?
(...)
Therefore, you men of Harfleur,
Take pity of your town and of your people,
Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command;
Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace
O'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds
Of heady murder, spoil and villany.
If not, why, in a moment look to see
The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters;
Your fathers taken by the silver beards,
And their most reverend heads dash'd to the walls,
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,
Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused
Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry
At Herod's bloody-hunting slaughtermen.
What say you? will you yield, and this avoid,
Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy'd?
