Shakespeare’s narrative poem *The Rape of Lucrece* was first published in 1594.
The poem was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 9 May 1594 and later appeared in a quarto printed by Richard Field for the bookseller John Harrison. Its title page called the work simply *Lucrece*, although “The Rape of Lucrece” appeared as the running title and became the standard modern name.
Shakespeare dedicated the poem to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, as he had dedicated *Venus and Adonis* the previous year. The poem contains 1,855 lines arranged in 265 seven-line stanzas and draws on versions of the Roman story found in Livy and Ovid.
Readers sometimes confuse 1594 with 1593, the publication year of *Venus and Adonis*. They may also associate Shakespeare’s poems with 1623, the year of the First Folio, but *The Rape of Lucrece* was printed separately decades earlier.