Pt. I. Acts and monuments of violation -- Spectacles of violation: enacting the witness of word and woodcut -- "Find out this abuse": virgin-violators and sheep-biters in Measure for measure -- "Break ... all the bounds of manhood, noblesse and religion": George Chapman's Bussy D'Ambois -- pt. II. Ravishing the subject's masculinity -- "I'le want my will else": the rhetoric of rape and rights -- Arbella Stuart Seymour: "this unadvised young woman ... so wilfully bent" -- "This sight doth shake all that is man within me": sexual violation and the rhetoric of dissent in The cardinal -- pt. III. Renegotiating the rhetoric of abusive sexuality -- Margaret Cavendish and the regicidal historiographers: chastizing the royal will -- Boiling passions, bloody hearts, horrid spectacle: Dryden's conquest of England for the Stuarts -- "Willing rape is all the fashion": partisan politics and unruly sexuality in Aphra Behn's The city heiress.