SUMMERS, KAREN CRADY, Ph.D. Reading Incest - The University ...

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CHAPTER III
‘INCEST IS IN ME’: INCEST AND EARLY MODERN DRAMA
Incest is certainly a familiar trope in medieval tales; writers often appropriated
pre-Christian tales to highlight the dangers of poor self-governance. Incest is formulated
as the ultimate expression of the destructive effects of loss of self-control, as passion
overcomes reason and the human slides toward the bestial. Perilous for the individual, it
is disastrous in a king, as he puts an entire nation at risk. This chapter will interrogate
the changes in usage of the incest motif from the medieval period into the early modern
age by examining three specific works. As English society consciously moved against
Catholicism as a method of understanding the world, it might be expected that interest in
old-fashioned tales of such “unkynde abhominaciouns” would fade from popularity and
usefulness, but instead it mushroomed and found expression on the stage.
As Gower and Malory knew, medieval Englishmen were no strangers to dynastic
shifts. The several dedications of Confessio Amantis reveal one such shift from Richard
II to Henry IV, as well as awareness of the prudence of avoiding any outright critique of
the king. Malory’s knights of Camelot experienced the armed conflict and intermittent
battles that mirrored the rivalry between the Yorkists and the Lancastrians which
culminated in the rise of the Tudor line when Henry Tudor won the crown from Richard
III on Bosworth Field in 1485, effectively ending the Wars of the Roses and establishing
peace.