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

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in the family and on a national level, though the plot resolution often reverses this
expectation. It is perhaps not surprising that of all the works produced by Renaissance
playwrights, 80 contain an incest theme (Wilkinson 5).
One of these works with the most obvious reliance on incest in its plot is
Shakespeare’s Pericles. The story of Apollonius was well known, having been
transmitted from classical tales from as early as the fifth century BCE (Archibald 4). 3
Gower’s “Tale of Apollonius” was one of Shakespeare’s primary sources, Gower having
translated it from the Latin for the Confessio Amantis (Archibald 14). In fact, a character
named Gower acts as the Chorus in Shakespeare’s play, directing its interpretation much
as Chaucer had the Man of Law comment on the impropriety of the same tale in the
Confessio Amantis. The two texts are unequivocal in their critiques of the incestuous,
tyrannical king. The plot of the traditional story is retained in Pericles and is anchored in
father-daughter incest, but a comparison of Gower’s tale to Shakespeare’s play indicates
a greater degree of antagonism toward the daughter in the early modern text.
In Confessio Amantis, the pathos of the daughter’s anguish and suffering
demonstrates her horror over her father’s actions:
Bot sche, which hath ben overlad
Of that sche myhte noght be wreke,
For schame couthe unethes speke;
And evere wissheth after deth,
(Confessio Amantis VIII.322-47)
3 Archibald’s study, Apollonius of Tyre: Medieval and Renaissance Themes and Variations, studies the
“literary transmission, reception, and taste” surrounding the long history of the Historia Apollonii Regis
Tyre and includes most, if not all, of the known translations of the story. They range from (oral) Greek,
Syrian, Norse, Provencal, Bohemian, Icelandic and Roman, among others.