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

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comes not from an instinctive application of kynde but instead from Marina’s
resemblance to her mother and especially through her telling of riddles.
Archibald notes that “the ability to solve riddles has always been the supreme sign
of royalty—incest not only the first sin, but also the first riddle” (24). Riddles are ways
to teach and to demonstrate education: they may also disguise a potentially dangerous
commentary or critique, as in the opening riddle scene common to all redactions of the
Apollonius story. Riddles “have a fundamental association with incest and endogamy”
(Archibald 24); the prototypical incest tale, Oedipus Rex, is the prime example of this.
But there is a significant difference in the story of the riddle between Gower’s version
and Shakespeare’s. Gower portrays the incest as the father’s rape of his daughter but
Shakespeare implies the daughter’s willing participation. Gower’s Antiochus speaks the
riddle to Apollonius:
With felonie I am upbore,
I ete and have it noght forbore
Mi modres fleissh, whos housebonde
Mi fader forto seche I fonde,
Which is the Sone ek of my wif (Confessio Amantis VIII.405-409)
Though Antiochus is speaking, he does so in the persona of the daughter. In
Shakespeare’s play, Pericles himself reads the riddle, again crafted in the “I” of the
daughter’s voice:
I am no viper, yet I feed
On mother's flesh which did me breed.
I sought a husband, in which labour
I found that kindness in a father:
He's father, son, and husband mild;