Incest in Pardon and Marriage - People Fas Harvard

Incest in Pardon and Mawiage
she must not be the Countess's daughter or Bertram must not be the
Countess's son. Helena insists on the first, that she can be the daughterin-law,
but not the daughter, of the Counte~s.~~ The plot suggests the
alternative condition for a chaste marriage, namely, the figurative disestablishment
of Bertram as the Countess's son. "He was my son," says
the Countess to Helena when she learns of Bertram's flight, "But I do
wash his name out of my blood / And thou art all my child" (AWW
3.2.68-70). The Countess's daughter (as the Countess would make
Helena) would be able to marry the Countess's ex-son.
"My sister, my spouse" (Song of Sol. 4: 12). The distinction in law
between spouse and sibling on which Helena relies recalls the conflict
between nature and law in Measure for Measure. There is a crucial difference
between the two plays, however. In All's Well, it is clear enough
that Helena is not actually Bertram's blood sister, and the question of
whether one can legally marry one's legally adopted sibling is not
raised. (As Shakespeare knew, the Roman Church is equivocal in
treating the question of whether siblings by legal adoption can marry.)
In Measure for Measure, on the other hand, it is unclear who is the
blood relative of whom, hence who can marry whom. And Measure for
Measure raises a question kept in abeyance in All's Well: whether our
status as equal children (liberi) of God the Father (pater)-as His bornagain
adopted children-does not, on account of the universality of
our Siblinghood, either bar us from all sexual relations (as in celibacy)
or require us to commit incest of a kind (as in libertinage). Measure for
Measure thus confronts directly the tension between nature and law.
Children of Adoption. Vincentio is, politically speaking, the father of
the patriarchal, secular community in which Isabella is a citizen (a
child); religiously speaking, he is both her "ghostly father" (5.1.128)insofar
as he is her confessor and the purported representative of the
Pope5'-and her brother, insofar as he has played at being a Brother
by virtue of his disguise and she has played at being a Sister in her
novitiate. (Vincentio is also both a father and a brother to Mariana:
like a father, he offers to give her a dowry [the sentenced Angelo's
possessions] with which to buy a husband [5.1.423]; in giving this new
dowry, he restores what her brother lost at sea [3.1.215-181.) But
what is the precise significance of a layman disguised as a friar or of a
novice nun within the context of this play?
Let us first take up the question of Isabella's novitiate. There is a
remarkable confusion in Measure forMeasure about whether the novice
Isabella is a nun or a laywoman. The Provost introduces her to Angelo
as "a very virtuous maid; / And to be shortly of a sisterhood, / If not