Incest in Pardon and Marriage - People Fas Harvard

Incest in Pardon and Marriage
wedloke, called her his wyfe, and made her his harlot, and in doble despyte of
maryage and relygyon both, lyueth wyth her openly and lyeth wyth her
nyghtly, in shamefull iriceste and abominable ly~herye.'~
Incest of a kind thus became the charge not only against such secu-
lar notables as Anne Boleyn, Queen Elizabeth's earthly mother, but
also against such religious notables as Bernardino Ochino and John
Bale, Elizabeth's spiritual fathers. "A kind of incest" at once both phys-
iological and spiritual is suggested by the absence of an answer to the
player-Brother Vincentio's proposal of marriage to the player-Sister
Isabella.
The Fiction of Chaste Marriage. In The Elementary Structures of Kin-
ship, Levi-Strauss writes, "Marriage is an arbitration between two loves,
parental and conjugal. [The two] are both forms of love, and the in-
stant the marriage takes place, considered in isolation, the two meet
and merge; 'love has filled the ocean.' Their meeting is doubtless
merely a prelude to their substitution for one another, the perfor-
mance of a sort of chase'-croise'. But to intercross they must at least mo-
mentarily be joined, and it is this which in all social thought makes
marriage a sacred mystery. At this moment, all marriage verges on
incest." 75
In Measure for Measure the "kind of incest" that Isabella is asked to
perform, first by Angelo and then by Claudio, is made more or less
acceptable by way of a series of commercial exchanges in which, for
the original barter exchange of maidenhead for head, are substituted
the monetary exchanges of maidenhead for maidenhead (Mariana
for Isabella) and of heads for head (Barnardine and Ragozine for
Claudio). Isabella kind of gives birth to her own brother, and the kind
of incest that Claudio (Angelo) proposes she commit is incorporated
and transcended by the kind of marriage that the Duke proposes.
Marriage as such appears to dissolve the dilemmas involving both
commercial taliation and sexual commensuration that inform the
play. In the essential moment of Measure for Measure, however, "all
marriage verges on incest."
Marriage appears to solve the fundamental issue of taliation by
creating or hypothesizing a condition of identity in difference where
"both are two but each is one," and it appears to solve the fundamen-
tal issue of sexual exchange by creating or hypothesizing an essen-
tially chaste relationship. This appearance is both its major ideological
role (marriage as estate or contract orders most all societies) and its
major dramaturgical role (marriage ends most all comedies). Thus
marriage of the traditional kind that the Duke first proposes may ap-
pear to be a welcome political and aesthetic closure, the desperately