SOURCE: "The Shadow of Antioch: Sexuality in Pericles, Prince of Tyre," in Parallel Lives: Spanish and English National Drama 1580-1680, edited by Louise and Peter Fothergill-Payne, Bucknell University Press, 1991, pp. 167-79.

In the following essay first presented at an International Conference in 1987, Leggatt describes the specter of incest that hangs over all of the sexual relationships in Pericles.

When incest appears in Jacobean drama it is generally treated as a fundamental violation of nature, a criminal passion that horrifies even those who are in its grip. Arbaces in A King and No King is driven temporarily mad when he believes he has conceived an incestuous desire for his sister; Ferdinand in The Duchess of Malfi will not admit his desire even to himself. Isabella in Women Beware Women will sleep with her uncle only when told he is not her uncle; when she learns the truth she murders...