Genre Categorization: Shakespeare’s Lucrece and Trying Again

Abstract

As Shakespeare’s Cymbeline concludes, the eponymous King of Britain miraculously finds himself within a loving and loyal family once again, his kingdom safe and reconciled to his Roman overlords, in spite of his own cascade of misguided acts. He seems to know that he has a powerful ally above, as witnessed by his apostrophe: “Heaven mend all!” (V.v.68). He might have added: “since I clearly can’t manage very well by myself.” Britain has been saved from the hands of a wicked queen and a foolish usurper in spite of Cymbeline’s weakness. The rightful heirs are returned, the king’s son-in-law, Posthumus, saved from his own stupidity, his faithful wife, Innogen, restored to him. The repentant Giacomo, when asked by the king to “Come to the matter” (V.iv.168) declares: “Your daughter’s chastity — there it begins” (V.iv.179). Is she, his daughter, the “heaven” who mended all? It is the purpose of this chapter to adumbrate the analogy in these plays between two abstractions — the grace of a providential divinity and the chastity of women — which together have been given equal billing, here, for the happy outcome.

Yea, the illiterate that know not how

to cipher what is writ in learned books

Will quote my loathsome tresspass in my looks.

— Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece, ll. 810–12

In the course of primate evolution, “the most challenging problem faced by individuals was dealing with their companions.”

— From Machiavellian Intelligence II, eds Andrew W. Whiten and Richard W. Byrne