SOURCE: McCabe, Richard A. “Shakespeare.” In Incest, Drama and Nature's Law, 1550-1700, pp. 156-90. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

In the following excerpt, McCabe surveys Shakespeare's subtle and varied use of the incest motif in his histories, tragedies, and romances.

The Consciences of Kings

‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments’: the nobility of the sentiment survives the bitterness of its context, conjuring up visions of spiritual union transcending all the fleshly ‘impediments’ prevalent throughout the Shakespearean canon. In Much Ado About Nothing the Friar warns Hero and Claudio that should either of them know of ‘any inward impediment’ forbidding them to be ‘conjoined’ they must utter it on peril of their souls (iv.1.11-13). The Tudor marriage service lies behind both passages but provides an inadequate gloss on either. In the world of Shakespearean drama the relationship between ‘truth’ and ‘nature’ is not that...