"The Tale of Tereus" and the Story of Procne: Innogen's Bedside Reading.

Author/Editor
Boecker, Bettina.

Title
"The Tale of Tereus" and the Story of Procne: Innogen's Bedside Reading.

Published
Boecker, Bettina. "'The Tale of Tereus' and the Story of Procne: Innogen's Bedside Reading." Shakespeare 20.3 (2024): 415-32.

Review
This article concerns the bedchamber scene in Shakespeare's "Cymbeline" 2.2, specifically Innogen's reading the "Tale of Tereus" (2.2.45) just before she falls asleep and Giacomo emerges from a trunk to spy on her. The Ovidian story describes a rape, and Giacomo's action is a kind of rape although physical touching does not occur. Boecker addresses two previous deficiencies in scholarship on Innogen's reading: the exclusive focus on the rapist mind of Giacomo, at the expense of Innogen's mind in the act of reading, reducing her to a passive victim (416); and the assumption that Innogen's book must be Ovid's "Metamorphoses" (418). For Shakespeare and his audience, Boecker argues, the "Tale of Tereus" included a tradition of English Ovidiana where Procne and Philomela also figure prominently, and which offer insight into the consciousness of Innogen, her active "non-conformism" (417), and the early modern women poets who embraced the tale (418-19). Thus, Innogen's book is better understood as an "amalgam" of Ovid and four English intertexts: Chaucer, Gower, George Gascoigne, and George Pettie (419). Gower's "Tale of Tereus" is told as an exemplum against "ravine," a violent branch of avarice including rape (422). In its equal focus on Procne and Philomela, Gower's version provided Innogen with a model of female "agency" against oppression by the male (422). Tereus mutilates Philomela only after she has threatened to tell the world of his crime (423). Not only does Procne carry out a gruesome revenge on Tereus, but even as a bird she continues to broadcast his perfidy (423). Gower's version also invokes the political theory of Giles of Rome whereby a virtuous monarch is like a faithful husband. This resonates with Innogen's insight that if Posthumus is unfaithful to her, which as a faithful wife she does not believe, he has also "forgot Britain" (424). [LBB. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 44.1]

Date
2024

Gower Subjects
Influence and Later Allusion
Confessio Amantis
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations