The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 15.1128  Thursday, 27 May 2004

From:           Gabriel Egan <
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Date:           Thursday, 27 May 2004 09:20:52 +0100
Subject:        Representing Incest in Genealogy

Emboldened by past success in asking SHAKSPERians questions that were
hard to get quick answers to elsewhere, I wonder if anyone can tell me
how incest gets represented in the family trees that genealogists draw.

I've trawled through a few of the easily available guides to making
family trees, and although illegitimacy is acknowledged, incest isn't. I
may have been looking at the wrong guides, of course. It seems to me
that where horizontal lines represent mates and vertical lines represent
offspring from mating, there's bound to be a problem representing
offspring who subsequently become mates with one of their parents. (I'm
being a bit coldly biological in terminology here, but it helps clarify
the issue I think.)

I ask this because I suspect that the arboreal imagery of Pericles might
be related to the theme of incest.

Gabriel Egan

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