CHASTITY AS SPECTACLE IN WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S CYMBELINE AND THOMAS MIDDLETON’S HENGIST
CHASTITY AS SPECTACLE IN WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S CYMBELINE AND THOMAS MIDDLETON’S HENGIST

Summary/Abstract: Chastity as Spectacle in William Shakespeare’s Cymbeline and Thomas Middleton’s Hengist. This paper is concerned with the depiction of female chastity in Thomas Middleton’s Hengist and William Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. It employs Lacanian and Foucauldian perspectives on the concept of the gaze, combining feminist and psychoanalytical approaches in order to illuminate divergent perspectives on chastity, which serve as crucial contrasts between Middleton’s and Shakespeare’s art. Hengist’s Castiza and Cymbeline’s Innogen are both portrayed as paragons of chastity, but this moral feature is perceived differently in the two plays. Unbeknownst to her, Castiza becomes the victim of rape by her husband and subsequently faces public judgment for her supposed dishonour. This analysis demonstrates that this represents the jarring effect of politicizing chastity in the play, of stripping it of its moral valences and instead transforming it into a social currency. The main assumption is that chastity becomes a panoptical spectacle in Hengist, due to the male gaze by which women are kept under societal control. Conversely, although Innogen also experiences the intrusive gaze of Iachimo, her virtue empowers her to confront her wrongdoer by assuming a male disguise. The analysis identifies a fundamental contrast in the treatment of chastity between the two plays: in Cymbeline, it remains a personal conviction impervious to external scrutiny, whereas in Hengist, it devolves into a social commodity that diminishes Castiza’s ability to retaliate.

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