ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the connotations of illegitimacy as a figure of speech associated with evil in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century English drama, and explores the associations of the bastard with national and social stability and identity. In early modern England, illegitimacy or questionable or unknown paternity obscured or destabilised the connection between the father and the child, and thereby damaged the links which bound each individual into a community where transfer of property, status, and hence, social identity between generations generally took place along patriarchal lines. Illegitimacy, paternity, and genealogy could all be described as the instruments through which a society affirms its identity through connections with the past. In late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England the separation from the Church of Rome, Henry VIII's matrimonial complexities, and a series of childless monarchs had created profound anxieties over succession and the legitimacy and identity of the nation.
