ABSTRACT
Hazards endemic to the structures of accusation and defense are crucially amplified by the monarchical settings of The Winter's Tale and Cymbeline and by women's explicit confrontation with the tyranny of male power. This chapter argues that, in these two plays, women's defenses against the accusation of cuckoldry work as "insurrectionary" acts in Butler's terms and are staged as necessary corrections to a system in rebellion against itself. Both plays are haunted by, repeat, and resist the violence of Othello: Iago's poisonous whispers, the reciprocal and complementary but opposing dynamics of bonds and competitions between men, the looming violence women confront as their men lose faith in their constancy, and women's voices lamenting the disloyalty of their men. Narratives about the female body, about the threat to masculinist systems of honor and reputation posed by female desire, and about the vulnerability of men to women are dismantled by the play's treatment of Innogen.
