Swearing by Hercules

Abstract This chapter shows that Hercules’ plural and contradictory mythos presents a rich array of tonal and generic possibilities and resources for early modern writers. In the ‘old’ Arcadia Sidney uses Hercules’ multiplicity—and particularly the slipperiness between Hercules in his comic and tragic manifestations—to express differences in social register and social status, and to draw attention to characters’ departures from decorum and to the troubling use of mythological information by suspect women. In the ‘old’ Arcadia these uses play off, and indeed depend upon, Hercules’ variegated and unstable mythos, and the tonal instability that they create. However, this effect is no longer desirable in the ‘new’ Arcadia. The chapter demonstrates that the changing generic profile of Sidney’s revision, and its introduction of the dangerously mythologically learned Cecropia, result in a decrease in Hercules’ textual appearances, and attempts to limit or ‘control’ more undesirable episodes in Hercules’ mythos when the hero is referenced.