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Sam Thompson, Bound to a Corpse: A Macabre Emblem in Early Modern Drama, Notes and Queries, Volume 59, Issue 1, March 2012, Pages 82–86, https://doi.org/10.1093/notesj/gjr279
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AMONG the various atrocities evoked on the early modern stage we encounter the recurring idea of a living person bound to a corpse. This image of horrific intimacy with the dead, which has a source in the Aeneid, also appears in prose texts of the period and in Geffrey Whitney's A Choice of Emblems. It plays a complex symbolic role in the drama, where, as used by Marston, Chapman, Jonson, and Webster, it is associated with slander, jealousy, adultery, and sexual violence.
Marston uses the image to open the first scene of Antonio's Revenge (1599–1601):
Enter PIERO unbraced, his armes bare, smeared in blood, a poniard in one hand, bloody, and a torch in the other, STROTZO following him with a cord.
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Piero1 explains that ‘Feliche stabbed’ will be ‘laid by Mellida, to stop the match / And hale on mischief’ (I.i.75–8). In the event, Feliche's trunk is not bound to Mellida's ‘panting side’ in the most literal sense: instead the dead body of Feliche is revealed where we expected to find the living body of Mellida (I.iii.130), and Pietro figuratively ‘binds’ Mellida to the corpse by falsely accusing her of adultery, claiming he killed Feliche because he saw ‘that incestuous slave / Clipping the strumpet with luxurious twines' (I.iv.17–18). Pietro's use of a murder victim's corpse as fabricated evidence for adultery puts into practice the threat with which Tarquin coerces his victim in The Rape of Lucrece (1594):
