Shakespeare and Marriage: An Open Question

Abstract

Marriage is a focus of conflict today, from lamentations about divorce rates to legal contests over same-sex marriage. It was equally contested in Shakespeare’s England, even if the issues at stake were somewhat different. Recent scholarship on the history of marriage has unsettled many of the assumptions that once governed discussions of early modern marriage and its representation on the stage. It is no longer safe to assume we know what early modern marriage meant, how it felt, or what it achieved or required. This essay focuses particularly on new research on rates of marriage in early modern England, on married women’s agency, will, and work, and on same-sex attachments. What are the implications of these new approaches for our readings of Shakespeare’s plays? Is marriage a happy ending? Is it an ending at all?