Flo. And he, and more Do, and be witness to 't. Pol. Fairly offer'd. Cam. This shows a sound affection. Say you the like to him? Per. But, my daughter I cannot speak So well, nothing so well; no, nor mean better: Shep. Flo. O, that must be I' the virtue of your daughter: one being dead, Shep. And daughter, yours." Come, your hand; To the argument of Polixenes that the father of Florizel ought to know of his proceeding, the young man answers.— "Flo. Mark our contract." Come, come, he must not: And then the father, discovering himself, exclaims,— "Mark your divorce, young sir." Here, then, in the publicity of a village festival, the hand of the loved one is solemnly taken by her "servant;" he breathes his life before the ancient stranger who is accidentally present. The stranger is called to be witness to the protestation; and so is the neighbour who has come with him. The maiden is called upon by her father to speak, and then the old man adds,— "Take hands, a bargain." The friends are to bear witness to it: "I give my daughter to him, and will make The impatient lover then again exclaims, "Contract us 'fore these witnesses. The shepherd takes the hands of the youth and the maiden. Again the lover exclaims, "Mark our contract." The ceremony is left incomplete, for the princely father discovers himself with, “ "Mark your divorce, young sir." We have thus shown, by implication, that in the time of Shakspere betrothment was not an obsolete rite. Previous to the Reformation it was in all probability that civil contract derived from the Roman law, which was confirmed indeed by the sacrament of marriage, but which usually preceded it for a definite period,—some say forty days,— having perhaps too frequently the effect of the marriage of the Church as regarded the unrestrained intercourse of those so espoused. In a work published in 1543, The Christian State of Matrimony,' we find this passage: "Yet in this thing also must I warn every reasonable and honest person to beware that in the contracting of marriage they dissemble not, nor set forth any lie. Every man likewise must esteem the person to whom he is handfasted none otherwise than for his own spouse; though as yet it be not done in the church, nor in the street. fasting and making of the contract the wedding should not be deferred too long." goes on to rebuke a custom, "that at the handfasting there is made a great feast and superfluous banquet;" and he adds words which imply that the Epithalamium was at this feast sung, without a doubt of its propriety, "certain weeks afore they go to the church,” where "All sanctimonious ceremonies may With full and holy rite be minister'd." After the handchurch-going and The author then The passage in 'The Tempest' from which we quote these lines has been held to show that Shakspere denounced, with peculiar solemnity, that impatience which waited not for "all sanctimonious ceremonies." a But it must be remembered that the solitary position of Ferdinand and Miranda prevented even the solemnity of a betrothment; there could be no witnesses of the public contract; it would be of the nature of those privy contracts which the ministers of religion, early in the reign of Elizabeth, were commanded to exhort young people to abstain from. The proper exercise of that authority during half a century had not only repressed these privy contracts, but had confined the ancient practice of espousals, with their almost inevitable freedoms, to persons in the lower ranks of life, who might be somewhat indifferent to opinion. A learned writer on the Common Prayer, Sparrow, holds that the Marriage Service of the Church of England was both a betrothment and a marriage. It united the two forms. At the commencement of the service the man says, "I plight thee my troth;" and the woman, "I give thee my troth." This form approaches as nearly as possible to that of a civil contract; but then comes the religious sanction to the obligation,-the sacrament of matrimony. In the form of espousals so minutely recited by the priest in 'Twelfth Night,' he is only present to seal the compact by his "testimony." The marriage customs of Shakspere's youth and the opinions regarding them might be very different from the practice and opinions of thirty years later, when he wrote 'The Tempest.' But in no case does he attempt to show, even through his lovers themselves, that the public trothplight was other than a preliminary to a more solemn and binding ceremonial, however it might approach to the character of a marriage. It is remarkable that Webster, on the contrary, who was one of Shakspere's later contemporaries, has made the heroine of one of his noblest tragedies, 'The Duchess of Malli,' in the warmth of her affection for her steward, exclaim— "I have heard lawyers say, a contract in a chamber a Life of Shakspeare by Mr.de Quincey, in the Encyclopædia Britan nica.' This is an allusion to the distinctions of the canon law between betrothing and marrying-the betrothment being espousals with the verba de futuro; the marriage, espousals with the verba de præsenti. The Duchess of Malfi had misinterpreted the lawyers when she believed that a secret "contract in a chamber" was "absolute marriage," whether the engagement was for the present or the future. It is scarcely necessary to point out to our readers that the view we have taken presupposes that the licence for matrimony, obtained from the Consistorial Court at Worcester, was a permission sought for under no extraordinary circumstances;-still less that the young man who was about to marry was compelled to urge on the marriage as a consequence of previous imprudence. We believe, on the contrary, that the course pursued was strictly in accordance with the customs of the time, and of the class to which Shakspere belonged. The espousals before witnesses, we have no doubt, were then considered as constituting a valid marriage, if followed up within a limited time by the marriage of the Church. However the Reformed Church might have endeavoured to abrogate this practice, it was unquestionably the ancient habit of the people. It was derived from the Roman law, the foundation of many of our institutions. It prevailed for a long period without offence. It still prevails in the Lutheran Church. We are not to judge of the customs of those days by our own, especially if our inferences have the effect of imputing criminality where the most perfect innocence existed. Because Shakspere's marriage-bond is dated in November, 1582, and his daughter is born in May, 1583, we are not to believe that here was "haste and secrecy." Mr. Halliwell has brought sound documentary evidence to bear upon this question; he has shown that the two bondsmen, Sandels and Richardson, were respectable neighbours of the Hathaways of Shottery, although, like Anne herself, they are described as of Stratford. This disposes of the "secrecy." In the same year that Shakspere was married, Mr. Halliwell has shown that there were two entries in the Stratford Register, recording the church rite of marriage to have preceded the baptism of a child, by shorter periods than indicated by Shakspere's marriage-bond; and that in cases where the sacredness of the marriage has been kept out of view, illegitimacy is invariably noted in these registers. The "haste" was evidently not required in fear of the scandal of Stratford. We believe that the course pursued was strictly in accordance with the custom of the time, and of the class to which the Shaksperes and Hathaways belonged. CHAPTER VI. “THIS William, being inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to London, I guess about eighteen, and was an actor at one of the playhouses, and did act exceedingly well. Now Ben Jonson was never a good actor, but an excellent instructor. He began early to make Essays at Dramatic Poetry, which at that time was very low, and his plays took well." So writes honest Aubrey, in the year 1680, in his 'Minutes of Lives' addressed to his "worthy friend Mr. Anthony à Wood, Antiquary of Oxford." Of the value of Aubrey's evidence we may form some opinion from his own statement to his friend:-""T is a task that I never thought to have undertaken till you imposed it upon me, saying that I was fit for it by reason of my general acquaintance, having now not only lived above half a century of years in the world, but have also been much tumbled up and down in it; which hath made me so well known. Besides the modern advantage of coffee-houses in this great city, before which men knew not how to be acquainted but with their own relations or societies, I might add that I come of a longævous race, by which means I have wiped some feathers off the wings of time for several generations, which does reach high." ง 2 It must not be forgotten that Aubrey's account of Shakspere, brief and imperfect as it is, is the earliest known to exist. Rowe's 'Life' was not published This letter, which accompanies the 'Lives, is dated London, June 15. 1680. |