Shakespeare's Wife (12 page)

…at our meetings on the holy days between the lads and the wenches, such true mirth at honest meetings, such dancing on the green, in the market house or about the may-pole, where the young folks smiling kiss at every turning, and the old folks checking with laughing their children, when dancing for the garland, playing at stool ball for a tansy and a banquet of curds and cream, with a cup of old nappy ale, matter of small charge with a little reward for the piper, after casting of sheep's eyes and faith and troth for a bargain, clapping of hands, are seals to the truth of hearts, when a pair of gloves or a handkerchief are as good as the best obligation, with a cap and a curtsey hie you home, maids to milking, and so merrily goes the day away.
⁷

At such gatherings a young woman who was not spoken for would have found it difficult to steal away with an unattached boy, but space was made for young people known to be courting, so that they could be together unobserved, even to the extent of leaving them together in the family house in the dark. The likelihood is that Ann Hathaway and young Shakespeare were known to be courting months before her father's friends applied for a special licence for them to marry. Further evidence of a tradition in parts of England of bedding the couple first and going to the church in the morning can be found in the well-known ballad of
The Northamptonshire Lover
:

 

The damsel, this perceiving

And noting his behaviour,

Thought fit to entertain him,

Possessed of all her favour,

Which he enjoyed with full consent.

So unto church they go,

Where he espoused the maid he loved,

Fa lero lero lo.
⁸

 

Ann's enemies among the bardolaters have seen a rejection of his own youthful behaviour in
Measure for Measure
, in the harsh treatment meted out to Claudio, who seems to have done pretty much as he did in 1582.

 

upon a true contract

I got possession of Julietta's bed.

You know the lady. She is fast my wife,

Save that we do the denunciation lack

Of outward order. This we came not to

Only for propagation of a dower

Remaining in the coffer of her friends,

From whom we thought it meet to hide our love

Till time had made them for us, but it chances

The stealth of our most mutual entertainment

With character too gross is writ on Juliet. (I. iv. 133–48)

 

There was nothing sinful in Claudio's and Julia's cohabitation, because, having said the words of the
sponsalia per verba de praesenti
, they would have been married in the eyes of God. The ‘denunciation of outward order' is merely the making public of the state of affairs to enable its recognition in law. When Isabella hears of the pregnancy she simply cries, ‘O let him marry her,' which would have been the reaction of most of the audience. Lucio, the whoremonger, tells her that Angelo has ‘picked out an act' under which the punishment for fornication is death. When the disguised duke comes across Julia, he asks her if their ‘offenceful act' was mutually committed, which, as we have seen, is enough to sanctify it, but the duke interprets the fact as increasing Julia's burden of guilt: ‘Then was your guilt of heavier kind than his' (II. iii. 30). Julia takes the burden upon herself:

 

I do repent me as it is an evil,

And take the shame with joy. (37–8)

 

Measure for Measure
was written in 1604–5; bedding before wedding had been roundly condemned from the pulpit for years and by then the protestant reformers were beginning to see a result. More and more vicars' courts all over the country were summoning newly-weds to face charges of fornication if their first child was born within forty weeks of the wedding, and punishing them by the same public humiliation and fines that had earlier been imposed for fornication and adultery. Public perceptions were changing; although the average
age of marriage was the highest ever recorded, premarital pregnancy and bastardy were both disappearing from parish registers.
⁹
The full extent of this step-change in public mores has yet to be charted, much less explained. Claudio's behaviour and Angelo's summary justice would have been judged differently by different sections of Shakespeare's audiences whether at court or in the public theatres.
Measure for Measure
squarely confronts the shift in moral perception together with the distressing truth that more and more women fleeing disgrace in the church courts or actually driven out of town by the parish authorities for ‘unlawful pregnancy' were arriving in London every week to swell the ranks of prostitutes.

The solemnisation of the marriage of Ann Hathaway and William Shakespeare is not to be found in any surviving register, which doesn't mean that they were married hugger-mugger by a hedge-priest. The issuing of the special licence itself suggests that the wedding of Will and Ann was to be properly solemnised,
in coram populo
, before a congregation, and by a priest with the authority to perform the ceremony. We could hope that, though it was out of season, they treated themselves to a village wedding. Ann may even have heard the bridesmaids singing
The Bride's Goodmorrow
as she opened her shutters on that dark November morning.

 

The night is past and joyful day appeareth

Most clear on every side.

With pleasant music we therefore salute you,

Good Morrow, Mistress Bride.

From sleep and slumber now wake you out of hand.

Your bridegroom stayeth at home,

Whose fancy, favour and affection still doth stand

Fixed on thee alone.

Dress you in your best array!

This must be your wedding day.
¹⁰

 

Traditionally, the wedding celebrations took a whole summer's day, beginning with the waking of the bride by her maids and ending after sunset. At sun-up the village girls would form a procession and walk to the bride's house, singing as they went. Having roused the
bride and dressed her they would then escort her on foot through the village to the church. In the epithalamium that he wrote for his own wedding with Elizabeth Boyle in 1594, Spenser conflated popular custom with the classic form; though he summoned the Muses to be bridesmaids, their duties are recognisable as those of English girls.

 

Early before the world's life-giving lamp

His golden beam upon the hills doth spread,

Having dispersed the night's uncheerful damp,

Do ye awake and with fresh lustihead

Go to the bower of my beloved love,

My truest turtle dove;

Bid her awake…

Bid her awake therefore and soon her dight [i.e. dress]—

And while she doth her dight,

Do ye to her of joy and solace sing,

That all the woods may answer and your echo ring.
¹¹

 

It was the maids' job to arrange the bride's gown and hair, which would be worn spread on her shoulders for the last time. As a married woman she would put it up and cover it with a kerchief. Spenser gives us an idea of the costume of a bride of the 1580s:

 

Clad all in white, that seems a virgin best…

Her long loose yellow locks like golden wire,

Sprinkled with pearl and pearling flowers a-tween,

Do like a golden mantle her attire,

And being crowned with a garland green,

Seem like some maiden queen.
¹²

 

Ann is unlikely to have dressed in white, but she would have had a new gown for the occasion. When widowed Jack of Newbury took a second bride she appeared before the company of local gentry,

attired in a gown of sheep's russet and a kirtle of fine worsted, her head attired with a biliment of gold, and her hair as yellow as gold, hanging down behind her, which was curiously combed and pleated, according
to the manner in those days. She was led to the church between two sweet boys, with bride-laces and rosemary tied about their silken sleeves.
¹³

Sometimes the bridesmaids prepared the way to the church, so that the bride did not sully her slippers:

 

As I have seen upon a bridal day,

Full many maids clad in their best array,

In honour of the bride come with their flaskets

Filled full with flowers, others, in wicker baskets,

Bring from the marsh rushes to o'erspread

The ground whereon the lovers tread.
¹⁴

 

Sometimes the groom too was woken with music; in
The Merchant of Venice
the music Portia will have played while Bassanio considers the caskets will be such:

 

As are those dulcet sounds in break of day,

That creep into the dreaming bridegroom's ear

And summon him to marriage. (III. iii. 51–3)

 

The groom too had new clothes for the occasion: ‘[The groom's] house was as full of lusty gallants that took care to set out their bridegroom all new from top to toe, with a pair of green garters tied cross above the knee and a dozen of crewel points that set off his hose very fair.'
¹⁵
The groom then walks to the bride's house with his attendant knights, ‘fresh boys' ‘in their fresh garments trim' with the musicians, the pipe, the tabor and the excited crowd.

 

The whiles the boys run up and down the street,

Crying aloud with strong, confusèd noise…
¹⁶

 

Among the garlands brought by the maids should be a special one for the bride, according to Spenser, ‘of lilies and of roses Bound true-love-wise with a blue silk riband'.
¹⁷
The onlookers begin to applaud as the groom's party approaches and at last the bride appears:

 

Forth, honoured groom; behold not far behind,

Your willing bride, led by two strengthless boys…
¹⁸

 

The wedding was above all a celebration for the neighbourhood. Rather than bringing presents the guests brought flowers and herbs, and were rewarded by the bride with tokens, usually twopenny gloves.

 

All things are ready and every whit prepared

To bear you company.

Your friends and parents do give their attendance

Together courteously.

The house is dressed and garnished for your sake

With flowers gallant and green.

A solemn feast your comely cooks do ready make,

Where all your friends will be seen.

Young men and maids do ready stand

With sweet rosemary in their hand…
¹⁹

 

With all this clamour anyone in the neighbourhood who didn't already know that a marriage was toward would join the throng that was bringing the bridal pair towards the church. Such a village wedding was as public as could be, with all the neighbours, as well as the couple's parents and the ubiquitous ‘friends' who had made the match and drawn up any settlements, as witnesses. What happened next was ordained by the Book of Common Prayer: ‘At the day and the time appointed for solemnization of Matrimony, the persons to be married shall come into the body of the Church with their friends and neighbours…' The main plot and all the sub-plots of
As You Like It
are driven by the theme of marriage; the finale of the play is a fourfold wedding at which Hymen himself officiates and everybody sings the ‘wedlock' hymn:

 

Wedding is great Juno's crown,

O blessed bond of board and bed.

'Tis Hymen peoples every town;

High wedlock then be honourèd.

Honour, high honour and renown

To Hymen, God of every town. (V. iv. 139–44)

 

Nearly all the marriages in Shakespeare's plays are two-stage affairs, consisting of contract or ‘wedding' and solemnisation or ‘matrimony'. As Fripp remarks, ‘The domestic contract was the binding ceremony, marriage in church was the concluding rite.'
²⁰
The earliest of the Shakespearean two-stage marriages is that of Katharina and Petruchio in
The Taming of the Shrew
. The first stage, the church wedding, is thoroughly sabotaged by Petruchio. Though he himself had arranged it, he evidently doesn't consider it a true wedding, for after it he doesn't permit himself to exercise the rights of a husband.

He is so late in coming to collect his bride that Katharina storms off in tears.

 

He'll woo a thousand, 'point the day of marriage,

Make feast, invite friends, and proclaim the banns,

Yet never means to wed where he hath wooed. (III. ii. 15–17)

 

The ‘goodly company' stays to witness Petruchio's arrival bizarrely accoutred. He goes to ‘bid good morrow' to his bride and together they proceed to the off-stage church, where he indulges in a bout of sacrilege.

 

when the priest

Should ask if Katharine should be his wife,

‘Ay, by gogs-wouns,' quoth he, and swore so loud

That, all amazed, the priest let fall the book,

And, as he stooped again to take it up,

The mad-brained bridegroom took him such a cuff

That down fell priest and book, and book and priest.

‘Now take them up,' quoth he, ‘if any list.' (III. iii. 31–8)

 

Katharina, we are told, merely ‘trembled and shook'. ‘After many ceremonies done', Petruchio called for wine, ‘quaffed off the muscadel And threw the sops all over the sexton's face'.

 

This done, he took the bride about the neck,

And kissed her lips with such a clamorous smack

That at the parting all the church did echo. (50–2)

 

The sound of music warns the people on stage that the bridal couple is on its way back from the church, but when he arrives Petruchio refuses to enjoy ‘the great store of wedding cheer' and drags his rebellious wife off to the country where he refuses to consummate the marriage. The second stage of the wedding is when Petruchio, satisfied that Katharina now respects and trusts him, asks her to kiss him ‘in the midst of the street',
in coram populo
, like any puritan.