Elizabethan Marriage

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INTRODUCTION “By the power vested in me, by the State, I join you two in holy matrimony”. For ages, these words have been said time and time again in the wedding process. Throughout history matrimony, or marriage, has been a vital part of society and its well-being. By many, this union between two is considered a holy bond of love between two individuals aspiring to become one. Eventually, as the need for compatibility between the two members of the grew the arranged marriage system began to gain popularity. Linda Alchin states, For the majority of history, marriages were set up as arranged marriages (“Elizabethan Wedding Customs”) . According Jodi O’Brien the author of “Encyclopedia of Gender and Society”, “Arranged marriage is a type of marital union where the bride and groom are selected by a third …show more content…

However, the legal age of consent was 21 and boys wouldn't typically marry before this age. Elizabethan customs, more commonly in the noble classes, also sometimes included the arrangement of marriage following a baby's birth by a formal betrothal (Alchin, “Elizabethan Wedding Customs”). Normally, the parents that would have arranged child marriages would have strictly economic ambitions in mind.Nonetheless, child marriage or not, aristocratic families, marriages were a dynastic and diplomatic exchange and they weren’t much different among the merchant and other lower class families (Sokol and Sokol, Shakespeare, Law, and Marriage) . The position of matchmaker, typically if the wedding was in the upper nobility of Florence, would be Lorenzo de' Medici who formed the most strategic marriages for the loyal families (Morin, “Marriage: Italian Renaissance Style”) . “Marriage not only reflected order, it was a civilizing influence on which the whole of society depended” (Italian Renaissance Learning Resources, “Picturing Family and

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