Marriage and Love in Elizabethan England

Marriage and Love in Elizabethan England

The movie, Shakespeare in Love, provides insight into the world of Elizabethan England. Through the character of Viola De Lessups the audience is shown how marriage was an institution entered into not for love, but as a strategic maneuver designed to enhance the lives of those who would benefit from a union, whether or not the beneficiaries were the people actually exchanging vows. As Queen, Elizabeth I chose not to enter into such a union. She expressed the thoughts and feelings she had about the subject in both her speech, “On Marriage” and her poem “On Monsieur’s Departure.” A comparison of the character of Viola to the real life Queen of England, Elizabeth I, can provide the reader a greater understanding of marriage and love in Elizabethan England.

Queen Elizabeth and Viola both realized that their station in life would determine their prospects for marriage. Elizabeth had the power to decide not to marry. Viola’s marriage to Wessex decided for her as “a daughter’s duty and the Queen’s command”(Shakespeare).[2] Viola is the daughter of a wealthy merchant and while she is “not so well born” she is, as her nurse points out, “Well moneyed” which “is the same as well born” and “well married is more so” (Shakespeare). Likewise, Elizabeth knew that if the Queen of England were to marry she would have to make a union that would benefit her country. She felt pressure from Parliament to marry and addressed it in her speech, “On Marriage”, given to Parliament in 1559. She assured them that they could put that idea “clean out of [their] heads” for “whensoever it may please God to incline [her] heart to another kind of life,” she intended “not to do...

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...n that she understood that duty prevented her from such a marriage. In her poem, “On Monsieur’s Departure” she allows a glimpse into the pain it caused her to be unable to fully pursue a life of love.

Works Cited:

[1] William Shakespeare, “Sonnet CXVI”, The Longman Anthology of British Literature: The Early Modern Period, ed. David Damrosch, 2nd ed., vol 1B (NewYork: Longman, 2003) 1233-34.

[2] Shakespeare in Love, dir. John Madden, Perf. Gwyneth Paltrow, Joseph Fiennes. Mirimax/Universal, 1998.

[3] Elizabeth I, “On Marriage,” The Longman Anthology of British Literature: The Early Modern Period, ed. David Damrosch, 2nd ed., vol 1B (NewYork: Longman, 2003) 1084-85.

[4] Elizabeth I, “On Monsieur’s Departure,” The Longman Anthology of British Literature: The Early Modern Period, ed. David Damrosch, 2nd ed., vol 1B (NewYork: Longman, 2003) 1081-82.