Courtships, Marriage Customs, and Shakespeare's Comedies

This study focuses on the courting and marrying behaviors in matrimonial enforcement suits in the London Consistory Court depositions from 1586 to 1611 and in Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Twelfth Night. Linking these two different kinds of evidence, the book's detailed readings examine the roles available to women and men within courtship and marriage, probe the ways in which they perceived and contested their behaviors within these processes, and reveal females and males as agents capable of challenging the roles assigned to them.