NOTES INTRODUCTION CONSENTING ADULTS: "IN THE WAY OF MARRIAGE" 1. For information on ecclesiastical courts and marriage law, see Richard Adair, J. H. Baker, E. R. C. Brinkworth, Richard Burn, Eric Josef Carlson, Colin R. Chapman, Frederick J. Furnivall, Edmund Gibson, Loreen L. Giese, John R. Gillis, John Godolphin, Laura Gowing, Paul Hair, R. H. Helmholz, William Holdsworth, Ralph Houlbrooke, Martin Ingram, Ronald A. Marchant, A. Percival Moore, Diana O'Hara, R. B. Outhwaite, James Raine, Peter Rushton, B. J. Sokol and Mary Sokol, Henry Swinburne, and Richard M. Wunderli. Discussions of ecclesiastical jurisdiction include Helmholz (Roman 28-54), Holdsworth (1: 614-32), Houlbrooke (Church 7-20 and "The Decline of Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction"), Dorothy Owen ("Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction in England"), and Susan Brigden (129-71). Contemporary discussions on the legitimacy of ecclesiastical jurisdiction include the unpublished, "Notes and Remembrances" (Bodleian Library, Tanner MS 176, 261 "-265v), and "A Distinction Betweene the Ecclesiastical! Law and the Common Law" (British Library, Lansdowne MS 253, 138r-178v) , and published works by John Bridges, Richard Cosin, and Thomas Ridley. 2. Reprints of the canons include those by J. V. Bullard and H . Chalmer Bell, Edward Cardwell (Synodalia), and H . J. Schroeder. Discussions of canon law include Cardwell (Reformation), Charles Donahue, Jr., Helmholz (Roman), Eric Waldram Kemp, Frederic William Maitland, E. Garth Moore, R. C. Mortimer, and Michael M. Sheehan. 3. Chapman (Ecclesiastical Courts), Francis Clarke, H[ enry] C[ onset], Henry Coote, Gibson, Helmholz (Marriage 6-24 and 123-40), Houlbrooke (Church 21-54), Thomas Oughton, Owen (Records), and J. S. Purvis discuss ecclesiastical court practices. For a discussion of the notaries, see C. W. Brooks, R. H. Hemholz [sic.], and P. G. Stein. 4. In his study of the customs of spousals in early modern England, Adair comments, "It seems that in St Botolph Aldgate, at least, the custom of spousal was not yet dead in the late sixteenth century. It is hard to tell whether this finding is merely parochial or local, or applicable to London as a whole" (221 ). The cases in the London Consistory Court indicate that spousals were "not yet dead" for many other parishes as well. 164 NOTES 5. Cook comments on how age and the kinds and terms of service affect courtship patterns: "As adolescents, young adults, or sometimes even as children, large numbers of both sexes left their homes to go into service in other households. Researchers estimate that perhaps 40 percent or more of the population were under twenty and that, among the 10 percent or so of all ages who were servants, the vast majority were between fifteen and twenty-four years old, with the proportion dropping sharply as people got older. Not only were household servants young, but they were rarely married, frequently orphaned, and usually cut off from direct supervision by their parents. The terms of employment varied in length, with a year the minimum, thus allowing a mobility that further intensified the prob­ lems of control over such persons. Against the practical values of learning skills and saving money before entering marriage stood the temptations to irregular courtship inherent in the relative freedom enjoyed by indi­ viduals at this age and social level" (Making 77-78). 6. Almost all cases concentrate on the courtships and marriages of the liti­ gants. A few cases contain comments regarding how many other people also took a fancy to someone. For example, in a deposition repeated on 16 October 1599, Robert Crumwell deposed that James Harrison told him "that he .. had done [Elizabeth Willson] . some wronge in that he had hindred her of divers marriages she might have had" (DL/C/215/350v). In a deposition from a different case repeated on 19 June 1610, Mary Awsten identified just how many people Roger Norris courted: "she knoweth of ii or iii ... women yt the sayd Roger Norris was a suter unto for marriage at severall tymes and lykely to spede and to have had good matches and they refused to marrie with him by reason of the sayd Joice ffosters reportes for this deponent was a media­ tor to one widowe for him the sayd Roger and she sayd she would not have him because he was intangled to the sayd Joice ffoster" (DL/C/219 /183v). 7. See Giese, London Consistory Court Depositionsvii-xxvii. 8. For more information on Shakespeare's involvement in the case, see Katherine Duncan-Jones (206-08 and 241-44), Stephen Greenblatt (Will in the World 405-06), S. Schoenbaum (209-13), and Charles William Wallace. 9. For example, Lisa Hopkins points out that "Shakespeare insistently angli­ cises the social customs of even the most alien of his communities" (109). In terms of settings, Susan Baker comments on the resemblance between the settings in Shakespeare's plays to Shakespeare's England ( 304-05 ), and Keir Elam notes this connection between Twelfth Night and rural England in particular (31). M. St. Clare Byrne makes a more direct com­ parison between Olivia's household and contemporary ones in writing that "Olivia's household is one of the most accurately Elizabethan pic­ tures of a noble household that Shakespeare has drawn" (209). 10. While important discussions concerning the status and significance of boy actors continue, I have not included them here since it is secondary NOTES 165 to my immediate purpose, which is to examine courting and marrying behaviors in the play texts. In these plays, I read the cross-dressed figures as women playing men. As Jean E. Howard points out, "at some level boy actors playing women must simply have been accepted in perform­ ance as a convention. Otherwise, audience involvement with dramatic narratives premised on heterosexual love and masculine/feminine differ­ ence would have been minimal" (37). 11 . For a discussion of the development of courtship on the stage, see Cook, who argues that in the 1580s "wooing moves from literary fantasy to something sometimes approximating actuality. Here playwrights increas­ ingly conflate familiar customs with dramatic situations. Here stage courtship is transformed" ("Transformation" 175). 12. See, for example, DL/C/214/165-67 and DL/C/219/2l'-22v. 13. Two examples include Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford, who argue that the "betrothal ritual" was "an integral part of female culture which could serve as an instrument for female agency in the courtship process" (118-19), and Gillis, who writes that "betrothal could obliterate differ­ ences in rank and alter the relationship between the sexes. It gave females a measure of choice and a degree of power more equal to that of men. For a brief moment they were the center of attention. Having been courted and fought over, they were in a position to make demands that were not possible for mere spinsters or wives" (52). 14. All references to Shakespeare's plays are from Arden editions. 15. Rather than the much-praised Viola, it is Olivia who breaks out of the stereotypical sexual behavior by having and creating a definition of woman that differs from the monolithic one in the play. Critics of Twelfth Night have generally given little or no attention to Olivia, often leaving her to "what you will ." In a 1938 article on Olivia, John W. Draper rightly observed that "critics have neglected her in favour of Viola" ("Wooing" 44); he himself, however, devoted most of his discussion to Olivia's suitors. Recently, in 1987, Douglas H. Parker came to Olivia's "defence," arguing she is a twin to Viola and seeing her "in the more pos­ itive image of the admirable Viola" (24). Yet he too practiced 'Viola wor­ ship' by calling Olivia an "Illyrian Viola" (24): Viola is the standard by which Olivia is to be measured. My point here is much in line with that of Howard, who also identifies Olivia as the figure who poses the threat: "the political threat of female insurgency enters the text not through Viola, the cross-dressed woman, but through Olivia, a figure whose sex­ ual and economic independence is ironically reined in by means of the cross-dressed Viola" (32). She maintains that "the play records the tradi­ tional comic disciplining of a woman who lacks such a properly gendered subjectivity" (33). I argue, however, that Olivia is not ultimately "disci­ plined" but redefines a more enabling and autonomous position for women. 16. When making this statement, I exclude Cleopatra since she is royalty and has a historical reputation to uphold. 166 NOTES 1 CHOOSING A SPOUSE l. John T. Noonan, Jr. explains the legal debates surrounding choice in the mid­ dle ages. For a more general discussion of choice in England, see Macfarlane (Marriage 119-47). Discussions focusing more on early modern England include Carlson ("Courtship" 27-29), Houlbrooke (English68-73), Ingram (Church 138-40 and 202- 03), and Wrightson (English66--88) . 2. Other historians point to the practices of individuals choosing for them­ selves in early modern England: for example, Carlson states, "So success­ full y did young people monopolize the courtship process that parents often did not know it was going on and when they casually suggested pos­ sible suitors to their children, were surprised to hear that the children were already committed to others" (Marriage 109); Gowing also comments: "In practice, parental influence on marriages seems to have been low at social levels below the elite: parents approved, rather than enforced, their children's choices" ( 156 ); and Macfarlane notes: "The initiative in locating a likely marriage partner could be taken by a number of people: by the couple themselves, by parents, by relatives, by friends. It was the young couple themselves who often made the first choice, based on mutual attraction" (124).