rich woodland scenery. The lime-tree avenue may, perhaps, be of a later date than the age of Elizabeth; and one elm has evidently succeeded another from century to century. But there are old gnarled oaks and beeches dotted about the park. Its little knolls and valleys are the same as they were two centuries ago. The same Avon flows beneath the gentle elevation on which the house stands, sparkling in the sunshine as brightly as when that house was first built. There may we still lie "Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out and doubt not that there was the place to which leaping gaily along, or crossing the river at their own will in search of fresh fields and low branches whereon to browse. We must associate Charlcote with happy circumstances. Let us make it the scene of a troth-plight. The village of Charlcote is now one of the prettiest of objects. Whatever is new about it and most of the cottages are new-looks like a restoration of what was old. The same character prevails in the neighbouring village of Hampton Lucy; and it may not be too much to assume that the memory of him who walked in these pleasant places in his younger days, long before the sound of his greatness had gone forth to the ends of the earth, has led to the desire to preserve here something of the architectural character of the age in which he lived. There are a few old houses still left in Charlcote; but the more im* As You Like It, Act 11., Scene 1. portant have probably been swept away. In one such house, then, about a year we will say before William Shakspere's own marriage, is a small party assembled to be present at a solemn rite. There can be little doubt that the ancient ceremony of betrothing had not fallen into disuse at that period. Shakspere himself, who always, upon his great principle of presenting his audiences with matters familiar to them, introduces the manners of his own country in his own times, has several remarkable passages upon the subject of the troth-plight. In Measure for Measure we learn that the misery of the "poor dejected Mariana" was caused by a violation of the troth-plight: "Duke. She should this Angelo have married; was affianced to her by oath, and the nuptial appointed: between which time of the contract and limit of the solemnity, her brother Frederick was wracked at sea, having in that perished vessel the dowry of his sister. But mark, how heavily this befel to the poor gentlewoman: there she lost a noble and renowned brother, in his love toward her ever most kind and natural; with him the portion and sinew of her fortune, her marriage-dowry; with both, her combinate husband, this well-seeming Angelo. Isabella. Can this be so? Did Angelo so leave her? Duke. Left her in tears, and dried not one of them with his comfort; swallowed his vows whole, pretending, in her, discoveries of dishonour; in few, bestowed her on her own lamentation, which she yet wears for his sake; and he, a marble to her tears, is washed with them, but relents not." Angelo and Mariana were bound then "by oath;" the nuptial was appointed; there was a prescribed time between the contract and the performance of the solemnity of the Church. But, the lady having lost her dowry, the contract was violated by her "combinate" or affianced husband. The oath which Angelo violated was taken before witnesses; was probably tendered by a minister of the Church. In Twelfth Night we have a minute description of such a ceremonial. When Olivia is hastily espoused to Sebastian, she says,— "Now go with me, and with this holy man, Into the chantry by: there, before him, This was a private ceremony before a single witness, who would conceal it till the proper period of the public ceremonial. Olivia, fancying she has thus espoused the page, repeatedly calls him "husband;" and, being rejected, she summons the priest to declare "What thou dost know The priest answers,— "A contract of eternal bond of love, Confirm'd by mutual joinder of your hands, Attested by the holy close of lips, Strengthen'd by interchangement of your rings; And all the ceremony of this compact Seal'd in my function, by my testimony: Since when, my watch has told me, toward my grave I have travell'd but two hours." But from another passage in Shakspere it is evident that the troth-plight was exchanged without the presence of a priest, but that witnesses were essential to the ceremony.* The scene in the Winter's Tale where this occurs is altogether so perfect a picture of rustic life, that we may fairly assume that Shakspere had in view the scenes with which his own youth was familiar, where there was mirth without grossness, and simplicity without ignorance : * Holinshed states that at a synod held at Westminster, in the reign of Henry I., it was decreed "that contracts made between man and woman, without witnesses, concerning marriage, should be void if either of them denied it." To the argument of Polixenes that the father of Florizel ought to know of his proceeding, the young man answers,— And then the father, discovering himself, exclaims,— "Mark your divorce, young sir." Here, then, in the publicity of a village festival, the hand of the loved one is solemnly taken by her "servant;" he breathes his life before the ancient stranger who is accidentally present. The stranger is called to be witness to the protestation; and so is the neighbour who has come with him. The maiden is called upon by her father to speak, and then the old man adds,— "Take hands, a bargain." The friends are to bear witness to it : "I give my daughter to him, and will make The impatient lover then again exclaims, "Contract us 'fore these witnesses." The shepherd takes the hands of the youth and the maiden. Again the lover exclaims,― "Mark our contract." The ceremony is left incomplete, for the princely father discovers himself with, "Mark your divorce, young sir." We have thus shown, by implication, that in the time of Shakspere betrothment was not an obsolete rite. Previous to the Reformation it was in all probability that civil contract derived from the Roman law, which was confirmed indeed by the sacrament of marriage, but which usually preceded it for a definite period, some say forty days, having perhaps too frequently the effect of the marriage of the Church as regarded the unrestrained intercourse of those so espoused. In a work published in 1543, The Christian State of Matrimony,' we find this passage: "Yet in this thing also must I warn every rea sonable and honest person to beware that in the contracting of marriage they dissemble not, nor set forth any lie. Every man likewise must esteem the person to whom he is handfasted none otherwise than for his own spouse; though as yet it be not done in the church, nor in the street. After the handfasting and making of the contract the church-going and wedding should not be deferred too long." The author then goes on to rebuke a custom, "that at the handfasting there is made a great feast and superfluous banquet;" and he adds words which imply that the Epithalamium was at this feast sung, without a doubt of its propriety, "certain weeks afore they go to the church," where "All sanctimonious ceremonies may With full and holy rite be minister'd.” The passage in The Tempest from which we quote these lines has been held to show that Shakspere denounced, with peculiar solemnity, that impatience which waited not for "all sanctimonious ceremonies." * But it must be remembered that the solitary position of Ferdinand and Miranda prevented even the solemnity of a betrothment; there could be no witnesses of the public contract; it would be of the nature of those privy contracts which the ministers of religion, early in the reign of Elizabeth, were commanded to exhort young people to abstain from. The proper exercise of that authority during half a century had not only repressed these privy contracts, but had confined the ancient practice of espousals, with their almost inevitable freedoms, to persons in the lower ranks of life, who might be somewhat indifferent to opinion. A learned writer on the Common Prayer, Sparrow, holds that the Marriage Service of the Church of England was both a betrothment and a marriage. It united the two forms. At the commencement of the service the man says, "I plight thee my troth;" and the woman, "I give thee my troth." This form approaches as nearly as possible to that of a civil contract; but then comes the religious sanction to the obligation,—the sacrament of matrimony. In the form of espousals so minutely recited by the priest in Twelfth Night, he is only present to seal the compact by his "testimony." testimony." The marriage customs of Shakspere's youth and the opinions regarding them might be very different from the practice and opinions of thirty years later, when he wrote The Tempest. But in no case does he attempt to show, even through his lovers themselves, that the public troth-plight was other than a preliminary to a more solemn and binding ceremonial, however it might approach to the character of a marriage. It is remarkable that Webster, on the contrary, who was one of Shakspere's later contemporaries, has made the heroine of one of his noblest tragedies, ‘The Duchess of Malfi,' in the warmth of her affection for her steward, exclaim— "I have heard lawyers say, a contract in a chamber Per verba præsenti is absolute marriage." This is an allusion to the distinctions of the canon law between betrothing and marrying the betrothment being espousals with the verba de futuro; the mar *Life of Shakspeare, by Mr. de Quincey, in the Encyclopædia Britannica.' |