SOURCE: Ranald, Margaret Loftus. “‘As Marriage Binds, and Blood Breaks’: English Marriage and Shakespeare.” Shakespeare Quarterly 30, no. 1 (winter 1979): 68-81.

In the following essay, Ranald surveys the use of English matrimonial law as a thematic and plotting device in Shakespearean drama.

The ramifications of English matrimonial law, with its numerous and confusing regulations on spousals, contracts, and impediments, had considerable influence on the plotting of Shakespeare's plays, and indeed on a great deal of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. A full understanding of the action of many plays in these two periods depends largely on a knowledge of the complexities of matrimonial law.

It is not necessary to claim that Shakespeare, Jonson, Webster, Wilkins, Beaumont, Fletcher, or Ford were well-trained lawyers or were otherwise possessed of any special knowledge about the canon and civil law of matrimony.¹ Osmotic knowledge of matrimonial law was probably even more comprehensive and precise in...