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
Her portion equal his."

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 hand fasted 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." 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

6

* Life of Shakspeare, by Mr. de Quincey, in the Encyclopædia Britannica.'

riage, espousals with the verba de præsenti. The Duchess of Malfi had misinterpreted the lawyers when she believed that a secret "contract in a chamber" was "absolute marriage," whether the engagement was for the present or the future.

Such a ceremonial, then, has taken place in the presence of the young Shakspere, as he has himself described with inimitable beauty in the contract of his Florizel and Perdita. But under the happy roof at Charlcote there is no forbidding father; there is no inequality of rank in the parties contracted. They are near neighbours; a walk from Hampton Lucy through the grounds of Charlcote House brings the lover to the door of his mistress. And now, the contract performed, they merrily go forth into those grounds, to sit, with happiness too deep for utterance, under the broad beech which shades them from the morning sun; or they walk, not unwelcome visitors, upon the terrace of the new pleasure-garden which the good knight has constructed for the special solace of his lady. The relations between one in the social position of Sir Thomas Lucy and his humbler neighbours could not have been otherwise than kindly ones. The epitaph in which he speaks of his wife as "a great maintainer of hospitality" is tolerable evidence of his own disposition. Hospitality, in those days, consisted not alone in giving mighty entertainments to the rich and noble, but it included the cherishing of the poor, and the welcome of tenants and dependents. The Squire's Hall was not, like the Baron's Castle, filled with a crowd of prodigal retainers, who devoured his substance, and kept him as a stranger amongst those who naturally looked up to him for protection. Yet was the Squire a man of great worship and authority. He was a Justice of the Peace; the terror of all depredators; the first to be appealed to in all matters of village litigation. "The halls of the justice of peace were dreadful to behold; the screen was garnished with corslets, and helmets gaping with open mouths, with coats of mail, lances, pikes, halberds,

brown bills, bucklers." The Justice had these weapons ready to arm his followers upon any sudden emergency; but, proud of his ancestry, his fightinggear was not altogether modern. The "old worshipful gentleman who had a great estate" is described

"With an old hall, hung about with pikes, guns, and bows,

With old swords, and bucklers, that had borne many shrewd blows."†

There was the broad oak-table in the hall, and the arm-chair large enough for a throne. The shovel-board was once there; but Sir Thomas, although he would play a quiet game with the chaplain at tric-trac, thought the shovelboard an evil example, and it was removed. Upon ordinary occasions the Justice sat in his library, a large oaken room with a few cumbrous books, of which the only novelty was the last collection of the Statutes. The book upon which the knight bestowed much of his attention was the famous book of John Fox, 'Acts and Monuments of these latter and perillous Dayes, touching Matters of the Church, wherein are comprehended and described the great Persecutions, and horrible Troubles, that have been wrought and practised by the Romishe Prelates.' This book was next to his Bible. He hated Popery, as he was bound to do according to law; and he somewhat dreaded the inroads of Popery in the shape of Church ceremonials. He was not quite clear that the good man to whom he had presented the living of Charlcote was perfectly right in maintaining the honour and propriety of the surplice; but he did not altogether think that it was the "mark of abomination." He reprobated the persecution of certain ministers "for omitting small portions or some ceremony prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer."§ Those ministers were of the new opinions which men began to call puritanical. But, on the other hand, he would not go along with the violent denouncers of old festivals; and those who deprecated hunting and hawking were in his mind little better than fools. He had his falconer and his huntsman; and never was he happier than when he rode out of his gates with his hounds about him, and graciously saluted the yeomen who rode with him to find a hare in Fulbrooke. If, then, on the day of the troth-plight, Sir Thomas met the merry party from the village, he would assuredly have his blandest of smiles in store for them; and as the affianced made their best bow and curtsey he would point merrily to the favour in the hat, the little folded handkerchief, with its delicate gold lace and its tassel in each corner.

§ When in Parliament, in 1584, Sir Thomas Lucy presented a petition against the interference of ecclesiastical courts in such matters, wherein these words are used.

"And it was then the custom for maids, and gentlewomen, to give their favourites, as tokens of their love, little handkerchiefs of about three or four inches square, wrought round about, and with a button, or a tassel at each corner, and a little in the middle, with silk or thread. The best edged with a little small gold lace, or twist, which being folded up in four cross folds, so as the middle might be seen, gentlemen and others did usually wear them in their hats, as favours of their loves and mistresses."-Howes's Continuation of Stow, p. 1039.