[In the following excerpt, Desens remarks on the efforts of women in such works as The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, Much Ado about Nothing, Cymbeline, and Othello to create an equal union between husband and wife by selecting men outside their own social rank.]

Much of the feminist criticism in the last decades of the twentieth century has focused on the ways in which female characters in the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries are bound by their society's male-constructed paradigms. A wealth of historical and legal evidence from the society that produced this drama suggests that these arguments are also relevant to life in the “real” world as well as to the fictional world depicted on stage. However, acknowledging the legal and social power of men and focusing solely on women as powerless victims in early modern England, which understandably many such studies have done initially, may cause us to miss parts of the larger picture. In any system where one group holds power, whether that group does so because of gender, class, ethnicity, religion, or any other socially constructed paradigm, some members of the subordinate group will always find ways to negotiate the system in order to gain covertly the power their society overtly denies them. These attempts may vary from efforts to dominate the dominator, to efforts to achieve a de facto equality not formally recognized in the society at large.¹ It is on the second of these that I wish to focus. I would like to suggest that some female characters in Renaissance dramas, and likely some women throughout the society that produced it, found ways of negotiating within the system in order to gain, unofficially, some of the power officially denied them. In this essay, I want to look at marriage as the site of such negotiation. In particular, I am interested in how female characters, approaching the making of a marriage, use their superiority in wealth and social status to create a condition of equality in marriage. While most such efforts—as in some of Shakespeare's comedies, Chapman's The Widow's Tears, and Webster's The Duchess of Malfi—successfully resolve the conflicting tensions inherent in gender and class differences, similar attempts in other plays collapse under the weight of the conflict.

The idea that women negotiate within marriage, either for domination or for a form of equality that the law does not officially recognize, is not new to Tudor or Stuart England. Chaucer addresses this issue of sovereignty in the marriage group of The Canterbury Tales, particularly in “The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale” and in “The Franklin's Tale.” In the first, the Wife of Bath seeks to end her inequality by dominating her various husbands, and yet her tale itself reveals a wistful longing for an equal relationship in which domination would not be necessary. When the husband gives the mastery to the ugly old hag he has been forced to marry, she in turn submits to him and becomes young and beautiful.² This resolution suggests that the Wife of Bath, at least on an unconscious level, is actually seeking equality rather than domination. Unfortunately, she has no sense of how to gain power within marriage other than by manipulative behavior, which of course ends by destroying any possible basis for equality. In contrast, in “The Franklin's Tale,” the class difference between Dorigen, a woman of high degree, and her husband, a lowly knight, allows them to create a nonhierarchical relationship that only conforms outwardly to society's gender paradigm. He earns her love by performing noble deeds, and she responds by deciding “to take hym for hir housbonde and hir lord, / Of swich lordshipe as men han over hir wyves” (741-42). To reconcile the gender with the social hierarchy, Averagus, who is both superior and inferior, vows “that nevere in al his lyf he, day ne nyght, / Ne shold upon hym take no maistrie” (746-47). However, he will keep “the name of soveraynetee / That wolde he have for shame of his degree” (751-52). She, in turn, swears that since he proffers her “so large a reyne” that she will be “youre humble trewe wyf” (755-58). Thus, outwardly the marriage will conform to society's gender paradigm, but within the marriage they will be equals.

This issue of negotiation within marriage is also a feature in The Book of Margery Kempe, for Margery's acquisition of independent wealth apparently allows her to negotiate her freedom from the marriage bed in return for paying off her husband's debts. Although we must be careful in drawing conclusions about life in a historical period based solely on literary works, we also need to acknowledge the variables that occur within relationships, variables that may not necessarily coincide with law or custom. Two willing partners could negotiate privately a marriage quite different from the cultural model that gives the husband sole power. While such relationships may not have been the norm, they very likely existed in life as well as literature. These representative medieval works suggest a precedent for similar kinds of relationships depicted in the drama of the Elizabethan and Stuart periods, and it is to those relationships that we now turn.

Shakespeare certainly gave some thought to the possibility of this kind of negotiation, as a number of his comic heroines “marry down,” and in doing so, they apparently retain more power than they otherwise would. In addition to the precedent from medieval literature, he had another important model of such disparity from the Elizabethan stage: Bel-imperia of Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy. Bel-imperia chooses not one but two lower-class lovers, thereby scorning a match with a social equal who would then, by virtue of being male, dominate her. She rejects the dynastic marriage her father, brother, and uncle plan for her with Balthazar—the heir to the Portuguese throne and the murderer of both her lovers. All the men expect her obedience; they speak down to her, dismiss her objections, and deny that she has independent status. One can see why she chose first Andrea, then, after his death, Horatio. With them, she can achieve the equality she cannot find with a man of equal or higher rank. Andrea notes this difference in rank that caused him to work at earning her love rather than taking it for granted:

My name was Don Andrea, my descent,
Though not ignoble, yet inferior far
To gracious fortunes of my tender youth:
For there in prime and pride of all my years,
By duteous service and deserving love,
In secret I possess'd a worthy dame,
Which hight sweet Bel-imperia by name.(3)

The grieving Bel-imperia refers to Andrea as “my garland's sweetest flower, / And in his death have burried my delights” (1.4.4-5). She selects Horatio as her next lover because, as Andrea's friend, he is so much like Andrea, although revenging Andrea and spiting Balthazar may also motivate her. The lovers' dialogue between them in 2.4 suggests that an equal relationship is evolving. The difference in social rank is particularly galling to Balthazar and the males of her family. Lorenzo later attempts to excuse his murder of Horatio by referring to the unsuitability of the men she chose:

Why then, remembering, that old disgrace
Which you for Don Andrea had endur'd,
And now were likely longer to sustain,
By being found so meanly accompanied,
Thought rather, for I knew no readier mean,
To thrust Horatio forth my father's way.

(3.10.54-59)

In arranging the marriage to Balthazar, her father and uncle speak of the need to control Bel-imperia. The king tells her father, that he must “take some little pains / To win fair Bel-imperia from her will” (2.3.41-42). “Will,” of course, does not only mean willfulness but also carries the meaning of sexual desire and power, a desire these men seek to curb in “their” women. Marrying her to a man of similar or higher rank reinforces the gender hierarchy.⁴

Her family misjudges her because she is female, just as they misjudge Hieronimo because he is not of the nobility. In taking on the role of revenger, typically a male role in the drama, and using a knife to stab Balthazar to death,⁵ she asserts her independence, then kills herself to maintain it. The importance of Bel-imperia in The Spanish Tragedy should not be underestimated. The play was continually revived until the closing of the theaters in 1642, so this idea that women may deliberately choose men of lower class in order to gain a form of equality had continual reinforcement—reinforcement that I would argue is reflected in other plays of the period.⁶

In addition to precedents from literature, Shakespeare could also have looked to such relationships within his own society. Social historians who have studied marriage patterns have noted that while most marriages appear not to have crossed class lines, some did. There is, however, disagreement as to how frequently such marriages occurred. David Cressy notes that “most English brides belonged to the same occupational or status clusters as their bridegrooms,” and that social equality was considered an important basis for marriage.⁷ However, according to Alan Macfarlane, marriages that crossed class lines did occur with some frequency. He cites studies by Stone and Laslett to support the contention that “intermarriage between different ranks of society was very common.” He further notes: “Lower down the social scale there is evidence in village studies of considerable marital mobility. The son of a poor labourer often married the daughter of a rich butcher or yeoman.” For men and women, marriage thus becomes “one of the most important strategies in improving one's life chances,” whether by social advancement or by gaining wealth.⁸ Thus, calculation of benefits and options was important in the making of marriages. This point is also made by Ann Jennalie Cook: “For many, a trade-off between birth and riches offered the only way to rise or to survive in the society.” However, she qualifies that statement by noting that her reading of the research still suggests a need for caution: “On balance, then both historical research and contemporary records do confirm the existence of alliances between those of unequal rank, wealth, or personal gifts. Yet neither the number nor the range must be exaggerated, for both were rather limited.”⁹ Perhaps these marriages were not the norm, but perhaps that is why they appealed to Shakespeare and his contemporaries as useful dramatic devices. Such marriages may also have been more common among the middle and lower classes, the groups from which most dramatists and actors came.

If we look at Shakespeare's plays, we see, with some frequency, women deliberately choosing men who, in varying degrees, are either below their social level or who are lacking in the wealth the women hold; indeed, they may be lacking in both. Ann Jennalie Cook devotes a chapter in Making a Match to exploring all the unequal marriages—where one spouse outranks the other—that occur in Shakespeare's plays. Such pairings, she notes, occur in his comedies, tragedies, and histories, but “in dramatizing fictional marriages between men and women of unequal rank, Shakespeare hews no single pattern.”¹⁰ On the whole, I would agree, but it strikes me that there is a pattern that emerges when we look at the female characters who marry men of lesser rank and wealth, a pattern discerned, in part, by Clara Claiborne Park, although her focus is on how much more intellectually gifted Portia and Rosalind are in comparison to their husbands-to-be, rather than on the women's superiority in social rank and wealth. Thus, Park argues, “If the bright young girl is to be made acceptable—to audiences, to readers, perhaps even to her creator—ways must be found to reduce the impact of her self-confidence, to make sure that equality is kept nominal.¹¹ In other words, the woman must be brought down to the man's level. In terms of psychological dynamics, I agree with Park's thesis, but I question whether it holds in terms of social rank and wealth, particularly in The Merchant of Venice and in Twelfth Night. Portia and Olivia certainly appear to hold onto more power than many of their sister characters, and I would suggest that is because the usual gender hierarchy is to some extent mitigated by their superiority in social rank and wealth.

Some thoughtful female characters comment on their society's gender paradigms in marriage, and they do not like what they see. In Much Ado about Nothing, Beatrice has the following reply to her uncle's desire to see her wed: “Not till God make men of some other mettle than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be overmaster'd with a piece of valiant dust? to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No, uncle I'll none. Adam's sons are my brethren, and truly I hold it a sin to match in my kindred.”¹² Men, she is insisting, are not superior to women but equal. If all humans are made out of the dust of the earth, as stated in Genesis, then no one piece of dirt has the right to order around any other piece of dirt. Crispinella, in John Marston's The Dutch Courtesan, takes a similarly dim view of marriage. In the courtship phase, the woman has some power, but that power ends with marriage:

Marry? No, faith; husbands are like lots in the lottery: you may draw forty blanks before you find one that has any prize in him. A husband generally is a careless, domineering thing that grows like coral, which as long as it is under water is soft and tender, but as soon as it has got his branch above the waves is presently hard, stiff, not to be bowed but burst; so when your husband is a suitor and under your choice, Lord, how supple he is, how obsequious, how at your service, sweet lady! Once married, got up his head above, a stiff, crooked, knobby, inflexible, tyrannous creature he grows; then they turn like water, more you would embrace the less you hold. I'll live my own woman.¹³

She is even more explicit later, as she comments on the double standard of sexual behavior for men and women:

Oh, i' faith, 'tis a fair thing to be married, and a necessary. To hear this word must! If our husbands be proud, we must bear his contempt; if noisome, we must bear with the goat under his armholes; if a fool, we must bear his babble; and, which is worse, if a loose liver, we must live upon unwholesome reversions. Where, on the contrary side, our husbands—because they may, and we must—care not for us. Things hop'd with fear and got with strugglings are men's high pleasures when duty pales and flats their appetite.

(4.1.309-38)

Given the views stated here, one can imagine Beatrice and Crispinella going through life as happy spinsters, but such is not the case. Each negotiates a marriage based on the understanding that the husband will not exert the power society grants him. In Much Ado, that understanding is reached in 4.1, when Benedick agrees to kill Claudio, thereby explicitly choosing his future wife over his male friends. In The Dutch Courtesan, that agreement is spelled out in the proposal of Tysefew, Crispinella's suitor: “If you will be mine, you shall be your own. My purse, my body, my heart is yours; only be silent in my house, modest at my table, and wanton in my bed, and the Empress of Europe cannot content, and shall not be contented, better” (4.1.76-79).¹⁴

Based on their interactions with their future husbands, Beatrice and Crispinella are able to trust that the men will give them the equal relationships they desire. Portia and Olivia, however, choose husbands where they will have an advantage due to their wealth and social rank. Those advantages will offset the usual gender paradigm and allow for the private negotiation that will create the basis for a more equal relationship. Trust alone, it is suggested, may not be enough without some specific means of enforcing the agreement.

It may seem odd, in the case of Portia, in The Merchant of Venice, to speak of her as “choosing” a husband. After all, her father's will specifies that she must marry whichever man selects the correct casket. Even though she is bound by the will, she has, however, identified the man she would like. The question is, “Why Bassanio?” Various critics have considered this question, and there is some truth in the various answers they suggest. For Clara Claiborne Park, it is as simple as looking at the other suitors who have presented themselves: “Bassanio may be no more than a pleasantly affectionate incompetent in need of a rich wife to free him from his debts. But … among suitors who include a drunken German, an Englishman who speaks no European language, and an African prince … Bassanio looks good. She can make up, after all, what he lacks in intelligence and force.”¹⁵ Certainly the audience has no encouragement to favor the other suitors. Frank Whigham, however, argues that “the casket device in fact functions with quite secular effectiveness to select, by stylistic tests, a man of just the right sort of awareness, ultimately reaffirming and supporting a particular class-oriented definition of values.”¹⁶ He does not see Portia as making a choice; indeed, his essay focuses on issues of class, as defined by men, but ignores those of gender. I would suggest that Portia's father may have created the test in order to assure that his daughter will have more bargaining power after marriage than law and custom would strictly allow. These details would have been worked out in a marriage settlement, if her father had lived.¹⁷ In other words, he may have more faith in the good sense of the daughter he knows than he does in the future son-in-law he does not. The will would also prevent any other relative from arranging a marriage for Portia, so it need not necessarily be seen as her father's lack of trust in her ability to choose a husband. As is often the case, Shakespeare does not close off possibilities.

Portia clearly states that Bassanio is the man she would choose, and that choice stems from the realization that in marrying him, she could gain a more equal relationship.¹⁸ When Bassanio chooses the correct casket, Portia gives a speech that is customarily taken as a statement of the legal reality that all the wife's goods become her husband's:

                                                                                          But the full sum of me
Is sum of something; which, to term in gross,
Is an unlesson'd girl, unschool'd, unpractic'd,
Happy in this, she is not yet so old
But she may learn; happier than this,
She is not bred so dull but she can learn;
Happiest of all, is that her gentle spirit
Commits itself to yours to be directed,
As from her lord, her governor, her king.
Myself, and what is mine, to you and yours
Is now converted. But now I was the lord
Of this fair mansion, master of my servants,
Queen o'er myself; and even now, but now,
This house, these servants, and this same myself
Are yours—my lords!—I give them with this ring,
Which when you part from, lose, or give away,
Let it presage the ruin of your love,
And be my vantage to exclaim on you.

(3.2.158-74)

Ann Jennalie Cook, in her discussion of property and marriage, cites the relevant judicial statement: “But as the law bluntly put it, ‘That which the Husband hath is his owne,’ while ‘That which the Wife hath is the Husbands.’ At the end of the wedding day, the woman yielded up her body, her name, and her worldly goods.”¹⁹ However, even though Portia makes this public declaration, does she actually give up everything to Bassanio, or is there a difference between the public statement (what is culturally accepted) and the private reality (what can be negotiated between husband and wife)? Alan Macfarlane points out that while the wife's goods became the husband's upon marriage, “real estate—that is freehold land or housing, or land held by other tenures such as copyhold by a woman at her marriage—was very different. Unless she formally transferred this to her husband, it remained ultimately in her ownership.” In other words, “it remains his wife's, though he can have use of it.”²⁰ Legally, the house and the estate may still be Portia's. In addition to this legal distinction, Bassanio also appears to be properly intimidated by his marriage to this fantastically wealthy, beautiful heiress. After all, it is Portia who offers him the money he needs to redeem Antonio, after he confesses to her that he has come wooing her in wealth for which Antonio has taken out a loan. His recognition of the social and financial gulf between them offsets the gender paradigm that Portia acknowledges in her speech.

Portia makes it clear at the end of the play that she is willing to use the power she has if Bassanio does not give her the equal treatment she desires. In her disguise as the doctor of law sent to rule on Shylock's case, she overhears her new husband proclaim:

Antonio, I am married to a wife
Which is as dear to me as life itself,
But life itself, my wife, and all the world,
Are not to be esteem'd above thy life.
I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them all
Here to this devil to deliver you.

(4.1.282-87)

Portia's response shows a justifiable irritation: “Your wife would give you little thanks for that / If she were by to hear you make the offer” (4.1.288-89). In Shakespeare's plays, the test of whether a man is ready to be a husband is whether he can put a wife ahead of his male friends. Bassanio obviously needs some schooling in what marriage means, and Portia, using the ring, makes sure to drive the lesson home. Lisa Jardine has argued that in giving the ring, Portia is setting up a legal contract: “If Bassanio parts with the pledge, she will be entitled to ‘exclaim,’ to renounce her claim, to break the betrothal, to renounce the contract drawn up. The formality of this pledge befits the fortune she brings to the marriage, which carries its own contractual obligations and undertakings.” In other words, “the symbolic breach is for Portia contractual (she may default on the property agreement.)”²¹ Cook disagrees with Jardine, since this is a marriage, not a betrothal, as “their vows are solemnized in church before this happens,” and thus Portia “cannot use such grounds for a dissolution.”²² The issue is confusing, especially since David Cressy, writing on social history, states, “No marriage was complete without consummation.”²³ Significantly, consummation is what Portia is rejecting: “By heaven, I will ne'er come in your bed / Until I see the ring!” (5.1.190-91).²⁴ Portia's threat not to consummate the marriage has profound legal consequences, since if she does indeed hold the land and manor in her own right, then at her death, it would not automatically pass to Bassanio, for his lifetime, unless there was a child born alive during the marriage.²⁵ Portia does eventually reveal that Bassanio actually gave the ring to her, but she is letting him know that she expects equality within the marriage, and that she has some power to enforce it.

Olivia's choice in Twelfth Night, handled more subtly, is missed by many critics in discussions of the play, and by many actors and directors in productions of it. Indeed, Viola, in her male disguise, tends to be seen as the resourceful woman, while Olivia is often portrayed as self-indulgent, at best, and scatterbrained, at worst.²⁶ In an astute discussion of the stage history of Twelfth Night, Irene Dash has pointed out the problem Olivia poses for productions: “Since patriarchal values favor the compliant woman over the aggressive one, Viola's breeches, ironically appear far less threatening than Olivia's decision making and husband-wooing.” For Dash, both Viola and Olivia are “grasping at suddenly available freedom” as a result of the deaths of brothers and fathers. However, she also sees them as losing that freedom, for she comments that “at the play's end, neither woman achieves her goal, defeated by contemporary conventions surrounding love and matrimony.”²⁷ While I agree with Dash that Olivia's strength is repeatedly underestimated by critics and directors, I do not agree that her marriage at the end of the play is a defeat. I also question whether the unequal marriage of Olivia and Sebastian is only a matter of “holiday escape” on the stage, as Cook argues, a fairy tale that audiences would have defined only in that way, or whether Sebastian is “the forceful male needed to manage Olivia's chaotic household.”²⁸ The question is why Olivia chooses Cesario/Sebastian over a marriage with Orsino, a man of higher social rank than her own.

The answer is hinted at early in the play. Sir Toby tells Sir Andrew: “She'll none o' the' Count. She'll not match above her degree, neither in estate, years, nor wit; I have heard her swear't” (1.3.110). While there is some disagreement on whether Olivia and Orsino are social equals or he is superior,²⁹ a duke clearly outranks a countess. For a woman, marriage even to a social equal immediately puts her in a subordinate position because of the gender hierarchy, and marrying a man of superior rank only reinforces that subordination. Olivia is a woman who easily carries her authority. There is no evidence that her estate is poorly run. Indeed, Sebastian comments on her efficiency, even as he tries to puzzle out her apparently sudden interest in him. She is not mad, he notes, for if she were:

She could not sway her house, command her followers,
Take and give back affairs, and their dispatch,
With such a smooth, discreet, and stable bearing
As I perceive she does.

(4.3.17-20)

At the play's end, it is Olivia, not her betrothed, Sebastian, who invites Orsino and Viola to share the wedding feast planned for her own nuptials: “One day shall crown th' alliance on't, so please you, / Here at my house and at my proper cost” (5.1.318-19). Earlier, when Sebastian agrees to their betrothal, she allows it to be kept secret until he is ready for it to be known, at which “time we will our celebration keep / According to my birth” (4.3.30-31; all italics mine). Her initial uncertainty on learning that she mistook Sebastian for Cesario may be the momentary fear that she has not obtained that superior power that will allow her to negotiate an equal marriage. Orsino's reassurance, “Be not amaz'd, right noble is his blood” (5.1.264), which focuses on a patriarchal concern with lineage, unexpectedly lets her know that she does still have the means for negotiation. He is “right noble” but not necessarily of her rank, and she likely has the greater wealth.³⁰ She has not been suddenly thrust into the kind of marriage that she would have had with Orsino, a kind that she clearly rejects.

In wooing Olivia, Orsino relies on the privileges his rank and gender give him, and he is unable to accept Olivia's refusal to submit to his control. When she rejects one messenger, he sends another, certain that eventually she will relent. He is caught up in the behavior of the conventional lover who, in focusing on his own desires, reduces the woman to an object. Olivia is correct when she calls his proclaimed love “heresy” (1.5.228), for while he speaks as if she is in control and he is her servant, he is a “perfectly orthodox would-be dominant male.”³¹ Her refusal begins to anger him. He sends Cesario back with a jewel, as a love token/bribe, and the message, “My love can give no place, bide no denay” (2.4.124). Finally, he comes in person, and his anger is clear:

                                                                                          You uncivil lady,
To whose ingrate and unauspicious altars
My soul the faithfull'st off'rings have breath'd out
That e'er devotion tender'd!

(5.1.112-15)

Indeed, he is angry enough that she refuses his suit to consider killing her:

Why should I not (had I the heart to do it),
Like to th' Egyptian thief at point of death,
Kill what I love? (a savage jealousy
That sometime savors nobly).

(5.1.17-20)

These are the dynamics of Othello, in which idealization of the woman gives way to anger at the man's inability to control her, and then to hatred and the desire to destroy her. Is it any wonder that Olivia wishes to avoid such a marriage, or that she exercises her own control by wooing a “man” who because of his lesser social rank and wealth will not be able to dominate her in this way? Orsino and Viola belong together because they share the same romantic idealism and, in the end, Viola wants the conventional hierarchical marriage that Olivia rejects. Dash argues that the women in the play must learn to “accept their identities as sexual beings in a male-dominated world.”³² That is true for Viola, perhaps, but not for Olivia, who negotiates exactly the kind of nonconventional marriage she wants.

.....

Although Shakespeare depicted the positive results that can ensue when inequalities of gender must be balanced with inequalities of social rank and wealth, three plays also suggest he was fully aware of its destructive possibilities. In Much Ado about Nothing, it contributes to Claudio's insecurity and the intense anger he displays toward Hero.³³ Although critics generally assume that Hero and Claudio are equal in rank and fortune, I am not sure that is the case.³⁴ Shakespeare's sources for the Hero-Claudio plot differ in this regard. In Orlando Furioso, Canto V, the woman is of a higher rank than the man, whereas in Bandello's La Prima Parte de le Novelle, novella 22, the man is of higher rank and greater financial wealth. Spenser's use of the story in The Faerie Queene, 2.4., also depicts the woman as of higher rank than the man.³⁵ Although most discussions assume that Shakespeare is following Bandello, and altering his source by making the couple social equals,³⁶ that assumption is open to question, as Shakespeare's depiction includes features of the story as told in Ariosto.³⁷ Furthermore, the play contains evidence that Hero outranks her future husband and has the greater wealth. Does Claudio's status as “a young lord of Florence” equate with hers as the daughter of the “governor of Messina”? Don John is apparently dubious, for when Borachio announces that Claudio hopes to wed Hero, “the daughter and heir of Leonato,” he responds “a very forward March-chick” (1.3.54-56).³⁸ Apparently, Claudio has an inkling that Hero, her father's only heir, certainly could do better in the marriage market, for he is initially reluctant to tell Don Pedro of his interest, and once he has, he is only too happy to have the Prince not just talk to the lady's father but woo her for him. Although Cook has argued that Don Pedro is here in the tradition of the noble who “exercises his authority and responsibility to make a suitable match for a follower,” and does cite other examples from plays,³⁹ it still seems odd that Claudio speaks neither to father nor daughter until the engagement. Leonato's announcement, “His grace hath made the match” (2.1.303), suggests that Claudio has been accepted due to the Prince's influence. Thus, this sense of social insecurity, along with male anxiety about controlling women, and an inability to integrate the roles of warrior and lover, all become factors in Claudio's rage against Hero in the aborted wedding scene.

A much greater social gap exists between Posthumus and Imogen in Cymbeline. She is the daughter of the king and is heir apparent to the throne, while he is “a poor but worthy gentleman” (1.1.7). Thus, in choosing him “her own price / Proclaims how she esteem'd him,” and shows his virtue, which “by her election may be truly read, / What kind of man he is” (1.1.51-54). However, this opinion of Cymbeline's court is not reflected in Iachimo's comments on the drastic social difference between the two; indeed, Iachimo implies that because his wife outranks him, Posthumus will only be judged by Imogen's worth rather than his own: “This matter of marrying his king's daughter, wherein he must be weigh'd rather by her value than his own, words him” (1.4.14-17). He argues that Imogen's choice, which is praised “to fortify her judgment,” actually suggests that “an easy battery might lay [her] flat, for taking a beggar without less quality” (1.4.19-23). Although when Posthumus makes the wager with Iachimo, he is fully convinced of Imogen's chastity, Iachimo is able to convince him otherwise, even without his most damning evidence, by producing the bracelet Posthumus gave Imogen as a love token. Although a friend points out that it could easily have been stolen, Posthumus insists on taking it as evidence of Imogen's promiscuity. He may not be as quick as Othello to believe reports of his wife's unfaithfulness, but just as in Othello and Much Ado, the violence stems not just from an ingrained patriarchal tendency to see women as either pure or sexually rapacious but from the man's insecurity at knowing that this woman outranks him, with a subsequent loss of his power within the marriage. If she is unchaste, then she is not better than he, and socially he can reassert himself, either by killing her emotionally, as in Much Ado, by killing her himself, as in Othello, or by having her killed, as Posthumus seeks to do. However, Posthumus is unique in that he is the one man in Shakespeare's plays (and perhaps on the English Renaissance stage) who, even when he still believes his wife was guilty, realizes that he had no right to order her death. In his soliloquy at the start of the fifth act, he speaks of men who “murther wives much better than themselves / For wrying but a little!” (5.5). He calls his wife “the noble Imogen” (9), refers to “my lady's kingdom” (19), and calls her Britain's “mistress” (20). As if to stress the social distance between them, he disguises himself as a Briton peasant during the battle. While the soliloquy can be read in terms of Imogen's moral superiority, his use of terms equally relevant to social difference suggests that he has, belatedly, resolved the clash between the gender paradigm and that of social rank.

Shakespeare's most comprehensive handling of differences within a marriage—one of which is social rank—occurs in Othello. As Ann Jennalie Cook points out, “Viewed through the lenses of tragedy, the marriage of a man and woman differing in age, birth, upbringing, temperament, nationality, and race can wreak disaster,”⁴⁰ but she also notes that the play is silent on difference in social rank. She observes that “if, as the Moor claims, ‘I fetch my life and being / From men of royal siege’ (1.ii.21-2), then he has wed beneath his rank,” but she also acknowledges Mark Taylor's argument that “as a senator's daughter Desdemona marries below her rank.” While it is true that “rank is the one ground of inequality not charged against her for this marriage,” perhaps that is because it is implicit in the situation.⁴¹ Othello may be general of the Venetian army, but he is also an outsider who has no clear social rank in Venice. Given that Desdemona has “shunn'd / The wealthy curled [darlings] of Venice” (1.2.66-67), according to her father, and “forsook so many noble matches” (4.2.125), according to Emilia, the question needs to be asked: What does Desdemona hope to gain from this marriage with a man so different from herself?

The answer lies in the gender paradigm we have been considering, as well as in her cultural context and its paradigm for marriage. According to the gender paradigm, once again, a lady of high degree has responded to the heroic deeds that have ennobled a warrior and thus made him worthy of her love, despite an obvious difference in social rank that must be negotiated within marriage. That difference is here reinforced by the cultural difference. Desdemona, in rejecting the “wealthy curled [darlings]” of Venice, is also, ironically as it turns out, rejecting the paradigm of the jealous Italian husband in the traditional Venetian marriage.⁴² When she first realizes the handkerchief is missing, she is confident of her husband's response:

DESDEMONA.
                                                  And but my noble Moor
Is true of mind, and not made of no such baseness
As jealious creatures are, it were enough
To put him to ill thinking.
EMILIA.
                                                                                                    Is he not jealious?
DESDEMONA.
Who, he? I think the sun where he was born
Drew all such humors from him.

(3.4.26-31)

Her confidence springs from the belief that Othello differs from all those “wealthy curled [darlings]” of Venice that she has rejected. Certainly, Othello initially gives her a freedom bordering on equality. He allows her to be “half the wooer” (1.3.176), approves of her deception of her father, and asks that she be allowed to address the Duke and council to speak in her own behalf. At this point, he sees her as a fellow outsider, and thus an equal in their joint battle against her father's opposition to the marriage.

Desdemona apparently expected that the difference in social rank, as well as the cultural difference, would create the possibility for the kind of negotiation that would give her a more equal marriage than she could expect with a man of her own society. She expects that Othello will continue to respond to her as an equal. Once the marriage is accepted by the Duke and Venetian senate, however, Othello no longer needs an ally and expects Desdemona to return to the traditionally subordinate role. The traditional hierarchy in their marriage is reinforced by the age difference, as well as by the fact that in eloping, she lost the advantage of independent wealth (Othello must “crave fit disposition for my wife” when the Senate gives him command at Cyprus), as well as that of powerful relatives (her father disowns her). If Othello considers himself a social equal, then that expected advantage is negated also. Even before Iago has begun to put his plan into motion, we see some friction between the couple, as she assumes she has a prerogative to discuss Cassio's reinstatement with Othello. Cassio has not yet asked for her help, but Emilia tells him, “the general and his wife are talking of it, / And she speaks for you stoutly” (3.1.43-44). Later, Othello is apparently uncomfortable with the direct role Desdemona is taking, for he attempts to divert her request rather than answering directly. She, for her part, attempts to get a specific answer:

DESDEMONA.
                                                  Good love, call him back.
OTHELLO.
Not now, sweet Desdemon, some other time.
DESDEMONA.
But shall't be shortly?
OTHELLO.
                                                  The sooner, sweet, For you.
DESDEMONA.
Shall't be to-night at supper?
OTHELLO.
No, not to-night.
DESDEMONA.
To-morrow dinner then?
OTHELLO.
                                                  I do not dine at home;
I meet the captains at the citadel.
DESDEMONA.
Why then to-morrow night, [or] Tuesday morn;
On Tuesday noon, or night; on We'n'sday morn.
I prithee name the time, but let it not
Exceed three days.

(3.2.54-63)

Othello finally agrees to Cassio's return, but he ties it directly to his emotional attachment to Desdemona, who replies that she has not asked a “boon” but is giving rational advice: “'Tis as I should entreat you wear your gloves, / Or feed on nourishing dishes, or keep you warm” (3.2.77-78). Othello then requests that she “leave me, but a little to myself” (3.2.85). He is clearly uneasy with her appeals to him on equal ground, and he is no doubt also feeling uneasy about the emotional power he feels that his love gives her.⁴³

Thus, Iago, in his role as catalyst, has plenty of material on which to work. Desdemona, assuming equality, initially attempts to resolve her problems with Othello through logical arguments, and then, after being hit and subjected to his verbal and emotional abuse, through an increasingly traditional female subordination. Finally, she sends Emilia away on the fatal night because “we must not now displease him” (4.2.17). Like many a victim of gender violence, before and since, she recalls the hope of the early relationship with its promise of equality, even as she switches to compliance in a desperate attempt to alleviate the rapidly growing chasm of inequality with herself as victim. When Emilia asks the dying Desdemona who has killed her, she replies enigmatically, “Nobody; I myself” (5.2.124). Desdemona had hoped that the differences between Venetian men and Othello would allow her a more equal marriage. She did not understand what Emilia knew only too well: in this society, the male drive to dominate women, of which jealousy is a symptom, has made that impossible from the start.

Shakespeare was clearly fascinated with exploring the dynamics of women marrying down in terms of social rank and fortune. In addition to the plays discussed here, it is also a feature in As You Like It, where both Rosalind and Celia marry below their rank, as well as in the marriage of Antipholus of Ephesus and Adriana in The Comedy of Errors. That other dramatists also chose to explore this idea of women marrying down suggests that the issues it raises are not necessarily unique to Shakespeare, although he does explore it in greater depth than any of the others, over a wider range of plays. While it may not always yield a positive outcome, on the whole, the decision by the woman in these plays to cross class boundaries gives hope for a more successful resolution of the inequality inherent in a patriarchal system of marriage. Although the female characters who marry beneath their social level may not always have the steely strength of Bel-imperia, they are after the same goal: a more equal relationship than would be possible with men of their own or a higher rank. That this dynamic is so widespread in the earlier drama of the English Renaissance⁴⁴ suggests that issues of gender and class were of particular concern, especially when it gave women the power to move out of the subordinate position to which their gender had seemingly confined them. When class and gender hierarchies collide, there is uncertainty, and such uncertainty may give women their best opportunity to gain at least a more equal marriage than they could otherwise expect. However, it may also widen fissures by exacerbating male insecurity, thereby leading to male attempts to reassert the gender hierarchy in violent and deadly ways. It is a calculated risk by the female characters who choose this strategy, but a risk that many are shown as willing to take.

Notes

1. The stereotype of the henpecked husband clearly illustrates the first, while the paradigm of a marriage where a wife, considered subordinate by her culture, considers herself an equal partner illustrates the second.

2. Upon seeing her transformation, he embraces and kisses her, while “she obeyed hym in every thyng / That myghte doon hym pleasance or likying.” See Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Wife of Bath's Tale,” in The Canterbury Tales, 2nd ed., ed. F. N. Robinson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957), lines 1255-56). Further references to this edition appear in the text.

3. Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy, ed. Philip Edwards (London: Methuen and Co., 1959; repr. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1981), 1.1.5-11. Further references to this edition appear in the text.

4. The same dynamic occurs in Grim the Collier of Croydon (c. 1600), by William Haughton. Morgan, Earl of London, wishes to marry his daughter to Lacy, Earl of Kent, a man of his own age, but she prefers Musgrave, a young gentleman. Morgan sets up a bed-trick in which his daughter, believing she is sleeping with Musgrave, will actually be matched with Lacy. He soliloquizes about the need to keep his daughter controlled by reinforcing the gender hierarchy with those of age and social rank:

   And then my Lord of Kent shall be my Sonne;
   Should I go wed my Daughter to a Boy?
   No, no, young girles must have their Wills restrain'd,
   For if the Rule be theirs, all runnes to nought.

   (2.1.109-12)

   His daughter will not be under effective male control after she marries unless she weds an older man who is a social equal or superior. See William Haughton, Grim the Collier of Croydon, in A Choice Ternary of English Plays; “Gratiae Theatrales” (1662), ed. William M. Baillie (Binghamton, N. Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1984).

5. I know of only two other female revengers in this early drama. One is Perseda in Soliman and Perseda, also by Kyd. Perseda, however, uses a poisoned kiss to kill her husband's murderer. The other female revenger, Videna in Gorboduc, is a mother who revenges the murder of her son by stabbing her other son who killed him.

6. One could, of course, make the argument that Bel-imperia, as a member of the royal family of Spain, is behaving irresponsibly, as she has a political duty to her nation. Audiences of the time would also know that Henry VI's and Edward IV's matrimonial choices, that put personal desire ahead of the nation's political good, had created social disaster. Ann Jennalie Cook has a good discussion of such marriages in Shakespeare's history plays. See Making a Match: Courtship in Shakespeare and His Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 50-52. However, The Spanish Tragedy is only peripherally concerned with the nation; the focus is instead on personal relationships (within families, between lovers) and on the class distinctions within that society.

7. David Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 256.

8. Alan Macfarlane, Marriage and Love in England: Modes of Reproduction 1300-1800 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 257; 258; 253.

9. Ann Jennalie Cook, Making a Match, 43; 47.

10. Ibid., 53.

11. Clara Claiborne Park, “As We Like It: How a Girl Can be Smart and Still Popular,” in The Women's Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare, ed. Carolyn Ruth Swift Lenz, Gayle Greene, and Carol Thomas Neely (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), 105.

12. William Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing, ed. Anne Barton, in The Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd. ed., ed. G. Blakemore Evans and J. J. M. Tobin (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1997), 2.1.59-65. All references to Shakespeare's plays will be to this edition.

13. John Marston, The Dutch Courtesan, ed. M. L. Wine (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965), 3.1.67-79. Further references to this edition appear in the text.

14. A woman who does choose spinsterhood and its freedom over marriage is Moll, the cross-dressing woman in The Roaring Girl:

    I have no humour to marry. I love to lie o' both sides o' th' bed myself; and again, o' th' other side, a wife, you know, ought to be obedient, but I fear me I am too headstrong to obey, therefore I'll ne'er go about it. … I have the head now of myself, and am man enough for a woman; marriage is but a chipping and changing, where a maiden loses one head and has a worse i' th' place.

    See Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker, The Roaring Girl, ed. Paul Mulholland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987), 2.2.36-45.

15. Park, “As We Like It,” 109. Although Park suggests that Portia rejects the African prince because a cross-racial marriage does not appeal to her, and Portia does say this, it should be noted that the prince has personality flaws that put him in the same category as the other suitors. His rank would also put Portia firmly in a subordinate position.

16. Frank Whigham, “Ideology and Class Conduct in The Merchant of Venice,” in Renaissance Drama, New Series, 10, ed. Leonard Barkan (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1979), 97.

17. Alan Macfarlane explains that a woman who had been through a church wedding had “an automatic right of ‘dower’ whereby a woman was seized of one-third of her husband's freehold estate for life. This could not be taken from her, waived or undermined, and it needed no specification or contract to protect it.” However, negotiations before a marriage might also include a “contractual jointure … to provide more generous terms for the wife, over and above the common law dower.” See Marriage and Love in England, 282. Macfarlane, however, does not note that the jointure could be less than dower, and that wives who were given a jointure before marriage lost any dower rights. Portia's father realizes he will not be alive to conduct those negotiations.

18. There is an ongoing debate as to whether Portia, by her choice of song, instructs Bassanio on the correct casket. If so, then she is actively choosing him; if not, she does choose him, but she still needs her father's test to ratify her choice.

19. Cook, Making a Match, 166.

20. Macfarlane, Marriage and Love in England, 274. See also the detailed discussion on 275-76.

21. Lisa Jardine, “Cultural Confusion and Shakespeare's Learned Heroines: ‘These are old paradoxes,’” in Reading Shakespeare Historically (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 59.

22. Cook, Making a Match, 177 n. 92.

23. Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death, 374. See also 564, n. 76.

24. In Shakespeare's source, the relationship was consummated before the young man returned to Venice. See the translation of “The First Story of the fourth Day of Ser Giovanni,” Il Pecorone, reprinted in the 2nd Arden edition of The Merchant of Venice, ed. John Russell Brown (London: Methuen & Co., 1955, repr. 1979).

25. See Macfarlane, Marriage and Love in England, 275.

26. In the Trevor Nunn film (1996), the silly strain in Olivia is played up, although she is allowed to maintain some dignity. The “Live from Lincoln Center” production that aired in fall 1998 on American television depicts Olivia as a shallow woman.

27. Irene G. Dash, “Challenging Conventions: Twelfth Night,” in Women's Worlds in Shakespeare's Plays (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1997), 212; 211.

28. Cook, Making a Match, 62.

29. Cook summarizes some of this disagreement in Making a Match, 61 n. 56.

30. In the source, the story of Apolonius and Silla, in Barnabe Riche His Farewell to Military Profession, the brother and sister are children of a duke who is still alive. The change in social status—to make Viola and Sebastian of lesser rank than their marriage partners—appears to be deliberate on Shakespeare's part.

31. I owe this succinct phrasing to my colleague, Constance Kuriyama, who read this essay and offered suggestions for sharpening arguments and improving clarity.

32. Dash, Women's Worlds, 244.

33. I describe it as “contributing” because it is one of several factors. Carol Thomas Neely's discussion of Much Ado clearly examines the social and psychological roots of the men's fear of female control. The men, she notes, deal with possible female betrayal and subsequent male loss of power in three ways: “they deny its possibility through idealization, anticipate it through misogyny, or transform it, through the motif of cuckoldry, into an emblem of male virility.” See Broken Nuptials in Shakespeare's Plays (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985), 41. She also points out that the men must break with their male peers in order to marry (32).

34. Among these are Cook, Making a Match, 94. See also A. R. Humphreys, in the introduction to the second Arden Much Ado about Nothing (London: Methuen, 1981), 11, and R. A. Foakes, introduction to Much Ado about Nothing (New York: Penguin, 1968), who writes that Claudio and Hero are “apparently of the same rank, and untroubled by disparity of fortune,” (15).

35. The squire says:

    It was my fortune commune to that age,
              To loue a ladie faire of great degree,
              The which was borne of noble parentage,
              And set in highest seat of dignitee,
              Yet seemd no lesse to loue, than loued to bee:
              Long I her serv'd, and found her faithful still,
              Ne euer thing could cause vs disagree:
              Loue that two harts makes one; makes eke one will:
    Each stroue to please, and others pleasure to fulfill.

    See Edmund Spenser, The Faeire Queene, ed. Thomas P. Roche, Jr. (London and New York: Penguin 1978, repr. 1987), 2.4.19.

36. Jean E. Howard, argues that “while the Hero figure in the source is of humble origins, that is not true of Shakespeare's Hero,” and she claims Don Pedro “promotes a union between social equals and so strengthens the existing social order.” See “Renaissance Antitheatricality and the Politics of Gender and Rank in Much Ado about Nothing,” in Shakespeare Reproduced: The Text in History and ideology, ed. Jean E. Howard and Marion F. O'Connor (New York and London: Methuen, 1987), 175. She follows Charles T. Prouty's assertions in The Sources of “Much Ado about Nothing” (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950), 43-44.

37. Ariosto provides the detail of the maid who unwittingly is used in place of her mistress for a supposed rendezvous. In sharp contrast to Claudio, this version has the lover, who thinks he had been betrayed, return to defend his lady in trial by combat against his own brother, even though he still believes her guilty. Bandello's story provides the feigned death of the lady and her subsequent resurrection once her name is cleared. In Spenser, the jealous lover kills his betrothed.

38. Cook takes this line as referring to Don John's supposing Hero is seeking to marry the prince, Don Pedro. However, Don John is clearly talking about Claudio's intended marriage to her.

39. Cook, Making a Match, 94.

40. Ibid, 68.

41. Ibid, 52-53 n. 42. See also Mark Taylor, Shakespeare's Darker Purpose: A Question of Incest (New York: AMS Press, 1982), 11.

42. Part of Iago's genius is that he not only convinces Othello that Desdemona conforms to the stereotype of the sexually promiscuous Venetian woman, but he is able to elicit from Othello behavior that conforms to the stereotype of the jealous Italian husband—well known to Shakespeare's audience from the Italian novellas. For a more detailed discussion, see Margo Hendricks, “‘The Moor of Venice’ or the Italian on the Renaissance English Stage,” in Shakespearean Tragedy and Gender, ed. Shirley Nelson Garner and Madelon Sprengnether (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996), 193-209.

43. Much has been written about Othello's inability to resolve sexual issues. Carol Thomas Neely, in Broken Nuptials in Shakespeare's Plays, analyzes these dynamics from a feminist perspective, as does Gayle Greene in “‘This That You Call Love’: Sexual and Social Tragedy in Othello,” originally published in Journal of Women's Studies in Literature 1 (1979): 16-32, and reprinted in Shakespeare and Gender: A History, ed. Deborah E. Barker and Ivo Kamps (London and New York: Verso, 1995), 47-62. By drawing attention to the issue of “marrying down” in this play, I by no means wish to downplay the importance of those sexual issues, but only to point out that Desdemona's quest for equality is a contributing factor. Another would be the differing cultural expectations that Othello and Desdemona bring to the marriage, an issue that Neely explores in “Circumscriptioins and Unhousedness: Othello in the Borderlands,” in Shakespeare and Gender, 302-15.

44. I say “earlier” Renaissance drama because a preliminary survey suggests that it is much less common in the later drama.