The Shakespearean Marriage

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

   PDF

2. Introduction: Shakespeare and Contemporary Marriage

   • Lisa Hopkins

   Pages 1-15

3. Marriage as Comic Closure

   • Lisa Hopkins

   Pages 16-33

4. Marriage in the Middle

   • Lisa Hopkins

   Pages 34-65

5. What Makes a Marriage?

   • Lisa Hopkins

   Pages 66-84

6. The Fate of the Nation: Marriage in the History Plays

   • Lisa Hopkins

   Pages 85-108

7. Roman Marriage

   • Lisa Hopkins

   Pages 109-132

8. Tragic Marriage

   • Lisa Hopkins

   Pages 133-160

9. The Wedding of the Daughter: Marriage in the Last Plays

   • Lisa Hopkins

   Pages 161-187

10. Conclusion

    • Lisa Hopkins

    Pages 188-191

11. Back Matter

    Pages 192-219

    PDF

Marriage features to a greater or lesser extent in virtually every play Shakespeare wrote - as the festive end of comedy, as the link across the cycles of the history plays, as a marker of the difference between his own society and that depicted in the Roman plays, and, all too often, as the starting-point for the tragedies. Situating his representations of marriage firmly within the ideologies and practices of Renaissance culture, Lisa Hopkins argues that Shakespeare anatomises marriage much as he does kingship, and finds it similarly indispensable to the underpinning of society, however problematic it may be as a guarantor of personal happiness.

• Comic
• culture
• novel
• Renaissance
• society
• William Shakespeare
• British and Irish Literature

• Sheffield Hallam University, UK

  Lisa Hopkins

Lisa Hopkins

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