INTRODUCTION

As we have seen in chapter 1, John Webster's Duchess of Malfi and her steward Antonio marry privately by mutual consent. Each uses unconventional and metaphorical language to express their intent to marry one another, and yet by this they are married. For, as discussed above, any expression of genuine present intent, with no need for a particular formula or type of words, created a valid and binding marriage contract by spousals. The Duchess then says, using the word ‘force’ with a meaning perhaps hovering between legal ‘enforcement’ (OED ‘enforce’ III, 14) and moral compulsion: ‘What can the church force more?’ Antonio hints at misgivings, but she reiterates:

No clearer statement could be made of the rules, which we have previously examined, governing consensual marriage. These rules, current in Shakespeare's England, did indeed ensure the inability of the Church or its ceremonies to ‘bind faster’ in marriage than spousals did. Church solemnities, the Duchess says, are merely an echo of what went before.

Webster's play makes equally clear, however, that such a marriage by spousals alone could be disastrous for all concerned. The not uncommon practice of unsolemnised or ‘clandestine’ marriage was much debated, as we shall see in chapter 6. Here we will consider the other side of the same coin, the question of solemnisation itself.