SPOUSALS

Today it is almost unbelievable that a valid marriage could have been created as informally as it was seen to be in John Webster's play The Duchess of Malfi. Yet the above few words, spoken by Webster's Duchess, quite properly describe the simple process that allowed willing couples to be married in Shakespeare's age.

The Duchess's remark makes an explicit (if perhaps defensive) reference to legality, and also refers to an indissoluble Gordian knot. In so doing, she correctly claims that the secret union she is about to form with her steward Antonio will be ‘absolute marriage’. She then marries privately, without any written licence or other form of permission from Church or state. She is not married in a church. There are no clergy present, and no religious rites. Her family play no part and there is no more publicity than the witnessing presence of a waiting woman. No particular formal words or ritual words are spoken. Rather, she and Antonio express, using highly figurative language, their agreement to be married. Because they are not prohibited from giving such consent (by ‘impediments’ of incest, bigamy, or incapacity to express consent), they are then immediately and irrevocably married.

In this scene Webster portrays the creation of a valid and binding marriage by what was known as spousals.