From Gate to Gate: A Study of the Restorative Power of Marriage in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure

In early modern England, marriage was a problem, a big problem. Women might find themselves, nine months post vows, delivered of children to fathers who no longer acknowledged themselves husbands, to fathers no longer bound by either legal or religious obligations to the mothers of their offspring. The reasons for these ruptured marriages were many and varied, and the fallout that came in the wake of their disharmony, considerable. For England wasn’t simply dealing with a problem of broken households, of women and children with no means of support; instead ruptured marriage meant chaos across every aspect of English culture, from fallout in the criminal courts, as witnessed in the proliferation of bawdy houses and prostitution, to the spread of disease and increased mortality, to the wider problem of moral laxity and reprobation across the population. Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure depicts how marital instabilities acted corrosively to corrupt and contaminate across the social order. I would argue that these failures emerged in part as a result of structural and doctrinal shifts within the English reformed church. When Martin Luther presented his reformed doctrine in the early years of the sixteenth century, he had hoped to free marriage from its sacramental standing, believing that the Catholic Church focused too much on ideas of forgiveness in sexual reproduction, seeking to promote celibacy as the holier occupation. Because England had already split from the Catholic Church, ecclesiastical law on marriage was not re-established in 1563 when the Council of Trent settled the idea of marriage on the Continent. So too the English opted to leave that jurisdiction alone, refusing to re-organize marriage practices under civil authority until forced to do so during the Interregnum. Thus, the institution of marriage was grossly inadequate in England, inevitably causing the moral structure of the country to crumble. By the time Measure for Measure was written, there was a heritage of confusion concerning matrimony in England, and English society was rife with the kinds of corruptions that the play seems intent on exposing.Bachelor of Art