Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 39

[cahn]

Last post, along with the usual 18th-century suspects, included the Ottonians; changing ideas of conception and women's sexual pleasure; Isabella of Parma (the one who fell in love, and vice versa, with her husband's sister); Henry IV and Bertha (and Henry's second wife divorcing him for "unspeakable sexual acts"). (Okay, Isabella of Parma was 18th century.)

Comments

Sixteenth-century question about proposing

[cahn]

For reasons! Let's say that a man is asking a woman to marry him in Elizabethan England. The two aren't royalty, so the marriage isn't arranged (and is in fact a love match); both are children of knights (one is an old family, the other is a merchant family, recently knighted).

In particular, do we have the convention in this era that the man goes down on one knee and asks the woman to marry him? If not, is there any convention for proposals? And (especially if not) is there any sort of convention in the kinds of romances (e.g. Arthurian romances) they would have been reading at the time?

Re: Sixteenth-century question about proposing

[selenak]

Without being an expert; I think going down on one knee was not yet a thing, though I could be wrong. Ototh, you have enough Elizabethan plays to provide some useful data for marriage proposals. To name the most obvious example: Romeo and Juliet. It is actually Juliet who proposes in that she says if Romeo‘s love is honorably minded, where should she send her woman to meet him while he arranges for them to get married. (I.e. finds a priest.)

Romances: depending on when in Elizabethan times, they would be familiar with sonnets (note that Romeo and Juliet‘s first conversation while dancing with each other takes the form of a sonnet). Sonnets were increasingly popular, and reading them together, with or without being inspired to add one‘s own attempts, would be something I could see young lovers doing.
Sonnet-writing folk during Henry VIIII‘s time: Thomas Wyatt, Henry Howard, Earl of Sussex.
Later Elizabethans: Philip Sidney, Walter Raleigh, and good old Will Shakespeare, of course.

Prose: depending on their state of education (are we talking English reading only or also French? Italian?) , they might be reading the Decameron (by Boccachio). According to its wiki article - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decameron - (, an English translation exists as early as 1526, and it was a far more contemporary bestseller and way to get romances - including Arthurian romances - from than Le Morte D‘Arthur.

(Other possibilities include the Heptameron by Marguerite de Navarre.)

Re: Sixteenth-century question about proposing

[cahn]

Oh duuuuuuh, Elizabethan plays! Of course! Thank you :D (This would in fact be for Mary/very early Elizabeth, but eh, for my not-extraordinarily-accurate purposes I'm willing to use later Elizabethans as sources (for me, obviously not for them) as well.)

Hm, interesting, I believe only English is referred to, but really I don't see why they couldn't read the Decameron, or even if not I'd expect them to have access to those tropes even if they hadn't personally read it.

Thank you! <3

Re: Sixteenth-century question about proposing

[mildred_of_midgard]

Ahem. I did the best I could to ask someone whose period it more or less is. Mostly because the conversation reminded me of her saying that Juliet being so young was *not* because normal English girls got married that young, but because English people saw Italians as gross and willing to marry their daughters off that young.

The book she recced is not on Kindle nor likely to arrive any time soon, but there's at least a Google books preview here.

The only thing I can say from my own highly limited knowledge is in regards to

The two aren't royalty, so the marriage isn't arranged

It doesn't necessarily follow that it isn't arranged, just that it has a chance of not being arranged.

Re: Sixteenth-century question about proposing

[selenak]

English people saw Italians as gross and willing to marry their daughters off that young

On that note, and going off on a tangent, while royal marriages aren't normal marriages, it's still worth pointing out what the History of the Germans podcast has reminded me of: Maude, daughter of English king Henry I (and mother of future Henry II via her second married) was sent off as a child to marry Emperor Henry V, and while he didn't immediately marry her (but had her living as his intended at his court), he did marry her when she was eleven. As Dirk said, let's hope he waited a few more years for the marriage consummation. (We wouldn't know, because they had no kids.) On the not royal but related to royals front and closer to Shakespeare's own time, there's Margaret Beaufort, who gets married to Edmund Tudor at age 12, and he does consumate the marriage, because she gets pregnant immediately with future Henry VII and gives birth at age 13. Margaret Beaufort will, decades later, insist that her granddaughter Margaret when married (in absentia) to the Scottish King at a similar age will remain home at the English court for a few more years. Also, while Edmund Tudor died very early and Margaret Beaufort got married two more times (including to that Lord Stanley who together with his brother had a role top lay at Bosworth Fields), she won't have another child, and in fact supposedly took a vow to remain sexless (making the marriages purely political arrangements).

In terms of rl examples, there's also whatever Thomas Seymour did with teenage Elizabeth when she lived with him and Catherine Parr at Chelsea; Elizabeth was twelve verging on 13 when her father died and 15 when Catherine Parr died. Now, Catherine Parr undoubtedly loved Thomas Seymour, whom she had wanted to marry before Henry VIII more or less drafted her as his last wife. But Thomas Seymour, after Henry's death, asked the Council whether he could marry either Elizabeth or Mary, and only when that immediately was shot down did he marry Catherine (who didn't know he'd considered alternatives). And of course Thomas Seymour tried to marry Elizabeth again after Catherine's death.

Then we have Henry VIII's bff Charles Brandon, Duke of Sussex, whose last wife started out as his ward, intended for his son (from his previous marriage), only then he reconsidered and married 14 years old Catherine and her great dowry (yes, another Kate) himself once a widower.

But sure, Elizabethans, it's the Italians who are gross...

Re: Sixteenth-century question about proposing

[mildred_of_midgard]

Yeah, we talked about that, and she had a lot to say about the differences between what the royals/nobles did and what their subjects thought about what they did, and whether said subjects protested and/or took precautions to keep it from happening to their own daughters.

Because yeah, I can (and did, upthread) name a bunch of skeevy noble and royal marriages for political purposes off the top of my head from all periods across all of Europe, but what the lower classes thought about it is pretty far outside my area, so I am taking recessional's word on it.

there's also whatever Thomas Seymour did with teenage Elizabeth when she lived with him

But this kind of thing happens even in our day, there being a huge difference between what happens irl and what you will have your good guys proudly state is a good idea in a play.

Re: Sixteenth-century question about proposing

[cahn]

ahahaha, thank you! That is a super interesting discussion!

(Uh, I didn't mean to turn this into you getting a book! But it does sound like an interesting book.)

Re: Sixteenth-century question about proposing

[mildred_of_midgard]

Well, I'm not actually planning to get the book, since it's not easily available and I'm unlikely to still care by the time it arrives and I get around to digitizing it. If it were more easily available I would have. But the Google book sample is there for you!

The whole thread is worth reading from the top, not just the part I linked--recessional would fit in well in salon if she were ever to join us.