Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Renaissance ladies marrying beneath them - Coggle Diagram
Renaissance ladies marrying beneath them
Shakespeare's Twelfth Night
Female characters often use their superiority to create equality in marriage - goes against Renaissance ideals.
Shakespeare's era - it was extremely unusual for women to be given significant roles within literature, as males remained the dominant gender and held importance over women.
In this play, Olivia is given the power that a woman would not usually have when it comes to marriage, both her brother and father have died meaning she was given control over who she marries.
Olivia would like to marry a man with less status than she as she wants to show that she does not need a man to survive.
Viola also asserts her power by disguising herself as a man in order to live successfully with the Duke - she obtains more power than the typical woman of this time period.
Olivia rejects messages of love from Duke Orsino and instead falls in love with the servant Cesario, not knowing Cesario is Viola in disguise.
Olivia is a wealthy hieress whose father and brother have both died.
Beard's Theatre of God's Judgement
Thomas Beard was an English Clergyman and theologian of Puritan views.
Author of 'The Theatre of God's Judgements' as well as being a painter.
Many have argued that he is Webster's main source of inspiration for his play, 'The Duchess of Malfi'.
Beard condemns the Duchess for marrying Antonio, a man who was of a signifcantly lower class to the Duchess.
Beard denies the legality of the Duchess' marriage describing it as "nothing but plain whoredom and fornication" ('The Theatre of God's Judgements' 1554).
Whetstone's Heptameron of Civil Discourses
1852 - Whetstone published his 'Hemtameron of Civil Discourses', a collection of tales which included 'The Rare Historie of Promos and Cassandra'.
From this plot, Shakespeare drew the plot of 'Measurefor Measure'.
Tells the story of an English traveller in Italy, nicknamed Cavaliero Ismarito, who arrives at a palace about ten miles from Ravenna and is invited to join feasting by Signor Philoxenus.
Philoxenus’ sister, Madona Aurelia, was crowned the King of revels and the subject of their entertainment, a “civill contention”, is “whether Mariage or the single lyfe, is the worthyer”.
Suggests it is “better to marry than to burn” and that “the wife is the weaker vessel” and so “the wife must submit to the husband: a virtuous woman is a rare and glorious thing”.
Catherine, Duchess of Suffolk and Richard Bertie
Catherine’s first husband was Charles Brandon, who had borrowed the money to buy her wardship at nine-years-old, turning her into Baroness Willouhby de Eresby on the death of her father - and one of the wealthiest heiresses in England.
Brandon’s plan was to secure her as a bride for his son and heir, Henry.
Charles Brandon’s wife, Mary Tudor (Dowager Queen of France) suffered with a debilitating ‘pain in her side’ - he may have been making plans for after her death.
Brandon married Catherine only three months after Mary’s death, instantly solving his money worries thus becoming the wealthiest landowners in Lincolnshire.
Catherine was raised as a strict Catholic, yet she became an outspoken advocate of religious reform.
Seven years after Charles Brandon’s death, Catherine married for love, to her gentleman usher, Richard Bertie, in 1552.
They had a child in 1554 and when Catholic Mary became Queen they fled in order to escape persecution.
Catherine Willoughby was a woman far ahead of her time, prepared to stand up for her beliefs.
Troubadour tradition & folk ballards
Troubadour = one of a class of lyrical poets and poet-musicians often of knightly rank who flourished from the 11th to the end of the 13th century chiefly in the South of France and the North of Italy and whose major theme was courtly love.
The Troubadours speak of the physical beauty of their ladies and the feelings and desires the ladies arouse in them.
Courtly love (refined love) = refers to a romantic relationship between two unmarried people in medieval times.
