You are viewing a free preview of this lesson.
Subscribe to unlock all 10 lessons in this course and every other course on LearningBro.
AO3 — the assessment objective concerned with context — carries significant weight in A-Level English Literature. For Paper 1 Section A, you need to demonstrate understanding of the social, cultural, and historical contexts in which Shakespeare wrote, and how these contexts shape his treatment of love. This lesson provides the essential contextual knowledge for the set plays, focusing on marriage, sexuality, race, religion, and the law.
| Feature | Detail |
|---|---|
| Age of marriage | Legal minimum was 12 for girls, 14 for boys — but most people married in their mid-to-late twenties |
| Parental consent | Expected (and socially enforced) but not legally required for those over the age of consent; however, marrying without consent could result in disinheritance |
| Betrothal (troth-plight) | A formal promise to marry, which had legal force — a couple who had exchanged vows and consummated the relationship were considered married in the eyes of the Church |
| Dowry | The bride's family provided a dowry (money, property, goods) to the groom's family; the size of the dowry was a major factor in marriage negotiations |
| Jointure | The groom's family settled property on the bride that she would receive if widowed — her financial security |
| Coverture | Upon marriage, a woman's legal identity was absorbed into her husband's — she could not own property, sign contracts, or bring legal actions independently |
In The Taming of the Shrew, the financial negotiations between Petruchio and Baptista are dramatically foregrounded. Baptista offers "twenty thousand crowns" as Katherine's dowry and "half of all my lands" after his death (2.1.117–22). The scene makes explicit what polite convention usually conceals: marriage is a commercial transaction.
Claudio and Juliet's situation in Measure for Measure reflects the confusion surrounding betrothal. They have exchanged vows and consummated their relationship, but have not yet had a church wedding — and under Angelo's strict enforcement of the law, Claudio is sentenced to death for fornication. This plot point depends on the audience understanding the legal ambiguity of pre-contract.
AO3 — Context: Shakespeare's own daughter Susanna was accused of fornication (though acquitted) in 1613, and his younger daughter Judith married Thomas Quiney, who had fathered an illegitimate child. The social realities of sexual behaviour in early modern England were often more complex than the legal and religious ideals suggested.
The Church of England taught that sex was permissible only within marriage and only for the purpose of procreation. Extra-marital sex — whether fornication (between unmarried people) or adultery (involving at least one married person) — was a sin and could be prosecuted in the ecclesiastical courts.
In practice, sexual morality was enforced far more strictly for women than for men:
| Standard | For Women | For Men |
|---|---|---|
| Virginity | Essential for an unmarried woman; its loss destroyed her marriageability and social standing | Not expected; sexual experience was often seen as a mark of masculine maturity |
| Adultery | A devastating social and legal offence; an adulterous wife could be divorced and left destitute | Condemned in theory but widely tolerated in practice; male infidelity did not carry the same social stigma |
| Prostitution | Prostitutes were stigmatised, punished, and marginalised | Male customers faced no equivalent social punishment |
This double standard is central to Measure for Measure, where Angelo condemns Claudio to death for fornication while himself attempting to coerce Isabella into sex. The play exposes the hypocrisy of a system that punishes men for what it would destroy women for, while the enforcers of that system are themselves corrupt.
In Othello, the entire tragedy depends on the weight given to female chastity. Desdemona's supposed infidelity is not merely hurtful to Othello — it is, in the logic of the play's world, an existential catastrophe. Othello's honour, his public identity, his sense of self — all depend on Desdemona's fidelity.
Key Definition: Cuckoldry — the state of a husband whose wife is unfaithful — was one of the most pervasive anxieties in Elizabethan and Jacobean culture. The cuckold was depicted as wearing horns (a visual symbol of his humiliation) and was the object of public ridicule. The fear of cuckoldry pervades Shakespeare's work, from the comic (the jealous Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor) to the tragic (Othello, Leontes).
Othello is Shakespeare's most sustained engagement with race, and understanding the racial dynamics of the play requires careful contextual knowledge.
Subscribe to continue reading
Get full access to this lesson and all 10 lessons in this course.