Family life in the age of Shakespeare

Modern readers wonder how changes in family life since Shakespeare’s time should affect our interpretation of the plays. The purpose of this book is to answer that question and to provide historical and other kinds of information about family life that will enhance readers’ appreciation and understanding of Shakespeare. Drawing on primary sources and the work of recent historians, the book challenges and corrects misconceptions—for instance, about young brides, forced marriages, and the supposedly common brutality of fathers—and offers a balanced approach to family life in the age of Shakespeare. Besides acknowledging the negatives that were undoubtedly present, the book demonstrates the equally well-documented positives, including the ideals of sacrifice, generosity, and mutual respect and the aspiration for loving, happy family life shared by many in the period. The result is that readers are better equipped to experience and interpret the richness and variety of Shakespeare’s works. The volume begins with an overview of the roots of Renaissance family life in the classical era and Middle Ages. This is followed by an extended consideration of family life in Shakespeare’s England, with sections on the family’s political, social, and ideological functions; the structure and size of households; courtship and marriage; parent-child relations; sibling and extended family relations; inheritance; and changes in attitudes and practices over time. The book then examines issues related to family life across a broad range of Shakespeare’s works, exploring family’s thematic and dramatic functions in the plays and the ways Shakespeare’s use of family corresponds to and differs from family as experienced in his time. Later chapters examine how productions of the plays have treated scenes concerning family life and how scholars and critics have commented on family life in Shakespeare’s writings. Following the main chapters is a section of primary documents presenting over thirty selections from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources that illustrate attitudes and practices related to various aspects of family life. The volume closes with a glossary of terms and a bibliography of print and electronic resources for research.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction, Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.