Marriage in Elizabethan time
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Love and Romance in the Elizabethan Era3

Men embroidered shirts with buttons down in the front. People who belong to the top class also wore fine silk hat with a single feather. Wear shoes were always made of high-quality leather. Long, the flow of their high hats was also increased about the class of clothing worn in the Elizabethan era.

Love and Romance in the Elizabethan Era

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The upper class used all kinds of fabrics. They mostly used velvet, silk, fur, even taffeta. Such exotic materials were imported from different places around the world. Bright colours robe very much sought during this phase, such bright colours were also expensive to purchase. For instance, the early depictions of Queen Elizabeth, they show her in a dark red robe, this intense red is actually found only in the Mediterranean, the insects. Therefore, these kinds of dyes were expensive to purchase.

Love and Romance in the Elizabethan Era
Love in the Elizabethan era

For people belonging to the lower strata of the social categorization wore clothes made from wool, sheepskin, even linen. Such people are not allowed to wear materials in silk or even with velvet gift. The clothing in the Elizabethan observed people with gold and silver joy and even button gems. Snoods were also popular in the Elizabethan era.

Like everything else in the Elizabethan era, love and marriage were also subject to financial and social ranking. The women had very little rights in terms of their marriage and had to compline with what their parents chose for them. Marriages were mostly arranged by families keeping in mind the social status of the families.

Wives were treated as properties of their husbands and were dependent on them. Children were also treated alike who had to provide the same respect to their parents that servants paid to their masters.

Elizabethan Era Courtship

Courtship, the very concept was derived from the Elizabethan era where the ladies of the court were wooed and won by knights and lords of the court through gestures such as of frequent visits, gifts and compliments. The man generally asked a woman’s father for permission to court his daughter that implied that the man seriously and openly desired the responsibility of marriage.

Romeo and Juliet
Romance was a predominant theme in Elizabethan literature

In saying “yes” to a courtship proposal, the father was granted the man permission to visit his daughter, give her gifts, accompany her to formal to social events, etc. Comparable to these days wherein every woman would look forward to that day when they have to walk in the aisle, Elizabethan marriages was also one of the highlights of every woman’s life.

Love and Romance in the Elizabethan Era

The chief difference between then and today is that back then the woman possessed very little right in choosing her husband. The matrimony was arranged by families of the bride and the groom in order for the two sides to benefit from one another.

How important was love when arranging a marriage in the Elizabethan times?

Love or ideas of love held very little importance in matters of marriage in the Elizabethan era. People rarely married out of love. Marriages were mostly arranged and alliances were made keeping in mind the financial and social status of both families.

marriage alliances were usually conducted with the motive of lifting one’s own social status. The women had very little say in their own marriages. It was, therefore, a practical affair with no room for romantic sentiments.

Marriage in the 16th century

Elizabethan era Relationships

In the Elizabethan era, it was considered stupid to get married for love. Parents were believed to know what was best for their children. Marriages depended on one’s social rank and the higher one’s social rank was, the better chances he/she had of getting married.

It also affected the age of people’s marriage. For common people, the age to get married was 25 – 26 for men and around 22 for women. If the social rank was higher, he/she could get married much sooner. every person was expected to get married in the Elizabethan era.

Elizabethan Era Marriage

Why did people marry in the Elizabethan era?

Mostly, these were arranged marriages keeping wealth and reputation into consideration. Families of landowners were expected to marry just to attain land possession. Couples usually met each other ON the day of the wedding.

Marriage in Elizabethan time

This was a very well known tradition among well-known nobilities. However, people in the lower class would normally go for arranged marriages with the children of friends and neighbours. Thus, the lower the status a family holds in the society than the larger power a person may have in choosing life partners.

Elizabethan love poems

No matter what status love and romance had in the everyday life of people, they had become the primary subjects of concerns in the Elizabethan literature. Most plays, poems and songs written during this time had love as their central theme.

In Renaissance England, the love poems often expressed not only romantic but also sexual passion. Love was viewed as an elemental human passion. It thus became an overriding theme in Renaissance literature.

Romance in the 16th century

The Elizabethan sonnets primarily explored themes of love. It actually lies in the lyrical nature of sonnets to explore love. Sonnets are inherently musical in metrical terms. It is melodious in its sound and rhythm, and therefore, fir to express overwhelming emotions of love.

Shakespeare, along with other great poets like Spenser, Sydney and Drayton composed sonnets that deal with the themes of love. Although they primarily deal with love and heartbreak, they are also quite complex and deep in their articulation of these subjects.

More Info On- Love quotes by William Shakespeare, Love and romance in the Literature, Love and Omance in the Elizabethan Era, Love and romance in literature of William Shakespeare

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