Shakespeare's Wife by Germaine Greer Page A

Barnabe Googe which was submitted to the arbitration of the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1563. Mary was originally sought in marriage by John Lennard, of Chevening, near Tunbridge Wells, for his eighteen-year-old son Sampson. Lennard claimed to have been first approached by the Darrells who proposed their daughter as a match for his son, and that, far from being averse to the match, Mary showed as much eagerness as feminine modesty would permit. The Darrells praised young Lennard, who stood to inherit a fortune, insisting on his suitability for their daughter; Lennard demurred, perhaps because he considered his boy too young. Lennard interviewed Mary several times:
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    I had divers talks with the maid for my son in his absence and yet no more than she was glad of, and then delivered me by her parents…at our last talk, hearing her mild and loving answers with full consent to have my son, who I know loved her entirely, and therefore I having good liking in me that he should be her husband, nature wrought in me to lay my right hand on her breast and to speak thus in effect: ‘Then I see that with God’s help the fruit that shall come of this body shall possess all that I have, and thereupon I will kiss you.’ And so indeed I kissed her. I gave her after this silk for a gown (she never wore none so good), and she, in token of her good will, gave my son a handkerchief and, in affirmance of this, her father wrote a letter to me by her consent… 11
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    To a modern sensibility Lennard’s behaviour is repellent. The courting of Mary Darrell had reached the stage of a match concluded, with letters and tokens exchanged. Because Lennard’s son had not been present the agreement was not a full contract, but a pre-contract, which would have to be formally set aside before a contract with any other party could be entered into. It may seem peculiar that the lover himself had apparently not asked the lady for her hand—indeed he might never have spoken with her at all—but a modest young woman was supposed, not to see for herself whether she fancied a given man,but to acquiesce in the choice of others, in this case both sets of parents. When Lennard visited the Darrells at Bartholomewtide he told Mary and her parents that he had heard talk that she was to be married, which surprised him.
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    They all three answered me, and others for me, very often, that it was not so and that Master Googe was but a suitor. To prove that to be true, the parents sent me a letter sent to Master Googe of late wherein she termeth him to be but a suitor and prayeth him to leave his suit, and the parents still say that he hath no hold of her, except by secret enticement, against their will, he hath caught some word of her, a thing odious to God and not to be favoured by man. 12
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    Part of the ‘secret enticement’, as here alleged, was Googe’s writing of poems to Mary. A similar situation is complained of in A Midsummer Night’s Dream when Egeus appears before Theseus:
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    Full of vexation come I, with complaint
    Against my child and daughter, Hermia.
    Stand forth, Demetrius. My noble lord,
    This man hath my consent to marry her.
    Stand forth, Lysander. And, my gracious Duke,
    This man hath bewitched the bosom of my child.
    Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes,
    And interchanged love-tokens with my child.
    Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung,
    With faining voice, verses of feigning love,
    And stol’n the impression of her fantasy…
    (I. i. 22–31)
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    What Archbishop Parker decided to do when confronted with the case of Barnabe Googe and Mary Darrell was to remove Mary from her parents’ house and make her a ward of the court while the case was considered. The ecclesiastical authority decided for the lovers, and denied the claim of both the Lennard and the Darrell families. On 5 February 1564 Barnabe and Mary were married, and went on to have eight children.
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