Renaissance love(s): marriage, bigamy and literary representation in seventeenth-century England

In 1604, an Act of James I declared that bigamy, formerly perceived as a spiritual offence, was henceforth to be prosecuted as a secular felony punishable by death. This essay examines the impact of this reframing on love and marriage as social and sexual transactions across the seventeenth century, via an analysis of contemporary cases, popular print, and literary representations of bigamous liaisons, including Thomas Heywood's The Wise-woman of Hogsdon, William Rowley's All's Lost by Lust, Aphra Behn's History of the Nun and Thomas Southerne's The Fatal Marriage. How were ideas of re-marriage and adultery affected by the legislation and what was at stake for the state and for those who offended? The latter group included fortune-hunters and serial monogamists, the wives of sailors believed lost at sea, as well as those who had simply fallen foul of the ambiguities inherent in contemporary marriage practice. This essay will argue that this diverse body of offenders, together with the move from spiritual to secular enforcement, influenced both the implementation of the law and the regulation of love and marriage as the century progressed and will demonstrate the ways in which literary modes illuminate and engage with the contemporary climate.