procreation, celibacy, fertility, children, Vives, De Officio Mariti, Thomas Paynell, betrothals, spouse, marriage

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exaltation of procreation over celibacy; insisting alternately that there is no worse condition than infertility, and then that there is no better state than fertility. The bleakness of the cynic’s outlook escalates throughout the quatrain, culminating in the claim that “No ioy remaines when hope of fruite is gone”. The stoic rejoins “A greater ioye than Childrens may not bee”.

In both poems this involves a commodification of women whereby they are valued in proportion to their capacity to produce children. The answer even applies such venality to the estimation of women’s financial worth:

Put case an aged Trot be somewhat tough?
If coyne shee bring the care will be the lesse,
Thou needste not force so much of handsomnesse. (ll.17-20)

The pursuit of marriage for wealth appears to have been fairly commonplace and transcended class boundaries, and it was a practice generally frowned on by commentators upon the subject. ³⁰⁰ Todd points out that it was “a practice that Erasmus deplored”, and Thomas Paynell, in the introduction to his translation of Vives’s De Officio Mariti, similarly criticises those who “choose not their wiues for their honestie and vertue, […] but for theyr possessions and ryches”. ³⁰¹ Financial circumstances did need to be considered when choosing a spouse, however, and marriages lacking financial security were disparaged. Couples would often delay marriage until they could afford and “young people made betrothals conditional on a change in economic circumstances, usually on obtaining a house or a farm”. ³⁰²

Marriage to the contemptuously named “aged Trot” is certainly not portrayed as

³⁰⁰ See, for instance, Ralph A. Houlbrooke, The English Family: 1450-1700 (London and NY: Longman, 1984), pp.11-12; Wayne ed. (1992), p.11 and pp.55-6; Carlson (1994), pp.107-8 and Mendelson and Crawford (1998), p.133 and p.142.

³⁰¹ Todd (1987), p.186; The Office and Duetie of an Husband, Made by the Excellent Philosopher Lodouicus Viues, and Translated into Englyshe by Thomas Paynell (printed by John Cawood, [1553(?)]), sig. Aii^v, STC 24855. Subsequent references for this text are given in parentheses following quotations.

³⁰² Carlson (1994), p.116.

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