5 Real-Life Dating Rules of Shakespeare's England

Shakespeare’s romantic plays and 154 love poems have influenced our idea of love and romance for centuries, and remain as popular today as they were in his day (if not moreso). But romance itself in Elizabethan England wasn’t quite as straightforward as many of Shakespeare’s plays have it. His fondness for a happy ending sees many of his characters simply married off at the end of his stories, often in rather hurried and irrational ways: Celia and Oliver end up marrying one another at the end of As You Like It, for instance, despite them barely knowing one another (and despite Oliver spending much of the play being a thoroughly heartless character). 

In reality, though, the road to a happy marriage was a long and somewhat bizarre one in Shakespeare’s time, and in many ways is a far cry from what we might consider a happy relationship in 2026.

1. LOVE ISN'T IMPORTANT
2. START YOUNG (ESPECIALLY IF YOU WANT TO MARRY THE NOBILITY)
3. GET PERMISSION TO WOO
4. A (SNEAKY) GIFT GOES A LONG WAY
5. THERE'S NO NEED TO KEEP THINGS EXCLUSIVE

LOVE ISN'T IMPORTANT

These days, you meet someone you like, and you ask them out on a date. It’s all about that first romantic spark, and seeing if anything comes from it. That was much less the case some 400 or 500 years ago, when romance was expected to play second fiddle to matters of property, mutual enrichment, social prestige, and family security. 

Marriages in the medieval and early-modern periods were typically arranged—not by the bride and groom, but by their parents and families. Their interests did not always align with ensuring a happy life for their children (although consent was at least preferable), but instead with matters of social and financial gain and merging estates. This was especially true among the upper classes, where marriages were seen as a way of uniting families, dynasties, and estates in a way that mutually benefitted both parties. Love between the husband and wife, ultimately, wasn’t all that important; as a result, it has been estimated that around one-third of all married couples in the nobility in Shakespeare’s day lived apart. 

Ironically, there was more romantic freedom among the lower classes; the children of whom might be compelled to move away for work or training opportunities, allowing them to take the time to marry whomever they pleased. 

START YOUNG (ESPECIALLY IF YOU WANT TO MARRY THE NOBILITY)

There’s an odd presumption that everyone in Shakespeare’s time was getting married off when they were essentially still children (to our modern sensibilities, at least). In truth, the average wedding-day age for most people in England in the 1500s and 1600s was between 25 and 30, with men slightly older than women. In fact, the only time in the last 500 years that the average wedding age has fallen below 24 was the postwar Baby Boomer era of the 1950s and 1960s. Shakespeare himself was 18 when he married Anne Hathaway, but such a situation was rare at the time, and in their case, might have been driven by other concerns. The fact that Anne was eight years Shakespeare’s senior—and three months pregnant—would have been scandalous. 

That being said, it was certainly common in Shakespeare’s time for youngsters to be officially betrothed to one another in childhood—that is, their parents making plans for them to marry at some point in the future—especially among the monied classes and the nobility. Arranging and negotiating such unions far in advance was yet another way of guaranteeing future prosperity by uniting families. As a result, the minimum age for marriage in Tudor England was 12 for girls and 14 for boys. 

GET PERMISSION TO WOO

Even if someone were to have caught your eye in Shakespeare’s time, you certainly wouldn’t be expected to just go up to them and ask them out. Just as asking a bride’s father for permission to marry her remains a tradition today, back in the 16th century, it was customary for a young man to begin his wooing of a young woman with a “courtship proposal”—that is, asking her father for his permission to begin romantically pursuing her. 

A (SNEAKY) GIFT GOES A LONG WAY

During a young couple’s courtship, it was also customary in Shakespeare’s time for the man to shower his new beau with gifts of coins, fabric, buttons, clothing, and other trinkets, both as a show of his romantic seriousness and intentions, and as a display to her family of his wealth and good taste. In some cases, this gift-giving even extended to members of the woman’s family. 

That was all easier said than done in an era when public displays of affection weren’t always considered good taste, of course, and so the courting party often had to be somewhat sneaky in how he delivered his gifts. One popular method was the employment of third-party messengers and intermediaries. Some courtly gentlemen relied on the element of surprise: there are accounts, for instance, of gifts of coins and rings being secretly hidden inside ladies’ gloves. 

THERE'S NO NEED TO KEEP THINGS EXCLUSIVE

Given the considerable amount of family pressure young men and women were under to find a husband or wife in Shakespeare’s time, it might be unsurprising to find that some of them seemed to hedge their bets somewhat and play the romantic field. As a result, it wasn’t uncommon for a young gentleman to pursue one woman while simultaneously keeping his eye on several others—and in return, it wasn’t uncommon for a young woman to be busy fielding advances from several men all at the same time. One of the most revealing working-class texts of the 17th century, for instance, is the diary of a young mercer’s apprentice from the rural northwest of England named Roger Lowe; in it, he writes that he romantically pursued two women, and had his eye on at least another three more, all in a single year.