1. Moral Conceptions of Sexual Love in Elizabethan Comedy

Abstract

Elizabethan romantic comedy is traditionally regarded as a dra­ matic form that can be distinguished as a generic celebration of marriage. Contrasting the erotic teleology of romantic comedy (which she calls "pure comedy") with the moral corrective of satire and the tragicomic emphasis on plot, Helen Gardner has written that " the great symbol of pure comedy is marriage, by which the world is renewed, and its endings are always instinct with a sense of fresh beginnings . Its rhythm is the rhythm of the life of man­ kind, which goes on and renews itself as the life of nature does . . . . The young wed, so that they may become in turn the older genera­ tion, whose children will wed, and so on, as long as the world lasts . . . . The end of comedy declares that life goes on. " 1 In romantic comedy, then, the sexual love that leads to marriage symbolizes the ongoing life of society, which in Elizabethan terms suggests a spiritually integrated cosmos. Although recent scholar­ ship has been carefully dissecting the ideological program that sus­ tains this comic syndrome, pointing to the devious subversions of its unity and the complex qualifications of its ideals , no analysis has disputed that the multileveled idealization of marriage is a power­ ful informing presence in Elizabethan comedy . 2 Yet this celebra-