‘World Now Thou Seest What Tis to Be a Ward’: Representations of Wardship and Enforced Marriages on the Seventeenth-Century Stage

Abstract

This article argues that the trope of the young ward being threatened with enforced marriage by their guardian remained popular on the late seventeenth-century English stage, despite changes in the law of wardship which offered more protection to wards. It offers an overview of the changing laws of wardship in the seventeenth century and links these to representations of wardship in the work of William Shakespeare and George Wilkins on the one hand, and Thomas D’Urfey on the other. That D’Urfey continued to use, as a main driving action in his plays, the character of the greedy guardian who tries to enrich himself by infringing on the rights of his ward, is, however, less a representation of the legal situation at the time, and more a continuation of a popular, earlier-seventeenth-century trope.