That, in my opinion, is Shakespeare's own confession.
Of course, every one has noticed how Shakespeare again and again in his
plays declares that a woman should take in marriage an "elder than
herself," and that intimacy before marriage is productive of nothing but
"barren hate and discord." In "Twelfth Night" he says:
"Let still the woman take
An elder than herself: so wears she to him,
So sways she level in her husband's heart."
In "The Tempest" he writes again:
"If thou dost break her virgin knot before
All sanctimonious ceremonies may
With full and holy rite be minister'd,
No sweet aspersions shall the heavens let fall
To make this contract grow; but barren hate,
Sour-ey'd disdain, and discord, shall bestrew
The union of your bed with weeds so loathly
That you shall hate it both."
These admonitions are so far-fetched and so emphatic that they plainly
discover personal feeling. We have, besides, those quaint, angry
passages in the "Comedy of Errors," to which we have already drawn
attention, which show that the poet detested his wife.
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