The Pain and Sorrow of Evil Marriage — Text and Context

A Catalogue of Faults

The poem builds its case against evil marriage by enumerating a wife’s supposed vices. She is described as “varyable,” loving “many wordes and stryfe,” and more concerned with public display than domestic duty. The speaker accuses her of seeking “sondrye pylgrymages” and sitting “on scaffoldes on hygh stages” to show her face, while neglecting her husband’s needs. She cares nothing for cost, preferring to “laye some pledge” rather than lack good food and drink. These accusations are not subtle; they are blunt, repetitive, and designed to persuade through accumulation rather than nuance.

Classical and Biblical Allusions

The poem draws on a small set of authoritative references to bolster its claims. Solomon is cited for the trio of “shrewde wyves, rayne, and smokes blake” that drive husbands from their homes. The Sirens, or “Cyrenes,” appear as a figure for a wife’s deceptive charm: “Whose blandysshynge endeth with myschaunce.” These allusions are not developed; they serve as shorthand for familiar warnings. The speaker also invokes martyrdom, telling husbands they will “dye a martyr without ony doute” if they endure patiently—a grim consolation that underscores the poem’s satirical edge.

Advice and a Bitter Punchline

The final stanzas shift from complaint to counsel. The speaker advises husbands to “do nothynge agaynst the pleasure of your wyfe” to keep the peace, but immediately undermines this with a conditional threat: if she will not improve, “Set her upon a lelande and bydde the devyll fet her.” This couplet, printed as part of the poem, encapsulates its tone—half jest, half venom. The closing lines return to the opening warning: “let yonge men to eschew sorowe and care / Withdrawe theyr fete or they come in the snare.” The poem thus ends as it began, with a circular structure that leaves no room for redemption or alternative views of marriage.

Readers should note that this text is a reprint by the Percy Society (1840) from a unique copy of Wynkyn de Worde’s original. The introduction mentions two companion poems, “A complaynt of them that be to soone maryed” and “Here begynneth the complaynte of them that ben to late maryed,” which together form a trilogy on marital timing. The present poem stands alone in its focus on the quality of the match rather than its timing, and its unrelieved pessimism makes it a striking example of early Tudor satire.

I remember the little verse against bad wives, that swaggering sixteenth-century warning with its final nod to the devil, and it always calls to mind a quieter companion on my shelf, Cricket Songs — Reading Notes, where the married couple is sunlight and field noise, not shrill complaint. Both know marriage is a sort of weather, and we simply live through it, one way or another.