age
ceremony, as appears from a rubric in one of the Salisbury missals. In
the "Taming of the Shrew," Shakespeare has made an excellent use of this
custom, where he relates how Petruchio (iii. 2)

"took the bride about the neck
And kiss'd her lips with such a clamorous smack
That, at the parting, all the church did echo."

Again, in "Richard II." (v. 1), where the Duke of Northumberland
announces to the king that he is to be sent to Pomfret, and his wife to
be banished to France, the king exclaims:

"Doubly divorc'd!--Bad men, ye violate
A twofold marriage,--'twixt my crown and me,
And then, betwixt me and my married wife.--
Let me unkiss the oath twixt thee and me;
And yet not so, for with a kiss 'twas made."

Marston, too, in his "Insatiate Countess," mentions it:

"The kisse thou gav'st me in the church, here take."

The practice is still kept up among the poor; and Brand[716] says it is
"still customary among persons of middling rank as well as the vulgar,
in most parts of England, for the young men present at the marriage
ceremony to salute the bride, one by one, the moment it is concluded."

[716] "Pop. Antiq.," vol. ii. p. 140.

Music was the universal accompaniment of weddings in olden times.[717]
The allusions to wedding music that may be found in the works of
Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and other Elizabethan dramatists, testify, as
Mr. Jeaffreson points out, that, in the opinion of their contemporaries,
a wedding without the braying of trumpets and beating of drums and
clashing of cymbals was a poor affair. In "As You Like It" (v. 4), Hymen
says:

"Whiles a wedlock-hymn we sing."

[717] "Brides and Bridals," 1873, vol. i. p. 252.

And in "Romeo and Juliet" (iv. 5), Capulet says:

"Our wedding cheer, to a sad burial feast;
Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change."

It seems to have been customary for the bride at her wedding to wear her
hair unbraided and hanging loose over her shoulders. There may be an
allusion to this custom in "King John" (iii. 1), where Constance says:

"O Lewis, stand fast! the devil tempts thee here
In likeness of a new untrimmed bride."

At the celebration of her marriage with the Palatine, Elizabeth Stuart
wore "her hair dishevelled and hanging down her shoulders." Heywood
speaks of this practice in the following graphic words:

"At length the blushing bride comes, with her hair
Di