oo (iv. 1), Iris says:

"no bed-right shall be paid
Till Hymen's torch be lighted."

According to a Roman marriage custom, the bride, on her entry into her
husband's house, was prohibited from treading over his threshold, and
lest she should even so much as touch it, she was always lifted over it.
Shakespeare seems inadvertently to have overlooked this usage in
"Coriolanus" (iv. 5), where he represents Aufidius as saying:

"I lov'd the maid I married; never man
Sigh'd truer breath; but that I see thee here,
Thou noble thing! more dances my rapt heart,
Than when I first my wedded mistress saw
Bestride my threshold."

Lucan in his "Pharsalia" (lib. ii. 1. 359), says:

"Translata vetuit contingere limina planta."

Once more, Sunday appears to have been a popular day for marriages; the
brides of the Elizabethan dramas being usually represented as married on
Sundays. In the "Taming of the Shrew" (ii. 1), Petruchio, after telling
his future father-in-law "that upon Sunday is the wedding-day," and
laughing at Katharina's petulant exclamation, "I'll see thee hanged on
Sunday first," says:

"Father, and wife, and gentlemen, adieu;
I will to Venice; Sunday comes apace:--
We will have rings, and things, and fine array;
And, kiss me, Kate, we will be married o' Sunday."

Thus Mr. Jeaffreson, speaking of this custom in his "Brides and
Bridals," rightly remarks: "A fashionable wedding, celebrated on the
Lord's Day in London, or any part of England, would nowadays be
denounced by religious people of all Christian parties. But in our
feudal times, and long after the Reformation, Sunday was of all days of
the week the favorite one for marriages. Long after the theatres had
been closed on Sundays, the day of rest was the chief day for weddings
with Londoners of every social class."

Love-charms have from the earliest times been much in request among the
credulous, anxious to gain an insight into their matrimonial
prospects.[724] In the "Merchant of Venice" (v. 1), we have an allusion
to the practice of kneeling and praying at wayside crosses for a happy
marriage, in the passage where Stephano tells how his mistress

"doth stray about
By holy crosses, where she kneels and prays
For happy wedlock hours."

[724] See "Merry Wives of Windsor," iv. 2.

The use of love-potions by a despairing lover, to secure the affections
of