12 The Rice Institute Pamphlet
Imogen is that she failed to obey her father. An Elizabethan
girl was brought up in far stricter surroundings than a mod-
ern one; she was under the explicit authority of her father at
all times, particularly in the selection of a spouse. In Robert
Greene’s Perimedes the Black-Smith, for example, Gradasso,
the father, has decided to marry his daughter Melissa to
Rosilius rather than to her choice, Bradamant: “Melissa not-
ing with a secret mislike hir fathers motion, yet for feare
durst not oppose hir selfe against his determination, but told
him that as she was his Daughter, so she was bound by the
law of nature to obeye him as hir Father, and his will should
be to hir as a law, which by no means she dared to infringe.”
Later she tells Bradamant of her decision: “Rather had I
marry Bosilius, and so wed my selfe to Continuall discontent
and repentance, then by being lose in my loues, and wanton
in my thoughts disobeying my fathers commaund, to dis-
parage mine honour and become a by-word throughout all
Aegipt, for Ladyes honors are like white Iawnes, which soone
are stayned with euery mole.”51 Imogen has been in this
same situation, but her reaction is far different from Melissa’s.
The evil Cloten charges her that in refusing him as a hus-
band she is committing a sin—“You sin against obedience,
which you owe your father.”55 Her father, too, makes the
same charge;56 and Imogen acknowledges her error, and its
unusualness, while making her husband a party to her defec-
tion:
And thou, Posthumus, thou that didst set up
My disobedience ’gainst the king my father
And make me put into contempt the suits
Of princely fellows, shalt hereafter find
It is no act of common passage, but
A strain of rareness.57
We might agree that such a duty before marriage is under-