The Woman—Dressed in the common mode of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries — stands with her right, or sometimes left, hand extended forward, the second finger raised and stretched forth. The man, dressed similarly, confronts her, ring in hand, to place on her outstretched finger. There are others in attendance, principally a figure of dignity close to the pair and perhaps as many as ten or more spectators. The description is that of a wedding, in fact, a Jewish one. The action takes place exclusively between the bride and the groom, although in one version of this picture (there are many), the dignified third figure raises a cup in hand; in others, he is reciting words of blessing.

Historians of the Family in Renaissance Europe have devoted much attention to its patriarchal orientation. For the northern Italian cities, intense monographic study of elite behavior has illuminated the guiding principles behind strategies that preserved and enhanced family status. Those principles also occupy a prominent position in the prescriptive writings of contemporary jurists, humanists, and moralists; from them historians have argued that women's powers of decision in the urban environment of Renaissance Italy were severely limited. Similar conclusions have been reached for the Reformation period.

The Year 1600 Witnessed A significant though little-noted event in Italian cultural history: the publication of the first substantial full-length works by Italian women writers arguing the case for women's moral and intellectual equality with men. The writers in question were two Venetians, Lucrezia Marinella and Modesta Pozzo (Moderata Fonte); their works, respectively, a polemical treatise, La nobilta et I'eccellenza delle donne, and a dialogue, Il merito delle donne. These texts, long neglected, have recently begun to attract a certain amount of critical attention: particularly Fonte's Merito, far the more accessible of the two and a work, as is now being recognized, of considerable literary merit.

O Thello's Popularity in the Early seventeenth century is indicated both by the frequency of its revival and by its influence over many of the dramatists of the period. It seems to have exerted a lasting hold over Ford's imagination, the effects traceable in three plays written at different stages in his career: The Queen, published anonymously in 1653 but now generally reckoned to be an early work, Love's Sacrifice (1633), and The Lady's Trial (1638). The extent and significance of the influence ofOthello on Love's Sacrifice has been much discussed. In the words of one commentator, “So close are the parallels with Othello in the middle scenes of the action that it is tempting to imagine that Ford wrote with a copy of the play at his side.