Marriage and Land Law in Shakespeare and Middleton examines the dynamics of early modern marriagemaking a timehonored practice that was evolving often surreptitiously from patriarchal control based on money and inheritance to a companionate union in which love and the couples own agency played a role. Among early modern playwrights the marriage plays of Shakespeare and Middleton are particularly though not uniquely concerned with this evolution observing the movement towards spousal choice determined by the couple themselves. Through the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean period the role of the patriarch though often compromised remained intact the father or guardian negotiated the financial terms.