Courtship has been an abiding and compelling subject in human discourse from the most ancient times because it ritualizes elements that are fundamental to social existence: love, sex, marriage, and procreation. In our own age, psychologists have shown how susceptible amorous and sexual behaviour is to change, and how modern courtship, cohabitation, and marriage have all been radically influenced by the changing demographic and ideological patterns of a post-industrial society. And, while courtship rituals naturally vary widely in different cultures and at different times, yet whatever the culture-specific variations in courtship practice, the prioritizing cultural activity which surrounds courting is pretty well a constant in Western culture and civilization.

Courtship clearly presents itself, then, as an enormous subject, with ramifications that veer off into the anthropological, sociological, mythological, historical, and psychological (to name but a few). This book's particular focus upon the rhetoric of courtship in Elizabethan language and literature therefore requires a word of explanation. For to concentrate predominantly on representations of courtship in one historical period might be argued to imply an anteriority, development, and progress through time, all of which conflict with the abiding presence of courtship as a cultural phenomenon. Yet the methodology of this book is such as to allow for a certain specificity. For this study traces the point in history when the word ‘courtship’ evolved meanings which had a particular political and amorous resonance, and when it came to mean broadly what it does today – the interactive behaviour and ritual between two people who are emotionally and romantically engaged.