Bianca's age?

[Ben Johnson]

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Thomas Larque <thomas.larque at lineone.net>
Date:           Monday, 1 Oct 2001 23:04:42 +0100
Subject: 12.2261 Age of Consent
Comment:        Re: SHK 12.2261 Age of Consent

> This may seem a very naive question, but what info do we have on
> sixteenth and seventeenth century attitudes to, perhaps statutory
> statements about the age of sexual consent, for either sex?

One source that apparently lays down an age of consent is cited in Karen
Bamford's excellent "Sexual Violence on the Jacobean Stage".  Discussing
changing rape laws in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, she cites one
mid-seventeenth century legal tract (at least I think that is what it
is) written by Sir Matthew Hale which describes rape as "the carnal
knowledge of any woman above the age of ten years against her will, and
of a woman-child under the age of ten years with or against her will"
(p.3 in Bamford's book).  This seems to set a female age of consent at
age ten, below which the girl is unable to give consent to sexual
intercourse and sex with her counts as rape whether she consents or not.

Since puberty apparently occurred later in the Renaissance than in
modern times this age of consent seems to have no reference to the
physical development of a girl's body into an adult woman, but after the
age of ten the "woman-child" apparently legally turns into an adult
woman in Hale's mind.

Thomas Larque.

http://www.shaksper.net/archives/2001/2259.html
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