Project Gutenberg's The Pain and Sorrow of Evil Marriage, by Wynkyn de Worde

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: The Pain and Sorrow of Evil Marriage

Author: Wynkyn de Worde

Release Date: May 20, 2010 [EBook #32445]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAIN AND SORROW OF EVIL MARRIAGE ***

Produced by Irma Spehar and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)

THE
PAIN AND SORROW
OF
EVIL MARRIAGE.

FROM AN UNIQUE COPY

Printed by Wynkyn de Worde.

LONDON:
REPRINTED FOR THE PERCY SOCIETY,
BY C. RICHARDS, ST. MARTIN'S LANE.
MDCCCXL.

COUNCIL OF The Percy Society.

J. A. CAHUSAC, ESQ. F.S.A.
WILLIAM CHAPPELL, ESQ. F.S.A.
JOHN PAYNE COLLIER, ESQ. F.S.A.
T. CROFTON CROKER, ESQ. F.S.A.
REV. ALEXANDER DYCE.
RICHARD HALLIWELL, ESQ. F.S.A.
JAMES ORCHARD HALLIWELL, ESQ. F.R.S. Treasurer
WILLIAM JERDAN, ESQ. F.S.A.
SAMUEL LOVER, ESQ.
CHARLES MACKAY, ESQ.
E. F. RIMBAULT, ESQ. _Secretary_.
THOMAS WRIGHT, ESQ. M.A. F.S.A.

INTRODUCTION.

There are three early humorous tracts in verse upon the subject of
marriage, all printed by Wynkyn de Worde: only one of them has a date,
1535, but we can have little difficulty in assigning the two others to
about the same period. They have the following titles.

1. "A complaynt of them that be to soone maryed."

2. "Here begynneth the complaynte of them that ben to late maryed."

3. "The payne and sorowe of evyll maryage."

The last we have printed entire in the following pages, and of the two
others, Dr. Dibdin has inserted a brief account in his edition of Ames
(Typ. Ant. II. 384). We propose to go more at large into a description
of the contents of these ancient and facetious relics.

We have reason to believe that the two fi