Britten and Pears regarded their relationship as a ‘marriage’ and described it as such as early as 1943. Although comfortable with using this term privately, they were aware of the legal prohibition and social stigma that prevented them from proclaiming their partnership openly. And yet throughout their nearly forty years together they made no immediate secret among their circle of friends and relatives about living their lives as a couple. As this essay suggests, theirs was a special case, in that they lived their relationship with relative openness among those who knew them. Works such as the Michelangelo Sonnets and Canticle I were a declaration of sorts about the nature of their relationship, although it was not until after the composer’s death that Pears commented overtly in an interview about their love for one another. A decade after the decriminalisation of homosexual acts in the UK, and with social discussion on homosexuality widening, Pears believed that his and Britten’s marriage need no longer be regarded as a secret.

establishes Southwell’s Puritan allegiances and situates her within a wider godly community that included Walter Raleigh, Francis Quarles, and Roger Cocks, male authors equally committed to trenchant political critique of early Stuart kings and court. Writing exclusively in manuscript, Southwell challenges the politics of both King James and King Charles in the contentious decades of the early seventeenth century. Much like Whately, Speght, and Lanyer, Southwell deploys a politically-charged domestic rhetoric not only to represent the wife as counselor to her husband but also to rhapsodize a prospective union with the ideal bridegroom and husband, Christ.