Ted Dickson presents on the history of Love.

1. A Brief History of Love and Marriage Is it better to marry for love or money?

2. Love is a modern invention. Did poetry invent love or did love invent poetry? At the time of Shakespeare, marriage was still thought to be best arranged by parents who could be relied upon to choose socially and economically suited partners (essentially it was a business contract). How do you think Shakespeare’s audience reacted to Romeo and Juliet?

3. Why did this concept of love and marriage change? Only in the last 100 years has marriage been based on romantic love – the romantic-companionate ideal. Thought question: Has this changed the age that people get married? Thought question 2: How do historians study this?

4. Has this change affected the length of marriages? Death in early modern Europe was the functional equivalent of divorce. Recent studies in Japan have shown no difference in divorce rates between couples whose marriages were arranged by their parents and couples whose marriages were made by individual choice based on romantic love.

5. Today: First time in world history that a culture has been dominated by notion of romantic love? Marriage today based on more equality and deeper friendship than in the past – at the expense of friendships and relationships outside of marriage.