LOVE'S LABORS.(Against Love: A Polemic)(Book Review)

In 1643, John Milton published his "Doctrine & Discipline of Divorce," an essay addressed to the members of the English Parliament, in which he deplored matrimonial laws that imprisoned the unhappily married in "a drooping and disconsolate household captivity, without refuge or redemption." But the "Doctrine of Divorce" is also the reverse of what its title suggests: in defending divorce, Milton offers a meditation on what a marriage worth the name might consist of. In his tenderest phrase, Milton (whose own first, unhappy marriage must have been instructive in these matters) writes, "In God's intention, a meet and happy conversation is the chiefest and noblest end of ...