Other people's marriages are always a source of speculation. It's no different with stage marriages. How did those Macbeths ever meet in the first place? What part did childlessness play in their relationship? Will Kate and Petruchio still be trying to best each other in 10 years' time, or heading for the divorce court? What future can Isabella from Measure for Measure possibly have with the dissembling Duke (I always want to shout "No!" when they get together at the end)? In Congreve's The Way of the World, how will things pan out for Millamant and Mirabell after their famed marriage agreement?
I'm not alone in speculating about the relationship between Vershinin and his wife, who is never seen on stage, in Chekhov's Three Sisters: Helen Cooper was so intrigued, she wrote a play entitled Mrs Vershinin about the lieutenant's off-stage wife. That said, it's always Masha and her school teacher husband who really fascinate me in Chekhov's play.
Equally ripe for analysis are Juno and her drunken "Captain" in Sean O'Casey's tragi-comedy Juno and the Paycock. The play is being revived in a co-production with Liverpool Theatres at Bristol Old Vic, with Niamh Cussack and Des McAleer playing the Boyles. Why does Mrs Boyle stay so long with a man who is never going to pull his weight or hold the family together, leaving only when the worst has already happened?
If Romeo and Juliet had lived, might they have ended up as unhappy as Jimmy and Alison Porter (maybe too much ironing for Alison was at the root of their problems) – or, worse still, tearing chunks out of each other, like the Captain and his wife in Strindberg's Dance of Death? Strindberg's bitter play was undoubtedly an inspiration for the relationship between Martha and George in Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
From Brick and Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to any of Alan Ayckbourn's varied portraits of the conjugal state, tell us about your favourite stage marriages and unions.
