On Fidelity, Polygamy, and Celestial Marriage

Abstract

England discusses Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and cites the importance of fidelity, the complete faithfulness, loyalty, and sharing that is possible only when a man and a woman join their full lives--physical, mental, and spiritual--in what he called "the marriage of true minds." He expresses that fidelity is central to married love, which he portrayed as the supreme form of human happiness and wholeness at the end of each of his comedies, and the violation or interruption of which lies at the heart of the most of the tragedies and late romances. Furthermore, he imparts that fidelity is central to mortal joy and eternal life, even godhood, and great catastrophes are already resulting from the current neglect of it in society generally and in too many Mormon marriages.