MATOS FRAGOSO, JUAN DE (1614?-1689), Spanish dramatist, of Portuguese descent, was born about 1614 at Alsito (Alemtejo). After taking his degree in law at the university of Evora, he proceeded to Madrid, where he made acquaintance with Perez de Montalbán, and thus obtained an introduction to the stage. He quickly displayed great cleverness in hitting the public taste, and many contemporaries of superior talent eagerly sought his aid as a collaborator. The earliest of his printed plays is La Defensa de la fé y principe prodigioso (1651), and twelve more pieces were published in 1658. But though his popularity continued long after his death (January 4, 1689), Matos Fragoso’s dramas do not stand the test of reading. His emphatic preciosity and sophistical insistence on the “point of honour” are tedious and unconvincing; in La Venganza en el despeño, in Á lo que obliga un agravio, and in other plays, he merely recasts, very adroitly, works by Lope de Vega.
MATRASS (mod. Lat. matracium), a glass vessel with a round or oval body and a long narrow neck, used in chemistry, &c., as a digester or distiller. The Florence flask of commerce is frequently used for this purpose. The word is possibly identical with an old name “matrass” (Fr. materas, matelas) for the bolt or quarrel of a cross-bow. If so, some identity of shape is the reason for the application of the word; “bolt-head” is also used as a name for the vessel. Another connexion is suggested with the Arabic matra, a leather bottle.
MATRIARCHATE (“rule of the mother”), a term used to express a supposed earliest and lowest form of family life, typical of primitive societies, in which the promiscuous relations of the sexes result in the child’s father being unknown (see [Family]). In such communities the mother took precedence of the father in certain important respects, especially in line of descent and inheritance. Matriarchate is assumed on this theory to have been universal in prehistoric times. The prominent position then naturally assigned women did not, however, imply any personal power, since they were in the position of mere chattels: it simply constituted them the sole relatives of their children and the only centre of any such family life as existed. The custom of tracing descent through the female is still observed among certain savage tribes. In Fiji father and son are not regarded as relatives. Among the Bechuanas the chieftainship passes to a brother, not to a son. In Senegal, Loango, Congo and Guinea, relationship is traced through the female. Among the Tuareg Berbers a child takes rank, freeman’s or slave’s, from its mother.
Bibliography.—J. F. McLennan, Patriarchal Theory (London, 1885); T. T. Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht (Stuttgart, 1861); E. Westermarck, History of Human Marriage (1894); A. Giraud-Teulon, La Mère chez certains peuples de l’antiquité (Paris, 1867); Les Origines du mariage et de la famille (Geneva and Paris, 1884); C. S. Wake, The Development of Marriage and Kinship (London, 1889); Ch. Letourneau, L’Évolution du mariage et de la famille (Paris, 1888); L. H. Morgan, Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of Human Family, “Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge,” vol. xvii. (Washington, 1871); C. N. Starcke, The Primitive Family (London, 1889).
MATRIMONY (Lat. matrimonium, marriage, which is the ordinary English sense), a game at cards played with a full whist pack upon a table divided into three compartments labelled “Matrimony,” “Intrigue” and “Confederacy,” and two smaller spaces, “Pair” and “Best.” These names indicate combinations of two cards, any king and queen being “Matrimony,” any queen and knave “Intrigue,” any king and knave “Confederacy”; while any two cards of the same denomination form a “Pair” and the diamond ace is “Best.” The dealer distributes a number of counters, to which an agreed value has been given, upon the compartments, and the other players do likewise. The dealer then gives one card to each player, face down, and a second, face up. If any turned-up card is the diamond ace, the player holding it takes everything on the space and the deal passes. If not turned, the diamond ace has only the value of the other three aces. If it is not turned, the players, beginning with the eldest hand, expose their second cards, and the resulting combinations, if among the five successful ones, win the counters of the corresponding spaces. If the counters on a space are not won, they remain until the next deal.