This study argues that the Greek romances of late antiquity were an important source in the works of William Shakespeare and Sir Philip Sidney. I specifically address how the chaste marriage plot of Greek romance reflected the social and religious ethics of the Jacobean and Elizabethan era. The renewed interest in Hellenistic romance coincided with an emerging Protestant sexual ethic of mutual love in marriage and wedded chastity. The genre of Greek romance also imparted the theme of erotic suffering. This theme manifests itself in the ideal romance plot pattern of love-leading-to-marriage. The young hero and heroine triumph over adversity in their quest to remain faithful to the principle of true love. I discuss Sidneys use of the Greek romance model in the New Arcadia, particularly his interest in the model of erotic suffering as a paradigm of female virtue. Sidney explicitly invokes a Heliodorian model of ideal love. I also discuss Shakespeares use of the Greek romance paradigm of sexual love in his romance plays, Pericles, Cymbeline, and The Winters Tale. In these late plays, Shakespeare draws on source material that is rooted in the Greek romance tradition of ideal marriage and erotic suffering. The heroes in Shakespearean romance often find psychological or spiritual redemption in affliction. The heroine in Shakespearean romance is often made to suffer for love on account of patriarchal abuse. It is the heroines virtuous fortitude in adversity that gives the play its regenerative closure.