Eibeibunka 48

47 『英米文化』48, 47–60 (2018) ISSN: 0917–3536 “It’s a Service that I Kneel for to You”: Failure of Courtly Love in The Changeling TANAMACHI Atsushi Abstract This paper investigates the treatment of courtly love convention in the main plot of The Changeling to demonstrate how the convention is radically parodied in it. For this purpose, the paper explores the use of the word “service,” which bears multiple meanings, including those concerning the master-servant relationship as well as the relationship based on courtly love. An example of this play’s treatment of the courtly love convention can be seen when Beatrice drops her glove hoping that Alsemero would be the receiver. However, her plan is sabotaged by patriarchal interference, and her glove falls into the hands of Deflores, a servant whom she despises. Moreover, since Deflores describes the glove as a “favour” from the socially superior lady, and later begs Beatrice that “[t]rue service merits mercy” (2.1.63), it is apparent that Deflores envisions himself as a courtly lover and attempts to reformulate his situation into that of a courtly lover offering an exalted kind of service to his lady. In this way, courtly love conventions undergo a breakdown and the expectations are frustrated until the climax of the play when they receive a final death blow. In the subplot of The Changeling (1622), a collaborative work of Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, a gentleman named Antonio disguises himself as a “changeling,” or an idiot, and infiltrates a mad-house in order to secretly approach and woo Isabella, the wife of the warden. Antonio acts accordingly and plays a fool while suspicious eyes are around, but when he is left alone with Isabella, he addresses the warden’s wife in a courtly manner: This shape of folly shrouds your dearest love, The truest servant to your powerful beauties, 48 『英米文化』48 (2018) Whose magic had this force thus to transform me. (3.2.116–118) Although he shifts his speech into a more dignified manner when they are alone, Antonio remains in his fool’s attire. He declares himself to be Isabella’s “servant” in the vein of a courtly love tradition. Later, Isabella talks of him as “[t]his love’s knight-errant, who hath made adventure / For purchase of [her] love” (3.2.230–1). It is evident from these lines that the rhetoric of courtly love is utilized in this work. However, the strangeness of a man dressed in a ridiculous costume employing the speech of love to his social inferior indicates that, by the late Jacobean period when the play was written and performed in an indoor playhouse, the Phoenix, the idea of courtly love may have lost its esteem substantially. Therefore, this paper investigates the treatment of courtly love convention in the main plot of The Changeling and how the convention is radically parodied in the relationship between Beatrice-Joana1 and Deflores. Courtly Love and Service From the time when Gaston Paris coined the term “amour courtois (courtly love)” with reference to Le Chevalier de la Charrette (c. 1174–81, also known as the Lancelot) in 1883, there have been many arguments over the phrase, leading one critic to conclude that the term itself “reflects modern critical assumptions more than medieval practice” (Kay 81–82). Courtly love is an elusive and problematic term surrounded by controversy even from the first influential definition by C. S. Lewis given in his book, The Allegory of Love (1936): “Humility, Courtesy, Adultery, and the Religion of Love.” However, it is also true that, according to Larry Benson, by the late fourteenth century, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote a com- plaint of a lover who fits many criteria of a courtly lover (239). Benson also notes that, by the early sixteenth century, “Henry VIII’s courtiers were living the lives of courtly lovers, using stanzas from Chaucer’s Troilus as love letters” (252). The prominence of the idea con- tinued under Elizabeth I, who kept the courtly love convention alive in order to “keep her jostling courtiers where she wanted them” (Low 27). Thus, it is clear that the idea of courtly love was an inextricable part of both the literary and social conventions in early modern England. Elusive though it may be, there should be some clarification of the scope of courtly love. The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English gives us a rather broad definition of the term: TANAMACHI Atsushi “It’s a Service that I Knell for to You” 49 [A] particular kind of love between men and women, involving service and veneration on the part of the man, and nominal or actual domination on the part of the woman. This reversal of the usual medieval marital relationship took place between a lady who might or might not be married and a man sometimes but not invariably her social inferior. Descriptions consequently insist on its private, discreet and secret nature. (Ousby 212, “courtly love”) This definition touches upon several points: devotion of male to female, the asymmetrical social status of lovers, love as both an ennobling and a private affair. Relationships in courtly love were expected to be confidential, taking place behind watchful eyes. Among the four marks of courtly love cited above (Humility, Courtesy, Adul- tery and the Religion of Love), the inclusion of its adulterous assertion has caused much controversy. While the objective of courtly lovers in literary works is not inevitably the achievement of an adulterous liaison, it is still, as Catherine Bates reminds us, a subversive love-relation that is frequently denied a legitimizing conclusion (17). As a result of this, pri- vacy and secrecy came to characterize courtly love. Meanwhile, the concept of a knight worshiping a socially superior lady, humbling himself before her and dedicating his service to earn her love and favour echoes the master-servant relationship of a feudal system based on homage and tenure. As vassals provide their service to their lords, and the lords, in turn, provide land and protection for their subjects, a knight would provide his service to a lady to sue for her favour. The following remarks of Chakravorty on the matter examine the similarities between these relationships and explain how the chivalric service in courtly love was understood: In the classical phase of feudalism, love-service or domnei was conceived as an ana- logue of the liege-homage which a vassal owed his overlord. Moreover, the ‘service’ of the free vassal, as distinct from that of the servile orders, was conceived to be prompted by his loyalty and honour, not by fear and necessity. In the courtly love, the myth promoted a peculiar mixture of submission and proud self-regard, cultivated as a badge of social entitlement. (148) The service of the free vassals was upheld as an honourable act unlike that of the lower class, and the fact that the former group was able to engage in such relationships with their 50 『英米文化』48 (2018) superiors marked them apart from “the servile order.” In the same way, the fact that one was allowed to engage in courtly love relationships was seen as a distinguishing marker of status.2 “Service” in The Changeling According to Annabel Patterson’s count, the word “service” is used 17 times in the play (1635). This includes those concerning both master-servant relationship as well as courtly love relationship. One example of the former can be seen in a statement of Jasperino. At the beginning of Act 2, Scene 1, Beatrice, the daughter of the governor of a citadel, entrusts him with instructions for his master, Alsemero. As she hands her message, she asks for his “fair service” (2.1.1), to which Jesperino answers in an exemplary manner of a good servant: “The joy I shall return rewards my service” (2.1.5). It seems that he relishes the honourable act that is the service of free vassals and shows a proud self-regard in his service. Turning our attention to the service in courtly love relationship, an editor of The Change- ling draws attention to the close connection between love and service during the English Renaissance: The rhetoric of courtly love which the Renaissance inherited from the medieval chivalric code, imagined love as a kind of sublime ‘service’ offered by a knight to his lady: and the paradigm of such relationships was one in which the wooer abased himself before a woman of higher rank. (Neill Introduction xxx) We may, therefore, conclude that, some forms of service were considered to be sublime and ennobling experiences. However, this was only true for those who could choose to abase themselves, such as free vassals and courtly lovers. In the case of those in the servile rank who are subjected to abasement not on their own accord, their situation is fundamentally different. Moreover, the courtly love relationships represented in the play seem to intentionally fail to meet the conventional expectations. Chakravorty observed that the play “reformulates the tropes of chivalry and courtly love, and it is . concerned with estranging their generic reg- ister on the stage” (145). This idea can be clearly demonstrated by comparing similar scenes from another earlier play. In Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy (c. 1590) Bel-Imperia, a TANAMACHI Atsushi “It’s a Service that I Knell for to You” 51 duke’s daughter, drops her glove for a knight to pick up and rewards him with it: She, in going in, lets fall her glove, which Horatio, coming out, takes up HORATIO. Madam, your glove.

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