Love Ethics in Platonic Court Drama 1625-1642

Abstract

HE COURT of Charles I fostered a love culte whose ethics would have startled the most tolerant Elizabethan sonneteer. Nurtured chiefly by Henrietta Maria and her ladies in waiting, it is important not simply because it renewed interest in Platonic love (an old theme which, in English literature, had reached its highest expression in Spenser's Fowre Hymnes), but mainly because it considerably affected English manners and English letters;'2 and because evidence suggests that it increased the growing antagonism between Cavalier and Puritan. An examination of the cult's practices and philosophical tenets should therefore reveal much concerning courtly life and thought, should give a clearer meaning to Caroline literature, and should help explain, in part, the rupture which led to the rebellion. This paper, however, is not so ambitious in scope; it attempts, rather, to codify the love tenets of the cult, analyze its twisted love ethics, and point out briefly the Puritan reaction to its ideas and practices. The early history of this cult can be stated succinctly. Coming to England from France in 1625, Henrietta Maria brought ideas that seemed to have had their origin in the Hotel de Rambouillet.8 This hotel, founded by Catherine de Vivonne, used for its bible D'Urfe's Astree, in which her group found the tenets of love, elegance, and beauty for which it had been looking:

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