Over at the Literary Review (definitely English) Adrian Tinniswood (likewise) gives a nice take on John Stubbs’ latest, Reprobates: The Cavaliers of the English Civil War, 549 pages on the Cavalier Poets, young lads who hung out with an aging Ben Jonson and sought to make a name and a career for themselves by sucking up to Charles I, soon to fall victim to spoilsports like Oliver Cromwell in the English Civil War. The cream of the jest is that the lads—William Davenant, Thomas Carew, Sir John Suckling, Henry Jermyn, Sir John Denham, Richard Lovelace, Robert Herrick, Endymion Porter, and the “archetypal cavalier Prince Rupert,” to mention only a few—never really amounted to much of anything. They’re “an endearing bunch,” Adrian chuckles, “always broke, always on the fringe of things, always promising the grand gesture and rarely carrying it through.”
Great lovers? Well, a lot of them did get the clap, but that was about it.
Great poets? “Most are remembered for a single poem, like Sir John Denham and ‘Cooper’s Hill’, or even a single line, like Richard Lovelace’s 'Stone walls do not a prison make’ or Robert Herrick’s 'Gather ye rosebuds while ye may’. Some aren’t even remembered for that. Can you recall anything Suckling wrote?”
Great swordsmen? When the time actually came to fight for fight for King and Country, most of the lads were missing. Only Denham and Davenant actually showed up for the show.
But after booting them amusingly around the page for ten or fifteen column inches, Adrian suddenly waxes solemn at the close: “With considerable skill and insight Stubbs brings to life an age, a literary movement and, for all their many faults, a group of individuals whose commitment to the king’s cause helped to shape the history of England.” Well, yeah, except for the fact that none of them did anything, and the “king’s cause” got its ass kicked. Is that what you mean by shaping the history of England?
Afterwords
For a great caricature of the lads, go here.
