acrostic, Castiglione, Puttenham, Benedick, Beatrice, Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, wit, opponents, amorous

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acrostics. The lover’s blunt question, “When shall I meddle with the”, is met by the lady with equally brash candour in her response, “When tyme doth serue thou shall”. ³⁸² By answering acrostic with acrostic this lady participates willingly in the rhetorical game established by the lover in her postponement of their assignation until a convenient opportunity arises. Just as Castiglione and Puttenham recommend, the lover’s verse has a primary, surface context that he can fall back on if his suit is not met with a favourable response. Moreover, it is surely this guarded approach that ensures a favorable answer.

Ringler’s coarse example is related closely to another sort of verse exchange suggestive of a mutuality and equality of social and intellectual status, the amorous flyting. The best known instance of this sort of wit-combat occurs between Benedick and Beatrice in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. As Frank J. Warnke recognises, their equality of wit suggests a good match, and he points out that Beatrice and Benedick are expected to make good partners because they make good opponents. ³⁸³ This would also be a reasonable estimation of one amorous mock flyting from Rawl. Poet. 26 which presents a vigorous exchange of brutal sexual chemistry as the lady responds to the tongue-in-cheek flyting curse of her admirer in kind and with equal force, reciprocating his threat of genital mutilation:

Mr Lawson of St John’s Colledge his Verses to his Mistress

³⁸² Ringler, Verse in MS, TM1893 and TM1895 (Cat. Anon 43).
³⁸³ Frank J. Warnke, ‘Amorous Agon, Erotic Flyting: Some Play-Motifs in the Literature of Love’, in Auctor Ludens: Essays on Play in Literature, ed. Gerald Guinness and Andrew Hurley (Philadelphia, PA: Benjamins, 1986), pp.99-112 (p.106). Benedick contemplates courting Beatrice with Petrarchan openness when he begins a rendition of William Elderton’s Petrarchan ‘The Gods of Love’ only to break off before Beatrice has the chance to overhear him. He reflects, “I was not born under a rhyming planet, nor I cannot woo in festival terms” (V.ii.36-7). His rejection of this approach signals the success of his courtship since Beatrice would surely reject him were he to woo her in such a fashion. Elderton’s ballad is answered by Cat. G 138.

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