Walter Ralegh, The Lie, body politic, civil, behaviour, wit combats
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38
combative effrontery is not only antisocial but also morally bankrupt:
69
Go, Eccho of the minde,
a careles troth protest;
make answere that rude Rawly
no stomack can digest.
for why? the lies discent
is over base to tell;
to vs it came from Italy,
to them it came from hell.
What reason proues, confesse,
What slander saith, denye;
Let no vntruth with triumph passe,
but never giue the lye. (ll.1-12)
70
In his pun upon Ralegh’s name here the poet denounces the attack upon the body politic as contrary to civil behaviour, and imagines Ralegh’s expulsion from civilised society. Ralegh’s raillery threatens to give the body politic food poisoning and needs to be spewed out quickly to prevent him from causing a lasting illness: “as quarrels once begun/ ar not so quickly ended,/ so many faultes may soone be founde,/ But not so soone amended” (ll.57-60). The notion that such quarrelsomeness leads to self-perpetuating disputes that might escalate into something worse, such as inciting physical violence or civil unrest, although a standard concern of the authorities, is not borne out by quarrels such as that between Cellesi and Gatteschi.
Alternatively, the complaint of the author of The Booke of Honor and Armes that such wit-combats might be prolonged as an alternative to physical aggression (as Weinstein supposes to happen in Italy), is more probable. One verse exchange, in which it is tempting to suppose that a wit-combat may have been substituted for physical aggression, has been attributed to another pair of well-known rivals at the Elizabethan court. An answer-poem ascribed to Sidney, beginning “Wearte thou a king, yet not command contente”, that
69 The insult is especially pertinent since Ralegh was patron of the first Italian fencing school in the city (see Peltonen (2003), pp.61-2).
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