Manhood and the Duel: Masculinity in Early Modern Drama and Culture.(Book Review)

Publication: Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England

Publication Date: 01-JAN-06

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COPYRIGHT 2006 Associated University Presses

Manhood and the Duel: Masculinity in Early Modern Drama and Culture, by Jennifer A. Low. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Pp. xvii + 238. Hardcover $59.95.

In one of the most outspoken of her Sociable Letters (1664), Margaret Cavendish expresses her fictional correspondent's reaction to a duel, probably closely modeled on Cavendish's own response to an actual seventeenth-century dueling incident:

I Am Sorry that Sir C.A. is Kill'd, and as Sorry that V.A. hath Kill'd him, for by Report they were both Worthy and Right Honourable Persons, which causes me to wonder how such two Persons could Fall out, for surely they were such men as would be as Unwilling to Give an Offence as to Take an Affront, and if the Offence was Unwillingly given, as by Chance, they being men of Honour and Merit, would not be Grieved, at least, not Angry at or for it ... (1)

Cavendish's account contains almost all the important ingredients of an early modern duel. The participants are aristocratic males, known not only for their worth and "merit" but also, more significantly in this test of manhood, for their "Honour," a quality twice mentioned in one sentence by Cavendish. The apparent cause of their duel is the giving of "Offence" on the one hand and the taking of "Affront" on the other, though Cavendish wonders whether this occurred "Unwillingly" rather than with deliberate intent. In the ensuing discussion she goes on to note that the causes of duels are often "Frivolous, Idle, or Base," and include disagreements about "Words, or Women, or Hawks, or Dogs, or Whores, or about Cards or Dice," a list that is particularly remarkable considering that it was put together by a woman. However, what remains indisputable in this case is the fact that, of the two distinguished gentlemen, "the one is Kill'd, the other Banished" (81).

Cavendish's observations do not feature in Jennifer Low's study of the duel in early modern English culture, no doubt because her concern is largely with the period 1580-1620. However, I am gratefully conscious of having been made more alert to the significance of the details of this passage through reading Low's work. I never expected to find a whole book on Renaissance dueling so compelling and enlightening, and it is greatly to the credit of Professor Low that she manages to maintain...

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