Chapter II: Theory of Love (3)

The masque referred to is D’Avenant’s “The Temple of Love” (1634). In Thomas Heywood’s “Love’s Mistress or the Queen’s Masque” (1640) the myth of Cupid and Psyche is interpreted in accordance with the notion of Platonic love; and in D’Avenant’s “Platonick Lovers” (1636) the subject of Platonic love is ridiculed. It is probable that the rise of this custom at the court was due to the presence of Henrietta Maria, the queen of Charles I. Margaret of Valois had made Platonic love known in France; and had shown how licentiousness of conduct was compatible with its practice. “She had a high harmonious soul,” writes Howell,[13] “much addicted to music and the sweets of love, and oftentimes in a Platonic way; She would have this Motto often in her mouth; _Voulez vous cesser d’aymer? possedez la chose aymée._... She had strains of humors and transcendencies beyond the vulgar, and delighted to be call’d _Venus Urania_.” It is probable that the young queen wished to follow such an example and made known to the English court this new way of love gallantry. The practice of making love in the Platonic way grew so popular at any rate as to become a question of serious discussion. John Norris says, “_Platonic Love_ is a thing in every Bodies Mouth,” and after comparing it with the love described by Plato in the “Symposium,” he concludes, “But why this should be call’d by the name of _Platonic_ Love, the best reason that I know of, is because People will have it so.”[14] Algernon Sidney has left an account of love as a desire of enjoying beauty. He concludes that since man is midway between angels and beasts, his love will share in the peculiarities of both the celestial and the sensual passion.[15] Walter Charleton ridicules the subject and unmasks its immorality, although his purpose is not in any way to purify the morals of his readers.[16] Robert Boyle wrote, but did not publish, a series of letters, “wherein [among other subjects] Platonic love was explicated, celebrated, and wherein the cure of love was proposed and prosecuted.”[17]

The ideas expressed in these poems on Platonic love are not essentially different from those in the lyrics which have been already discussed. At times, as in Stanley’s “Love’s Innocence,” the Platonic manner is understood as one devoid of all danger. It was in this way that Vaughan looked upon his love for Amoret. “You have here,” he says, “a flame, bright only in its own innocence, that kindles nothing but a generous thought, which though it may warm the blood, the fire at highest is but Platonic; and the commotion, within these limits, excludes danger.”[18] On the other hand, Carew’s “Song to a Lady, not yet Enjoyed by her Husband,” shows how the stock ideas was used to cloak the immorality of the poet’s thought. George Daniel has left a series of poems revealing the several phases of this love ranging between the two extremes. He writes one “To Cinthia, coying it,” in which its innocence is preached. “To Cinthia Converted” describes the union of the two souls. “To the Platonicke Pretender” warns the ladies from listening to this love when taught by a libertine. “Pure Platonicke” explains the spiritual nature of the passion by contrast with sensual love. “Court-Platonicke” shows how at court it was used merely as a means to an improper end. “Anti-Platonicke” recites the feelings of the sensual lover.[19] In Lord Herbert are found two other phases of this love. The first and second of his poems named “Platonick Love” are complimentary poems addressed to a lady; the first, telling her how the love inspired by her refines his soul, and the second celebrating Platonic love in general application.

“For as you can unto that height refine
All Loves delights, as while they do incline
Unto no vice, they so become divine,
We may as well attain your excellence,
As, without help of any outward sense
Would make us grow a pure Intelligence.”

(Stz. 2.)

In the third “Platonicke Love” the lover is represented as wavering between despair and hope with a slight balance in favor of the latter. He is disconsolate because he finds no hope

“when my matchless Mistress were inclin’d
To pity me, ’twould scarcely make me glad,
The discomposing of so fair a mind
Being that which would to my Affections add.”

(Stz. 1.)

He finds hope, however, in the thought that

“though due merit I cannot express,
Yet she shall know none ever lov’d for less
Or easier reward. Let her remain
Still great and good, and from her Happiness
My chief contentment I will entertain.”

(Stz. 7.)

He ends with hope still living:

“Then, hope, sustain thy self: though thou art hid
Thou livest still, and must till she forbid;
For when she would my vows and love reject,
They would a Being in themselves project,
Since infinites as they yet never did,
Nor could conclude without some good effect.”

(Stz. 16.)

Platonic love, as such an example proves, was but synonymous with hopeless love.

Platonic love, then, meant either a love devoid of all sensual desire, an innocent or hopeless passion, or it was a form of gallantry used to cloak immorality. Its one characteristic notion was that true love consisted in a union of soul with soul, mind with mind, or essence with essence. This idea of restricting love to the experience of soul as opposed to the enjoyment of sense is the one notion which runs beneath many of the love lyrics written in the seventeenth century; and it is the point attacked by opponents. In John Cleveland, “To Cloris, a Rapture,” and in Campion’s “Song”[20] the poets exhort their beloved to enjoy this high union of soul. In Carew’s “To My Mistress in Absence,” in Lovelace’s “To Lucasta. Going beyond the Seas,” and in Cowley’s “Friendship in Absence,” the triumph of love over time and space is explained by the mingling of souls in true love. In Sedley’s “The Platonick” and in Ayres’s “Platonic Love” are found examples of the hopelessness of the passion. In Aytoun’s “Platonic Love” which was taken by Suckling to form a poem—the “Song,” beginning, “If you refuse me once”—the lover modestly confesses that he cannot rise to the heights of such a pure passion, and requests a more easy way. In Cleveland’s “The Anti-Platonick” and “Platonick Love,” in Brome’s “Epithalamy,” in Cowley’s “Platonick Love” and “Answer to the Platonicks,” and in Cartwright’s “No Platonique Love,” the claims of the opponents are expressed in all the grossness of Restoration immorality.

The atmosphere in which the metaphysical treatment of love flourished was intensely intellectual. The poets in whom the strain is clearest were trying to accomplish two thing: they wished to oppose the idea of passion in love, and they endeavored to account for the attraction of sex in the love which they themselves experienced. However much these poets wished to exclude the notion of sex, their minds were constantly busied in trying to solve the source of its power. In Donne, the greatest representative of the metaphysical manner, this purpose is very evident. He wrote his longest poem, “An Anatomy of the World,” to show how, by reason of the death of a certain young woman, “the frailty and the decay of this whole world is represented.” In reply to Jonson’s criticism, that this poem was “full of blasphemies,” Donne remarked that “he described the Idea of a Woman, and not as she was.”[21] Here lies the secret of Donne’s treatment of woman; he was interested in her, not as a personality, but as an idea. In solving the nature of this idea he recurred to certain Platonic conceptions by which he thought to explain the source of her power.

These Platonic conceptions are two. Woman is identified with virtue; she is the source of all virtue in the world, others being virtuous only by participating in her virtue. Thus in a letter “To the Countess of Huntingdon” he shows how virtue has been raised from her fallen state on earth by appearing in woman. She was once scattered among men, but now summed up in one woman.

“If the world’s age and death be argued well
By the sun’s fall, which now towards earth doth bend,
Then we might fear that virtue, since she fell
So low as woman, should be near her end.

“But she’s not stoop’d, but raised; exiled by men
She fled to heaven, that’s heavenly things, that’s you;
She was in all men thinly scatter’d then,
But now a mass contracted in a few.

“She gilded us, but you are gold; and she
Informed us, but transubstantiates you.
Soft dispositions, which ductile be,
Elixirlike, she makes not clean, but new.

“Though you a wife’s and mother’s name retain,
’Tis not as woman, for all are not so;
But virtue, having made you virtue, is fain
To adhere in these names, her and you to show.

“Else, being alike pure, we should neither see;
As, water being into air rarefied,
Neither appear, till in one cloud they be,
So, for our sakes, you do low names abide.”

Beneath this torture of conceits may be seen the idea that woman is that very virtue of which Plato has spoken in his “Phædrus.” Sidney has used the idea to compliment Stella; but Donne’s purpose is to show how woman, as woman, is to be identified with it, and that the differentiation in the concept resulting from the fact that she may be a wife or a mother is due to the necessity that this virtue become visible on earth.

The second Platonic conception through which Donne conveys his idea of woman’s nature is the universal soul. In his lyric, “A Fever,” he says, speaking of the object of his love:

“But yet thou canst not die, I know;
To leave this world behind, is death;
But when thou from this world wilt go,
The whole world vapours with thy breath.

“Or if, when thou, the world’s soul, go’st
It stay, ’tis but thy carcase then.”

And in “An Anatomy of the World” this idea of the death of the world in the death of a woman is explained at length.

Holding thus to this idea of woman, and striving to differentiate love from passion, Donne was able to confine his notion of love to the soul; and through the metaphysical manner of his poetic art he was able to express this notion in the most perplexing intricacies of thought. As Dryden has said, “he affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign: and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with the speculations of philosophy, where he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softness of love.”[22] By imitating his style the other lyric poets of the seventeenth century produced the species of love poems which have already been analyzed. His skill and his sincerity of aim are lacking in their verse; and the result was either a weak dilution of his thought or a striving for his manner in praising a lower conception of love.