Such love, imperious and absolute, shuts out all laws and exigencies save its own;[1] it must be virtue and honour unto itself; it is careless of what ill it may do so long as that ill does not infringe love's laws. Evidently before it the bonds of marriage break, or pale to insignificance. It is its own sanction, nor needs the faint blessing of the priest. The poet—as the actual lover likewise—may even deem that love can best show itself to be the principle of its own honour when unsustained by wedlock; thus unsustained and unobscured it stands alone, fairer, clearer, more interesting and romantic. Again, since mediaeval marriage in high life was more often a joining of fiefs than a union of hearts, there would be high-born dames and courtly poets to declare that love could only exist between knight and mistress, and not between husband and wife. Marriage shuts out love's doubts and fears; there is no need of further knightly services; and husband and wife by law are bound to render to each other what between lovers is gracious favour; this was the opinion of Marie de Champagne, it also was the opinion of Heloïse. In chivalric poetry the lovers, when at last duly married, may continue to call each other ami et amie rather than wife and lord;[2] or a knight may shun marriage lest he settle down and lose worship, doing no more adventurous feats of arms, like Chrétien's Erec, till his wife Enide stung him by her speech.[3] Some centuries later Malory has Lancelot utter a like sentiment: "But to be a wedded man I think never to be, for if I were, then should I be bound to tarry with my wife, and leave arms and tournaments, battles and adventures."
If allowance be made for the difference in topic and treatment between the Arthurian romances and Guillaume de Lorris's portion of the Roman de la rose, the latter will
- ↑ "For what is he that may yeve a lawe to lovers? Love is a gretter lawe and a strengere to himself than any lawe that men may yeven"(Chaucer, Boece, book iii. metre 12).
- ↑ As in Chrétien's Cligés, 6751 sqq., when Cligés is crowned emperor and Fenice becomes his queen, then: De s'amie a feite sa fame—but he still calls her amie et dame, that he may not cease to love her as one should an amie. Cf. also Chrétien's Erec, 4689.
- ↑ See also Gawain's words to Ivain when the latter is married in Chrétien's Ivain, 2484 sqq.
