Chapter 4 - Noble Masculinity at the Tournaments

Summary

THOMAS Campion's poem ‘Faith's Pure Shield, the Christian Diana’ tells the story of a spectacular Elizabethan tournament that was ironically brought to a premature end by a typical English downpour. An ‘angry tempest’ drives away not only the fair weather, but also that metaphorical English sun, Elizabeth, so that the disappointed participants and spectators disperse. Campion's poem reveals Elizabeth as the focus of the day: she is hailed as the ‘Christian Diana’ and ‘England's glory’ while the crowds yearned for a glimpse of her, ‘at [her] sight triumphing’. The lavish pageantry dramatised the knights’ submission and service before her, competing for her favour as ‘the wonder/ Whom Eliza graceth.’ Yet much of Campion's poem also describes the splendour of the knights: their entry into the lists ready for combat, their ‘rough steeds’, and their ‘plum’d pomp’. This balance of royal and noble display enacted what Richard McCoy has termed the ‘chivalric compromise’, in which the nobility enacted their submission to the Queen and paid her tribute, but were also permitted to celebrate their exalted status and demonstrate their honour. Although such occasions were a stage for the creation of the monarch's identity, the aristocracy were also able to further their own political ambitions.

Elizabethan tournaments were usually held at the specially constructed tiltyard at Whitehall. A public challenge was issued in advance, calling the knights to take part. On the appointed day, each knight entered the tiltyard, acting out a fictional knightly persona through his themed armour and his accompanying pageant, train of supporters, and music. A page presented each knight's imprese (a shield displaying his emblem and motto) to the Queen with a speech or song. Music's role was comparable to early masques where music accompanied the entry of the masquers who then presented speeches, gifts, and songs to Elizabeth. The following tournament consisted of three events: the tilt or joust where knights rode at each other with lances; the tourney, a mock combat between groups of knights on horseback; and barriers, where knights fought each other on foot. By the sixteenth century the tournament no longer functioned as military training, and as the martial sports became more spectacle than practical in purpose, so the element of disguise and pageantry increased in importance and the opportunity for political comment was amplified.