Here we have one of Marvell’s most enigmatic poems. “The Unfortunate Lover” presents a series of tableaux or emblematic pictures that are vividly imagined yet challenge interpretation. The language of the poem is elevated and portentous. Grand events are being described, events that “make impression upon Time” and take place among wars and tempests. Yet the hero of the poem is a lover, albeit a lover whose beloved is never named, nor described. Something tremendous has happened, something verging on the apocalyptic, as “the rattling thunder” of the storm evokes “the fun’ral of the world”. The imagery of the poem is drawn from Petrarchan love poetry – the “tyrant Love”, the lover shipwrecked in the storms of passion, the rocks of fortitude or adversity, the sighs and tears – but the imagery of the battlefield is also prominent. We hear of the “winged artillery”, “the spectacle of blood” and towards the end comes the curious reference to the lover as Love’s “banneret”. A banneret was a knight created on the field of battle. Still, the tracing of Petrarchan tropes and imagery doesn’t bring us any nearer to determining the meaning of the poem. We suspect an allegorical procedure may be at work.
Knowing Marvell’s fondness for veiled political allusions, we are inclined to find in the poem some engagement with the events of the Civil War, and its momentous outcome, the defeat and execution of King Charles.
If we try to pull a strand of meaning from the tangle of images that compose the poem, we might well start with the word “masque” in line 26. The masque was a court entertainment in vogue in the reigns of James I and Charles I, in which a series of fantasy episodes was enacted on a stage with changing scenery, with the accompaniment of music, songs and dance. The fantasies of the plot usually offered allusions to events on the contemporary political scene, and indicated that the monarch played a central role – usually a benevolent one – in the shaping of these events. Charles I appeared in person in several symbolical roles in masques of the 1630s. His fondness for these fictions was such that Marvell was able to describe him in the “Horatian Ode” of 1650 as “the royal actor born” who made his final appearance on “the tragic scaffold” of his execution in January 1649. It is possible that “The Unfortunate Lover” may depict Charles in another masquing role that Marvell designed for him in the last phase of his life.
We are tempted to think that the unfortunate lover may be a persona of King Charles because of his exalted and exposed position, which held the attention of the whole country after his defeat. The use of the word “Caesarean” in line 16 also draws our thoughts towards Charles. Marvell also applied the title of Caesar to Charles in the “Horatian Ode”. He is born as a lover out of the chaos of a shipwreck, which may be the wreck of the ship of state, destroyed in the Civil War. The fiction of the poem suggests that his new identity as an Unfortunate Lover begins in stanza 2 with this disaster, but his new-born persona is also marked for death, as the rest of the poem relates. The “Caesarean section” refers to the unnatural nature of his birth in his new role, but it also looks forward to his death on the scaffold, when Caesar’s head was sectioned from his body. This strange being, the Unfortunate Lover, is truly “Th’amphibium of life and death”. As might be the case at court, the birth of a royal child could be marked by the performance of a masque, so the birth of the Unfortunate Lover is marked by “This masque of quarr’lling elements”, the storms and thunder of the Civil War.
We still need to know, however, why the King is re-born as an Unfortunate Lover. The answer might lie in King Charles” last appearance on the stage at the Banqueting House at Whitehall, when he enacted the role of Philogenes in the final masque of his reign, Salmacida Spolia, by William Davenant, in January 1640. “Philogenes” means “Lover of his people”. The plot of this masque was probably invented by King Charles in conjunction with Davenant, because the masque was essentially a propaganda exercise to assure the court of the King’s benevolent intentions towards his people, who have not adequately appreciated his love and care for them. The masque acknowledges that there is serious discontent in the land, and widespread hostility to the King’s policies. There is even recognition of incipient rebellion. The action of the masque is an attempt to reassure the court – a limited audience admittedly, but containing the most influential people in the land – that the King is intent on leading his country to unrivalled peace and contentment. But in the real world, civil war over-ran the country. The Lover of the People came to be regarded by half of his subjects as a tyrant and a traitor. Far from becoming the successful lover that he aspired to be in the masque, in the last years of his life he had become an Unfortunate Lover. Fortune had abandoned him. He ends as a tragic figure, “a lover / Dressed in his own blood”, a description that evokes his execution at the Banqueting House where he first appeared as the Lover of the People.
In considering this interpretation, one might object that the masque Salmacida Spolia was a pretty obscure reference point for the King as Lover. It would have been known to relatively few readers. But we must remember that Marvell did not write for an audience. He kept his poems secret, and wrote to please himself. His poems do not seem to have had any circulation in manuscript, and probably only a very few intimates, such as Thomas Fairfax, were aware of them. We know that he was exceptionally well read in the minor poetry of his own time, for critics have traced the impression of many little-known poets on his work. The characterisation of King Charles as a royal lover in Davenant’s masque might have given Marvell the hint he needed to contrive this poem, in which he turned the trope backwards to show how the King’s best hopes were perverted by cruel Fortune to a disastrous end. The line in the last stanza declaring that “he in story only rules” expresses a truth about Charles. “Story” here means fictions or fables. He was always at his best in masques, or poems, or portraits. There he could show power, authority and success. His triumphs in fictions were immediate and effortless. In the real world of politics he cut a less impressive figure.
Many of the details of the poem are puzzling and difficult to interpret. What or who, for example, do the memorable “fleet of corm’rants black” in stanza iv represent? In sixteenth and seventeenth century poetry, cormorants were almost always associated with greed. Here, in the probable context of the Civil War and the history of King Charles, they could allude to the Scottish army, composed mainly of Presbyterians, to whom Charles surrendered in May 1646. They became his “Guardians” when he was “received into their cruel care”. That care was cruel because the King was imprisoned, and eventually sold to the leaders of the Parliamentary army in January 1647. The selling of the King was clear evidence of Scottish greed. In return for the large sum they received, the Scottish army withdrew to Scotland, but while they held the King, they had “fed him up with hopes and air”, allowing him to believe that he would be treated fairly.
In the later stanzas, the presence of the King’s book, Eikon Basilike, published early in 1649, seems to make itself felt. This was his justification for his actions, and was probably compiled by the cleric John Gauden. The book was the foundation of his posthumous reputation as the royal martyr, who sacrificed his life in defence of the Church of England and for love of his country. Its famous frontispiece contains the image of the rock in the midst of tumultuous seas beneath a tempestuous sky that surely contributed to the imagery of stanza vii. The hero of the poem wins his unique title (“the only banneret”) in the last conflicts of his life, and the memory of his heroic struggles lingers on after his bloody death – heraldically registered as a red figure against a black background – transformed into the perfume of an admirable life and the music of a noble soul. This final transformation may have been suggested by a work by a fellow poet Thomas Stanley, Psalterium Carolinum, composed in 1649. Here Stanley turned the prose of Eikon Basilike into verse, and had the verses set to music. Stanley’s work is hardly known today, but would have been known to Marvell, for both men had associations with the Fairfax family.
It is doubtful if the imaginative processes at work in “The Unfortunate Lover” will ever be fully traced or understood, but the poem will always command attention through the force of its expression, its challenging imagery, and its elusive story.
Reference
Smith, Nigel (ed.). The Poems of Andrew Marvell. London, 1966.
1631 words
Citation: Parry, Graham. "The Unfortunate Lover". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 15 February 2018 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=38829, accessed 01 April 2025.]
