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Sir Walter Scott
KENILWORTH (1821) Reviewed by Patrick Killough I. For barnesandnoble.com Here is how your review will appear on the title page: Reviewer:Patrick Killough (patrick@thekilloughs.com), a critical fan of Walter Scott, June 24, 2007. Reviewer's Rating of Walter Scott's KENILWORTH: * * * * * FIVE STARS Title of this Review: "Kings Do Their Best." Sir Walter Scott's 1821 novel KENILWORTH was written in less than three months, with the author at the peak of his powers. It is set in 1575 England. Mary Queen of Scots is in her seventh year of captivity at the hands of her cousin Elizabeth Tudor, who is now in her 18th year on the throne. This tale unravels one secret after another. Terrible mistakes are made by well intended people, notably Queen Elizabeth, because one primal secret is so well kept for so long. As Scott's epigraph to Chapter XXXII puts it: "The wisest Sovereigns err like private
men.
..... Kings do their best -- and they and we Must answer for the intent, and not the event." We are drawn to wonder first who a minor fictional figure is and why he or she is in the tale, then are led clue by clue up a chain of power into the world of great historical figures, culminating in Queen Elizabeth and her mighty courtiers. Much of the darkest action takes place at a village within four miles of Oxford, at Cumnor Hall -- a largely ruined former monastery -- and in the Black Bear Inn. One thread leads to another. By the time we have read a third of the way through KENILWORTH we have a pretty good sense of where the mystery lies and what its ending might be. Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, has charmed the Virgin Queen and is presented with and presses home his opportunity to wed her and become King of England. Trouble is: Leicester is already secretly married to the beauteous young Amy Robsart. Her jilted fiance Edmund Tressilian of Cornwall is commissioned by her father Sir Hugh Robsart to find her and bring her home. Leicester, through his Master of the Horse, Richard Varney, has hidden Amy at Cumnor Manor. In a confrontation at Elizabeth's court, black-hearted Varney saves Dudley's reputation by a lying declaration that he himself is wed to Amy and the Puritan Earl is too ambitious to deny it. Elizabeth demands to meet Amy -- thought to be Mrs Varney -- during a forthcoming state visit to the Earl's castle at Kenilworth. The very feminine queen wonders how Amy could reject a good looking man like Tressilian for the ugly Varney. Varney, arguably the greatest villain in literature, intends to rise as The Earl rises and convinces his Lord that the only obstacle to Leicester's becoming king is his secret marriage to Amy. At a key turning point -- though not the last -- of the novel, Robert Dudley impatiently tells Varney 'Manage it as thou wilt,' meaning the problem of Amy. Few modern readers know KENILWORTH. So I shall not reveal its ending. Remember, though, that KENILWORTH is 'historical fiction.' There is indeed history: major characters, especially Elizabeth and Leicester really existed and interacted. But KENILWORTH is also fiction, alternative history, asking: what if Leicester had a young, gorgeous, adoring wife but Elizabeth thought him a bachelor, etc. Scott's contemporary Samuel Taylor Coleridge endorsed, for readers of poetic fiction, "That
willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes
poetic faith."
In KENILWORTH Scott himself cautions us, referring to 17th Century belief in the efficacy of a particular medicine: The
reader must be contented, for the time he peruses these pages, to hold
the same opinion, which was once universally received by the learned as
well as the vulgar" (Ch. XIII).
KENILWORTH starts slowly, very, very slowly. But as character s clumsily grasp this piece or that of the mystery, then this tale of love, ambition and treachery gathers and keeps its momentum. It is hard to put the last six chapters down. -OOO- ____________________________________________________________________________ Also recommended: -- Sir Walter Scott: WOODSTOCK, THE FORTUNES OF NIGEL. -- S. T. Coleridge, BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA. -- David Brown: WALTER SCOTT AND THE HISTORICAL IMAGINATION. -- Fiona Robertson: LEGITIMATE HISTORIES: SCOTT, GOTHIC, AND THE AUTHORITIES OF FICTION. II. for amazon.com Here is your review the way it will appear: Title of this review: "It is a seething of the kid in the mother's milk," June 24, 2007 Reviewer's Rating of KENILWORTH: * * * * * FIVE STARS In Sir Walter Scott's 1821 novel KENILWORTH, very young Amy Robsart of the English country gentry had once been engaged to marry a serious young scholar of Cornwall, Edmund Tressilian. But the handsome, rich, powerful Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, comes between them. Tressilian and Amy's father, Sir Hugh Robsart, know that Amy has either eloped or been carried off by someone. But they suspect ungainly Richard Varney, not the handsome, vastly wealthy Earl of Leicester. Richard Varney, as it happens, is the hugely influential right hand man of Dudley. And one of Varney's jobs is to scout out pretty women for his Puritan master to seduce. To this end Varney systematically ingratiates himself with Sir Hugh and brings his master and Miss Robsart together in clandestine meetings. Amy loves Dudley as woman has never loved man before but will not, like his other conquests, willingly go to bed with him unless and until they are married. The Earl, for his part, is smitten by Amy and impulsively weds her, over Varney's objections that he is ruining his political career. But the great Earl remains ambitious and prudent enough to keep the wedding secret until he can find a time and a way to make it known without doing harm to his rising status with his old childhood friend and onetime fellow prisoner of the Tower of London, Elizabeth Tudor. Dudley has Varney fit up splendidly as Amy's closely guarded residence a ruined abbey which Varney has been given as spoils from Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries. It pertains to the village of Cumnor near Oxford. The Earl hides his new wife in Cumnor Hall, where, after a search at novel's beginning, Tressilian finds her but cannot persuade her to return to her father. From that point on, the plot becomes more and more complex and the secret marriage harder to keep secret or, once discovered, to explain. Varney assures the inquisitive Queen that Amy is his wife, not Leicester's and Leicester takes his good time telling the truth. Meanwhile Varney convinces the already great Earl to do his best to win Elizabeth's hand and become King of England. The pious Lord trusts the villainous Varney to find a way to make this happen that is both effective and compatible with the Earl's Puritan conscience. Without revealing precisely what happens to love-smitten Amy Robarts, who remains devoted to Leicester through betrayal upon betrayal, let me quote her keeper's comment to Varney in the final pages of KENILWORTH on how Amy's love of her unworthy husband has scalded her: "It is a seething of the kid in the mother's milk" (Ch. 41). There are twenty or more other rounded, energetic characters whom readers will enjoy seeing pass across the stage of KENILWORTH. They include Sir Walter Raleigh and his legendary muddied cloak. There is Will Shakespeare, whose rhymes the Queen can't get out of her mind. There are other memorable real and fictional minor characters of both sexes. Walter Scott is famous for his descriptions of costumes, armor, jewelry and clothing. When the Queen visits Dudley's castle at KENILWORTH, her ladies must moderate their dresses lest they eclipse the vain monarch. But Elizabeth likes her men young and well turned out and the Earl of Leicester outdoes them all in dazzling white: "his shoes being of white velvet ... his
stockings of knit silk, lined with cloth of silver ... the scabbard of
his sword of white velvet with golden buckles" and on and
on
(Ch. 31). This is a rich fable of a Lord who did his devious best to have his cake and eat it too. Its dramatic possibilities led into almost as many Walter Scott operas as did IVANHOE. KENILWORTH inspired Auber, Klein, de Lara, Donizetti, among others, to set the story to music. Finally: a friend of mine grew up in affluent Kenilworth Village, north of Chicago. She says that street names there are daily reminders of characters from Sir Walter Scott's novel of the same name. My friend cites Amy Robsart as the prime example. An American town created as a monument to Sir Walter Scott! And why not? Sir Walter Scott's great historical, almost gothic, novel of 1821, KENILWORTH, deserves celebrating and is more exciting and heart-stopping fiction than plodding, minutely accurate history. Thank you, Illinois! -OOO- Your tags: sir walter scott, elizabeth tudor, robert dudley, amy robsart, edmund tressilian. ==-===-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= III. for epinions.com Reviewer's Rating of KENILWORTH: * * * * * FIVE STARS TITLE of this Review: "A train of mysterious and unintelligible intrigues" Pros Queen Elizabeth, Shakespeare, Raleigh and England's "nest of singing birds." Passion, deception, villainy and ambition. Cons A very, very slow start. Historical asides and digressions. The Bottom Line If you read only three or four novels of Scott, KENILWORTH must be one. Donizetti, Auber and others turned KENILWORTH into operas. When love meets politics, one must lose. Full Review In 1575 Queen Elizabeth was 42, had been on the throne of England for 17 years and would remain there for another 28 until she died of an illness. Elizabeth's management style was to keep political supremacy by never being dominated by any one man, by remaining a virgin, never marrying and by playing off one powerful male courtier against another. Thanks to her stepmother Katharine Parr, Henry VIII's sixth wife, Elizabeth had a superb renaissance education. She was highly intelligent and self-controlled. But, Walter Scott argues, she was also a woman and could be tempted to share regal supremacy if the right man came along. That right man was Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who had once been detained in the Tower of London as had Elizabeth. Dudley was a champion of the Protestant cause both in England and abroad. Despite his Calvinist, Puritanical leanings he was also a womanizer. He employed one of literature's darkest villains, Richard Varney, his Master of the Horses, as his scout and procurer of willing women. Through Varney, the Earl of Leicester had seduced young country maiden Amy Robsart. But, uniquely in Dudley's experience with women, Amy refused to be bedded until married. Against Varney's advice, Leicester impulsively lured Amy away from her ancestral home, widowed father and from scholarly fiance Edmund Tressilian. They wed secretly and Dudley ensconced his new Countess in a ruined monastery near Oxford, Cumnor Manor, which belonged to Richard Varney. The Earl weakly intended to acquaint Queen Elizabeth with what he had done -- if ever the time grew ripe. He had to announce his nuptials, he thought, in a way which kept his rivals from taking advantage of his deed. At this time, however, by unfortunate coincidence, his persistent courtly attention to Elizabeth softened her up to the point that she seriously considered marrying Dudley. And he would be King of England. That is the setting for the rest of a tale that begins slowly then rolls ever faster like a juggernaut across the lives of twenty and more named and described characters real and fictitious. One of these is Wayland Smith, introduced as a farrier who lives underground and shoes Tressilian's lame horse during the latter's search for the missing Amy Robsart. Smith has also been an alchemist and a strolling player, both of which skills he uses to advance the plot after he enters young Tressilian's service. As fate's nooses tightened around both Leicester and Amy, Wayland Smith "found himself engaged far deeper than he
had expected in a train of mysterious and unintelligible intrigues, in
which the actors seemed hardly to know their own course" (Ch.
XXIX).
Indeed, it was not easy to untangle the intrigues. For everyone lied. Or if (like Elizabeth) they did not lie, they were too easily deceived by those who did. The Earl can not bring himself to ruin his career by acknowledging Countess Amy to the Queen. Amy's father petitioned the Queen to return his daughter to him. The Earl was accused of being behind the seduction and kidnapping. To save both his master and himself, nimble-witted Varney lies and convinces the Queen that he, not the Earl, is Amy's husband and that the Earl had become too absorbed in the Queen to notice what Varney had been up to. The Queen demands to meet Amy during a coming royal visit to the Earl's castle of Kenilworth. Varney tries to prevent this by having a quack alchemist (former mentor of Wayland Smith) dose Amy lightly with a poison, so that she cannot travel from Cumnor Hall to Kenilworth. But with the help of Wayland and Edmund Tressilian, Amy fights off the potion and escapes her captivity. She demands to go to Kenilworth, where she has a chance encounter with the Queen. Varney manages to persuade Queen and Court that Amy is mentally unbalanced and she is given over to his care. The tormented Earl tells Varney to manage the situation as he thinks best. As new readers of Scott are not likely to know the novel's ending -- happy or otherwise -- of KENILWORTH, I decline to reveal it here. Suffice it to observe that the ever wavering Earl outsmarts himself. Scott's descriptions of Leicester's psychology that drives a basically decent man into depths of deceit are convincing. For her part, Amy loves her man and forgives him injustice piled upon injustice. At novel's end she subordinates all hope of personal safety to boundless trust in her Lord. How does Varney manage the situation? Read a great novel and find out. KENILWORTH, remember, is a novel, is fiction, as much so as THE DA VINCI CODE. But it is also thickly embedded in history, both real and "what if" history. The historical Elizabeth in fact knew and was influenced by lesser characters of the plot such as Walter Raleigh and William Shakespeare. She was also open to flattery and had a temper. Sir Walter Scott admits that to do justice to Eliizabeth in a romance, he himself had to overcome a prejudice against Elizabeth Tudor naturally felt by every patriotic Scotsman. This was because of her treatment of her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, who was in her seventh year of captivity as novel opened. Yet KENILWORTH does nothing to detract from Elizabeth's growing reputation as perhaps the greatest monarch England ever had. -OOO- Recommended: Yes 06/25/2007 http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/sirws_kenilworth.html |