The cõforte of louers The Comfort of Lovers — Inside the Classic

Allegorical Objects and Their Origins

The poem centers on three symbolic items—a flower, a sword, and a shield—which the narrator wins through fortune. The lady expresses surprise at his success, explaining that these objects were 'made to a meruaylous entente' in antiquity and that many knights had attempted but failed to obtain them. This suggests a chivalric allegory where the items represent virtues or rewards attainable only by the worthy. Hawes does not explicitly decode their meaning, leaving the reader to infer from the lady's words that the narrator's fortune is 'ordynate'—preordained. The vagueness of the allegory aligns with the prohemy's claim that poets 'cloke it subtylly.'

Chess as a Metaphor for Love's Uncertainty

In a striking passage, the narrator compares his situation to a chess game: 'yf at the chesse I drawe / My selfe I knowe not / as a cheke frome a mate.' This metaphor underscores the lover's confusion and lack of control, as he cannot distinguish between a check (a threat) and a checkmate (defeat). The chess imagery is not extended beyond this single couplet, but it encapsulates the poem's theme of fortune's caprice. Hawes uses the game to convey the lover's helplessness, a contrast to the confident tone of the prohemy.

Repetition and Emotional Intensity in the Lover's Complaint

The lover's monologue is structured around anaphora and parallel clauses: 'The more my payne, the more my loue encreaseth / The more my Ieopardy, the truer is my harte.' This rhetorical pattern builds a sense of escalating passion and despair. Hawes also employs a refrain-like address to fortune and the lady, repeating 'O thou fayre fortune' and 'O ryght fayre lady.' Such repetition gives the complaint a liturgical quality, emphasizing the lover's fixation. The diction is hyperbolic—'my herte is colde and faynt,' 'my teeres dystyll'—but remains within the conventions of courtly love poetry.

Self-Conscious Authorship and Literary Lineage

In the prohemy, Hawes explicitly names his predecessors: 'Fyrst noble Gower / moralytees dyde endyte,' followed by Chaucer and Lydgate. He humbly disclaims expertise, calling himself 'no hystoryagraffe / nor poete laureate,' yet he asserts his desire to follow Lydgate's 'makynge.' This genealogy situates The Comfort of Lovers within a recognized English poetic tradition. Hawes also addresses his readers directly, asking them to correct his errors 'with all my delygence.' Such self-conscious framing reveals an author aware of his place in a literary lineage and anxious about his own skill.

Readers approaching The Comfort of Lovers should attend to the interplay between the prohemy's theoretical claims and the poem's actual practice. The 'cloudy figures' Hawes defends are not merely ornamental; they structure the narrative through allegory and metaphor. The poem rewards close attention to its rhetorical patterns and historical context, particularly the influence of Lydgate. As a short dream-vision, it offers a concentrated example of early Tudor poetic craft.

Reading Hawes’s chessboard of fortune, where every move feels preordained yet strangely personal, I found myself thinking of the quiet loyalty in The dog's book of verse — Themes and Context. Both speak of waiting and winning, though one stakes claims with swords, the other with a worn paw placed gently on a knee. Obscurity has its own soft patience.