"The King and the Beggar-maid" is a 16th-century broadside ballad [1] that tells of an African king, Cophetua, and his love for the beggar Penelophon (Shakespearean Zenelophon). Artists and writers have referenced the story, and King Cophetua has become a byword for "a man who falls in love with a woman instantly and proposes marriage immediately". [2]
Cophetua is an African king known for his lack of sexual attraction to women. One day, looking out of a palace window, he witnesses a young beggar, Penelophon, "clad all in grey". [2] Struck by love at first sight, Cophetua decides that he will either have the beggar as his wife or commit suicide.
Walking out into the street, he scatters coins for the beggars to gather and when Penelophon comes forward, he tells her that she is to be his wife. She agrees and becomes queen, and soon loses all trace of her former poverty and low class. The couple lives "a quiet life during their princely reign" [3] and are much loved by their people. Eventually they die and are buried in the same tomb.
William Shakespeare mentions the ballad by title in several plays. [4] It is referenced or alluded in Love's Labour's Lost (I, ii, 115 and V. i. 65–85), A Midsummer Night's Dream (IV, i, 65), Romeo and Juliet (II, i, 14), Richard II (V, viii, 80), and Henry IV, part 2 (V, iii, 107), all written in the 1590s. [5] William Warburton believed that John Falstaff's lines in Henry IV, part 2, referencing Cophetua were taken from a now lost play based on the ballad. [6] In Love's Labour's Lost, Armado asks his page Moth, "Is there not a ballad, boy, of 'The King and the Beggar'?", to which Moth responds, "The world was very guilty of such a ballad some three ages since, but I think now 'tis not to be found; or, if it were, it would neither serve for the writing nor the tune." [7] Ben Jonson also makes reference to the ballad in his play Every Man in His Humour (1598) [3] and William Davenant in The Wits (1634). [8]
The oldest version of the tale surviving is that titled "A Song of a Beggar and a King" in Richard Johnson's anthology Crown Garland of Goulden Roses (1612). [9] [6] This was the source of the ballad in the first edition of Francis J. Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1855), although it was removed from the second edition (1858). [1] The ballad was also published in Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765). [2]
The ballad was probably sung to the melody (air) of "I Often with My Jenny Strove", published first in the third volume of Henry Playford's The Banquet of Music (1689). In the first volume of the anonymous Collection of Old Ballads (1723), a ballad titled "Cupid's Revenge"—which is a mere paraphrase of "The King and the Beggar-maid"—appears set to the music of "I Often with My Jenny Strove". [1] [10] This may be the original air of the Cophetua ballad. [7]
The Cophetua story was famously and influentially treated in literature by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (The Beggar Maid, written 1833, published 1842); in oil painting by Edmund Blair Leighton (The King and the Beggar-Maid) and Edward Burne-Jones ( King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid , 1884); and in photography by Julia Margaret Cameron and by Lewis Carroll (his most famous photograph; Alice as "Beggar-Maid", 1858). Tennyson's poem was set to music by Joseph Barnby (published 1880).
The painting by Burne-Jones is referred to in the prose poem König Cophetua by the Austrian poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal and in Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), a long poem by Ezra Pound. The painting has a symbolic role in a short novel Le Roi Cophetua by the French writer Julien Gracq (1970). This in turn inspired the 1971 film Rendez-vous à Bray , directed by the Belgian cineaste André Delvaux.
The story was combined with and inflected the modern re-telling of the Pygmalion myth, especially in its treatment by George Bernard Shaw as the 1913 play Pygmalion .
It has also been used to name a sexual desire for lower-class women by upper-class men. Although often attributed first to Graham Greene in his 1951 novel The End of the Affair , the term was used as early as 1942 by Agatha Christie in her mystery The Body in the Library [NY: Collier, pp. 119-121] when Jane Marple reflects on the attraction of older wealthy men for young lower-class girls and in 1861 where Anthony Trollope referred to the story in Chapter XXXV of Framley Parsonage, his fourth novel of The Barchester Chronicles. Sir Henry Clithering dubs it a "Cophetua Complex."
The English poet and critic James Reeves included his poem "Cophetua", inspired by the legend, in his 1958 book The Talking Skull.
Hugh Macdiarmid wrote a brief two-verse poem Cophetua in Scots, which is a slightly parodic treatment of the story. [11]
Polish composer Ludomir Rózycki wrote a symphonic poem "Król Cophetua", Op. 24, in 1910.
Alice Munro titled one story in her 1980 collection, "The Beggar Maid". Before her marriage to Patrick, Rose is told by him: "You're like the Beggar Maid." "Who?" "King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid. You know. The painting." The American edition of Munro's collection is also titled The Beggar Maid, a change from the Canadian title, Who Do You Think You Are?
Robin Hood is a legendary heroic outlaw originally depicted in English folklore and subsequently featured in literature, theatre, and cinema. According to legend, he was a highly skilled archer and swordsman. In some versions of the legend, he is depicted as being of noble birth, and in modern retellings he is sometimes depicted as having fought in the Crusades before returning to England to find his lands taken by the Sheriff. In the oldest known versions, he is instead a member of the yeoman class. Traditionally depicted dressed in Lincoln green, he is said to have stolen from the rich to give to the poor.
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his first pieces, "Timbuktu". He published his first solo collection of poems, Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, in 1830. "Claribel" and "Mariana", which remain some of Tennyson's most celebrated poems, were included in this volume. Although described by some critics as overly sentimental, his verse soon proved popular and brought Tennyson to the attention of well-known writers of the day, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Tennyson's early poetry, with its medievalism and powerful visual imagery, was a major influence on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
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Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
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Mariana is an 1851 oil-on-panel painting by John Everett Millais. The image depicts the solitary Mariana from William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, as retold in Tennyson's 1830 poem "Mariana". The painting is regarded as an example of Millais's "precision, attention to detail, and stellar ability as a colorist". It has been held by Tate Britain since 1999.
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King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid may refer to:
"Mariana" is a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, published in 1830. The poem follows a common theme in much of Tennyson's work—that of despondent isolation. The subject of "Mariana" is a woman who continuously laments her lack of connection with society. The isolation defines her existence, and her longing for a connection leaves her wishing for death at the end of every stanza. The premise of "Mariana" originates in William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, but the poem ends before Mariana's lover returns. Tennyson's version was adapted by others, including John Everett Millais and Elizabeth Gaskell, for use in their own works. The poem was well received by critics, and it is described by critics as an example of Tennyson's skill at poetry.
King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid is an 1884 painting by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones. The painting illustrates the story of 'The King and the Beggar-maid", which tells the legend of the prince Cophetua who fell in love at first sight with the beggar Penelophon. The tale was familiar to Burne-Jones through an Elizabethan ballad published in Bishop Thomas Percy's 1765 Reliques of Ancient English Poetry and the sixteen-line poem The Beggar Maid by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
The Beggar Maid is a 1921 American silent drama film based on the 1842 Tennyson poem of "The King and the Beggar-maid" and the 1884 painting of the scene by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. The feature was directed by Herbert Blaché and stars Reginald Denny and Mary Astor.
Pygmalion and the Image is the second series of four oil paintings in the Pygmalion and Galatea series by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones which was completed between 1875 and 1878. The two collections may be seen below, in the Gallery, the first being now owned by Lord Lloyd Webber, and the second housed at the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery. This article deals with an appraisal of the second series.
Poems and Ballads, First Series is the first collection of poems by Algernon Charles Swinburne, published in 1866. The book was instantly popular, and equally controversial. Swinburne wrote about many taboo topics, such as lesbianism, sado-masochism, and anti-theism. The poems have many common elements, such as the Ocean, Time, and Death. Several historical persons are mentioned in the poems, such as Sappho, Anactoria, Jesus and Catullus.
Poems, by Alfred Tennyson, was a two-volume 1842 collection in which new poems and reworked older ones were printed in separate volumes. It includes some of Tennyson's finest and best-loved poems, such as Mariana, The Lady of Shalott, The Palace of Art, The Lotos Eaters, Ulysses, Locksley Hall, The Two Voices, Sir Galahad, and Break, Break, Break. It helped to establish his reputation as one of the greatest poets of his time.
Love Among the Ruins is a painting by English artist Edward Burne-Jones which exists in two versions, a watercolour completed in 1873 and an oil painting completed in 1894. It depicts a man and a woman amid ruined architecture. The work is a synthesis of influences from the Pre-Raphaelite, Symbolist and Aesthetic art movements. The ambiguous scene without a clear narrative is considered one of Burne-Jones' best works.
