The Blessing of Disguise
A mysterious knight and an equally mysterious outlaw agree to preserve one another’s incognito.
set in 1194
A mysterious knight and an equally mysterious outlaw agree to preserve one another’s incognito.
set in 1194
The Black Knight has liberated the wounded Ivanhoe and his friends from Torquilstone, the castle of wicked Norman baron Reginald Front-de-Boeuf. Assistance came from an outlaw and his band of merry men, and though the two heroes each suspect they have penetrated the other’s disguise, they agree to drop the potentially embarrassing subject.
“SIR Knight,” said the Outlaw, “we have each our secret. You are welcome to form your judgment of me, and I may use my conjectures touching you, though neither of our shafts may hit the mark they are shot at. But as I do not pray to be admitted into your mystery, be not offended that I preserve my own.”*
“I crave pardon, brave Outlaw,” said the Knight, “your reproof is just. But it may be we shall meet hereafter with less of concealment on either side. — Meanwhile we part friends, do we not?”
“There is my hand upon it,” said Locksley; “and I will call it the hand of a true Englishman, though an outlaw for the present.”
“And there is mine in return,” said the Knight, “and I hold it honoured by being clasped with yours. For he that does good, having the unlimited power to do evil, deserves praise not only for the good which he performs, but for the evil which he forbears. Fare thee well, gallant Outlaw!”
The Black Knight is King Richard I ‘the Lionheart’ (r. 1189-1199), great-great-grandson of King William I (‘the Conqueror’), Duke of Normandy; the outlaw is the at least half legendary Robin Hood.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
What did the outlaw ask the Black Knight to do?
To help him to preserve his incognito.