LXXXVII explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Social Critique and Mortality

  The poet's cruel performance and the crowd's laughter at the Princess's fainting highlight the harshness and absurdity of courtly life.

Characters to notice

• Unknown

  The speaker who witnesses the poet's antics and rushes into the crowd to find the King.

• Princess

  The Princess who faints after the poet recites a Prothalamion in her face.

• Elfinan

  The King being sought by the speaker after the incident.

Key passages

• “A Poet, mounted on the Court-Clown’s back, Rode to the Princess swift with spurring heels, And close into her face, with rhyming clack, Began a Prothalamion;⁠—she reels, She falls, she faints!⁠—while laughter peals Over her woman’s weakness.”

  A poet, riding on the jester's back, hurried to the Princess and recited a wedding poem right in her face, causing her to stagger, collapse, and faint as the crowd laughed at her fragility.

  The poet's cruel act and the crowd's mocking laughter underscore the chapter's critique of courtly cruelty.

• “‘Where!’ cried I, ‘Where is his Majesty?’ No person feels Inclined to answer; wherefore instantly I plunged into the crowd to find him or to die.”

  I shouted, 'Where is the King?' but no one answered, so I immediately pushed through the crowd to find him, even if it meant dying.

  The speaker's desperate search for the King amid the chaos reflects his determination and the urgency of the situation.