Light of love

Read More

The OED traces "light of love" to early appearances that declare it a cousin of Elizabethan uses of "light" to mean "sexually inconstant." In Euphues (1579) John Lyly uses the phrase adjectivally: "Ah wretched wench, canst thou be so lyght of love, as to chaunge with every winde?" Thomas Proctor's A Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions (1578) makes it a noun: "The fickle are blamed: their lightilove shamed." Later uses cited in the OED show that it could also be a name for loose women themselves, as in John Fletcher's The Chances (1618): "Sure he has encountered / Some light-o-love or other." Joyce uses the phrase in this last sense.

A popular Elizabethan song called "Light of Love," set to a danceable "turkeylony" tune (the word apparently came from the tordiglione, an Italian galliard), figures in the dialogue in which Hero prepares for her wedding and Beatrice frets over her newfound love for Benedick while Margaret needles both of them with sexual innuendo:

        Hero. Why, how now? Do you speak in the sick tune?
        Beatrice. I am out of all other tune, methinks.
        Margaret. Clap's into "Light a' love": that goes without a burden. Do you sing it, and I'll dance it.
        Beatrice. Ye light a' love with your heels! then if your husband have stables enough, you'll see he shall lack no barns.
        Margaret. O illegitimate construction! I scorn that with my heels.                                (3.4.41-51)

A "burden" was the bass line in a song, and the word acknowledges the heaviness of Beatrice's love-longing, but it also echoes "the weight of a man" from several lines earlier. "Light...with your heels" suggests energetic dancing but also evokes "light-heeled," another idiom for unchastity. "Barns" extends the theme of "stables" but also puns on "bairns," children. "Illegitimate" refers not only to faulty logic but also to the fruits of promiscuity. Shakespeare's lush word play suggests that the song's lyrics must have sent lustful thoughts racing through Elizabethan minds.

In Scylla and Charybdis Stephen imagines that the bedroom of every "light-of-love" in London must have held a copy of Venus and Adonis, the story of a sexually aggressive woman. In Circe he thinks of Shakespeare and two other famous men having been dominated by such women: "We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. Even the allwisest Stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a light of love." From the first of these appearances to the second no real change of meaning or suggestion occurs: the flighty Anne Hathaway rode roughshod over Shakespeare, and Socrates and Aristotle experienced similar humiliations.

But later in Circe Bloom uses the phrase in a new and puzzling way. When a constable threatens to take him to the police station Bloom performs certain recognizable Masonic signs and protests, "No, no, worshipful master, light of love. Mistaken identity." The ruling officers of Masonic lodges are often addressed as Worshipful Master, and many Masons have spoken of their order as being a "light of love" to the world: tolerant, inclusive, highminded, and charitable. The duplication of meaning here is astounding: Bloom signals that he is a Mason and hence someone of high moral character, while at the same time he either confesses to sexual immorality himself or admits that he has been involved with a woman of that type.

But it is not only "light of love" that proves polysemous. In a personal communication, Arnie Perlstein has called my attention to the fact that "worshipful master" may recall the speech of Dogberry, the bumbling constable in the subplot of Much Ado. This commoner entrusted with the job of leading the night watch in Messina stumbles upon Don John's scheme to ruin the reputation of Hero, but he proves supremely incapable as an investigator. His clownish idiocy regularly produces malapropisms and other verbal blunders, and he is obsequious toward his betters. Worship and Master are much on his lips, as in these exchanges:

     Leonato.  Neighbors, you are tedious.
     Dogberry.  It pleases your Worship to say so, but we
are the poor duke’s officers. But truly, for mine
own part, if I were as tedious as a king, I could find
in my heart to bestow it all of your Worship.
     Leonato.   All thy tediousness on me, ah?
     Dogberry.  Yea, an ’twere a thousand pound more
than ’tis, for I hear as good exclamation on your
Worship as of any man in the city, and though I be
but a poor man, I am glad to hear it.  (3.5.18-27)

     Conrade.  I am a gentleman, sir, and my name is
Conrade.
     Dogberry. Write down Master Gentleman Conrade. Masters, do you serve God?
     Conrade, Borachio.   Yea, sir, we hope.
     Dogberry.  Write down that they hope they serve
God; and write God first, for God defend but God
should go before such villains. Masters, it is
prov'd already that you are little better than false
knaves, and it will go near to be thought so shortly.
How answer you for yourselves?
      Conrade.   Marry, sir, we say we are none.
     Dogberry.  A marvelous witty fellow, I assure you,
but I will go about with him. Come you hither, sirrah; a word in your ear, sir. I say to you, it is thought you are false knaves.
     Borachio. Sir, I say to you, we are none.
     Dogberry. Well, stand aside. 'Fore God they are both in a tale.                                           (4.2.13-26)

The sycophantish Dogberry acts with spectacular ineptitude as an officer of the constabulary. The sycophantish Bloom speaks with spectacular ineptitude to an officer of the constabulary, urging him to come to the aid of a fellow Mason when there is almost no chance that the officer is a Mason. No one but Joyce would discover such a connection in the happenstance resemblance of two words––much less five––but by joining the two contexts he creates a brilliant play of meanings. By saying "No, no, worshipful master, light of love," Bloom simultaneously claims the moral high ground and gives it away, declaring himself a virtuous Mason and admitting that he is only a bumbling oaf, a besotted tool.