Entertainment
The forgotten Cavalier poet and his tangled love for Lucasta (Column: Bookends)
By Vikas Datta
An intrepid swordsman, inveterate royalist, handsome, and a ladies’ man, this 17th-century English nobleman was a Cavalier, with a capital C, in all its colourful, historical meaning, instead of the current usage as an unflattering adjective. He also happened to be a delightful poet, largely forgotten now despite penning one of the most quoted lines of English poetry — and the finest expositions of human spirit’s resilience.
“Stone walls do not a prison make,/Nor iron bars a cage…” wrote Richard Lovelace (pronounced as “loveless”) (1617-57 or 1618-58) in the final stanza of his “To Althea, from Prison” (1642). It was written from a prison — though only on a seven-week sentence — where he had been sent by the Parliament for approaching it with an unwelcome petition.
But it strikes a greater chord when we read the full stanza which goes on: “Minds innocent and quiet take/That for an hermitage./If I have freedom in my love,/And in my soul am free,/Angels alone, that soar above,/Enjoy such liberty” or as it begins: “When love with unconfined wings/Hovers within my gates,/And my divine Althea brings/To whisper at the grates;/When I lie tangled in her hair/And fettered to her eye,/The gods that wanton in the air/Know no such liberty…”
Scholars dispute the identity of Althea, with some terming her a product of Lovelace’s imagination, though others cite evidence to claim she was Lucy Sacheverell, to whom Lovelace was once betrothed.
However, in her case, he was guilty of being a cavalier in its modern meaning too. Despite dedicating both “To Althea…” and his other famous poem “To Lucasta, Going to the Warres (Wars)” — also written in jail, as well as many others, to her, he showed a lack of proper concern towards her to the extent she gave up on him.
As Nicholas Parsons says in “The Book of Literary Lists”, Lovelace is unfortunate to have his fame rest on these two poems, and was equally unfortunate in his personal life. “… for it was reported that he was killed fighting in France; consequently his betrothed, Lucy Sacheverell (Lucasta), married another man. Perhaps, also, she was a bit fed up with Lovelace, who put military duty before passions”.
“To Lucasta…” bears this out. The three-stanza poem begins: “Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,/That from the nunnery/Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind/To war and arms I fly”, and goes on to say: “True, a new mistress now I chase,/The first foe in the field;/And with a stronger faith embrace,/A sword, a horse, a shield”.
And it ends: “Yet this inconstancy is such/As thou too shalt adore;/I could not love thee, dear, so much,/Loved I not honour more.”
Beautifully put, but scarcely the way to a woman’s heart.
But what sort of a man was Lovelace?
His contemporary, antiquary and writer John Aubrey (1626-1697), best known for his “Brief Lives”, a collection of short biographical pieces, writes, in his gossipy way, that “he was a most beautifull gentleman”.
“In the civill warres, colonel of horse in Sir Fr. Dodington’s brigade. Good sword-man; horseman; admirable extempore orator pro harangue; great memorie; great historian and romanceer; great falkoner and for horsemanship; exceeding curious and searching long since, in natural things,” wrote Aubrey.
Lovelace was also “one of the handsomst men of England… He was an extraordinary handsome man, but prowd…”
An Oxford contemporary, Anthony Wood also described him as “the most amiable and beautiful person that eye ever beheld”.
Apart from matters of his descent, his estate and the fact that he once owed his tailor an unpaid bill for some time, other details about Lovelace are sketchy. We nearly have no idea how he spent the last decade of his life, though one account says that having spent his fortune in the King’s service, he died in poverty.
But we can get a fair idea of his love for Lucy/Althea/Lucasta — in his own way, dedicating poems to her at any opportunity. There was “To Lucasta, Going Beyond the Seas”: “If to be absent were to be/Away from thee;/Or that when I am gone,/You or I were alone;/Then my Lucasta might I crave/Pity from blustring winde, or swallowing wave…”
Then, there is “Ode. To Lucasta. The Rose”, ending: “But early as she dresses,/Why fly you her bright Tresses?/Ah! I have found I feare;/Because her Cheekes are neere.”
There are also “Dialogue. Lucasta, Alexis”, “Lucasta Weeping. Song”, “Lucasta’s Fan”, “Lucasta, taking the waters at Tunbridge. Ode”, “To Lucasta. Ode Lyrick”, “The Lady A.L. My Asylum In A Great Extremity”, “Lucasta paying her Obsequies to the Chast memory of my dearest Cosin Mrs. Bowes Barne”, “Lucasta’s World. Epode” and even “When I by thy fair shape did swear”, among others.
We could also cite “The Scrutiny” with “Then, if when I have loved my round,/Thou prov’st the pleasant she,/With spoils of meaner beauties crowned/I laden will return to thee,/Ev’n sated with variety.”
Even after all this, he could not get his heart’s desire — that is the tragedy many creative people face.
(Vikas Datta is an Associate Editor at IANS. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at [email protected])
–IANS
vd/vm/dg
Entertainment
Casino Days Reveal Internal Data on Most Popular Smartphones
International online casino Casino Days has published a report sharing their internal data on what types and brands of devices are used to play on the platform by users from the South Asian region.
Such aggregate data analyses allow the operator to optimise their website for the brands and models of devices people are actually using.
The insights gained through the research also help Casino Days tailor their services based on the better understanding of their clients and their needs.
Desktops and Tablets Lose the Battle vs Mobile
The primary data samples analysed by Casino Days reveal that mobile connections dominate the market in South Asia and are responsible for a whopping 96.6% of gaming sessions, while computers and tablets have negligible shares of 2.9% and 0.5% respectively.
The authors of the study point out that historically, playing online casino was exclusively done on computers, and attribute thе major shift to mobile that has unfolded over time to the wide spread of cheaper smartphones and mobile data plans in South Asia.
“Some of the reasons behind this massive difference in device type are affordability, technical advantages, as well as cheaper and more obtainable internet plans for mobiles than those for computers,” the researchers comment.
Xiaomi and Vivo Outperform Samsung, Apple Way Down in Rankings
Chinese brands Xiaomi and Vivo were used by 21.9% and 20.79% of Casino Days players from South Asia respectively, and together with the positioned in third place with a 18.1% share South Korean brand Samsung dominate the market among real money gamers in the region.
Cupertino, California-based Apple is way down in seventh with a user share of just 2.29%, overshadowed by Chinese brands Realme (11.43%), OPPO (11.23%), and OnePlus (4.07%).
Huawei is at the very bottom of the chart with a tiny share just below the single percent mark, trailing behind mobile devices by Motorola, Google, and Infinix.
The data on actual phone usage provided by Casino Days, even though limited to the gaming parts of the population of South Asia, paints a different picture from global statistics on smartphone shipments by vendors.
Apple and Samsung have been sharing the worldwide lead for over a decade, while current regional leader Xiaomi secured their third position globally just a couple of years ago.
Striking Android Dominance among South Asian Real Money Gaming Communities
The shifted market share patterns of the world’s top smartphone brands in South Asia observed by the Casino Days research paper reveal a striking dominance of Android devices at the expense of iOS-powered phones.
On the global level, Android enjoys a comfortable lead with a sizable 68.79% share which grows to nearly 79% when we look at the whole continent of Asia. The data on South Asian real money gaming communities suggests that Android’s dominance grows even higher and is north of the 90% mark.
Among the major factors behind these figures, the authors of the study point to the relative affordability of and greater availability of Android devices in the region, especially when manufactured locally in countries like India and Vietnam.
“And, with influencers and tech reviews putting emphasis on Android devices, the choice of mobile phone brand and OS becomes easy; Android has a much wider range of products and caters to the Asian online casino market in ways that Apple can’t due to technical limitations,” the researchers add.
The far better integration achieved by Google Pay compared to its counterpart Apple Pay has also played a crucial role in shaping the existing smartphone market trends.
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