The King and The Beggar-maid - in Later Art and Literature - Passing References

Passing References

P.G. Wodehouse, in the novel Laughing Gas, has the impoverished Ann Bannister initially reject a marriage proposal from the wealthy Reggie Havershot by alluding to this story and then saying "If I'd been there, I'd have said 'Oh yeah?' "

Agatha Christie uses the phrase "Cophetua syndrome" in her novel The Body in the Library, to refer to the case of an elderly upper-class Englishman who becomes infatuated with a working-class girl, albeit in a fatherly rather than sexual way. Christie also references Cophetua in her novel Crooked House.

In the novel Lonely Road, by Neville Shute, the dancer Mary (Mollie) Gordon rejects Commander Malcolm Stevenson's marriage proposal, citing "the things you hear about men being dragged down by marrying wrong"; Stevenson wonders absently "if King Cophetua had had this sort of thing, and if so, what he did about it."

Dorothy Sayers, in "Strong Poison," depicts Lord Peter Wimsey saving Harriet Vane's life by his detective skills and immediately departing from court, whereupon one of Harriet's friends predicts that Peter will "come see her;" to which another friend declares "No, he's not going to do the King Cophetua stunt." This usage, unexplained, suggests that the Cophetua story was familiar to the reading public in early-20th-century England. She makes another reference in "Have his Carcase" where she has Harriet Vane telling Peter Wimsey: "You think you can sit up there all day, like King Cophetua being noble and generous and expecting people to be brought to your feet. Of course people will say, "look what he did for that woman - Isn't it marvellous of him!"

In Anthony Trollope's Barsetshire novel Framley Parsonage (1861), Lucy Robarts likens her relationship with Lord Lufton, who has proposed to her and whom she loves, to that of King Cophetua and the beggarmaid. It is clearly implied that such a relationship would have unfortunate consequences for them both.

In The American (1877) by Henry James, Valentin the Comte de Bellegarde, in describing his near-perfect aristocratic lineage to Newman states, "Horrible! One of us, in the middle ages, did better: he married, like King Cophetua. That was really better, it was like marrying a bird or a monkey, one didn't have to think about her family at all."

C. S. Lewis often used Cophetua and the beggar girl as an image of God's love for the unlovely. In The Problem of Pain, for instance, he writes, "We cannot even wish, in our better moments, that could reconcile Himself to our present impurities - no more than the beggar maid could wish that King Cophetua should be content with her rags and dirt..."

Georgette Heyer, in 1928's The Masqueraders, has Prudence tell her brother: "Lord, it’s a marvellous man! We become persons of consequence, and Tony’s denied his cherished role. He’d an ambition to play King Cophetua, Robin.’"

At the end of the 1947 film Black Narcissus the Young General makes a reference to "The prince and the beggar-maid", implying he has married the serving girl who was infatuated with him.

P.D. James, in her book Cover her Face (1962) has a character saying "These King Cophetua marriages seldom work out." This was her first novel, and the first in the Adam Dalgleish series.

In Robin McKinley's Beauty - A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast, she writes of Beauty's first entrance into the Beast's castle: "I wondered how King Cophetua's beggar-maid had felt when the palace gates had first opened for her."

In Shirley Hazzard's 1980 novel The Transit of Venus, the character Christian Thrale becomes infatuated with a young woman who he assumes is fairly poor, as his wife Grace had been when he met her. "He could not help associating his present impetuosity with his first encounter with Grace. Was there not, in fact, a recognized condition called the Cophetua Complex? Or had he made that up?"

Florence King revived the term for her 15 July 2002 essay entitled "On Keeping a Journal," which appeared in "The Misanthrope's Corner" of the National Review magazine.