''A Farewell to Arms'' is an occasional sonnet written by

George Peele George Peele (baptised 25 July 1556 – buried 9 November 1596) was an English translator, poet, and dramatist, who is most noted for his supposed but not universally accepted collaboration with William Shakespeare on the play ''Titus Andronicus' ...

. It is the coda of Peele's ''Polyhymnia'', written for the

Accession Day tilt The Accession Day tilts were a series of elaborate festivities held annually at the court of Elizabeth I of England to celebrate her Accession Day, 17 November, also known as Queen's Day. The tilts combined theatre, theatrical elements with j ...

of 1590. The prior thirteen parts of ''Polyhymnia'' are each

blank verse Blank verse is poetry written with regular metrical but unrhymed lines, almost always in iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the 16th century", and P ...

descriptions of pairs of contestants with vague impressions of their combat, though Peele does not name the victors. ''A Farewell to Arms'' then commemorates the tenure and retirement of

Sir Henry Lee Sir Henry Lee KG (March 1533 – 12 February 1611), of Ditchley, was Queen's Champion and Master of the Armouries under Queen Elizabeth I of England. Family Henry Lee, born in Kent in March 1533, was the grandson of Sir Robert Lee (d.1539 ...

as the

Queen's Champion The Honourable The King's (or Queen's) Champion is an honorary and hereditory office in the Royal Household of the British sovereign. The champion's original role at the coronation of a British monarch was to challenge anyone who contested the ...

. Lee had been the Queen's Champion since the first Accession Day tilts, possibly as early as 1559. In 1590 the position passed to the

Earl of Cumberland The title of Earl of Cumberland was created in the Peerage of Peerage of England, England in 1525 for the 11th Baron de Clifford.''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press'', 2004. It became extinct in 1643. The Duke of C ...

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References

{{reflist Sonnets Poetry Elizabethan era