ABSTRACT
In each of the three Love and Chastity performances, in Scotland, France, and England, we are able to decipher a diplomatic intention. Catherine de Medici, although a queen mother rather than a monarch in her own right, was the oldest and most experienced of the three queens, and her Love/Chastity debate was part of the most elaborate and spectacular of the three entertainments. The 1564 debate between Love and Chastity fell during celebrations at Fontainebleau which initiated the magnificent two-year Royal Tour of France which Catherine arranged for the young Charles IX in the wake of the first War of Religion. The subject matter is superficially apolitical: Castelnau comments on the 'gentiles et agreables inuentions pour l'amour & pour les armes' which accompanied the neo-Platonic focus of the Love-Chastity debate. Eros was represented by 'blinde Cupid', Chastity by 'a fayer yong maid', while Mutual Love was presented by 'a younge childe set furth like vnto tyme'.
