Chapter Guido to Gulliver of G by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Guinevere. So Tennyson spells the name of Arthur’s queen in his Idylls. He tells us of the liaison between her and “sir Lancelot,” and says that Modred, having discovered this familiarity, “brought his creatures to the basement of the tower for testimony.” Sir Lancelot flung the fellow to the ground, and instantly took to horse; while Guinevere fled to the nunnery at Almesbury. Here the king took leave of her; and when the abbess died, the queen was appointed her successor, and remained head of the establishment for three years, when she also died.

It will be seen that Tennyson departs from the British History by Geoffrey, and the History of Prince Arthur as edited by sir T. Malory. (See Guenever.)

Tennyson accents the name Guin-ever—

Leodogran …
Had one fair daughter, and none other child, …
Guinevere, and in her his one delight.
   —Coming of Arthur.

Guiomar, mother of the vain-glorious Duarte.—Fletcher: The Custom of the Country (1647).

Guiscardo, the ’squire, but previously the page, of Tancred king of Salerno. Sigismunda, the king’s daughter, loved him, and clandestinely married him. When Tancred discovered it, he ordered the young man to be waylaid and strangled. He then went to his daughter’s chamber, and reproved her for loving a base-born “slave.” Sigismunda boldly defended her choice, but next day received a human heart in a golden casket. It needed no prophet to tell her what had happened, and she drank a draught of poison. Her father entered just in time to hear her dying request that she and Guiscardo might be buried in the same tomb. The royal father

Too late repented of his cruel deed,
One common sepulchre for both decreed;
Intombed the wretched pair in royal state,
And on their monument inscribed their fate.
   —Dryden: Sigismunda and Guiscardo (from Boccaccio).

Guise (Henri de Lorraine, duc de) commenced the Massacre of Bartholomew by the assassination of admiral Coligny [Co-leen-e]. Being forbidden to enter Paris by order of Henri III., he disobeyed the injunction, and was murdered (1550–1588).

(Henri de Guise has furnished the subject of several tragedies. In English we have Guise or the Massacre of France, by John Webster (1620); The Duke of Guise, by Dryden and Lee. In French we have Etats de Blois (the Death of Guise), by François Raynouard, 1814.)

Guisla, sister of Pelayo, in love with Numacian a renegade. “She inherited her mother’s leprous taint.” Brought back to her brother’s house by Adosinda, she returned to the Moor, “cursing the meddling spirit that interfered with her most shameless love.”— Southey: Roderick, Last of the Goths (1814).

Guizor, groom of the Saracen Pollentê. His “scalp was bare, betraying his state of bondage.” His office was to keep the bridge on Pollentê’s territory, and to allow no one to pass without paying “the passage- penny.” This bridge was full of trap-doors, through which travellers were apt to fall into the river below. When Guizor demanded toll of sir Artegal, the knight gave him a “stunning blow, saying, ‘Lo! there’s my hire;”’ and the villain dropped down dead.—Spenser: Faërie Queene, v. 2 (1596).

Upton conjectures that “Guizor” is intended for the due de Guise, and his master “Pollentê” for Charles IX. of France, notorious both for the St. Bartholomew Massacre.

Gulbeyaz, the sultana. Having seen Juan amongst Lambro’s captives, “passing on his way to sale,” she caused him to be purchased, and introduced into the harem in female attire. On discovering that he preferred Dudù, one of the attendant beauties, to herself, she commanded both to be stitched up in a sack, and cast into the Bosphorus. They contrived, however, to make their escape.—Byron: Don Juan, vi. (1824).