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Under this heading also falls the planh, a funeral song lamenting the death of a patron, and here again, beneath the mask of conventionality, real emotion is often apparent, as in the famous lament upon Richard Coeur de Lion composed by Gaucelm Faidit. Reference has been already made to the tenso, one of the most characteristic of Provençal lyric forms.
One class of tenso was obviously fictitious, as the dialogue is carried on with animals or even lifeless objects, such as a lady's cloak, and it is possible that some at least of the discussions ostensibly conducted between two poets may have emanated from the brain of one sole author.
The same troubadour was sufficiently familiar with Alfonso's successor, Pedro II., to take part in a tenso with him. Aimeric de Pegulhan, though more closely connected with the court of Castile, is loud in his praises of Pedro, "the flower of courtesy, the green leaf of delight, the fruit of noble deeds."
There remain also political poems written against John and Henry III. which may be fairly called sirventes, Latin disputes, such as those Inter Aquam et Vinum, Inter Cor et Oculum, De Phillide et Flora, are constructed upon the principles of the tenso or partimen. The use of equivocal and "derivative" rimes as they are called in the Leys d'Amors is seen in the following Anglo-Norman stanzas.
It was in the great hall, about the wide hearth, after the evening meal, that the harp was sounded and the tenso was begun which was of such interest to the singer and his fair chatelaine; and among the questions of serious import which they then discussed, the following will serve by way of illustration: "Which is better, to have wisdom, or success with the ladies?"
Such, at any rate, is the form of the tenso; a poet propounds a theme in the first stanza and his interlocutor replies in a stanza of identical metrical form; the dispute usually continues for some half dozen stanzas.
It was all a play world, of course; the troubadour knight and lover would discuss by means of the tenso, which was a dialogue in song, all sorts of questions with his lady, or with another of his kind, while the slow, thick-headed husbands dozed in their chairs, dreaming of sudden alarums and the din of battle.
Raynouard quotes the conclusion of a tenso given by Nostradamus in which one of the interlocutors says, "I shall overcome you if the court is loyal: I will send the tenso to Pierrefeu, where the fair lady holds her court of instruction." The "court" here in question was a social and not a judicial court.
A special poetical form which was popular among the troubadours may have given rise to the legend. This was the tenso, in which one troubadour propounded a problem of love in an opening stanza and his opponent or interlocutor gave his view in a second stanza, which preserved the metre and rime-scheme of the first.
Sometimes three or four interlocutors take part; the subject of discussion was then known as a joc partit, a divided game, or partimen, a title eventually transferred to the poem itself. The most varied questions were discussed in the tenso, but casuistical problems concerning love are the most frequent: Is the death or the treachery of a loved one easier to bear?
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