Note to As You Like It, 3.4.42: "quite traverse"
quite traverse: all awry. —Here, and in the following three lines, Celia compares Orlando to a novice jousting tournament participant. An experienced contestant would charge at his opponent and hit him square, not awry or "athwart" the heart.
"Athwart" means cross from side to side, transversely, a direction that may not result in unhorsing your opponent, although the primary goal of the horsemen was to reproduce the military sounds made by heavy calvary while riding toward each other at a high rate of speed in order to break the opponent's weapon, armour, or shield. Jousting tournaments were only part of elaborate court festivities [called a tilt] to celebrate the day [November 17th] Elizabeth I became queen and the Tudors reigned. During Elizabethan tilts, Queen Elizabeth's courtiers tried to outdo each other in jousting, poetry, pageantry, allegorical armour and costume —all to exalt the queen and her realm. The last Elizabethan Accession Day took place in 1602, the year before Elizabeth I died. Tilts continued to be part of Accession Day festivities until 1624, the year before the death of James I.
Jousting medieval knights