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THE MANLY ANNIVERSARY STUDIES IN LANGUAGE and LITERATURE
-:ipfirU)t,- f- hi f,-.ri^,ii,f A
JOHN MATTHEWS !\IANIA'
THE MANLY ANNIVERSARY
STUDIES IN LANGUAGE
AND LITERATURE
Essay Index Reprint Series
Originally published by: THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
BOOKS FOR LIBRARIES PRESS, INC. FREEPORT, NEW YORK
First Published 1923 Reprinted 1968
Reprinted from a copy in the collections of
The New York Public Library
Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations
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PRINTED IN THE XJNTTED STATES OF AMERICA
THIS VOLUME IS PRESENTED TO
JOHN MATTHEWS MANLY
BY HIS STUDENTS AND ASSOCIATES
ON THE COMPLETION OF HIS TWENTY-FIFTH YEAR
AS HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Lajamon's Poetic Style and Its Relations . John S. P. Tatlock 3
The Name of the Green Knight . . . James R. Hulbert 12
Was Chaucer a Student at the Inner Temple ? . Edith Rickert 20
An Interpretation of Chaucer's Legend of Good Women
D. D. Griffith 32 The Castle of Perseverance: Place, Date, and a Source
Walter K. Smart 42
The Captivity Episode in Sidney's Arcadia . .Edwin Greenlaw 54
Spenser Apocrypha Frederic Ives Carpenter 64
Another Principle of Elizabethan Staging . George F. Reynolds 70
Shakespeare as a Writer of Epitaphs . Joseph Quincy Adams 78
Bassanio as an Ideal Lover . . . Charles Read Baskervill 90
Fletcher and Henry the Eighth .... Baldwin Maxwell 104
A Stage Cartoon of the Mayor of London in 1613
Evelyn May A Ibright 113
Jonson in the Jest Books Thornton S. Graves 127
Comus, Old Wives Tale, and Drury's Alvredus . . Edgar A. Hall 140
Hudibras, Part I, and the Politics of 1647 . . Hardin Craig 145
English Epistolary Fiction before Pamela . Helen Sard Hughes 156
Notes on the Canon of Pope's Works, 1714-20 George Sherburn 170
Some Immediate Effects of The Beggar's Opera
David Harrison Stevens 180
Hogarth's "Distressed Poet" R. H. Griffith 190
The Ideas of Captain Thomas Morris . . . C. B. Cooper 197
Percy and His Nancy G. L. Kittredge 204
The Text of Burns George L. Marsh 219
A Visit to Henry James Robert Herrick 229
Roger Bacon and the "Dialogues" of Seneca Charles H. Beeson 243
Concerning the Origin of the Miracle Play . Karl Young 254
ix
X TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
A Note Concerning the Cult of St. Nicholas at Hildesheim
George R. Coffman 269
Clerical Sea Pilgrimages and the Imrama William Flint Thrall 276
The Passing op Arthur Tom Peete Cross 284
The Wonderful Flower That Came to St. Brendan
Arthur C. L. Brown 295
On the Chronology of the Grail Romances . William A. Nitze 300
Early Alphabetical Indexes .... Ernest H. Wilkins 315
ZUR FrAGE NACH DER PoRTUGIESISCHEN tJBERSETZUNG VON GoWERS
Confessio Amantis K. Pietsch 323
Francis A. Wood 328
Carl Darling Buck 340
T. Atkinson Jenkins 351
. E. S. Sheldon 362
. Kemp Malone 374
Augurs and Omens, Gods and Ghosts
The Letter Y
A French Etymology: Fr. bis, Ital. bigio
Observations on Some English Etymologies
Finite Verb Categories ....
Notes on the Founders of Prescriptive English Grammar
W. F. Bryan 383 The "Going-to" Future
James Finch Royster and John Marcellus Steadman, Jr. 394
Sign-Words and Pro- Words in Modern English Albert H. Tolman 404
Aspects of Linguistic Research . . . Thomas A. Knott 415
Vita 425
Bibliography . . . . ' 426
List of Subscribers 429
THE MANLY ANNIVERSARY STUDIES
LA^AMON'S POETIC STYLE AND ITS RELATIONS
John S. P. Tatlock Stanford University
The most characteristic trait of Lajamon's poetic style is his remarkable profusion of epic formulas, similar phrases used re- peatedly, as a rule in similar circumstances.^ In a sea voyage "wind stod an willen" (I, 47, 76, etc.);^ when an army is needed, the king "sende his sonde wide gend f»ane londe" (I, 19, etc.). There are more than one hundred and twenty-five formulas, each found three or more times, and one or other on an average once in every ten lines.' Not derived from La^amon's French original, they are normal in early epic, as is shown by the frequency of epic formulas in Homer, the Chanson de Roland, the Cantar de mio Cid, and other early poems. But Anglo-Saxon poets, like modern, dehberately avoided them, and cultivated variety and ingenuity of phrasing. In Beowulf one of the two formulas a full line long is merely that which introduces a speech, the commonest in early poetry;* and few formulas are fre- quently or perhaps even consciously used. This avoiding a natural epic usage is a sign of the artificial sophistication of Anglo-Saxon poetry.
The simile is a fairly well-marked trait of Lajamon's style. Among the epic formulas, several (found some dozens of times) contain similes; a fighter is compared to a boar or to a hon, and a multitude to the falling of hail. There are very many short insignifi- cant similes.^ Several long and elaborate ones in the Virgihan manner are used of and by La^amon's great hero Arthur; he is likened to a ravenous wolf in winter (II, 421), and with grim
1 This first matter is merely summarized here. A full treatment will appear soon in the Publications of the Modern Language Asscciation.
2 Throughout I consider only the older text, except once or twice as noted. I cite Sir Frederic Madden's admirable edition by volume and page.
* Here and always this means full lines. Madden counts each half-line as a line.
^"Hrodgar madelode, helm Scyldinga" (Beowulf, 11. 371, 456) and the like. I quote Anglo-Saxon poems from the Grein-Wiilcker Bibliothek der ags. Poesie.
5 Cf. Kegel in Anglia, I, 211 fif.
3
4 JOHN S. P. TATLOCK
enjoyment he likens his campaign against Childric to a fox hunt (451-52), and Colgrim to a goat attacked by a wolf (470-71).^ In Anglo-Saxon poetry, not only are there almost no long and elaborate similes but the rarity even of short ones is recognized as one of its notable traits. In Beowulf, there are no more than five, and in the other poetry they are almost equally scarce.^ One may read thou- sands of lines and find none.
A more outstanding feature of La^amon's style is the terse sum- mary of a situation or of the emotion suggested by it. Six or eight of his epic formulas are of this nature: "balu wes on folke," "pat was uuele idon."^ Leir's messenger sits at Cordoille's feet — "sone per after him wes pe bet" (I, 150). There are hundreds of such impulsive, sometimes over-obvious, comments. These terse sum- maries are rare in Anglo-Saxon poetry.
In contrast with these novel traits of style, La^amon has dropped a good many more of the older ones. Understatement or litotes is no feature of his style, and it is in the terse comments just mentioned that we find most of his mild cases. Assaracus' mother was a Trojan harlot — "hire cheap was pe wrse" (I, 17); nine thousand of the northern English were slain — "pa du^ede we? pa Ia?»e'' (IT"'' ^'^'').^ Such is Lajamon's sometimes artless humor. Herein his manner contrasts with the classical Anglo-Saxon in two respects.^ There is
1 None of these and few of Lasamon's other similes are in the French original, in which similes are short and rare. None of the matters discussed in this article have any particular relation with Wace.
^Beowulf, 11. 218, 727, 985, 1571-72, 1608. Cf. Gummere, Anglo-Saxon Metaphor, pp. 4-10; Heinzel in Quellen und Forschungen, X, 17 f. ; Tolman in PMLA, III, 28; Sedgefield's edition of Beowulf, p. xxiii; Meyer, Altgermanische Poesie, p. 438; Zernial, Das Lied von Byrhtnoths Fall, Berlin, 1882, p. 16.
^Madden, II, 379, 444, etc.; ibid., 27, 345. For other such comments, not among the formulas, see I, 195, 417; II, 19, 33, 88, etc. Here and elsewhere space does not permit long lists.
* See also I, 8, 35, 55, 162, 164, 195, 200, 208, 252, 369, 406, 417; II, 250, 334, 345, 374, 625. A few of the epic formulas are of the nature of understatement; cf. those which we call Bidaeled, Hap, Teche, in the article above mentioned.
^ The frequency of understatement in Anglo-Saxon has been somewhat exaggerated. Cf. Sedgefield's Beowulf, p. xxiii; Gummere, Oldest English Epic, p. 19; Tolman in PMLA, III, 32. Heinzel, op. dt., does not mention litotes. There are four or five cases in the seventy-three lines of The Battle of Brunanburh, and a good many in Beowulf, the two most read of the poems. "Oft" not rarely may imply "always"; cf. Wanderer, U. 1, 8, 17, 20,40; Brunanburh, 1. 8. But one may read far without meeting a case. We should distinguish (as is usually not done) between mere negative words
LA^AMON'S POETIC STYLE AND ITS RELATIONS 5
very much less; it is not in the regular course of thought as usually in Anglo-Saxon, but a comment, an ironical forecast or summary of an obvious fact. Nowhere is the greater subtlety and sophistica- tion of the earlier poetry more visible than here.
Most noticeable of the older features which Lajamon lacks is the kenning. A decorative phrase used instead of, or in apposition with, a noun or pronoun, sometimes metaphorical and highly imagina- tive, sometimes merely descriptive and defining, everyone knows is one of the chief marks of Anglo-Saxon as of all Germanic poetry. Kennings are met every few lines in the classical poetry, in lyric and epic, before Alfred and after; poets clearly prided themselves on a store of them.^ In all the 16,000 and more of Lajamon's lines, there are just about a baker's dozen and no more. He has none whatever of the metaphorical and highly imaginative kennings which so often ennoble the earlier poetry; he has none of those which express the beauty of a life of action — a ship by the sea brim is a mere ship for Lajamon and nothing more; he clearly takes little interest in ken- nings, they do not spring to his mind, but only rarely stray in as a faint echo or aroma from a bygone age. He uses a few for earthly rulers, and more for divine persons, the two commonest subjects for them in Anglo-Saxon. "Domes walden[d], Luces pene kaisere" (II, 619), "Gorlois, gumenene [sic] lauerd" or "aeldere" (II, 346, 355) have the true antique ring. He invokes Christ or God thus:
Lauerd drihten crist, domes waldende,
midelarde mund, monnen froure,
Jjurh l>ine admode wil, walden[de] senglen, .... [Ill, 14] ;
iEldrihten godd, domes waldend,
al middel-serdes mund, whi is hit iwurden .... [Ill, 126] ?
like "unlytel," "unriht," and elaborate understatement. Needless to say, under- statement is found in many literatures and languages. Not to mention the Bible, it abounds of course in tbe classics; for two cases in the oldest Greek, see Hesiod, "Ep7a, 1. 482; Iliad xv. 10-11. Its peculiarity in early English is its grim and ironical use. There is an excellent field for investigation here, as in several of the matters discussed in this article.
1 It is hardly necessary to refer to the treatises and collections by Bode (Die Kenningar), Arndt, Gummere, Ziegler, Schnapper, Rankin, Heinzel, Cook (Judith and Genesis), Meyer, Zernial, etc. Miss F. L. Gillespy, Univ. of California Publica- tions in Modern Philology, Vol. Ill, No. 4, p. 480, notes a few of Lajamon's kennings.
6 JOHN S. P. TATLOCK
When he comes to the Nativity, he breaks out thus:
He is ihaten Jhesu Crist Jjurh l>ene halie gost,
aire worulde wunne, walden[d] englenne;
faeder he is on heuenen, froure moncunnes [I, 387].
In his lyric and hymnic mood, who knows what religious poem of his childhood may have come to his mind? It is natural that this traditional embellishment should survive chiefly in that chief refuge of traditional usage, the world of religion.^
The strings of kennings in apposition are only one variety of one of the most marked traits of the older poetic style, the practice of repeating an idea, briefly, as a rule, several times in succession, with little or no increment to the sense.^ We meet every few lines such passages as :
sorhfullne sid, \>a git on sund reon, ))ser git eagorstream earmum J>ehton, maeton merestrseta, mundum brugdon, glidon ofer garsecg [Beowulf, 11. 512-15].'
Here, too, the poet clearly took pride in his inventive ingenuity.* And this ambition, too, La^amon flung away. Occasionally we find a single repetition.* A few of the epic formulas are a little of this nature. But it is no feature of his style.
' A couple of the epic formulas (those which we call oddest and Deorling) are used like kennings; cf. also II, 396, 461, and 564. Lajamon's kennings are almost always used in apposition, rarely or never as a substitute for a pronoun, as so often in Anglo-Saxon. There are clauses which are equivalent to kennings (II, 450, 461), and phrases of mere additional description (II, 243). Of all Lajamon's kennings for divine persons, only two, strangely enough, seem to be used in Anglo-Saxon poetry. Bode (pp. 80-81) quotes "wealdend engla" four times, and "wealdend heofena" eleven times. " Domes waldend " is never used of an earthly ruler (Rankin, in Journal of English and Germanic Philology, VIII, 406).
' Cf. Heinzel, op. cit. pp. 5, 9; Sedgefield's Beowulf, p. xxiii; Gummere, Oldest English Epic, p. 18; PM LA III, 23, 32; Meyer, op. cit., pp. 116 ff.; Zernial, op. cit., pp. 13 f.
'Cf. also Beowulf, 11. 501-2, 506-10, 517-18, etc.; Genesis, U. 541-42, 585-87, 626-27, 630-33, etc.; Judith, 11. 23 ff., 28 ff., 36-37, 87-88; Wanderer, 11. 1-2, 4-5, 7, 13-14, etc.; The Body and Soul, 11. 15-16, 70-71, 72-74, etc.
* But the repetitions had a function, too, in making alliteration easier. So did the kennings sometimes. One function of Lajamon's epic formulas was to serve the same purpose instead of these usages which he lacked.
° I, ,5; II, 396 (Ne laeten je naeuere l)as haedene: bruken eoure hames, Dses ilke awedde hundes: walden eouwere londes).
LA^AMON'S POETIC STYLE AND ITS RELATIONS 7
The parenthetical clause which interrupts a sentence, often com- ing between a speech and the words which introduce it, is another trait of the older poetry.^ Less common than the last, and appar- ently much less common in lyric than in epic, anyone will grant the frequency of such interruptions as the following (and even longer
ones) :
scufan scyldigne (scealcas ne gaeldon) in drygne sead [Elene, II. 692-931.2
These are rare in Lagamon, merely occasional, as in any modern poet.' Few verse usages in the older poetry are commoner than a marked pause after the first half of a line, the second half beginning a new sentence or clause which runs on into the following line.*
"Satan ic Jjser secan wille: he is on })aere sweartan he He haeft mid hringa gesponne." Hwearf him eft nider boda bitresta [Genesis, 11. 761-63].
I include pauses marked by a semicolon or more, and of course exclude cases where the second half-line is complete in itself. In the three hundred and fifty lines of Judith, there are some ninety such enjambements; as many in an equal portion of Genesis, nearly as inany in Elene and Beowulf, and many in the shorter narratives and the lyrics. Such lines are extremely rare in Lajamon, so rare in fact that it is clear the poet avoided them. One chief function of his shorter epic formulas was as expletives to fill in a half-line for which he had no matter, that he might not be obUged to introduce a new theme. For this reason his second half-lines are apt to contain more rhythm and less meaning than in Anglo-Saxon. Clearly, one reason for Lajamon's formula habit was his desire to avoid enjamhement. This comparison of the rhetorical traits of Lajamon's style with those of classical Anglo-Saxon poetry sums up about thus. The characteristic look of the latter is due to its rich embroidery by the imaginative kennings and by the elaborately varied repetition of an
1 Noticed by Zernial, op. cit., pp. 14 f.
"Cf. II. 530, 586-87, 609, 627, 698, 776; Genms, 11. 590, 610, 667, 771, 822; Beo- wulf, 11. 18, 55, 501, 536, 586, 835.
' Cf. I, 1, Vppen Seuarne stajje: (sel |)ar him l>uhte) On fest Radestone. Lines by the hundred go by without a case.
* Cf. Sedgefield's Beowulf, p. xxiii; Crow, Maldon and Brunanhurh, p. xxiii.
8 JOHN S. P. TATLOCK
idea. Its characteristic movement is due to this pause to walk around an idea and admire it, and to the interruption of the flow produced by parenthesis and enjambement. The classical verse proceeds like the planet Mars through the ecliptic, not always direct, but now stationary and now retrograde. The pauses for apposition, repeti- tion, and transition produce a staccato rhythm. Owing to the absence of these traits, Lajamon's is more legato, though Madden's way of printing tends to conceal the fact, and though any alliterative verse is more or less staccato. Passages markedly so are due rather to heaping up additional brief detail than to repetition. All of this makes for speed. The characteristic look and feeUng of his poetry are due to his terse emotional sunmiaries, which half reveal a per- sonality; and to his profuse epic formulas, which, when one is used to them, promote a broad and simple unity, but by no means restore the richness which he has lost. Compared with the older poetry, Lajamon's is rapid and a trifle thin.
I have left till now the matter of versification in the restricted sense. La^amon's verse has long been recognized as akin to, but different from, the classical Anglo-Saxon verse.^ The chief points of difference are the greater length of his lines, the very frequent use of rhyme (that is, perfect or imperfect rhyme, and assonance), the frequent alliterating of the last and not the first accented syllable of the second half-line, and the not infrequent occurrence of lines with both alliteration and rhyme, or with neither. These traits are rarely or never found in the classical verse, produced by professionals and scholars. But besides this, there is the looser popular verse of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, which chronologically over- laps it and the nearer kinship of which to Lajamon's is usually recognized. First, there are six short historical narrative poems in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The best examples are the poem on the
' On the general affiliations and character of his verse and that of the other poems discussed below, see among others Schipper, Altenglische Metrik, Vol. I; Kaluza, Englische Metrik, pp. 124-32; Trautmann, Uher den Vers La'iamon's, Anglia, II, 153-73; Kluge, Zur Geschichte des Reim.es im AUgermanischen; Paul and Braune's Beitr&ge, IX, 422-50; Abegg, Zur Entwickelung der historischen Dichtung bei den Angelsachsen, Quellen und Forschungen, LXXIII; Sedgefield, Battle of Maldon, Boston, 1904; Skeat, Proverbs of Alfred, Oxford, 1907; W. K. Brandstadter, Stabreim und Endreirn in Layamons Brut, Kirchhain, 1912; Karl Regel, Die Alliteration im Layamon, Germanistische Studien, I, 171 ff.
LA^AMON'S POETIC STYLE AND ITS RELATIONS 9
capture of Alfred (1036, twenty lines), and the very prosaic verses on William the Conqueror (1087, nineteen lines). They use longer lines than is common in the classical verse, they have both allitera- tion and rhyme in about equal amounts, and sometimes final allitera- tion, and contain a few lines with neither embellishment and some with both. As to the other Chronicle poems, that on Edgar (959, about twenty-six lines) has short lines, practically no rhyme, except that nearly all hues end in unaccented -e, some alliteration (half of it being final alliteration), and neither embellishment in two-thirds of the lines. The poem on the death of Edgar (975, nine lines) uses alliteration and rhyme about equally, and lacks both in several lines. That on Edward and J^lfhere (975, ten hues) is similar, with a little less rhyme and alhteration. That on the capture of ^Elfheah (1011, six lines), if it is verse at all, is in short lines, mostly unembellished.^ The total number of lines in these poems is only ninety. Much more extensive are The Proverbs of Alfred (354 lines)^ and the Worcester fragment of The Body and Soul (350 lines), ^ both dating probably from the twelfth century. In the latter, the lines are strikingly long, and have all the essential marks of the popular Anglo-Saxon and of Lagamon's verse, though there is much more alliteration and much less rhyme. T/ie Proz;er6s are still more like Lajamon. The lines are long, with slightly more alliteration, somewhat less final alhtera- tion, slightly less rhyme, and about the same proportion of lines with both embellishments and with neither. The differences in proportion are less than are found in some parts of Lajamon, and in general the verse may be called identical with his.^
1 The foregoing are in Thorpe's edition ("Rolls Series," 1861), pp. 294, 355, 217, 227, 229, 266 f. See also Earle and Plummet's Two Saxon Chronicles Parallel. Two of the poems are in Sedgefield's book just mentioned. I disregard a few very short bits in the Chronicle, and others which seem to me almost undistinguishable from mere prose or from the classical verse.
2 Ed., Skeat (Oxford, 1907) ; I consider only the Trinity MS, but the conditions in the Jesus MS are almost exactly the same.
' Die Fragmente der Reden der Seele an den Leichnam (ed. Richard Buchholz, 1890), Erlanger Beitrage, Vol. VI.
* My figures for his poem are based on about one thousand lines taken at random from all through. Three other passages in the first six hundred lines show that at first he used a good deal less rhyme and more alliteration. There is less alliteration in the later MS than in the earlier. In all the poems, I have considered only consonant alliteration; to consider vocalic as well would probably raise the figures a little.
10 , JOHN S. P. TAT LOCK
In regard to versification, then, Lajamon's poem belongs clearly with the popular poetry of the centuries just before him, and not with the classical poetry. As to the matters discussed first, the historical poems are too short to admit much epic formula, but Edgar (959) has one or two colorless and not narrative formulas.^ The Proverbs seem to have none, though they have a great deal of conventional phrasing; but The Body and Soul decidedly has the formula usage, one occurring five or six times (introducing a speech) and four others twice.- Similes' and terse summaries are rare, if they occur at all. Kennings and repetitions scarcely occur in the historical poems; in three passages early in The Proverbs four kennings are used in apposition with Alfred's name and one with "Drihtin" (the Lord);* in The Body and Soul one appears in one of the formulas.^ Of repetitions, aside from the kennings, there is one with the true antique ring in The Proverbs (11. 313 f.), and three which sound more hke the parallelisms of the Psalms.^ In The Body and Soul, the
The figures for rhyme in all the poems should probably also be raised somewhat, for I have disregarded doubtful eases, unaccented rhyme, etc. Between what must have been and what could not have been felt as rhyme, it is hard to draw the line, but it does not matter much, for all poems have been treated alike. All the figures were collected some years ago. Another short poem which belongs to the same dispensation is that called "The Grave," twenty-one and one-half lines, supposed to be of the twelfth century (see Guest's History of English Rhythms [ed., Skeat], pp. 368 ff.). One line has alliteration and rhyme, one has neither, two have rhyme (one of these alliterating also), three have final alliteration, and the rest are normal in the old style (though the lines are rather long). The so-called "Here Prophecy" (five lines) may be of the same sort (in Saintsbury, History of English Prosody, I, 28). I disregard a few shorter bits of verse, and some longer things which can hardly be regarded as of this type. A corpus of all the verse chronologically between the mass of classical Anglo-Saxon and Lajamon would be of great interest and service.
1 "Wide ond side" is one of Lajamon's formulas; "oft ond gelome" (once, and in the ^Ifhere verses) is common elsewhere. None occurs oftener, and of course these might be found in the classical poetry.
2 C 2, D 17, 26, E 3, 36 (and cf. A 46) ; B 2, D 28; B 40, E 8; B 44-45, D 40-41; E 19, G 11.
^ William the Conqueror is said to have loved the tall deer "swilce he waere heora f seder."
^ Lines 10-11, 26, 62, 177. As in Lajamon, they are used only of the Deity and of rulers.
^ B 40, E 8. There is no space now to discuss the difference in usage between the kenning and other metaphors, of which some occur in this poem.
^ There are usually only two clauses, longer than in Anglo-Saxon, often joined by "and.^' See 11. 204-7, 306, 382-85, 609-10. But occasionally the Anglo-Saxon repetitions are like this.
LA'^AMON'S POETIC STYLE AND ITS RELATIONS 11
ten or so of repetitions are also apt to be of this latter sort.^ Enjambe- ment (with the run-on half-line) never occurs in the historical poems, almost never in The Proverbs, and rarely in The Body and Soul;"^ parentheses never in the others and but once in The Body and Soul (C 6). The style of all these intermediate poems is by no means as uniform as the earlier or as Lajamon's style, but, taken as a whole, they are like his poem in dropping kennings, enjambetnent, parentheses, and the classical kind of repetition, and in taking on the formula- habit.
This popular style has no rigid uniformity, like the classical. It was controlled by no fixed literary tradition or professional Ars Poetica, as the other must have been. In regard to matters both of verse and of rhetoric, it differs from the other more by what it has not, than by what it has. But it is clear that, on the whole, Lajamon has not what the others have not, and has what they have. The very fact that his style is practically unchanged from beginning to end, and is unaffected by the French, shows that he used a style with which he was famihar. Originally, it may have been merely pro- duced by the disintegration of the classical style, or may have lived beside and beneath it from the earhest times, like the Saturnian verse of the Romans along with their verse borrowed from Greece. But we must surmise that in his poem, still the chief traditional national epic of England, we have the best indication of the kind of narrative poetry which most EngUsh speakers listened to, almost from Alfred to the adoption of the French manner.
1 A 13-14, 15-16, B 15-16, 22-23, 24-25, 40, C 23-25, 40-41, D 10, 45, E 8, F 8-9.
^ One frequently doubts the editor's punctuation and division of lines, but cf. The Proverbs, 421, 669, and The Body and Soul, A 5, C 27, E 24, and G 13.
THE NAME OF THE GREEN KNIGHT
bercilak or bertilak
James R. Hulbert University of Chicago
After GawaLn has survived the head-cutting, he asks the Green Knight's name, and is told (according to the printed text) "Bernlak de Hautdesert I hat in pis londe" (1. 2444). That name is however a misreading of the manuscript. The symbol between r and / is not in the least like the scribe's n, which is made with two upright strokes and a diagonal connecting stroke often so thin as to be indiscernible.^ In the symbol between e and I, the two upright strokes are johied at the top by a strong horizontal line and the left upright stroke is not straight but slightly curved like the scribe's c. A careful examination of the manuscript shows that the symbol is ci; it is in fact identical with the ci in auncian (1. 1001), and in concience (1. 1196). It differs from ti, only in that in the latter the horizontal stroke extends a trifle to the left of the left upright stroke. It is clear, therefore, that the scribe wrote "Bercilak," possible that he meant "Bertilak." If he wrote the former intentionally, it is possible that he misread ti in his exemplar for ci, or that his exemplar already had a misreading, due to the same error. The name as it appears in the published text has never been discussed in print, probably because it has not been found elsewhere.^ With the correct reading, "Bercilak," however, we may be able to do something, and if we can determine its source, perhaps we may learn something of the methods of the author and the impression which he wished to suggest by the name.
I See the facsimile page in Osgood's edition of The Pearl, Boston, 1906, e.g., line 1, dene, line 2, men.
^ I make this statement on the basis of a manuscript onomasticon of the Arthurian romances, by Miss Alma Blount, now deposited in the Harvard College Library. This is doubtless not so complete as the author would have made it for publication, but it gives a, surer basis for such studies as mine in this paper, than years of unsystematic romance reading could give.
12
THE NAME OF THE GREEN KNIGHT 13
There are three possibiHties of source for the name: (1) it correctly represents an actual name either in romance or in life; (2) it is a perversion, by chance or design, of a name in romance or in life; (3) it is pure invention. As the name has not been found elsewhere, we are reduced to the second and third possibilities. Of these two, the second would seem the more reasonable (though of course we must recognize that the third may be right). If we assume then that the name is an alteration of some other appellation, we naturally look for a word similar to it in form. No word in Bern- at all like Bernlak appears: Miss Blount's list runs. "Bernage, Bernard, Berne, Bern- lak, Bernout de Riviers." If we look for a word beginning with Ber- and ending with -lak we find one — Bertelak. This name appears in the English prose Merlin, corresponding to Bertolais in the Old French. Bertolais (or some obvious variant of it) appears several times in the chansons de geste, applied to persons of no similarity in function to the Green Knight.^ It is used once as the name of a knight in Malory^ and several times in an insignificant connection in the prose Tristan.^ In only one place do we find the name used in a striking way; that is in the episode of the false Guinevere^ in the so- called Vulgate Arthurian romances.^ The story of Bertelak and the false Guinevere is as follows.
On the same day two girls were born to King Leodegan ; one, the true Guinevere, was the daughter of his wife; the other, the false Guinevere, was the daughter of his seneschal's wife. They looked exactly alike.* Certain lords planned to substitute the false Guinevere
' See Langlois, Table des noms propres ... dans les chansons de geste, Paris, 1904. Of course one cannot be sure that these are all really the same name, or indeed that the Bertolais of these works is the same as the Bertolais which becomes Bertelak in English. Just how the A; gets into the word is not clear, but that it did in English is certain from the forms which appear in the English Merlin. Compare also the form Barjelagk, which is the name of the same figure in Fueterer's translation of the Lati^elot (pp. 94 ff.). In the Vulgate romances, the word ends either in s or in ai; see Sonimer's Index.
2 Globe ed., p. 338.
^ Loseth's Tristan, pp. 208, 209, 431, 437. See also the prose Perceval (ed., Pot- vin), p. 3, the Meliador, 1. 4477, etc. Miss Blount refers to Philippe le Noir, Histoire du L. du L., Paris 1533, folios 117 S., to which I have not had access.
* Ed., Sommer. The episode is discussed briefly by J. D. Bruce, Romanic Review, IX, 246, n. 24; X, 51 f., and more extensively by F. Lot, iltvAe sur le Lancelot en Prose, Paris, 1908, pp. 359-77.
* Sommer, II, 301. The Merlin, from which the English version is translated.
14 JAMES R. HULBERT
for Artus' wife on her wedding night. MerHn arranged to defeat their plan.^ They bribed Guinevere's old nurse, and kidnapped Guinevere, but in the moment of success two knights whom MerUn had warned broke up the plot. The author forecasts the trouble which the false Guinevere and a knight will cause Artus. The knight was Bertolais. He hated a certain knight because the latter had slain a cousin of his. Bertolais met and killed this knight on the evening of Guinevere's abduction. Leodegan ordered the false Guinevere to be taken away. She was taken to an abbey in the realm of Carmelide, where she remained until Bertolais (whose mistress she became) found her. Bertolais was brought before Leodegan, who blamed him for killing the man without first asking his king for justice. Bertolais was tried, disinherited, and exiled. He went to the place where the false Guine- vere was and there long meditated revenge.^
No further mention of either of these characters is made until the fourth volume of the Vulgate romances (the second volume of the Lancelot).
One day a beautiful damsel arrived at Artus' court with a retinue. She said that she came from Queen Guinevere, daughter of Leodegan. An old knight (Bertolais) handed the damsel a jeweled box containing a letter. The first clerk who started to read it swooned when he saw its contents. After a second had failed also, the chaplain read it aloud. The letter said that it was from the true Guinevere, who was abducted on the night of her marriage. The damsel intro- duced Bertolais, who was now old but very strong, as the lady's champion. He offered to defend her against Gawain or any other, but was derided by Dodinel. Artus postponed his decision until Candlemas.' When the story is taken up again, the author repeats the early history of the false Guinevere, and says that the first attempt was made by counsel of Bertolais. The false Guinevere came to court at Candlemas, but by advice of Bertolais she asked for respite. Bertolais proposed a trick for capturing Artus and conveying him to Carmelide. This was done. In Carmelide the false Guinevere drugged Artus so that he became infatuated with her. He con- sented to recognize her as queen if the barons of Carmelide would
' Ibid., II, pp. 308-9.
^'ibid., pp. 310-13. » Ibid., IV, 10-16.
THE NAME OF THE GREEN KNIGHT 15
swear that she was the true Guinevere. Led by Bertolais they did so. The true Guinevere left to become queen of Sorelois,^ The pope interdicted Great Britain. The false Guinevere and Bertolais became ill in a terrible and disgusting way.^ Bertolais sent for Artus and confessed his trickery. So did the false Guinevere.' They died of their maladies.*
In this story, obviously, we have Bertelak performing a function similar to that of the Green Knight. Bertelak is the protector of a deceitful lady: he brings Artus to her home, and there she tempts the King, much as the lady in Syr Gawayn and pe Grene Knyit tempts Gawain. Now at some time in the earlier history of G.G.K. a writer embellished the story with an Arthurian background.^ It seems pos- sible that this writer observed the similarity in function between the Green Knight and Bertelak, and decided to give the name Bertelak to the former. The alteration of Bertelak to Bercilak is very slight and may have been due to some transcriber of G.G.K. , to a fault in the French text, or to misreading of the French text by the English author.
So far, I have said nothing about de Hautdesert. Miss Blount has not found this place name anywhere else. There is, however, a place called La Desert (the only one Miss Bloimt has found), which appears in the Vulgate romances. The Vulgate Lancelot begins with an extensive account of how Claudas de la Desert deprived King Ban of his territories.® It is possible that the author of G.G.K. arbitrarily united Bertelak with La Desert, since the lord of La Desert was an enemy to Arthur and his followers. But such a process does not seem likely. At another point in the Vulgate there is a brief episode about a certain BertoUe, who is said to be of the lineage of Claudas de la Desert.' This may have been the cause of some confusion with Bertolais. Finally it may have come about through misreading of desirete. Twice we are told that Bertolais was desirete.^
1 Ibid., pp. 44 ff. 2 Ibid., p. 73. ' Ibid., pp. 78 ff.
* Ibid., p. 82. According to another version, the false Guinevere and Bertolais confessed after Lancelot had overcome their three champions. Ibid., p. 389.
^ Neither Professor Kittredge's view, nor mine, supposes that the story was origin- ally associated with Arthur's court or with Gawain.
6 Sommer, III, 1 S. ^ Ibid., V, 422-23.
* "Bertolais li rous doit estre desiretes," ibid., II, 313 ; "Car li roys lauoit desirete," ibid., IV, 45.
16 JAMES R. HULBERT
None of these suggestions is promising, but one of them may be right. Considering that the name Hautdesert is nowhere found, we must have recourse to more or less unsatisfactory surmises.^ Perhaps we are wrong, however, in regarding the expression as a proper noun; it is found elsewhere as a descriptive phrase — haulx deserts.^
There are then in favor of the suggestion that the author of G.G.K. derived the name Bercilak from the Bertelak of the Vulgate the facts of similarity of name and of function. Against it is the diffi- culty of accounting for de Hautdesert, though as we have seen that can be explained in one way or another. If there were an alternative theory of any reasonableness, this explanation of the name might seem weak. But in the absence of other possibilities the theory that Bercilak is derived from Bertelak is worth considering.
THE SOURCE OF THE ARTHURIAN BACKGROUND IN " G.G.K."
In connection with the preceding discussion, the question arises: Was the author of G.G.K. familiar with the Vulgate romances? A casual reading of G.G.K. will show that the author has been at considerable pains to give the story an Arthurian background.' That this background is a late addition seems probable from the character of the remarks about Morgain la F^e.* Of course it does not necessarily follow that all the other details were added at the same time as the remarks about Morgain, but since the motive in that case is the same as that behind the other details (i.e., to get the atmosphere of an Arthurian romance) it seems probable that all these details were inserted by one hand. If we assume that as likely, we naturally inquire next what the source was. Of course such a man as the author of G.G.K. did not consciously consult a book to get this material, nor was his knowledge of Arthurian story limited to one
1 The name Gaut Destroit tantalizes one with its similarity of sound. The lady of Gaut Destroit, who is called la damoisele de Branlanc in the Vulgate (Sonmier, II, 164) and who had an officer Bran de Branlant li seneschaus de la dame du Gaut Destroit, certainly planned harm to Gawain (see especially La Vengeance Raguidel, 11. 1226 fF., Friedwagner's edition and Sommer, VII, 27 £f). But Branlant (or Branlanc) is the name of a castle, and the seneschal dbes not play an important role.
^ French Metrical History of the Deposition of King Richard the Second, in Archaeologia, XX, 298.
' See p. 15 above. By "author" I mean here the person who added the Arthurian background.
^ Cf. Modem Philology, XIII, 454. Kittredge, Gawain and the Green Knight, p. 132.
THE NAME OF THE GREEN KNIGHT 17
source. Hence we must not expect to find indubitable evidence that he derived all this material from one book. But I think there is enough evidence to make it seem probable that the author of G.G.K. was familiar with the Vulgate romances.
First, let us look at the most tangible evidence, the two lists of names (G.G.K., 11. 109 ff., 551 ff.). With two exceptions, all of these names appear in the Vulgate romances. ^ These two are Bishop Bawdewyn, who is found in no French source, and Errik, who is so widely known as scarcely to need a source. One other name, Agrauayn a la dure mayn, could not have been derived from the Vulgate since that character is never so described in the Vulgate. The nearest parallel to the description in G.G.K. was pointed out by Miss Thomas in her dissertation. ^ It appears in the Perceval in two
passages :
Et 11 secons est Agrevains Li orguelleus as dures mains.'
Et si i estoit Agravains
Li orgueilleus as dures mains.'*
In the Parzifal of Claus Wisse and Philipp Cohen, we find one occur- rence of a similar expression: "Agrapeus mit der herten hende."^ The shift in G.G.K. from the plural mains to the singular main is not easily accounted for. Hence I am inclined to think that the author got the phrase not directly from Perceval but from some intermediary.^
More significant is the treatment of some individual features in the Arthurian background. In hues 2446 ff. we are told that Morgain la Fee prompted Bercilak to this adventure; and that she was "J>e maystres of Merlyn" ("for ho hatj dalt dreury ful dere sum tyme with pat conable klerk"); that her name is "Morgne f>e goddes"; and that she sent Bercilak to Arthur's court "For to haf greued Gaynour, gart hir to dije " with the sight of the headless man. Now a
1 In making this statement, I assume that Boos (1. 554) is Bors, and that Ywan (1. 113) and Aywan (1. 551) are the same.
2 Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight, p. 54.
s Potvin, III, 11. 9509-10. « Ibid., p. 88. Mpl. MS.
^ Ed., K. Schorback, column 22. As the Umlaut of hand in MHG is regular only in the plural, presumably hende is a plural form.
^ Its use originally was to give a rhyme for Agravains. Perhaps after the s was dropped from the proper noun the word mains was changed to make the rhyme correct.
18 JAMES R. HULBERT
basis for all of this is to be found in the Vulgate romances.^ They emphasize her hatred for Guinevere and in several places explain the cause of it — namely the queen's interference with a love affair between Morgain and Guiomar.^ After Guinevere separated her from her lover — " tant cheualcha amount et aual quele troua Merlin que elle amoit par amore." He taught her enchantment.^ Further, in at least one manuscript of the Vulgate Lancelot, we are told that people called Morgain la deesse^ Finally, there is an episode in the Vulgate Lancelot which is very similar in its general plan to the lady's tempta- tion of Gawain in G.G.K., and which may be the immediate cause for the insertion of Morgain into the English poem. In this episode, Morgain caused a young damsel to try Lancelot's fidelity to Guinevere precisely as the lady tests Gawain, though of course the development lacks the refinement of G.G.K}
A less significant feature is the reference to Arthur's custom of not eating dinner until some adventure has happened. This is of course frequently mentioned, but the Vulgate is unusual in that it tells the origin of the custom.^ Another passage is curiously paralleled in the Vulgate, though the idea is sufficiently obvious to make this evidence perhaps uncertain. After Gawain has learned that the lady was testing him he says :
Bot hit is no ferly, Jjaj a fole madde,
& Jjurj wyles of wymmen be wonen to sorje;
For so watj Adam in erde vfiih one bygyled,
& Salamon with fele sere, & Samson eft sonej,
Dalyda dalt hym hys wyrde, & Dauyth }jer-after
Watg blended vfiih Barsabe, }jat much bale Jjoled,
Now l^ese were wrathed wyth her wyles, hit were a wy?ine huge,
To luf hom wel, & leue hem not, a leude Jjat couj^e.^
' Miss Weston suggested this point in her Romance, Vision and Satire, p. 332. She uses it as evidence for a French source for this part of G.G.K. It is certainly a more satisfactory explanation of the treatment of Morgain than the suggestion which con- nects it with the Mantel tests, made in MP, XIII, 454.
2Sommer, IV, 124; VII, 134 ff.
* Ihid., IV, 124, also 116, and II, 254. In view of this passage, it is no longer neces- sary to suppose, with Madden, that the poet confused Guinevere with Vivienne. See also the note in his Syr Gawayne.
* The passage which is printed in Jonckbloet's Roman van Lancilet, II, Ixix, from a Paris MS was pointed out by Miss Paton in her Fairy Mythology, p. 165, n. 1. The phrase does not occur in the corresponding place in Sommer's edition, which is based on London MSS.
' Sommer, IV, 127. « Ibid., II, 320. ' Lines 2414 £f.
THE NAME OF THE GREEN KNIGHT 19
In the passage of the Vulgate, Bohort accuses Guinevere of causing Lancelot's ruin: "lou ne su onques preudome qui longement amast par amors que al daarain nen fust honnis. Et se vous volies gardes as fais des anchiens des iuis & des sarrasins asses vous en poroie moustrer de eels dont la vraie hystoire le tesmoigne qui furent honi par feme." The writer then cites David, Salamon, Samson, Hector, Achilles, and Tristan.^
Of all evidences that the author of G.G.K. knew the Vulgate perhaps the best is his mention of the Duke of Clarence.^ Though this title is mentioned once or twice elsewhere, only in the Vulgate does a Duke of Clarence play any role.^ The Vulgate treats him as an important character, joining him with the early companions of Gawain, telling about his acquisition of the title and giving extensive accounts of his adventures.'' Thus only in the Vulgate do we have such development of the Duke of Clarence as to make him memorable and likely to be mentioned in another book.^
From these facts, and in particular the treatment of Morgain and the mention of the Duke of Clarence, it seems probable that the author of G.G.K. knew the Vulgate romances (or some direct de- scendant of them). If he did he was acquainted with the story of Bertelak, and hence the suggestion that he named his Green Knight from that personage has some basis in likeUhood.
1 Sommer, VI, 244^5. Also in the Dutch version, Jonckbloet, IV, 3013 ff. But this is probably a commonplace. See Miss Thomas' dissertation, p. 68, for another parallel.
2 Line 552. I have already referred to this in MP, XIII, 712, note.
' Loseth's Tristan, p. 41, and p. 467 (bare mentions of the name). In the Dutch Lancelot, he is mentioned twice in passages clearly translated from the Vulgate, 1. 24596 — Sommer, V, 235-36, I. 28723; Sommer, V, 288. He appears of course in Fueterer's translation of the Lancelot, and a Duke of Clarence is mentioned several times in Malory — Sommer's edition, pp. 484, 491, 766, 790.
* See Sommer's Index for references.
^ As to the names which occur at the beginning of G.G.K. — Eneas, Ticius, Felix, Brutus — I am inclined to think they were not derived from a romance. The passage in which they occur looks much more like a condensation of a historical source than a bit out of a romance. It was probably derived from a "Brutus book," such as the author (in 1. 2523) suggests as the source of his poem. The names themselves are puzzling. Madden could find no Ticius connected with Tuscany or Felix prefixed to Brutus; and in the chronicles published since his time I can find none.
WAS CHAUCER A STUDENT AT THE INNER TEMPLE ?
Edith Rickert University of Chicago
The first allusion to Chaucer as a student at the Inner Temple is in Speght's 1598 edition in the following context:^
By his trauaile also in Fraunce and Flaunders, where hee spent much time in his young yeeres, but more in the latter end of the reigne of K. Richard the second, he attained to great perfection in all kind of learning. For so doe Bale and Leland also report. Circa postremos Richardi secundi annos in Galliis floruit, magnamque illic ex assidua in Uteris exercitatione gloriam sibi comparauit. Domum reuersus forum Londinense, & Collegia Leguleiorum, qui ibidem patria iura interpretantur, Jrequentauit, &c. About the latter end of King Richard the seconds dales he florished in Fraunce, and got himselfe great commendation there by his diligent exercise in learning. After his returne home, he frequented the Court at London, and the Colledges of the Lawyers, which there interprete the lawes of the lande, and among them he had a familiar frend called John Gower. This Gower in his booke which is intituled Confessio Amantis, termeth Chaucer a worthie Poet, and maketh him as it were, the Judge of his workes.
It seemeth that both these learned men were of the inner Temple: for not many yeeres since, Master Buckley did see a Record in the same house, where Geoffrey Chaucer was fined two shillings for beating a Franciscane fryer in Fleetstreete.^
Upon this text Francis Thynne "animadverted," the same year, as follows :
In the same title yow saye, "yt semethe that these lerned menne were of the Inner Temple, for that, manye yeres since, master Buckley did see a recorde in the same howse, where Geffrye Chaucer was fined two shillinges for beatinge a Franciscane Fryer in fletestreate." This is a hard collect[i]one, to prove Gower of the Inner Temple, althoughe he studyed the law. for thus you frame your argumente. "Mr. Buckley founde a recorde in the Temple, that Chaucer was fyned for beatinge the fryer. Ergo Gower and
' This study has grown out of Mr. Manly's suggestions that it might be possible to identify " Master Buckley " and to test the authenticity of his record. For criticisms and help as the work progressed I am more indebted than this acknowledgment shows.
2 Hammond, Chaucer, a Bibliographical Manual, 1908, pp. 21 f.
20
WAS CHAUCER A STUDENT AT THE INNER TEMPLE? 21
Chaucer were of the Temple." But for myne owne parte, yf I wolde stande vppon termes for matter of Antiquytye, and ransacke the originalle of the lawiers fyrst settUnge in the Temple, I dobte whether Chaucer were of the temple or noe, vnlest yt were towardes his latter tyme, for he was one olde manne, — as apperethe by Gowere in Confessione amantis — in the xvi yere of R. 2: when Gower wroote that Booke. And yt is most certeyne to be gathered by cyrcumstances of Rercordes, that the lawyers were not in the temple vntille towardes the latter parte of the reygne of kinge Edwarde the thirde ; at whiche tyme Chaucer was a grave manne, holden in greate credy t, and employed in embassye; so that me thinkethe he sholde not be of that howse; and yet, yf he then were, I sholde iudge yt strange that he sholde violate the rules of peace and gravytye yn those yeares. But I wille passe ouer alle those matters scito pede, and leave euerye manne to his owne iudgemente therein for this tyme.'
From these quotations several facts are clear:
1. Speght had two sources of information: Bale and Leland,^ and "Master Buckley."
2. Thynne's main argument is that the statements about Chaucer do not prove that Gower studied at the Inner Temple.
3. His objections to the case for Chaucer are: (a) that Chaucer was too old by the time the lawyers were in the Temple, and (6) that so old a man would not have been guilty of such a misdemeanor.
4. Thynne neither asks who "Master Buckley" was nor impugns his authority.
Leland's statement, full of errors as it is, is interesting in showing that there was a tradition about Chaucer as a law student in the first half of the sixteenth century. Thynne's objections are met if, as we now believe, Chaucer was born not earlier than 1340 and the lawyers were in the Temple by 1347.' If, then, it can be shown that Buckley was in a position to know the Inner Temple records and that the record itself bears every mark of genuineness, the possibility that Chaucer may have studied law becomes a probability.''
1 AnimadueTsions .... (Chaucer Soc), 1S75 [1891], pp. 21 f.
^ One of whom (Bale follows Leland) he cites (cf. Hammond, op. dt., pp. 2 and 10) _
' Inderwick, Calendar of the Inner Temple Records, I (1896), xvii (quoting an early seventeenth-century MS now in the Inner Temple), and p. xi (referring to the Patent Rolls but without volume and page numbers; I have been unable to find the passage in the printed Calendar). There seems to be no question about the approximate date. Cf. also Hales in the Athenaeum, I (1896), 446f., with the authorities there cited.
* Hales {loc. cit.) and Kingsley (preface to Thynne, op. cit., pp. xv f.) inclined to believe Buckley's statement. Furnivall did not {ibid.).
22 EDITH RICKERT
Who was "Master Buckley"? In the Inner Temple records is mentioned a William Buckley, in 1564 as chief butler, and in 1572 as a newly admitted member.^ Among the special duties of chief butler in the Inns of Court were the following: collecting dues and fines; keeping accounts; recording attendance at conmions, moots, and chapel; and taking care of the library. He was also employed in engrossing indentures,^ and in other legal business.^ He was often admitted to membership.^
There can be little doubt that this Buckley, who not only for years had access to the Temple records but also had intellectual interests that enabled him to become a barrister, was Speght's informant. It is significant that Speght, beyond giving him the title "Master," which was commonly used in speaking of members of the Inns of Court, did not think it necessary to identify him, and also that Thynne accepted him without question. If, then, the record existed, this Wilham Buckley, butler, librarian, and barrister, was one of the few men in England likely to have seen it.*
Did such a record survive? It is commonly beheved that all early records of the Temple were destroyed by the insurgents of 1381, but the extant evidence hardly warrants this inference. Walsingham says only that " plura munimenta, quae juridici in custodia habuerunt, igne consumpta sunt."^ The author of the "Anominalle Chronicle" of St. Mary's, York, is more specific:
^ Inderwick, op. cit., I, 265, which reads:
"Order for the special admission of William Buckeley, late chief butler of the House, without any payment.
"Special admission of William Buckeley of Derby in the county of Derby, gent."
The two entries refer indubitably to the same person (cf. Inderwick, op. cit., I, 255, 261, 262 [2], and 263 [2], for parallel entries).
There were indeed two Buckleys, both butlers, but Richard, the younger, was not admitted to membership (ibid., cf. pp. 235 and 256), and so would not have been called "Master."
2 Ibid., pp. 11, 144, 212, 235, 274 f., xxxiv, xlv; also J. Douglas Walker, The Black Books of Lincoln's Inn, I, 316, 389, 393, 394, 401, 425, and xxi f.
» Walker, op. cit., I, pp. 421, 425, 432, and xxii.
* See Inderwick and Walker, op. cit., indexes, under "Butler."
' There were of course other Buckleys, for example: Thomas Buckley at Lincoln's Irm, 1578, admitted to the Bar, 1580 (Walker, op. cit., I, 408, 416). But what should he know about the ancient fine roll of the Inner Temple ?
* Historia Anglicana (Rolls ed.), I, 457.
WAS CHAUCER A STUDENT AT THE INNER TEMPLE? 23
Et aleront en Esglise et pristerent toutz les liuers et rolles et remem- brances que fueront en lour huches deins le Temple des apprentiz de la ley et porteront en le haut chemine et les arderent.'
The documents burned were evidently muniments kept for safety in the Temple Church; but they may have belonged to the knights of St. John of Jerusalem, who at that time still reserved the church for their own use^ and who were especially hated by the insurgents. Certain it is that the Inner Temple rolls of "fynes and amercementz," from 1507 on, were kept in a chest in the "parlement house." And as directions were then given for making fine rolls thereafter "in maner and fourme" of an earlier fine roU,^ it is highly probable that precedent was followed also in placing the new chest, made at that time,^ where the old one had stood.^ In that case, the early fourteenth century records might well have escaped the fire of 1381 because they were not in the Church and have been destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 for the same reason.^ The disappearance of all the "fine rolls" suggests, though it does not prove, that they shared a common fate.
But does Buckley's citation bear marks of authenticity ? Can it be tested by records that have survived ? From the Inner Temple we have nothing earlier than 1505, but The Black Books of Lincoln's Inn go back almost to Chaucer's time and supplement the few entries of fines that have crept into the Inner Temple "order" books.^ They record, in fact, besides rulings about fines, more than a hundred cases
> Edited by Trevelyan, Eng. Hist. Rev., XIII, 515. As Dr. Kriehn points out, this has many marks of having been written by an eyewitness {Amer. Hist. Rev., VII, 266).
* Foss, Judges of England, IV (1851), 26; and cf. Inderwick, op. cit., I, xx f.
' Inderwick, op. cit., I, 9. There are several other references to earlier records on that page and on p. 2.
< Ibid.
^ The force of tradition in English schools and universities strongly favors this view. And there is no mention of a change of position.
^ The fire destroyed the Inner Temple buildings but stopped short of the church (Wheatley, London Past and Present, III [1891], 354). According to Inderwick, there were "numerous fires" both before and after 1666 in which the records might have been lost {op. cit., I, ix). Those that survive "are confined, with few exceptions, to the orders passed at the Parliaments held at regular intervals within the Inn" {ibid.).
^ Some of these are for serious offenses; others have apparently been entered by mistake. I counted ten cases (excluding breaches of inn customs) between 1505 and 1603 (Inderwick, op. cit., I, 46, 89, 90, 94, 102 f., 128, 165, 179, 268, 269). Those that bear on the problem are discussed below.
24 EDITH RICKERT
of misdemeanor, involving more than two hundred and fifty students.^ Of these misdemeanors, ahnost three-fourths might be smnmed up under the head of disorderly conduct, about equally distributed between cases of fighting or assault, and of college pranks, insub- ordination, or disobedience. In some instances, classification is impossible, either because the situation is complex or because no details are given. ^
Of the thirty-seven cases of fighting or assault, more than three- fourths were of assault, only seven or eight upon members of the Inn. Thus the offense attributed to Chaucer was by far the commonest at Lincoln's Inn.
Was the two-shilhng fine the amount usually imposed for the offense? Although exact statistics are impossible,' the general practice with regard to fines can be clearly determined. A fine of more than five shillings was rarely imposed for misdemeanors other than offenses against the customs of the Inn.* The usual sums were three shillings and fourpence and one shilling and eightpence, but two
' Excluding such offenses as failing to keep vacations, to serve in oflBcial capacities, to attend chapel and moots, etc., with which we are not concerned.
* My figures, which, in spite of care and checking, must be regarded as only approximate, are as follows:
Fighting or assault (in two cases only threatened) 37
(Walker, op. cit., I, 40, 43 f., 63, 78, 81, 91, 117, 120, 125 f., 127, 129, 131, 134,
135, 136, 138, 139, 152, 166, 176 [2], 204, 210, 213, 215, 223, 227, 233, 237, 253, 255,
274 f., 292 [2], 293 [2], 312.)
College pranks, such as taking food (distinguished from theft), breaking windows, blowing horns, chasing and killing the rabbits within the precincts, removing things from their places, throwing "wyspis" in hall, breaking down the
kitchen door "out of cheek," etc 26
(Ibid., pp. 45 f., 79, 86, 106 [2] 109, 131, 134, 140, 176, 194, 204, 215, 218, 223,
225, 273, 275, 289 f. [2], 291, 297, 300, 304, 305, 306.)
Insubordination or disobedience 16
(Ibid., pp. 66, 71, 77, 91, 110, 126, 134, 152, 177, 182 f., 204, 215, 293, 297, 310.
312.)
In the remaining fourth of these misdemeanors, there are fifteen cases of associa- tion with women of bad character, eleven of playing dice or cards, and a few of offenses
not characterized.
^ Partly because the accounts were not kept uniformly and systematically, and partly because they are not published in full (Walker, op. dt., I, i f.).
* Probably not two dozen cases altogether. For failure to obey the regulations of the Inn, heavy fines were sometimes imposed, but these cases have nothing to do with the Chaucer record.
WAS CHAUCER A STUDENT AT THE INNER TEMPLE? 25
and sixpence (one case), two shillings (nine cases), one shilling (nine cases), and eightpence (one case) were also imposed.^
The fine for assault upon a member of the Inn was much higher^ than for assault upon an officer, servant, or outsider. Of the twenty- two cases of assault upon non-members, seventeen were punished with fines between 1/ and 3/4, including one fine of 2/6 and two of 2/.^ The two cases of 2/ fines were for similar offenses on the same day. One was for entering the "buttrye" and taking away "certeyn loves of brede, ageynst the wyll of the Butler"; the other, for "entering the kitchen and taking a piece of beef from the cook."*
With these three cases must be put two cases of fine for double offenses :
1509. "Thomas Veer .... for an assault and affray on the Butler with his dagger in the presence of divers Benchers ; he also used contumelious words in the presence of the Governors sitting in the Hall."* He was fined 3/4.
1506. "Miles Hubbert fined 3s. 4d. for breaking the door of the 'White Hert in Holburne' at night, and beating the house-wife of the same, to the scandal of the Society, and also for frequenting a brothel .... in Holburn, called 'Johne Hasylrykke's Hous.'"^
1 In more than two-thirds of the cases, the fine was either three and fourpence, or one and eightpence, about evenly distributed. The higher sum was usually imposed upon the leaders in a group enterprise (cf. Walker, op. cit., I, 135 f.; also pp. 117, 194, 204).
2 In the seven or eight cases (ibid., pp. 274 f. is doubtful), only one fine is as low as 3/4 (p. 312). The others range from 10/ to 40/ (ibid., pp. 40, 63, 138, 213, 215, and 237), and although in several instances reduced, still remain much higher than for assault upon non-members.
' These may be summed up as follows: Of one-shilling fines, five cases: (1) a blow on the ear of one of the butlers (Walker, op. cit., I, 176) ; (2) an "affray" on a member's servant, while waiting on his master in "Chaunceler Lane" (ibid.); (3) a slap to the "Panierman" in Hall (ibid., p. 213); (4) "castyng down" someone "in the Chapell att the messetyme" (ibid., p. 166; doubtful whether or not a member); (5) taking part in attacks on the cook (ibid., p. 117; reduced from 1/8).
Of 1/8 fines, four cases: (1) assault on the undercook (ibid., p. 78) ; (2) "violently" taking the steward's dagger and giving him "vile words" (ibid., p. 81); (3) striking the "Pannierman" at dinner before the governors (ibid., p. 127); (4) striking the butler's wife (ibid., p. 227).
Of 3/4 fines, five cases: (1) for the ringleaders in the attacks on the cook mentioned above (ibid., p. 117); (2) assaulting a butler with drawn sword (ibid., p. 134); (3) drawing a dagger on the chaplain in Hall (ibid., p. 136; here, only threatened assault); (4) and (5), quoted above.
* Ibid., p. 292. It is to be supposed that the officials resisted.
» Ibid., p. 152. 6 Ibid., p. 139.
26 EDITH RICKERT
These five cases suggest that a fine of two shiUings was customary for some cases of assault.
Moreover, there is evidence from other types of cases that a two- shilhng fine was sometimes imposed for an offense commonly rated at one and eightpence or at three and fourpence. Out of twelve cases of petty offenses, which are comparable, a two-shilHng fine is imposed in three, instead of the more usual sums.^
Undoubtedly an important factor was whether the offense was committed within the Inn or outside." Compare with Miles Hub- bert's escapade in 1506 the 6/8 fine imposed in 1502 for beating and ill treating the gardener's wife.'
On the other hand, there is evidence from fines imposed fifty years apart that the amounts remained comparatively stable for that period. In 1483 and in 1529-30, 1/8 was imposed for striking a servant;^ in 1467 and in 1518, 6/8, for gaming;^ in 1484 and in 1553, 1/8, for hunting rabbits within the precincts;^ and in 1478-79 and 1526-27, 3/4, for unseemly language before Benchers.^ Why, then, should they have been very different in Chaucer's time ?
But was the scale of fines in the two inns the same? In 1521, an order was issued at the Inner Temple for a fine of 6/8 to be imposed for gaming within the "House";^ in 1431, an order at Lincoln's Inn
1 In 1482-83, three men were fined 2/ each for playing cards within the Inn and six were fined 1/8 each for playing outside the Inn (ibid., pp. 76 f.). In 1496, a man was fined 3/4 for playing dice within the Inn (ibid., p. 108). In 1518, five men were fined 3/4 each for plasdng cards and dice "in chambers" and two of the party, double (ibid., p. 188). In 1526-27, a man was fined 3/4 for "dyeing and cardying," the place not stated (ibid., p. 215).
In 1476-77, a man was fined 3/4 for "opprobrious words" (ibid., p. 63). In 1478-79, a man was fined 3/4 for "unseemly words in the presence of the Governors and other Fellows of the Bench" (ibid., p. 66). In 1480-81, a man was fined 1/8 for "presumptuous and unsuitable words in answering the Governors and other Benchers openly in Hall" (ibid., p. 71). In 1504-5, a man was fined 1/8 for encouraging another in wrongdoing by "contumelious" words instead of reproving him (ibid., p. 135), but in 1496, a man was fined 2/ for "divers railings [? pro diversis malectis; ? for maledictis] and contempts" (ibid., p. 110).
In 1496, one man was fined 3/4 for taking a quince pie from the kitchen oven (ibid., p. 106) and another at the same time was fined 1/8 for taking eels from the oven (ibid.). In 1549, two men were fined 3/4 apiece for taking fagots out of the kitchen (ibid., p. 289), but another was fined 2/ because he "toke awey the laver next the ketchon dore" (ibid., pp. 289 f.), in addition to making a new "laver."
2 Ibid., p. 89. Cf. also p. 25, n. 2, above.
^Jbid., pp. 139 and 125 f. * Ibid., pp. 78 and 227. ^ 75^.^ pp. 44 and 188. 6 Ibid., pp. 79 and 305. ^ Ibid., pp. 66 and 215. » inderwick, op. cit., 1, 63.
WAS CHAUCER A STUDENT AT THE INNER TEMPLE? 27
imposed the same fine for gaming within the Inn after nine o'clock at night.^
In the Inner Temple, in 1541, a member was fined 6/8 for an "affray" upon another;^ in Lincoln's Inn, in 1502-3, two members were fined 6/8 and 3/4, respectively, for an "affray" between them.'
In 1555, orders were issued to the members of both inns to cut off their beards, and for insubordination in regard to this order, certain members of both inns were fined, some of them 3/4 and others 1/8.^
From these cases, it is safe to infer that the practice in the two inns was very similar. A point to be emphasized is the fact that the fine ordered for gaming at the Inner Temple in 1521 is the same as that ordered at Lincoln's Inn in 1431.
The internal evidence may be summed up: (1) the offense was the conomonest (aside from offenses against inn customs) at Lincoln's Inn ; (2) the fine imposed was not the usual fine for such an offense, though it was within the range of variation for such fines; (3) the fines at Lincoln's Inn continued about the same from the middle of the fifteenth century to the middle of the sixteenth; and (4) similar practice obtained between 1431 and the middle of the sixteenth century in the two inns. In view of these conclusions, I maintain that the Chaucer item bears all the marks of genuineness. If Buckley had hit upon the idea of manufacturing Chaucer biography for Speght, his most obvious motive would have been to reflect credit upon the Temple, and he would scarcely have invented such a story. If, famihar with the rolls as he was, he, for reasons unknown, invented an episode of a common type there, he would also, for the sake of verisimihtude, have invented the usual penalty. In this combina- tion of usual and of unusual that is at the same time possible and reasonable, I find the strongest internal evidence that Buckley was reporting an item that he had seen.^
> Walker, op. cit., I, 4. * Inderwick, op. cii., I, 128. ' Walker, op. cit., I, 131.
< Cf . Inderwick, op. cit., 1, 178, 179, and Walker, op. cit., 1, 312 (and cf . pp. 309, 310) .
* Nor is the story to be rejected for its picturesqueness. The item about Miles Hubbert is more picturesque. A small point, not to be urged, yet perhaps not without significance, is the fact that the friar is described and not named and that the event is said to have happened in Fleet Street. Within the Temple, the chances are that the fine would have been heavier and the friar's name have been reported. Outside, in a street ending at the Temple gate, the affair might have been witnessed and reported by those who knew of the friar only what his dress showed.
28 EDITH RICKERT
But when could Chaucer have studied at the Inner Temple? Between the years 1361 and 1366 we know not one single fact about him. Even if he continued to be an attendant in one of the royal households until he entered the service of the King himself/ he could at the same time have been a student at the Temple, as appears from the following records of Lincoln's Inn :
John Fortesceu, Esquire of the Body [armiger pro corpore] of King Edward IV, was admitted July 23rd. [1476]; he was pardoned all vacations and admitted to repasts; for which he gave a quarter of a tun of wine.^
Again:
Edward Brampt[on], Esquire of the Household [armiger de Hospicio] of the King, admitted Nov. 12th; [details as above].'
These entries and others* show that squires in the royal household were admitted on special conditions. They were not bound by the rules of the Society for study in vacations, or required to pay for conamons but only for such meals as they had.
Another entry shows that a squire in the King's household might have a room in Lincoln's Inn :
March 1, 1498. Robert Straunge was re-admitted to the Society, and pardoned all vacations; he shall be at repasts because he is of the King's Household [quia de Hospicio domini Regis] ; and he is pardoned all pensions and other things due by him; for which he gave a hogshead of wine; he shall have again [rehabeat] the chamber with Pykeryng without paying anything to the Society.^
This shows that Strange had been away and had now returned as a member of the King's household. Six years later we read of him again :
Robert Strange, having formerly been admitted to repasts as being of the King's Household, it is now proved that he is not; his admission to repasts is therefore void, but he may be in commons like every one else.'
1 The first record of his annuity, June 20, 1367, suggests that he had not been long in the King's service (Life Records, 4, p. 160) ; cf . the similar record about Philippa Chaucer as attendant upon Constance of Castile, who had come to England only a few months before (ibid., p. 181).
2 Walker, op. cit., I, 60. The case of John Sapcotes, admitted at the same time, ia iden^tical {ibid.).
» Ibid. « Ibid., p. 64 (2). » 7;,^__ p. 113, « 75^^., p. 138.
WAS CHAUCER A STUDENT AT THE INNER TEMPLE? 29
This suggests that he had left the royal household and settled down in earnest to study law.^
It can scarcely be doubted that similar arrangements were made at the other Inns of Court, and the gift of a quarter of a tun of wine would not have embarrassed John Chaucer.^
According to the household book of Edward IV, only haK the squires of the household were on duty at a time,' and this book was clearly modeled after the household book of Edward III.* But special arrangements could be made at Lincoln's Inn for a squire even when on duty.*
Thus Chaucer might have been a student at the Inner Temple during the years when he was — theoretically — ^in attendance at court. It does not follow that he ever practiced law. From Fortes- cue's account of the Inns of Court in the fifteenth century,^ it is clear that they were not merely law schools but rather universities where gentlemen's sons were trained for public careers. Music, dancing, history, and divinity were studied, as well as the law.' And Chaucer himself tells us that the members of the Temple who were most "of lawe expert"^ were fitted for business careers as stewards of great estates.
Consider, then, Chaucer's own career — as diplomat, custom-house ofl&cial, justice of the peace, member of ParUament, clerk of the works, and forester. Could all these positions have been held by a man without legal knowledge or training ? To examine the probabihties for each of these offices would carry me far beyond the limits of this paper, but a few significant facts may be pointed out. ,
^ There are frequent references to special admissions of students in attendance upon nobility (cf. ibid., pp. 23, 32, 37, 40, 45, 223, and many other cases not so clear).
^ In 1511, a squire of the King's household paid 20/ instead of the wine (ibid., p. 161).
' Life Records, 1-3, pp. 67 ff.
* Ibid., pp. 70 and xiv ff.
* In 1529, a man was allowed to be "out of commons at his pleasure" for a term because he was in service with a lord and bound to give daily attendance (Walker, op. cit., I, 223).
* He was at Lincoln's Inn before 1422 (Walker, op. cit., I, 1 £f.). ^ De Laudibus Legum Angliae, cap. xlix.
* Prologue, 11. 576 ff. The phrase translates the technical legis periti.
30 EDITH RICKERT
Even a cursory survey of Rymer's Foedera shows that lawyers were commonly employed on diplomatic missions.^ There were often great lords as ornamental figureheads, but there were lawyers to do the work. Take, for example, the Genoese mission of 1372, in which Chaucer's only associates were two Genoese.- The business concerned the establishment of a seaport in England for Genoese citizens and merchants, and the "franchises, liberties, immunities, and privileges" associated with such a grant. Are we to believe that the English interests would have been left in the hands of one unfamihar with the law?
Again, in the controllership, could Chaucer, without business training, have been expected to act as check on the operations of such financiers as Walworth, Brembre, and Philpot ? And could he have obtained such business training at a grammar school or at court? Were there not in the customs daily problems of rights, immunities, and privileges? Who settled them? Did the controller merely copy entries without making inquiries about them? Then he was no more than a clerk.
And what were Chaucer's duties as forester? Were there not continual questions of law between the denizens of the forest and the king? In the Forest of Dean recently, as I happen to know, the king's forester was a lawyer, who lived in a comfortable house within the forest. How was it in Chaucer's time ?
And why was Chaucer made justice of the peace ? A regulation of 1360 provided that "one lord and with him three or four of the most worthy in the county, with some learned in the law"^ should serve. On the commission of 1385, of which Chaucer was a member, there were eighteen men, of whom two held important offices, eight or more represented prominent Kentish families, and at least six were lawyers. On the commission of 1386, there were seven lawyers
* Many are so described and some described as knights were also laywers. Their names appear in Foss's Judges of England and Biographia Juridica, or in Dugdale'a Chronica Series, appended to the Origines Juridiciales.
"^ Life Records, 4, pp. 181 f. John de Marl is described as "Ciuis Januensis." James de Provan (or Pronan) was a knight, "locum tenens" for the brother of the Duke of Genoa as captain (i.e., admiral) of a fleet of Genoese galleys (Rymer, orig. ed., VI, 753).
' Hulbert, Chaucer's Official Life, 1912, pp. 37 fif.
WAS CHAUCER A STUDENT AT THE INNER TEMPLE? 31
(excluding Chaucer) out of seventeen men.^ Although Chaucer may have owned lands in Kent, he certainly did not represent an old Kentish family. Then is he not to be included among those "learned in the law" ?
There is, I am confident, one way of settling the questions that I have raised, and that is by investigating the careers of other men who have held Chaucer's pubhc positions. This study I hope to begin at once.
Further, there are various hints about Chaucer's friends to be investigated. Was Gower a lawyer ?2 Was the "philosophical Strode" the lawyer Strode at Aldersgate who was Chaucer's neighbor ? Was "My maister Bukton" addressed by his legal title ?^ Was there recognition of a legal status as well as of literary disciple- ship in Lydgate's and Hoccleve's use of the same title for Chaucer ? Was Hoccleve himself an "apprentice" of the law? In these ques- tions I am merely mapping out a line of research which may perhaps bring more evidence to bear upon the problem.
And finally, the works themselves must be scrutinized. However much a poet might try to keep law and hterature apart, there should be an occasional hint. In the Prologue, for example, it is not strange to find the Sergeant of Law; but why the Manciple ? In what sense is an understeward in one of the Temples representative ? Who would have been likely to remember his existence except one who had lived under his ministrations ? And why is he introduced ? He is neither described nor characterized. He is used purely as the means of cracking a joke on lawyers. Would such a joke have occurred to an outsider ?
All these considerations taken together so strongly bear out Buck- ley's testimony that I am convinced it may one day be shown with practical certainty that Chaucer belongs among the poets who went into literature by way of the law.
' Life Records, 4, pp. 254 and 259, and cf. Hulbert, loc cit.
In 1385: Bealknap, Clopton, Rikhill, Topclyf (not a Kentishman, land steward to the Archbishop of Canterbury; cf. Prologue, 11. 576 ff.), Brenchesley, and Shardelowe. Whether Savage and Falstolf had legal training I do not know.
In 1386: Tresilian, Bealknap, Hanemer, Clopton, Rikhill, Topclyf, and Brenchesley.
' Cf. Mirour de VOmme, 1. 21774 and the pictures in Archaeologia 39, II, 358 fif.
' Cf. Walker, op. cit., I. xxxix f. Certainly magister was commonly used for lawyers. But how widely it was used for other men in the fourteenth century I do not know.
AN INTERPRETATION OF CHAUCER'S LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN
D. D. Griffith Grinnell College
Four times in the F Prologue of the Legend of Good Women Chaucer declares that his poem is a legend, while the Man of Law refers to it as the "Seintes Legende of Cupyde." Other references show that Chaucer's followers understood the poem as a legend. In Hoccleve, Chaucer's Legend is referred to as Cupid's "Legende of Martres," in Lydgate as ''the Legend of Cupide," and as a "legende of parfite holines," and in the Lay Folks' Mass Book as "The holy legende of martyrs of Cupydo."^ To modern taste, this title seems paradoxical, as all the stories concern heathen women and as the medieval and technical meaning of the word "legend" is the hfe of a saint who is often also a martyr to the Christian rehgion. The solution of the difficulty hes in the very conception of the poem. Chaucer has borrowed from the Court of Love literature the idea of a religion of love of which Cupid is the god. Just as Christian saints have suffered martyrdom for their reUgion, so those whom the wor- ship of the God of Love has brought to their deaths may be thought of as martyrs to the god Cupid. Just as the stories of Christian saints are called legends, so the stories of those who died because of their devotion to love become legends of the saints of the god Cupid. In this poem, Chaucer is creating a collection of the legends of Cupid's saints and martyrs.
The following notes will show how completely Chaucer's Legend of Good Women has for its organizing motif the presentation of good women, who were martyrs to love because of devotion to a definitely conceived religion of which the god Cupid is the head.^ This worship
' See E. P. Hammond, Chaucer, a Bibliographical Manual, p. 379.
^ That the Legend of Good Women has echoes of Christian worship has been noted by J. S. P. Tatlock, Studies in Philology, XVIII (1921). 421-22, note, and by W. W. Sk«at, Chaucer, III, 139. W. G. Dodd, Courtly Love in Chaucer and Gower, pp. 208-32, has discussed the general influence of ecclesiastical elements upon the Legend. This
32
CHAUCER'S ''LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN'' 33
has its god, its mediator and intercessor (Alceste), its saints, its legends, its martyrs, its relic, and its shrine, with a system of repent- ance, penance, and satisfaction — all created in analogy to the Chris- tian worship of Chaucer's time. This paper will also point out that this organizing motif dominated the F Prologue, but that Chaucer changed his attitude toward this religion of Cupid and omitted from the G Prologue the most noticeable analogies to Christian worship. The study of all the alterations that Chaucer made in the F Prologue seems to show that the poet made his revision with the intention of removing unorthodox references to Christian service and, especially, of canceling the presentation of himself as a votary of Cupid.
In the F Prologue the poet's attitude toward "olde stories" as devotion and his worship of the daisy as the incarnation of the God of Love are plain. It is also plain that in the G Prologue he has abandoned this attitude. In F, 1. 27, he says, "Wei oghte us than honouren and beleve" "olde bokes," "And on hem yeve I feyth and ful credence" (1. 31), but, in G, the words, "honouren" and "feyth and ful credence" are omitted. "Farwel my book and my devo- cioun!" (1, 39, F) becomes, in G, the colorless "Farwel my studie, as lasting that sesoun ! " In F the reading of " olde bokes " is devotion which he leaves seldom on holy days ; in G this reading is study which he leaves only on holy days. In the F Prologue this devotion to love's literature is the reason for the worship of the daisy — "Now have I than swich a condicioun" — but in G the connection is broken by the statement that besides his study he loves the daisy.
In F the poet worships an individual flower, while in G this individual worship is removed by the expression of the poet's admira- tion for "these floures," that is, for daisies in general without any symbohsm. In F, then, the poet enters the fields in May to see this flower open to the rising sun and to worship the daisy as the incarnation of love after his devotional reading in love's Uterature. He says he is glad "whan that I have presence Of hit, to doon al maner reverence." In F he addresses the daisy personally, without
paper, which was begun six years ago under Professor John M. Manly, is intended to supplement these studies by pointing out the large influence of the analogy between the worship of Cupid and the worship of the Christian church upon the details of the prologues and the problem of their relation. Dodd, op. cit., pp. 213-14, has shown that this analogy is a common medieval conception.
34 D. D. GRIFFITH
name, as often in the hymns to the Virgin, for she is "of alle floures flour,' "Fulfilled of al vertu and honour," "ever y-lyke fair and fresh of hewe." In G these words are not personal, nor are they addressed to a nameless and adored person designated as "she" but are descrip- tive of the beauty of the daisy as a flower. In F the poet pledges eternal devotion and says that no creature loved "hotter in his lyve."
In the F Prologue Chaucer runs at sunset to see the flower close for "so hateth she derknesse." He does this in honor of love for she is "clernesse and verray Hght," that leads him through this world, the mistress of his wit, whom he obeys as the harp the hand. She is his guide, his sovereign, his earthly god. He says he cannot praise the flower sufficiently and calls upon the French poets as "Ye lovers" to aid his labor. In F the poet does this "in service of the flour, Whom that I serve as I have wit or might," (11. 82-83, F) but in G he is neutral in the contentions between the flower and the leaf. In G none of this fulsome adoration is retained. The poet does not say that his spirit moved him "with so gledy desyr That in my herte I fele yit the fyr." The adored one does not hate darkness nor is she clearness and "verray light." She is not mistress of his wit, his guide, his sovereign, his earthly god. The French poets are not addressed as "Ye lovers" but as folk that have gone before. With the removal of the poet's religious adoration and his joy in the flower's presence, which is hke the sacred presence of a shrine, the G Prologue has eliminated the worship of the daisy as the incarnation of love.
In the F Prologue, "With dredful herte and glad devocioun" the poet rises to witness the "resureccioun" of the flower. He kneels before it and remains kneeling until the flower uncloses. He greets the flower in worshipful and reUgious fashion.^ The poet remains in the fields all day worshiping the flower for she is his "emperice and flour of floures alle." At home he has his bed strewn with flowers and dreams that when he is lying in the field, the God and Queen of Love come to him. In G these religious words have all been omitted, and the worship of love by the birds has been placed in the dream to remove this worshipful adoration from the poet's
^*The word "grette" is used here with the meaning "to salute in worship," as it 1b often used in saluting the Virgin with song and gesture.
CHAUCER'S "LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN" 35
waking moments. In the F Prologue the poet's reUgious adoration of the daisy as at a shrine is very skilfully presented and becomes the reason for Alceste's intercession in his behalf later in the poem.^
In the vision described in both prologues, the Queen is habited in semblance of a daisy. The God of Love wears a halo^ and his face shines so brightly that the poet cannot look upon him. This description is practically the same in the two prologues, except that in G the poet avoids the religious significance of the halo by substitut- ing a garland. In praise of this "lady fre" in F the poet sings a lialade, but in G the God stops at the flower, his ladies kneel as at a shrine, then dance, and sing the balade. In this way the balade in G is not a hymn sung by the poet as worship in a religion of love.' Also, in F the lines "So passeth al my lady sovereyne That is so good, so fair, so debonaire" (275-76) lose their personal adoration and become "Hir name was Alceste the debonaire." The song of the ladies, "Hele and honour," in F, 11. 296 ff., which is reminiscent of the songs to the Virgin, is omitted in G.
In both prologues Cupid and his train worship the daisy and seat themselves in a circle about it, but in F the poet remains kneeling by the flower, while in G he is "lening faste by under a bente." Cupid accuses the poet of effrontery in kneeUng "So nigh myn owne flour." He asserts that the daisy is his reUc. The poet has broken the law of god Cupid; he has hindered folk in their "devocioun"; he holds it folly to serve Love; he spreads heresy and encourages
1 Dodd, op. cit., pp. 208 ff., maintains that the poet is an outsider in love in the Legend of Good Women. This is true of the G Prologue but in F he says, "I fele yit the fyr" and "loved no wight hotter in his lyve." In G, 11. 400^01, Alceste says, "Why! hewasyong, he kepte your estat; I not wher he be now a renegat." Alceste's playful statement in F, 1. 490, " thee lyke nat a lover be," is the only passage in F that excludes the poet from sympathy with lovers. These references make a clear case of the differ- ence of the poet's attitude toward the worship of love in the two prologues.
2 Dodd, op. cit., p. 211, note, refers to Neilson's statement that this is the only case of Cupid wearing a halo that he knows.
* It is significant that the revision of F causes the ladies to sing the ballad in G instead of the poet and omits from G the song "Hele and Honour," sung by the ladies kneeling as at a shrine. Although Alceste is mentioned here in the G Prologue, the poet is not, in either version, conscious of her as identical with the Queen of Love until after his penance has been assigned later in the poem. In both versions, at this later point, Cupid reveals the identity of Alceste and commands that the last legend be in her praise. It is possible that the reason for naming Alceste here, in G, ia to remove the similarity to hymns of the Virgin which resulted from praising her per- sonally without name and from addressing her as "My lady."
36 D. D. GRIFFITH
schism;^ in the Romance of the Rose and the Troilus, he has violated God's law and, ''By seint Venus," he shall repent. In G, while the frame of the episode is the same, the poet's worship of Love is removed. He is blamed for being in the god's presence and not for his worship of the daisy. In G the flower is not given the religious name of relic. Instead of holding it folly to serve love, as in F, the poet has, in G, personally offended Cupid by preventing folk from trusting in him. The difference between the prologues is further emphasized here by the statements of Cupid, added in G, that "he nis but a verray propre fool That loveth paramours" and "Thou beginnest dote As olde foles, whan hir spirit fayleth." In F the poet is a votary of love and a worshiper of its god at the shrine of the daisy. In G Chaucer has carefully removed the definite references to an analogy between Christian service and the worship of the god Cupid, and presents himself as an old man out of sympathy with the religion of love.
In the G Prologue at this point occurs Cupid's Hst of reading which is accessible to Chaucer. The god declares that women are true not "for hohnesse But al for verray vertu and clennesse." This statement is a retraction of the F Prologue, in which the women were true because of devotion to a religion of love. The G Prologue states that these women were not true to love through a religion but through virtue which is inherent in the nature of women.
By analogy with the position of the Virgin, the Queen of Love becomes the mediator and intercedes for the poet in return for his devotion and his worship of her. In her intercession in F, she pre- sents Cupid as a god and characterizes him as a king who is just, who must rule his court and beware of slanderers, and who should show mercy to unfortunate people. While this characterization applies well to the duties of an earthly king, it is also ecclesiastical and shows the position that a god should hold as the head of a religious system. In F the Queen says, "if ye nere a god," but in G the expression is omitted. The Queen, as intercessor, says that the poet has repented utterly of his works against love, but Chaucer omits this statement from the G version. Besides referring to balades, roundels, virelays as hymns for holy days of Cupid, the Queen refers in F to
1 Dodd, op. cit., p. 212.
CHAUCER'S "LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN" 37
Christian writings as holiness of another kind. This distinction between the hohness of Christian writings and the hohness of Cupid is removed in G by the weak hne ''And for to speke of other besi- nesse."^
In both prologues, at the intercession of the Queen and because of her grace, Cupid forgives the poet. The poet then kneels to her and gives thanks for her mediation in his favor. The Queen assigns his penance that he write a glorious legend of good women and tell of false men that betrayed them. She says that she will pray the God of Love to aid him in his work and, in F, commands that he present a copy of the legends in her behalf to the Queen at Eltham or at Shene.
In both prologues, after the poet has declared that he has always sought to further truth in love, the Queen speaks the formula, "Thou hast thy grace." Even in this part of the poem, however, some analo- gies to Christian worship have been removed in the revision of F. The part of Cupid's speech omitted in G, 11. 552 ff., says, "Ne shal no trewe lover come in helle," and tells of twenty thousand women true in love that make up the god's company. Cupid must go home with these true women to "Faradys," but, in parting, he commands the poet to serve always the "fresshe dayesye," his relic.
In the legends themselves that follow, Chaucer's conception of a rehgion of Cupid analogous to Christian worship is maintained.^ A saint's legend often describes the martyrdom of the saint and contains a declaration of faith at the end of the story. In writing of his saints who were martyrs to Cupid, Chaucer tells of their sacri- fices for love and places at the end of his legends a declaration of devotion to faith. The place of the heathen opposition to the Chris- tian martyr is taken by men who are faithless in love or, as in Thisbe, by the fathers who oppose love. This opposition and untruth is wickedness against the divine law of god Cupid. Professor Dodd, by an analysis of each of the legends, has shown that Chaucer changed traditional incidents and characterization and reorganized his
1 See Professor J. S. P. Tatlock, Studies in Philology, XVIII, 422, for the medieval meamng of the word "Holynesse."
* The rubrics of the first five legends in the Fairfax, Bodley, and Tanner MSS, which have preserved for us The Book of the Dttchess and which are fifteenth-century copies of a common original, designate these women who suffered for love as " Martyrs."
38 D. D. GRIFFITH
stories to suit the fiction of the rehgion of love.^ In Cleopatra, for example, Anthony is belittled to make him a heathen as regards love and the Queen of the Nile is made a model of virtuous devotion to love. The dying Cleopatra shows the fortitude of a Christian martyr and glories in the most terrible death of a pit of serpents in sacrifice to her worship of Love's religion. This pit of serpents is a conscious addition by Chaucer out of analogy to Christian martyrdom, as this form of torture is often used in Christian saints' legends.^ Professor Dodd has proved that in a similar way the succeeding legends empha- size the fortitude and the faithfulness of the women who suffer for love and the treachery and wickedness of the men who oppose Love's law.
The present study of the legends and the alterations that Chaucer made in the F Prologue shows that the organizing motif of the Legend of Good Women was the presentation, with delightful skill, of a definite rehgion of Love in analogy to Christian worship. By analogy with the conception of God, Cupid is made a divine judge, loyal to his followers, and approached through an intercessor, who, because of her wondrous grace and vicarious suffering, may plead for divine mercy. In the F Prologue are added the slightly offensive parallels that the god wears a halo, that his worshipers do not come to hell, and that he and his saints dwell in paradise.
The function of Alceste is the same as that of the Virgin in her position as mediator and intercessor, in which she is the embodiment of mercy.^ Through her may be secured the grace of the God of Love for sins against his law. She is the fairest among women and
lOp. cit., pp. 218-31.
"^ See, in addition to the common reference to Dante and Professor J. S. P. Tatlock's article in Modern Language Notes, XXIX, 98 ff., Herrig's Archiv, LVII, 253 ff.; and LXII, 453 fT.; Vision of Peter (Robinson and James, London), sec. 10, p. 50; St. Patrick's Purgatory, E.E.T.S., Orig. Series 87, p. 206; An Old English Miscellany, E.E.T.S., Orig. Series 46, pp. 149, 224, and 227.
' An excellent expression of this position of the Virgin is found in Chaucer's An A.B.C.,\\. 137 ff.:
"Soth is, that God ne grauntetb no pitee With-oute thee; for God, of his goodnesse, Foryiveth noon, but it lyke un-to thee. He hath thee maked vicaLre and maistresse Of all the worid, and eek governeresse Of hevene, and he represseth his justyse "* After thy wille, and therefore in witnesse
He hath thee crouned in so ryal wyse."
CHAUCER'S LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN 39
is to be worshiped at her shrine with hymns that address her personally without name and with postures of Christian worship. The daisy is the relic of this religion, with which Alceste is identified because of her dress. It, too, is worthy of worship as at a shrine and is addressed personally as the embodiment of the living presence of the god. Possibly the same relation existed between the daisy and Alceste as existed between the Virgin and her image.^
The religion of Cupid had its system of repentance, penance, and forgiveness, just as the Christian worship had. As it was a work of Christian devotion to read saints' legends and to write stories of martyrdoms, so it was a work of devotion to the God of Love to read "olde stories" and to write legends of the saints of Cupid. Cupid had his holy days and his worship was holiness in contrast to the hoHness of Christian service. This religion had its devotions, its reverence, its heresies, its penance, and its absolution. To write of untruth in love with sympathy was wickedness and sin against God's law. This religion had its hell and its saints lived with their god in paradise. This God of Love had his martyrs who died for his rehgion of love, as did Cleopatra, Thisbe, Dido, Medea, and Lucretia, and their stories, as in Ovid's Heroides, were devotional Uterature.
In the G Prologue Chaucer changed his attitude, not toward the larger conceptions of the poem — the nature of Cupid, the intercession of Alceste, and the assignment of the legends as penance, if they might be represented in a dream — but toward the details borrowed from Christian worship that might give offense to a strictly religious person. The poet also removed the passages that would show him as a votary of the religion of Love. This revision of the F Prologue removes analogies to the Christian religion in four different ways. (1) He omitted the poet's words of personal adoration and his atti- tudes of worship. (2) Chaucer removed expressions that had a definite religious signifi 3ance in the Christian church. These expres- sions are of three kinds: Christian words of definite significance,^
* See Troilus and Criseyde, 1, 1. 153, where Chaucer refers to the palladium as a relic.
^ These words are; (all in F) "feyth and ful credence" 1. 31; "devocioun," 1. 39; "reverence," 1. 52; "hateth she derknesse," 1. 63; "dredful herte and glad devocioun,'' 1.109; "resureccioun," I. 110; "relik," 1. 321; "if ye nere a god," 1. 348; "holynesse," 1. 424.
40 D. D. GRIFFITH
words of adoration/ and the hymns, which are very reminiscent of the usual worship of the Virgin in Chaucer's time, in that they are sung as to the hving presence at a shrine and contain, in the song "Hele and Honour," the commonest word of address to the Virgin and such expressions as "trouthe of womanhede" and "flour that berth our alder prys." (3) Beside the attitudes and words of worship, Chaucer has omitted from G other Christian elements — the reference to hell, the god's departure to paradise, and his halo. (4) This avoidance of religious analogy is further emphasized by the organiza- tion of the G Prologue. By placing the dream earlier in the revised prologue, Chaucer has caused such religious elements as are retained to fall in the dream and not in the poet's waking moments. In F the poet is a sympathetic worshiper of this rehgion of love. In G he is an old man unsympathetic to love and has fallen into an adventure with the God and Goddess of Love in a dream and not because of any personal devotion to their religion.
This very significant change in religious attitude suggests a reason for the revision of the F Prologue. It seems tenable that Chaucer in his maturer life became more formally religious and regarded the analogies between the service of the Roman church and the service of Cupid as blasphemous.^ The main impulse for the revision of the F Prologue probably came from the request of Venus in the last book of Gower's Confessio Amantis, where are many parallels to Chaucer's poem and a message to the poet himself asking that he continue his work.^ Chaucer was pleased with the use Gower had made of old age and revised his poem using this "old age" motif and some of
' Aside from the adoration, which is in itself reminiscent of worship, such expres- sions as "of alle floures flour," "fulfilled of al vertu and honour," "y-lyke fair and fresh of hewe," "clernesse and verray light," "maistresse of my wit," "lady sovereyne," and "erthly god" would, in the mind of a medieval worshiper, have a definite associa- tion with the prayers and hymns to the Virgin. The kneeling of the poet before the flower, his day long worship as a votary at a shrine, and his greeting of the flower in religious fashion, all in F and omitted in G, make clear the analogy between the Chris- tian worship of the Virgin and the poet's adoration of the daisy which was omitted in the revision of the F Prologue.
^ Aside from the evidence given above, this view is further supported by the fact that only serious works can be definitely dated in Chaucer's later years and by his attitude toward his "endytinges of worldly vanitees" in the Retractions.
'' See G. L. Kittredge, "Chaucer's Medea and the Date of the Legend of Good Women," Publications of the Modem Language Association, XXIV (1909), 343 ff.
CHAUCER'S "LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN" 41
Gower's stories. He had grown displeased with his own bold analo- gies between the Christian service and the worship of Cupid and with the representation of himself as a sympathetic votary of that religion. Hence, he reorganized the poem, removed the obvious use of the Chris- tian service and his adoration of the religion of love from his waking moments, and retained, in an impersonal way, much of the material from the French poets. ^ This view is based upon a study of the ele- ments that Chaucer removed from the F Prologue in its revision and would place the revision late in Chaucer's life, at least, after the com- pletion of Gower's Conjessio Amantis in 1390.
' Other reasons for the revision of the F Prologue have been suggested. Professor J. L. Lowes, "The Legend of Good Women," PMLA, XX (1905), 780 flF., suggests that better organization is the reason for the revision. It is somewhat difficult to determine, however, just what would be the medieval conception of "better organization" in dream poems, but, to modern taste, the organization of F is more logical in the early parts of the poem.
The removal of the extravagant elements of French poetry is not the reason for the revision, as many of these elements are retained in G in the dream.
The view (Professor J. S. P. Tatlock, Development and Chronology of Chaucer, pp. 102 ff.) that the personal elements of F were removed after Queen Anne's death, because they referred to her personally, does not explain the removal of the religious analogies. If the F Prologue were personally complimentary to Queen Anne, its revision, in any form, would surely have given offence to King Richard. The compli- mentary verses of the F Prologue are, however, only commands that a copy of the legends be given to the Queen in accordance with the custom of incorporating such verses in a presentation poem. In any case, the occasion for the reference would be past.
THE CASTLE OF PERSEVERANCE: PLACE, DATE, AND A SOURCE
Walter K. Smart Northwestern University
PLACE
Dr. Furnivall is of the opinion that the dialect of the Castle of Perseverance belongs to the East Midlands, more specifically to Norfolk.^ An examination of the language shows that it does belong to the East Midlands, but there is evidence that it should be placed farther north than the county of Norfolk. Two occurrences of the present participle in -ande (takande, 1. 144; quenchande, 1. 3604) are probably not of special significance, and they are noted only in passing. More significant is the considerable number of northern words in the play. The following list, though not complete, will furnish illustrations; it consists of words which are labeled by the New English Dictionary as chiefly or distinctively Scotch or Northern, or which are cited there in passages predominantly from Scotch and Northern writers:
Rappokis (1895, 1944), ill-behaved persons; syke (427), a rill; hyggyng (593), a building; bedene (329), at once; blodyr (1966), to weep noisily (related to blether, Mother, bluther, which are ascribed to Scotch or Northern dialects); tak (2987), tenure or leasehold; lowe (2299), a flame; boun (476), get ready, prepare; tyne (3198), to lose; gate (1577), road, way; rakle (2653), hurry; busk (476), to get ready; prene (1904), related to "spike"; skowtis (1872), a term of contempt for persons; brustun-gutte (235), a greedy person (assigned by the English Dialect Dictionary to Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire); kettis (1056), tangles; mowle (2407), earth; for laykys (929), games, as a northern form, see Skeat, Piers the Plowman and Richard the Redeless, II, Iviii.
The language of the play, then, is East Midland with a northern coloring, a combination which suggests the Northeast Midlands, or Lincolnshire.
1 F. J. Furnivall and A. W. Pollard, Macro Plays, E.E.T.S., p. xxxv.
42
THE "CASTLE OF PERSEVERANCE" 43
We turn now to the only direct reference made in the play to a locality in England. This occurs in line 2422, where Mundus speaks of the "galows of Canwyke." Dr. Furnivall, in the glossary, queries: "Candlewick St. (?) now Cannon St., London," and adds "There's a Canwick 1| m. S.E. of Lincoln." It is true that Candle- wick Street in London was formerly called Canwick Street,^ but there is not a scrap of evidence that connects it with the play.
The reference is clearly, I think, to Canwick just outside the city of Lincoln. The gallows of this village is mentioned in an Anglo- French ballad on the murder of young Hugh of Lincoln, a ballad which appears to be contemporary with the event (a.d. 1255). According to this poem, one of the murderers, named Jopin, was con- demned to death by hanging, and the poet adds, "This was done, I know well where, by Canewic, on the high hill."^
Again, in the time of Edward III (1327-77), the jurors of the inquisition returned among other items of revenue the sum of "6s. 8d. for the burial of persons hanged at Canewyke."'
This gallows, according to a letter from the Rev. Mr. Watney,* vicar of Canwick, stood on Canwick Hill close to the main road to Sleaford — a point from which it and its grim burden were in plain view against the sky from all parts of the city of Lincoln.
In a dihgent search I have found no other references to the gal- lows of Canwick; hence it is probable that — unhke Tyburn Hill, for example — Canwick was not widely known as a place of execution and that its fame was local. This points to the vicinity of Lincoln as the locality where the Castle of Perseverance was written — perhaps by an inmate of one of the reHgious houses of the district.
We know that from the latter part of the fourteenth century down to the time of EUzabeth, plays were given in the city of Lincoln. There are references to performances in the years 1397-98, 1406, 1410-11, 1420, 1424-25, 1441-42, 1447^8, 1452-53, 1455-56, 1456-57, 1471-72, 1473-74— to give only those in the later fourteenth
* See "London Lackpenny," in Percy Society Publications, II, 106.
2 F. J. Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, III, 237-39. ' Lincolnshire Topographical Society, 1843, p. 42.
* I am deeply indebted to the Rev. Mr. Watney for some interesting traditions concerning the gallows — traditions which, until recently, were still current among the older people in the village of Canwick.
44 WALTER K. SMART
and in the fifteenth century. These were of various types: Pater Noster plays, plays of St. Laurence, St. Susanne, St. Clara, King Robert of Sicily, and others. '^ If the Castle of Perseverance belongs to the city proper, we have a very important addition to this list; but there is no evidence that the play does belong to the city rather than to some other place in that locahty.
Another point concerning the locale of the play remains to be considered. My conclusion here is ojffered only as a conjecture, but it seems to me to be plausible.
The play proper is preceded in the manuscript by a prologue which was spoken by two vexillators who, when the company was on tour, went through the country as advance agents, announcing the coming performance.^ In this prologue, as in that of the N-town cycle, blanks are left for the insertion of the name of the district through which the announcement was made, and the town in which the performance was to be given. There are three of these blanks, two of which occur in the following passage :
36 manly men of , l>us Crist saue 50U all!
he maynten joure myrthis, & kepe 5011 fro greve,
l?at born was of Mary myld in an ox stall. Now, mercy be all , & wel mote je cheve !
AU oure feythful frendys, }>us fayre mote je faU! 3a, & welcum be je whanne je com, prys for to preve.
In this passage, it will be noticed, the four successive lines which contain the two blanks for the name are alUterated on m. This can hardly be an accident: the writer, I think, certainly had in mind some locality having a name beginning with this letter. Now, if in the first line we supply the name Manlee (modern Manley),' a
1 See E. K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, II, 377, and A. F. Leach in the Fumivall Miscellany, pp. 223 fif. Professor Hardin Craig has suggested that the Ludus Coventriae (N-town cycle) belongs to Lincoln (University of Minnesota Studies in Language and Literature, I, 72).
^ The present manuscript, it will be remembered, is not the original (see below under "Date") and, according to Mr. Pollard, belongs to a considerably later date. We do not know whether this prologue was also in the original manuscript; hence what is said here regarding Manley may refer only to later performances, not to the initial one. In some points the prologue does not agree with the extant text of the play, but the differences cannot be discussed here.
' ' The name of this district is spelled Manlee and Manle in documents of 1284-85, 1316, 1428, and 1431 (see Feudal Aids, III, 184, 266, 363, 371).
THE ''CASTLE OF PERSEVERANCE" 45
district or wapentake in Lincolnshire, extending to within about 12 miles of Lincoln, on the north, this line reads, "ge manly men of Manlee, J?us Crist saue 30U all," with a play on the words manly and Manlee. In the fourth line we have, "Now, mercy be all Manlee, & wel mote je cheve." This conjecture supplies a word which in both lines fits into the alliterative scheme, satisfies the requirements of meter, and at the same time is motivated by the instinct for a play on words.
These two blanks are for the name of the district through which the play was announced; the blank for the town where the per- formance was to be given occurs in the following passage:
Jjese parcellis in propyrtes we purpose us to playe bis day seuenenyt, be-fore 30U in syth,
At on ])e grene, in ryall a-ray.
je haste 30U l^anne )?edyrward, syris, hendly in hyth.
All goode neyboris, ful specyaly we 30U pray, & loke f>at le be Jiere be-tyme, luffely & lyth.
If alliteration was intended in the third line, we should have to supply a town having a name beginning with g or with r. The old records show a number of villages with these initials in the wapentake of Manley — Gunnesse, Gamelsthorpe, Gunthorpe, and Gerlethorpe; Rysby, Redburne, and Roxby, for example^ — and it is possible that the writer was thinking of some such place, but the passage is not so heavily alliterated as the other one and this point should not be insisted on too strongly.
It is probable that more than one performance of the play was given by a company making a tour of the country. The diagram or plan of the scene which accompanies the prologue in the extant manuscript contains the following statement, written in the space included between the two circles which indicate the moat around the castle: " )?is is \)e watyr a-bowte )7e place, if any dyche may be mad, JTer it schal be pleyed, or ellys J>at it be strongely barryd al a-bowt." In other words, a ditch was to be dug if conditions allowed, but if this was not feasible a fence or barrier was to be built. This is apparently for the guidance of the stage-builders under the different conditions that they might meet in different towns.
1 Feudal Aids, III, 184, 266, 363.
46 WALTER K. SMART
To summarize: The available evidence indicates that the Castle of Perseverance was written in the neighborhood of Lincoln. Whether it was originally performed in that city or in some other place in the vicinity, we do not know. But if the previous conjecture is correct, at some time or other the play was given by a company touring through the wapentake of Manley. It was for the advance agents of this tour that the prologue was written, and it was this district that the writer had in mind when he made his hues alhterate on m. This theory, however, does not preclude the possibiHty that the company afterward went beyond the limits of Manley and gave performances in other parts of the county. If this was the case, we may assume that the vexillators simply inserted the names of the other districts without regard to the alhteration. But there is no evidence that the tour was actually thus extended.
DATE
The probable date for the writing of the manuscript of the Castle of Perseverance is given by Mr. Pollard as about 1440. He points out also that this manuscript is not the original copy and suggests that it dates from a time considerably later than that of the original.^
Concerning the time when the play itself was written, Mr. Pollard says: "How early in the fifteenth century we may place the Castle of Perseverance is a question which must be decided by philolo- gists, but on literary grounds I should like to place it as early as pos- sible, not much later than 1425. "^ In a previous discussion, the same writer suggested a time not "later than the middle of the reign of Henry VI, "^ that is, about 1440.
Professor Gayley assigns the date to about 1400,* and in one place comments as follows: "If the plays called the Pride of Life and the Castell of Perseverance date from the first decade of the fifteenth century, a^ appears to he established, they also must have been com- posed while the miracles were in process of formation,"^ etc. So far as I know, this date has never been "estabhshed," and I have not been able to find Mr. Gayley's proof for the statement. Neverthe-
1 Macro Plays, pp. xxxi-xxxii. ^ Ibid., p. xxiv; see also p. xxxii.
' A. W. Pollard, English Miracle Plays, Moralities, and Interludes, 1895, p. 197. - * C. M. Gayley, Plays of Our Forefathers, p. 293. ' Ibid., p. 281. The italics are mine.
THE "CASTLE OF PERSEVERANCE" 47
less I incline to his view and offer some evidence in support of this point.
The first bit of evidence is in lines 1061 ff., where Pride, in describ- ing the costume that Mankind should wear, says:
Loke Jjou blowe mekyl bost,
with longe Crakows on }>i schos; Jagge H Cloth is in euery cost,
& ellis men schul lete ]>ee but a goos.
Crakows — sometimes called "poleyns" and also "pykes" — were long, pointed toes on shoes. The expression "jagge ]?i clothis in euery cost" refers to the custom of slashing the edges of garments to show the rich coloring of apparel underneath.
The same combination of pointed shoes and slashed clothes occurs in several other poems and treatises, usually in passages satirizing excess in apparel. I have found the following examples:
ca. 1380. Tagged clothes and crakowe pykis.^ ca. 1395. Gutted clothes to sewe hir hewe, With longe pykes on hir shoon.^ ca. 1400. Cuttede clothes and pyked schone.' ca. 1400 [?]. Dagged clothes and longe pyked crakowed shon.*
Thus we have the two items, pointed shoes and jagged clothes, combined as in the Castle of Perseverance, in productions of about 1380, 1395, 1400, and in another poem which, so far as the evidence goes, may be placed about 1400 with as much certainty, at least, as it can be placed later.
References to pointed shoes alone occur in the years 1362-67,^ 1388,« 1393-98,^ 1409-10,^ 1450,9 and as late as 1463-64 a law was
* A treatise on Antecrist, quoted in New English Dictionary (under "Crakow").
» The Plowmans Tale, II. 929, 930; in W. W. Skeat, The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, VII, 176. Date in ihid., p. xxxiv.
' John Myrc, Instructions for Parish Priests, 1. 43. Tliis was supposedly written about 1400, according to O. F. Emerson, A Middle English Reader, 1908, p. 282.
* Kail, Twenty-six Political and Other Poems, E.E.T.S., p. 93. The editor does not give a date for this poem, but he says that it is by the author of the other poems in the collection, which he dates from 1400 to 1421 (see his Introduction).
* F. S. Haydon, Eulogium Historiarum, "Rolls Series," III, 230-31. The date of this entry is given in the chronicle as 1362; in the New English Dictionary, as 1367.
* "A Poem on the Times," in T. Wright, Political Poems and Songs, "Rolls Series," I, 275.
^ Piers Plovrman, C Text, XXIII, 219; see also B Text, XX, 218.
8 The Lanterne of Li^t, E.E.T.S., p. 132, 1. 7.
^ "On the Corruption of Public Manners," in Wright, op. dt., II, 251.
48 WALTER K. SMART
passed restricting the length of " pykes " on shoes.^ Jagged clothing is satirized about 1380,2 1393-98,3 and again in 1399."
It is a commonplace in the books on costume, such as those by Fairholt and Planche, that the two articles cited above are promi- nent features of dress in the reign of Richard II (1377-99). They were not, however, confined to that period, and consequently a reference to them in a play is not conclusive evidence that it was written at this time. Nevertheless, the massing of dates in the preceding list of satirical passages is significant. Since the majority of the references belong to 1400 or earUer, it is fair to assume that this is the time when, because of their comparative newness, these fashions aroused the most opposition. Later, as people became accustomed to them, we may suppose that even the moralists and satirists took them as a matter of course. Hence, when we find them referred to in a satire on dress in the Castle of Perseverance, there is some ground for placing the play near the beginning of the fifteenth century.
A similar argument may be deduced from another incident in the play. The account of the attack on the castle and a similar passage in the Reply of Friar Daw Topias (date, 1401-2) appear to have a common source (see the discussion under "Source"). Both of these accounts are also related to an episode in Piers Plowman (B Text, date 1377; C Text, 1393-98). Here, again, in the absence of proof to the contrary, it is more reasonable to assign the play to near the same general time than to place it later.
Moreover, in fines 1742-48 of the Castle of Perseverance, Detraccio
says
I make men masyd & mad, & euery man to kyllyn odyr with a sory chere. I am glad, be Saynt Jamys of Galys, Of schrewdnes to tellyn talys boJ?yn in Ingelond & in Walys,
& feyth I haue many a fere.
These fines may contain a reference to Owen Glendower's rebel- fion against Henry IV. Up to the time of Richard IFs deposition in
1 A. Abram, English Life and Manners in the Later Middle Ages, p. 155.
2 Chaucer's Parson's Tale (Globe ed., Macmillan) , p. 279, 11. 415 flf. , 3 Piers Plowman, C Text, XXIII, 143.
* Richard the Redeless, Passus III, 11. 145 ff., in Skeat, Piers the Plowman and Richard the Redeless, I, 619.
THE "CASTLE OF PERSEVERANCE" 49
1399, Wales had been comparatively quiet and peaceful. The Welsh were strongly attached to that ruler, and tumults became common after he was removed from the throne. In 1400, they broke into open revolt under the leadership of Glendower, a revolt that was characterized by cruelty and savagery on both sides. Henry IV led an expedition into Wales in 1402, but it was unsuccessful. Glen- dower's power was at its height in 1404. By 1408 South Wales was again in Henry's hands, and although the Welsh chieftain held out in the North, his power rapidly declined. In 1411, the trouble had so far subsided that a pardon was issued for all but two of the rebels.
The reference to England in the lines quoted, taken in conjunction with the reference to Wales — it seems to me that they are not brought together accidentally in the passage — suggests at once the rebellion of the Percies in 1403, which was closely connected with that of Glendower. Edmund Mortimer, a brother-in-law of Harry Hotspur, had married Glendower's daughter, and before the Percies revolted they had effected a coalition with the Welsh leader, who was already in arms. Many Welshmen joined the ranks of the Percies, and Glen- dower, it appears, was to have been with them at the battle of Shrews- bury. He did not arrive, however, and the rebels were defeated.^
This passage in the play, if we accept the interpretation presented above, gives us the year 1403 as a terminus a quo in determining the date. The statement is made in the present tense: Detraccio seems to be referring to events contemporaneous or at least recent. Hence, on this evidence, together with that furnished by the satire on costume and the connection of the play with Friar Daw and Piers Plowman, we shall probably be not far wrong in assigning the Castle of Perseverance to about the middle of the first decade of the fifteenth century, or in round numbers about 1405.
A SOURCE FOR THE CENTRAL EPISODE : THE SIEGE OF THE CASTLE^
The central episode in the Castle of Perseverance is the siege of the castle. The general outline of the situation is as follows: Man-
1 See the Dictionary of National Biography, article on "Owen Glendower." ^ A passage in Piers Plowman (A Text, Passus X; C Text, Passus XI) and one in Bishop Grosseteste's Castle of Love have been suggested as possible sources of the siege in the Castle of Perseverance. For a summary of these two passages, and Dr. Furni- vall's objections to them as sources, see Macro Plays, p. xxxix. See also W. Roy Mackenzie, "The Origin of the English Morality," in Washington University Studies, Vol. II, Part II, No. 2, pp. 157 ff.
50 WALTER K. SMART
kind has repented of his sins and has taken refuge in the castle as a defense against temptation. This castle is defended by the Seven Virtues, against whom the Seven Deadly Sins make three assaults to regain possession of Mankind. First, the Devil sends his army, consisting of Pride, Envy, and Wrath; then Caro (the Body) directs his forces, Sloth, Gluttony, and Lecherj^ to advance to the attack. These are beaten by the corresponding virtues, and retreat in con- fusion. Finally, at the command of the World, Covetousness advances, and with fair promises and glozing words persuades Man- kind to forsake the castle and follow him.
In this episode the significant features for our study are the arms of the Sins and their method of attack:
Pride bears the banner [1937, 2081].
Wrath bears "styffe stonys" and "slynges" many a "vyre" [cross-bolt] [2113].
Envjf has a bow [2160].
Gluttony carries faggots to set Mankind in a flame, and with meat and drink nourishes Lechery [1962, 2253, 2259]. He also has a lance [1964].
Lechery carries coals, and kindles a fire in Man's "towte" [2290-92].
Sloth bears a spade [2327, 2353].
Covetousness uses fair words and promises [2428 ff.].
Compare this equipment with that given in the followmg lines from the Reply of Friar Daw Topias (dated 1401 by Wright 1402 by Skeat).^ In this passage, Friar Daw, representing the mendicant orders, says to Jack Uplande, representing the WycliflEites:
It ar je that stonden bifore,
in Anticristis vauwarde,
and in the myddil and in the rerewarde,
ful bigly enbataihd.
The devel is jour duke,
and pride berith the baner;
wrath the is joure gunner,
envie is 30ur archer,
30ur coveitise castith fer,
jour leccherie brennith,
glotony giderith stickes therto,
and sleuthe myneth the wallis,
malice is jour men of armes,
and trecherie is jour aspie.
1 Wright, op. cit., II, 57, 58. For the date see ibid., p. xi, and Skeat, The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (Clarendon Press), VII, xxxvii.
THE "CASTLE OF PERSEVERANCE"
51
It is obvious that there is a relation between the Castle of Perse- verance and this passage, but before this matter is taken up, it is necessary to examine a passage in Piers Plowman, C Text, Passus XXII ff., which may be summarized as follows:
Unity or Holy Church is represented as a "pile" or fortress surrounded by a ditch [XXII, 358-66]. Conscience commands Christians to come into this fortress as a protection against their enemies. Antichrist advances against Conscience and Pride bears his banner. The attack is warded off by Nature, with his allies, Eld and Death, who kill many [XXIII, 69-109].
Fortune now sends Lechery, who bears a bow and many broad arrows. Then comes Covetise, whose weapon was "al wiles to wynne and to huyden; With glosynges and with gabbyngs he gylede the people." He is followed by Sloth, who "a slynge made, and threw drede of dispayr a doseyne myle a-boute" [XXIII, 110-164].
Finally, Conscience, immured in Holy Church, is besieged by the Seven Deadly Sins "that with Antecrist helden." Sloth "with hus slynge an hard saut he made," and with him were over a hundred proud priests that held with Covetise [XXIII, 212-27; 373-76].
The preceding details are scattered through a long passage in the poem. The author does not describe the attack definitely, and he introduces long digressions in the manner characteristic of the C Text.
In order to show the relation between the preceding three accounts, the significant features are given in parallel columns:
|
Castle |
Friar Daw |
Piers Plowman |
|
|
Antichrist |
not present |
present |
present |
|
Troop leaders |
World, Flesh, DevU |
Devil |
Fortune |
|
Pride |
bears banner |
bears banner |
bears banner |
|
Wrath |
bears stones; slings bolts |
is the gunner |
not present |
|
Envy |
has a bow |
is the archer |
not present |
|
Covetise |
uses promises, |
casts fire |
uses wiles, |
|
fair words |
fair words |
||
|
Lechery |
bears coals; |
burns |
bears bow and |
|
kindles fire |
arrows |
||
|
Gluttony |
carries faggots; |
gets sticks for |
not present |
|
feeds Lechery |
Lechery's fire |
||
|
Sloth |
has spade |
mines the walls [with spade ?] |
bears sling |
52 WALTER K. SMART
What is the relation between these accounts ? There are obvious points of similarity: the general situation is the same — an attack made by the forces of evil on a castle defended by the forces of good ;^ the equipment of Pride is the same in all, and the equipment or method of fighting employed by the other Sins is similar in nature although the various items are, in some cases, differently distributed among the Sins.
This similarity, however, does not prove a direct borrowing one from the other. The Piers Plowman version, which is incomplete and shows the greatest variation in details, is not the source of the other two.2 The accounts in Friar Daw and the Castle of Perseverance are more closely related. Friar Daw, however, is not derived from the Cattle, for this theory will not explain how Antichrist, who does not appear in the Castle, is found in Friar Daw and also in Piers Plowman, the earliest version of the three. On the other hand, the Castle of Perseverance is not based on Friar Daw, for in the matter of the equipment of Covetousness the Castle differs from Friar Daw and agrees with Piers Plowman. In other words, we have two accounts which are very similar but which differ in two important points: Antichrist and the arms of Covetousness. In the first point, Friar Daw agrees with Piers Plowman; in the other, the Castle agrees with Piers Plowman. Evidently these variations cannot be explained as original ideas introduced by one writer in the process of borrowing from the other.
Both the similarity and dissimilarity of the three versions can be most easily accounted for by assuming the influence of a common source, which each writer used more or less freely. In a diligent search I have not been able to find this source, and perhaps it is now lost. Presumably, however, it was an account of an attack made by Antichrist and his followers on religion or the church — so
' Although a fortress is not definitely mentioned in Friar Daw, it is clearly implied in the statement that "sleuthe myneth the wallis." The entire passage has the appear- ance of being a general summary of a more specific account.
^ Professor Skeat, in a note on the passage in Piers Plowman, calls attention to the lines in Friar Daw, and remarks that the author of the latter "seems to have read our author's account of Antichrist's battle-array carefully" (Piers the Plowman and Richard the Redeless, II, 277). If by this statement he means that the passage in Friar Daw is derived directly from the one in Piers Plowman, he is clearly mistaken.
THE "CASTLE OF PERSEVERANCE" 53
much may be gathered from the nature of the episode in Friar Daw and Piers Plowman; and it was, therefore, a part of the great body of Antichrist hterature and tradition which sprang up during the Lollard agitation in England.^
It was from this source, we assume, that the writer of the Castle of Perseverance borrowed the idea of an attack made on a castle by the Seven Deadly Sins equipped with specific arms. He naturally dropped the connection with Antichrist because that was foreign to his purpose. There is no evidence that he derived from this account the suggestion for the series of single combats between the Sins and the Virtues or for the division of the Sins into three troops under the leadership of the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. Both of these features are conventional elements in medieval literature, and it is quite possible that our author added them to his account on his own initiative, without direct influence from any source.^ It is probable, also, that he did not borrow from the Antichrist source either the arguments or the phrasing used in the dialogues between the Virtues and the Sins. In these matters he gives the definite impression of originahty.
^ The epithet "Antichrist" was constantly used by Wycliffe, his disciples, and his successors in referring to their opponents — the Pope, the bishops, the monks, and the friars. In turn, it was applied to the Wycliffites by the other party. Scores of cita- tions could be made to the use of the term in this connection.
2 These two features are found in the Castle of Love, which Professor Mackenzie thinks is the source of the play (^op. cit., pp. 157 S.). But in my judgment, the poem and the play have no specific points of resemblance which would indicate any direct relation between them.
THE CAPTIVITY EPISODE IN SIDNEY'S ARCADIA
Edwin Greenlaw University of North Carolina
Certain aspects of Sidney's story of the captivity of the two princesses by the wicked Cecropia (Arcadia, Book III) throw hght upon the pohtical and philosophical thought of the author. The episode as a whole refers, I believe, to Sidney's sense of the peril in the French marriage that seemed imminent at the time when he wrote Arcadia, while the debate between Cecropia and Pamela introduces an attack upon the Lucretian philosophy, in a passage notable also for its style and its relationship to Spenser and Milton. In order to get the situation clearly before the reader, I append an abstract of those parts of the episode that I propose to discuss.
I. Taking advantage of the withdrawal of Basileus from active direction of his kingdom, and desiring to secure the realm for herself through the mar- riage of her son to one of the two princesses, Cecropia seizes Pamela and Philoclea and shuts them up in her castle. She attempts to persuade Philoclea to accept the love of Amphialus, promising that the castle and the territories it controls shall be hers. To this Philoclea responds that she has vowed to remain a virgin until her death. Cecropia inveighs against such a vow, holding that marriage and children bring happiness and immortality. Failing to move Philoclea, the queen turns next to Pamela.
II. She finds Pamela making a purse, interweaving roses and Ulies that were not so fair as her lips and hands. The queen praises Pamela's beauty and its power, to which the girl replies that she had never thought of beauty as more than a pleasant mixture of natural colors, delightful to the eye as music to the ear; but without any further consequence, since it is a thing often possessed by beasts and even by stones and trees. Cecropia says this but proves the excellence of beauty, and especially of beauty in women. By it women surpass men in power since men win glory only through effort but beautiful women command it, or rather win it without commanding. Thus beauty is the crown of feminine greatness. To Pamela's remark that if it is of so great excellence, it ought never to be defiled, Cecropia argues that love is no defilement but beauty's right. As colors are valueless unless seen, so is beauty nothing without the eye of love to behold it. Beauty vanishes, devoured by Time; enjoy the heaven of your age, whereof you are sure, like a good householder who uses betimes that which cannot be pre-
54
THE CAPTIVITY EPISODE IN SIDNEY'S "ARCADIA" 55
lerved. The seasons teach the same lesson: in the April of your age, you hould be like April.
III. Pamela refuses to listen to this advice, whereupon Cecropia upbraids ler for fear and over-scrupulous conscience. Devotion [religion], she says, s indeed the best bond which pohtic wits have found to hold men to well- loing. As children must first by fear be induced to learn that which after- vards they see is for their good, so these bugbears of opinion brought by ;reat clerks into the world have served to keep men from faults which the vorld's vanities and the weakness of sense might otherwise have brought hem to. But Pamela should be too wise to heed such vulgar opinions. ' Fear, and indeed, foolish fear, and fearful ignorance, was the first inventor )f those conceits. For, when they heard it thunder, not knowing the natural ;ause, they thought there was some angry body above, that spake so loud; ind ever the less they did perceive, the more they did conceive." So they orgot that yesterday was but as today, and tomorrow will follow the same rack; all things follow but the course of their own nature, saving only man, ^^ho, while he strives by imagination to attain to things supernatural, only 3ses his natural felicity.
IV. Pamela's reply is a sustained and indignant repudiation of this fiechanistic philosophy. The order of nature is proof of constancy in the verlasting governor. Religion is not the product of superstitious fear hrough man's ignorance of the causes of things; each effect hath a cause; his is the basis of religion. For this goodly universe hath not his being by :hance, for eternity and chance are self-contradictory. That is chanceable v'hich happeneth, and if it happen, there was a time before it happened when t might not have happened. If it had a beginning, that beginning was not lerived from chance, for chance could never make all things of nothing, ind if there were substances before which by chance met to form the uni- 'erse, the argument is absurd, for then those substances must have been rom ever, and so eternal, and that eternal causes should have brought forth hance effects is as sensible as that the sun should be the author of darkness, ''urthermore, chance is variable, or it is not chance, but this universe is teady and permanent. If nothing but chance created the universe, the leavy parts would have gone infinitely downward, the light infinitely upward, ,nd so never have met to make up this goodly body. Perfect order, perfect )eauty, perfect constancy result not from chance. Furthermore, if you ay it is so by nature, this is to say it is so because it is so; if you mean of nany natures conspiring together, it is as if the elementish and ethereal tarts had a meeting in a town-house to set down the bounds of each one's iffiice; but there must have been a wisdom to make them concur. If you aean such a wisdom by nature, we are in agreement; but if by nature you Qean that which operates it knows not why, it is the same absurdity as your heorj^ of chance. The argument concludes with a defence of the omni- cience and providence of God.
56 EDWIN GREENLAW
I desire now to discuss briefly the four sections into which I have divided my summary. That Sidney felt the importance of his subject is evident in the style. As he proceeds, the eccentricities of the Arcadian rhetoric disappear. He writes with a passionate intensity that proves his sincerity. It is a carefully planned refuta- tion of a mechanistic philosophy that must have seemed to him a dangerous adversary. The fact that politics, ethics, religion, and a cosmic theory are all related to a discussion about love and beauty need not trouble us. Such a practice, in the age of // Cortegiano and the Faerie Queene, was thoroughly characteristic.
In a study of Arcadia published some years ago, I gave reasons for regarding the romance as an example of Elizabethan allegory, a sort of prose counterpart of the Faerie Queene, in which Sidney's intention, at least in part, was not vaguely moral but was intended to apply to political conditions in his own time and to the crisis that he saw was coming upon England.^ That crisis, I believe, was the conflict with Spain, with all that that conflict involved in Sidney's thought. But the French marriage, imminent in 1580 and for pro- testing against which Sidney was in enforced retirement at the time when he wrote Arcadia, was a phase in the larger conflict. Since Bartholomew, Englishmen had looked upon Catherine de Medici as a monster. She was the subject of many pamphleteering attacks.^ English translations of some of the most severe of these attacks were widely circulated. In English correspondence, she appears as "Mad. de la Serpen te."^ Knollys said that the French marriage was "plotted out by the serpentine subtlety of the Queen mother's head."* The marriage was regarded as a popish plot to get control of England and to prevent the formation of a religious (Protestant) league such as Sidney had in mind.^ There is abundant testimony to show that
1 Kittredge Anniversary Papers, 1913, pp. 322 ff. See especially pp. 336-37.
^ See Baird, The Rise of the Huguenots, I, 444 ff., for illustrations.
3 For example Hatfield House MSS, II, 30.
* Letter to Leicester, June 1, 1580. Calendar Domestic Papers, 1547-80, p. 658.
^ On this league, see his correspondence with Languet, passim. In 1576, he went 'to "Vienna, to condole with the Emperor Rodolphus on the death of his father. His real purpose was to awaken the Emperor to the danger from Rome and to form a
THE CAPTIVITY EPISODE IN SIDNEY'S ''ARCADIA" 57
Sidney, more than most of his contemporaries, possessed the faculty of visioning the tendencies of European pohtics not by sections affect- ing some particular matter of diplomacy, but as a whole. He was politically minded. Through the entire period from 1572 to 1580, abroad and at home, his letters and the testimony of his friends indi- cate his sense of the danger of what seemed to him to be the lethargy of those who should be about uniting Protestant Europe. When, in 1580, the French marriage seemed assured, his letter to the Queen, one of the boldest and sincerest analyses of the politics of that time that we have, showed his perception of the gravity of the situation. What wonder, then, in the retirement to which his imprudence forced him, seeking to divert his mind by the writing of a romance, that his romance itself should be colored by thoughts that had been his companions for ten years. I do not believe that he wrote the romance primarily as a political allegory. Basileus, of course, is not Elizabeth, but the Prince, the type of a prince misguided by want of perception of his duties, set over against Evarchus, type of princely wisdom. But Cecropia, dark, sinister, with something of the serpent about her, whose coup is in a sense the climax which arouses Basileus to a sense of his peril, is the Queen Mother of France. Her plot is to force a marriage with her son, just as Catherine sought to entrap Elizabeth into a marriage with Alengon. Since Sidney was treading dangerous ground, and also since the whole episode must fit the conditions of his comphcated plot, the situation is par- tially disguised. But I think it is impossible to study his char- acterization of Cecropia, a powerful and original portrait, without being reminded in many ways of Catherine. Her subtlety, her atheism, her worldliness, the suggestion of almost demonic personality, her plot to gain control of the realm of Basileus by means of this
religious alliance to meet the peril. See Birch, Memoir, I, 3; Zouch, pp. 88-89, 103. The correspondence with Languet shows that the two friends agreed that the Protestant princes of Europe were asleep, oblivious of their danger. See especially his letter of May 7, 1574, which expresses just such a situation as Basileus, retired from public responsibilities and following his own personal concerns, represents in Arcadia: "This at least is certain, that our princes are enjoying too deep a slumber: nevertheless while they indulge in this repose, I would have them beware that they fall not into that malady in which death itself goes hand in hand with its counterpart" (ed., Bradley, p. 66). See also the letter of May 28, 1574, and Languet's letters of May 7, 1574, December 3, 1575, and June 14, 1.577.
58 EDWIN GREENLAW
marriage, are parallels too close to escape notice.^ To these points should be added the facts that in his letter to the Queen, Sidney had called Alengon "the son of a Jezebel of our age," and that Clinias, '*a verball craftie coward" (Book II, chap, xxvii), who was "privie to al the mischievous devises wherewith she went about to mine Basilius .... for the advauncing of her son," reminds one of Simier, to whom Catherine intrusted the negotiations for the marriage. Simier is the Ape in Mother Hubberds Tale and Trompart in the Faerie Queene.
II
The second "incident" is the injunction of Cecropia to Pamela to make use of her beauty. The passage is one of many dealing with one aspect or another of what has been called the religion of beauty in women. Some elements in it remind one of the discussion about the power of beauty in the fourth book of II Cortegiano, and Sidney may very well have had that discussion in mind. The argument parallels closely that used by Braggadocchio in his encounter with Belphoebe {Faerie Queene, II, iii, 38 ff.), and Pamela's reply is similar to that of Belphoebe. The parallel has further interest because Braggadocchio is meant by Spenser to typify the same malign influence as Sidney embodies in his Cecropia. Moreover, the two writers are dealing with the same situation, for I think there is no doubt that Spenser is portraying the monstrous and absurd presumption of Alengon in his Braggadocchio, while Trompart represents Simier. The thing has become burlesque, because the
^ I have no space here for the discussion of the extent to which- these things were recognized by readers of the romance. It must be remembered, of course, that it was circulated only in MS until 1590, when the danger of the marriage had passed and the greater crisis of the clash with Philip had culminated in the Armada. I do not believe that Sidney wrote with propagandist design. He had done his utmost in his letter to the Queen. But when he wrote, his knowledge of life, his acquaintance with the great actors on the stage of Europe, and his ideal of what a prose poem should be, all combined to color his narrative. That Cecropia equals Catherine, therefore, indicates not so much formal allegorical intent as the sort of influence that we find in the writings of many other novelists. I append two characteristic references, however, to indicate that his contemporaries saw cryptic things in Arcadia. Harvey, in Pierces Supererogation (ed., Brydges, Archaica, II, 66), connects Sidney with Comines and remarks: "There want not some subtle stratagems of importance, and some politic secrets of privity." And Greville, in his Memoir, remarks that the intention of Arcadia ife to show that when princes put off public action they incur contempt and pave the way to the ruin of the state.
THE CAPTIVITY EPISODE IN SIDNEY'S "ARCADIA" 59
danger had passed when Spenser wrote the passage. Spenser's use of the incident here, and the parallel in motif between Braggadocchio's argument and that of Cecropia, indicate direct influence of the Arcadia upon the Faerie Queene. Finally, the entire situation is also an ana- logue to that of Comus. The passage, therefore, deserves to be brought into relation with a motif that runs through a considerable body of literature in the Renaissance.
Ill
The third and fourth "incidents" in my summary embody a criticism of the Lucretian physics that is remarkable for its vigor and the keenness of its analysis. The argument gets pretty close to one of the most famous theological and scientific debates of the Middle Ages: whether the world had a beginning. This was seemingly denied by Aristotle in the aphorism: "From nothing nothing can be made.'" Sidney's interest in the subject sprang, I beheve, from his intimacy with Duplessis Mornay.^ The two men had much in common, and some years later Sidney began the translation of his friend's book against atheism, in which are many suggestions of the Cecropia-Pamela debate.^ The book was directed especially against the Epicurean philosophy, and Lucretius is often singled out as the chief enemy of religion. Against the doctrine of chance stressed in De rerum natura, Duplessis argues for "a steadie and fast settled order, and every creature to do service in his sort." The "epicures," we read, are so "carried away and overmastered by the course of the world .... so as they can have no other course or discourse then
> On the debate in medieval times, see Duhem, Le Systeme du Monde, tome V, passim, especially his account of Roger Bacon (pp. 401 ff.) and of Albertus Magnus (pp. 432 ff.).
^ Sidney probably met this brilliant Huguenot scholar in 1572, just before Bartholo- mew, when he also became acquainted with Ramus (who was slain in the massacre) and Languet. These three men were notable influences in his life. In 1577, when he returned from his foreign travels filled with the determination to bring about a union of Protestant princes under the leadership of Elizabeth, Sidney found Duplessis in London and for eighteen months was intimately associated with him. See Memoires by Mme de Mornay, p. 117, cited Wallace, Life of Sidney, p. 183.
^ "A Woorke Concerning the truenesse of Christian Religion: Against Atheists, Epicures, Paynims, lewes, Mahumetists, and other Infidels. Written in French, by Philip of Mornay, Lord of Plessis and Marly. Begunne to be translated into English, by that honourable and worthy Gentleman, Sir Philip Sidney Knight, and at his request finished by Arthur Golding." I use the fourth edition, London, 1617.
60 EDWIN GREENLAW
the world." Against them "we alledge this principle of their owne, that naturally of nothing, nothing is made. It is the saying of Aris- totle, and the Schooles would have him by the eares that should denie it." Duplessis shows thorough study of the ancient theories of creation. In his discussion of Lucretius' argument about the comparative shortness of human annals, he translates several lines from De rerum natura. There are frequent references to Lucretius, indicating that Duplessis regarded him as a formidable adversary. As to the beginning of the world, he cites "the epicures" as acknowl- edging that "it had a beginning, howbeit by hap-hazard and not by providence," a statement which gives the mam thesis of Pamela's reply.
The attack on Lucretius by Duplessis was not the only sign of the influence of the great Latin poem on the thought of the time. Bacon's debt is unmistakable, and is more far reaching than we have supposed. That Spenser made use of the Lucretian philosophy, I have pointed out in an earlier essay.^ The most popular poem of the time in England was Sylvester's translation of the Divine Week by Du Bartas. In this poem, Du Bartas repeatedly inveighs against the cosmic theories of Lucretius; it might almost be said that his chief intention was to write a cosmological poem in answer to De rerum natura. The rising tide of interest in science, with its tendency, as many thought, to atheism, was reflected in EngHsh Hterature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in a way that anticipates the conflict between religion and science precipitated in the nineteenth century by the advent of Darwinism. The tendency of the new science was felt to be mechanistic, and the arch-fiend, the suggester of scientific investigation and therefore most fruitful abettor of atheism, was Lucretius.
That Sidney should have been influenced by French Huguenot writings against Lucretius is therefore easy to understand in view of his friendships and the natural propensities of his mind. But I believe that the passage now under discussion shows a keener analysis and a more careful study of the doctrine than he could have got merely from these secondary sources. To men Hke Duplessis, Languet, Du Bartas, and Sidney, the purpose of Lucretius must have seemed
1 "Spenser and Lucretius," Studies in Philology, October, 1920.
THE CAPTIVITY EPISODE IN SIDNEY'S ''ARCADIA" 61
twofold. First of all, he sought to destroy religion, not merely pagan rehgion but the religious instinct in man. Second, for the classical cosmogony, which during the medieval period was recon- ciled in its most important traits with the biblical account, he sub- stituted a mechanistic philosophy in which the fundamental prin- ciples were the doctrine of atoms (semina rerum) and the doctrine of chance. In brief, the essentials of his philosophy, as interpreted by the men with whom we are here dealing, were: (1) religion is founded on fear, and is to be dissipated by further knowledge; (2) the uni- verse had its origin not as the work of a divine creator but by the fortuitous meeting of substances (atoms) in space. Both these fundamental topics Sidney discusses.
In the third "incident," the theme is fear as the basis of religion. The argument of Cecropia, which is intended to paraphrase the Lucretian position, I have summarized at the beginning of this paper. In many places, Lucretius traces the growth of religion to fear spring- ing from ignorance. In Book V, he asks what causes have spread worship of the gods and filled towns with altars. One reason he finds in the regular succession of the seasons (compare "yesterday was but as today, and tomorrow will tread the same footsteps of his foregoers, so as it is manifest enough that all things follow but the course of their own nature, saving only Man") and of the celestial phenomena, due to causes of which men were ignorant.^ There follows immediately the passage which parallels very exactly Cecropia's reference to the thunder, thought to be the voice of angry gods because of human ignorance.^ The parallel is so close as to be almost a paraphrase. Pamela's statement: " You sale because we know not the causes of things, therefore feare was the mother of superstition," is almost a paraphrase of Lucretius' idea that fear holds in check all mortals because they see many phenomena in earth and heaven the causes of which they cannot discover.^ Even the reference to religious superstition as being fit to frighten children is suggested by several passages in the Latin poem.* Finally,
'Book V, 1. 1160. The quotation from Sidney is at p. 406 of the edition by Feuillerat.
2 Ihid., U. 1217 ff.
3 Book I, 11. 147 ff. 4 For example Book II, 11. 60 ff.; Ill, U. 85 Q.
62 EDWIN GREENLAW
Cecropia's insistence that nature follows an equable course while only man tortures himself into loss of his natural fehcity by these creatures of his imagination, represents just such a summary of Lucretius' whole position as would occur to a hostile critic eager to defend religion against its adversary.
IV
With Pamela's reply, we are brought face to face with the true problem. Lucretius argues that things did not come of nothing (Book I, 11. 160 ff.) or by design (Book I, 11. 1020 ff., and V, 420 ff.). He defines in several places the "first beginnings" (rerum primordia), or "substances" (materies), or "seeds of things" {semina rerum) that "fell into arrangements" and so brought, by chance, the uni- verse into being. ^ This Sidney replies to at great length. It is quite impossible to give the parallels in the space at my disposal. He says, in effect, that if the world is eternal, "as you imply," eternity and chance are insufferable. If it had a 'beginning, it is equally absurd to think that chance could make all things of nothing. Even the details of Lucretius' atomic theory appear in Sidney, who speaks of the doctrine of "substances" {materies) and subjects it to criticism. If there were substances, he says, which by chance met to make up the world, these substances were from ever and so eternal, and eternal causes cannot bring forth chanceable effects. And the argument of Lucretius that the heavy substances would have fallen downward through the empty void, and hght substances would have mounted upward indefinitely, had it not been for the fact that at quite uncertain times and uncertain spots they pushed themselves a little from their course and so clung together to form the world (Book II, 11. 196 ff.), Sidney rightly recognizes as the theory which he must overthrow. This passage is at the heart of the whole system of Lucretius, and that Sidney has it in mind is indicated by his sentence beginning: "If nothing but Chaunce had glewed these pieces of this All, the heavie partes would have gone infinitely downeward, the hght infinitely upwarde, and so never have mett to have made up this goodlie bodie." This sentence introduces a passionate attack on the entire doctrine of chance.
1 See Book I, 11. 1020 ff.; II, 11. 80 ff.; V, 11. 185 ff.
THE CAPTIVITY EPISODE IN SIDNEY'S "ARCADIA" 63
If there were space for arranging some of this material in parallel columns, I think we should find strong presumptive evidence for holding that Sidney wrote this chapter with the Latin poem before him or freshly in his memory. In any case, his chapter is remarkable for its recognition of the chief points in the Lucretian philosophy and for its direct reply to the atomic theory. It is this last point that is the most interesting. The doctrine of " substances " was not so easily grasped by men of Sidney's circle as the more general implications of the philosophy. That Sidney recognized its importance is another proof of his intellectual curiosity, and helps us to understand why a man like Bruno, himself deeply interested in the problem of the origin of the universe and deeply versed in Lucretius, should have dedicated to the young Enghshman a number of his philosophical treatises.
SPENSER APOCRYPHA
Frederic Ives Carpenter Chicago, Illinois
The list of Spenser apocrypha can be stretched to some dozen items, excluding therefrom obvious imitations of Spenser of later date. Several of these items are interesting in themselves, especially the translation of the Axiochus, the MS Dialogue on Ireland in which the names of Spenser's two sons are used as those of the interlocutors, and the little Latin chronicle by "E. S." entitled De Rebus Gestis Britanniae. The Axiochus has a curious history, which I will not go into here. The Dialogue is a very puzzling document, having obvious points of connection with Spenser, but a poor thing as a Uter- ary composition, and, I should say, offhand but confidently, not from Spenser's pen. The Latin chronicle I propose to describe and dis- cuss briefly in the following pages. ^
Almost everything in the Elizabethan period signed "W. S." has been claimed for Shakespeare at one time or another. As attention is more and more directed to the study of Spenser, we shall probably see a similar procedure in his case. Luckily or unluckily, the signature "E. S." seems to be of comparatively rare occurrence in Elizabethan times.
The httle book of Enghsh chronicles by " E. S.," which is described below, is catalogued under Spenser's name in Sayle's Catalogue of Early English Printed Books in the University Library, Cambridge. Mr. Francis J. H. Jenkinson, the librarian, states: "The attribution of this little book to Edmund Spenser rests on the evidence of the book itself, which seems to be almost conclusive."
Internal evidence is seldom conclusive, as I have found in this case. There is a certain amount of antecedent probability in the attribution to Spenser. There were very few other writers at the
1 Professor J. M. Manly first directed my attention to this volume. I am indebted to Dr. Pierce Butler, of the Newberry Library, Chicago, for suggestions and for assis- tance in several parts of this paper.
64
SPENSER APOCRYPHA 65
time with his initials.^ The author was obviously a university man. Spenser was deeply interested in antiquities and in the matter of the chronicles. His learning fitted him for the task, and the work might well have been written^ either as a college exercise or in the years immediately after his leaving college, about which we have so httle definite knowledge. Unfortunately, we lack sufficient specimens of Spenser's Latin prose style to warrant a comparison with the style of this book. It is written in a direct, matter-of-fact and prosaic mood, and little suggests the legend-lover of the Faerie Queene. But in writing prose Spenser adopted the prose mood. The style of the View of Ireland is nervous, ordered, direct, beyond that of most EHzabethan writers of prose.
"E. S." has a trick of citing Greek words (transliterated), as 76; " quern Graeci ab mergendo Baptismum dicunt " ; 18a; " monarchiam Graeci vocant"; cf. 39a. So, once or twice, Spenser. See View of Ireland (Grosart's ed., p. 91): "the Greek Scoto, that is, dark- ness."
That our author begins with Brutus and treats him as a historical figure,* while Spenser raised historic doubts about him,* is of little significance. Spenser's skepticism was very probably a development of later date.
That the printer-publisher was Henry Bynneman fits in very well with the theory of Spenser's authorship. Bynneman was the pub- Usher of the Theatre of Wordlings, the Spenser-Harvey Letters, and of some four others of Harvey's works. He died in 1583. He was thus associated with the Spenser-Harvey circle from 1569 until his
1 If Spenser's authorship is to be rejected, probably the next best guess would be Sir Edwin Sandys (1561-1629), Fellow at Oxford 1580, and the author of Europae Speculum, 1599.
- Its date is between 1572 and 1583. See below.
* Cf. however 3b-4a: "But since this ancient history of Britain seems in part ■ obscure through the lapse of time and lack of record and in part by the nature of the
events themselves unworthy of literary preservation, we shall omit," etc. (transl. by Dr. Butler).
* View of Ireland (Grosart, p. 65) : "But the Irish do herein no otherwise than our vain Englishmen do in the Tale of Brutus, whom they devise to have first conquered and inhabited this land, it being as impossible to prove that there was ever any such Brutus of Albion or England as it is that there was any such Cathelus of Spain." In the Faerie Queene, of course, the question is not raised. Brutus and the other legends are proper materia poetica.
66 FREDERIC IVES CARPENTER
death, and if the book were an academic production of Spenser's, perhaps written with the encouragement of Harvey, he would naturally be chosen as its publisher. Possibly the young Spenser, who was then trying his hand in many veins, wrote it at Bynneman's suggestion. Bynneman was given to the publishing of chronicles and of books in Latin.
On the other hand, there stands the lack of any positive evidence that the E. S. of this title-page was Edmund Spenser. Indeed, although the book was known in its day and went through later editions and although after the publication of the Faerie Queene everything from the poet's pen was eagerly sought for, there is no contemporary attribution of it to him. The nature of the work, however, its vehicle of Latin prose, and the early date of its publica- tion (ca. 1582), might account for this.
There remains the difficulty of its dedication "Ad Henricum Broncarem, Armigerum." Who was this Henry (or Sir Henry) Brouncker and what connection could Spenser have had with him ? The question remains to be studied. We cannot say that he was not of Spenser's circle. The more one investigates the details of Spenser's life the farther one traces the ramifications of his friendships. The Brounckers appear to have been a prominent family of the nobility and gentry. The Dictionary of National Biography notices only two of this name, both viscounts, dating 1620-84, and died 1688. Various other Brounckers, and Henry Brounckers, appear in other records. The family apparently was of Wiltshire.^ From these records, it appears that the Henry Brouncker, of Spenser's time, also was an office-holder in Ireland. Possibly a friendship begun in England may have been continued in Ireland.
1 See Wiltshire Archaeol. Society Publications, 3d ser., Ill, 242; Wiltshire Archaeol. Mag., XXVII (1894), 169-70 (a Henry Bronker of 1 Edward VI); XXXIV (1906), 88 (a Henry Brouncker in 1552); Hist. MSS Com., Salisbury MSS., IV, 624, etc. (letters from H. B.); Cal. of State Papers, Domestic, Edw. Vl-James I, II, 357, 361, 363; III, 508 (Henry Brouncker "surveyor of issues lost," 1594); VI, 208 (Sir Henry Broncker appointed "commissioner" in 1602), 299 (Lord Brouncker, 1603); VII, 476; J. G. White, Hist, and Topog. Notes, p. 264 (Raymond Fitzgerald "was executed for treason by Sir Henry Brouncker in the reign of Queen Elizabeth"); Liber Munerum Pub. Hib., Part II, p. 184 (Sir Henry Brounker, president of the Council of Munster, 1603 ff.)- I owe several of these references to Miss Durkee, of the Newberry Library.
SPENSER APOCRYPHA 67
The title-page is as follows:
De / Rebus Gestis / Britanniae Com- / mentarioli / Tres. / Ad Orna- lissimum Virum} M. Henricum / Broncarem Armigerum. / E. S. / [Sir Christopher Hatton's crest] Londini / Ex Officina Typographica Henrici / Binneman. / Cum Serenissima Regia Maiestatis Priuilegio.
It is a small volume (12mo), 1| by 4| inches, with occasional marginal dates.
The date may be fixed between 1572 and 1583. Bynneman was printing in London 1566-83.^ The last event referred to in the book is the Rebellion in the North of 1569-70, and there is probable refer- ence on the last page to the death ("supplicio") of the Duke of Northumberland August 22, 1572. Circa 1582 may be conjectured as the probable date of publication, and circa 1573 as that of the date of composition. There appears to be no entry of it in the Stationers Register, possibly because it was issued "cum privilegio."^
As a compendium of English history, the book seems to have enjoyed a sort of vogue. Three other editions are on record:*
1. At Hamburg, Apud. Theodosium Wolderum, 1598, 8vo. 132 pp.
2. Historia Britannica, Hoc est, De rebus gestis Britanniae seu Angliae
Commentarioli tres Quibus accesservnt praeter generalem AngUae
descriptionem, Marginalia & Index rerum copiosus. Ambergae: typis lohannis Schonfield. 1603. 12mo.
Sig. A 4r-H 5 is a reprint of Bynneman's edition.
3. At Oxford. Excudebat Leonard Lichfield, Impensis Matthiae Hunt. 1640. 12mo. A reprint of the 1603 edition, omitting some of the foreign additions, and adding a Latin address to the reader, signed M. H.*
The three books cover: Liber I, from Brutus to the Saxons (folios 2a-15a); Liber II, the Saxons to the Norman Conquest (folios 16a- 206) ; Liber III, William the Conqueror to Ehzabeth (folios 21a-56a). The first book is naturally the most interesting in relation to the question of Spenser's authorship. So far as my examination goes, the evidence is inconclusive. Naturally many of the legendary
1 Spenser uses the same form of address preceding his Latin verses to Harvey, 1580.
^ Cf. Henry R. Plomer, in The Library, July, 1908, on Bynneman.
* There are copies in the British Museum, the University Library, Cambridge, the Newberry Library, Chicago, and probably elsewhere.
^ Cf. Brit. Mus., Cat. of Printed Books, 1895, p. 44, "S— Sacerdote."
^ Details as to these editions supplied by Mr. H. R. Plomer.
68 FREDERIC IVES CARPENTER
stories are omitted from the compact confines of a compendium of this sort with a distinct prose purpose which the poet later utihzes in the leisurely poetical progress of the Briton moniments of Faerie Queene, II, x, and III, iii. Naturally, also, there is occasional diver- gence in the stories in common. But a closer study may reveal significance and probable evidence in these variations.
A running and highly condensed account of the contents of this book may suggest the lines of such a study. I omit minor names and incidents.
"Brutus Troiaiius," his arrival in Britain; founds Troynovant [Londin- um] ; reigns twenty-four years. Brutus succeeded by his son Locriue in the middle part [Anglia], Albanact in the northern part [Scotia], and Canibrus in the west [Wales]. Locrine wars upon the Scj^thians or Huns; marries Gwendolen. Estrild and Sabrina [3a], Madan's reign and his death by wolves. Mempritius a degenerate. Ebrancus, his twenty-one wives and fifty children. Bladud introduces Greek arts and disciplines and founds a "scholam sen Academiam" at Stamford.^ Rivallus. Ferrex and Porrex and end of the line of Brutus. The Ferrex and Porrex passage may be quoted as a specimen :
"Longo satis intervallo Ferrex & Porrex fratres una remp. Britannorum partitis temporibus administrabant. Hos inter, ut fit, cooritur de potentatu dissentio, atque re ad arma vocata, longius ab iis fraternum nomen abest, alterumqwe alter hostium in numero habet. In ilia contentione Ferrex a fratre interficitur. Ea re mater adolescentum incitata, ut iis conclusa sit fabula, furere, &, quo pia videatur, impium exemplum alterius fratris filii sui sanguine expiare contendere. Nullam igitur moram mulier ad negotium intulit, Porrigemciite nihil sibi a matre metuentem, in suo lectulo trucidavit. Quo scelere etiam, ut nihil deese fato videretur, stirps generis & seminis Bruti, postquam imperium in hac insula 616 annis repetetis atque enumeratis temporibus obtinuisset, extincta est."
Thereafter civil wars. Dunnuallus reunites a single kingdom. His sons BeUnus and Brennus. Gurgustus. Foreign incursions. Spain, Ireland colonized [56]. Morindus. Elidure. Elia. Ludus. Caesar's invasions [66]. Guiderius. Arviragus. Christianity introduced 189 a.d. Lucius. Carassus. The Scotch wall. Asclepiodatus. Constantius. Vortiger. Hengist. Arthur [14a]; after his death the Britons driven into Cambria [Wales]. The Seven Saxon kingdoms: "AngUa," 589 a.d.
1 Is mention of the foundation of the school at Stamford to be found in any of the other English chronicles ? Was E. S. especially interested in it ? Ralph Church in his edition of Spenser claims that Spenser visited Northamptonshire (where Stam- ford is).
SPENSER APOCRYPHA 69
The second book concerns us less. The account (166) of the foundation of Cambridge University, 636 a.d., may be significant if written by a graduate or student therein. "E. S." gives it priority in date to Oxford, whose foundation he puts in 872 a.d. (17a).
Book III is condensed chronicles. Little of the period covered figures prominently in Spenser's poetry. The building of the Tower of London (23a) may have been a subject to interest one born almost under its shadow. Cambridge is mentioned again at 236, in connec- tion with the sojourn there of Henry I. The author's interest seems to center on the reigns of Edward III and Henry VIIL To each he gives nine pages out of his scanty one hundred and twelve in all. His rehgious sympathies are revealed in his account of the introduc- tion under Bloody Mary of "pontificias caeremonias superstitionem que .... contra voluntatem & testamentum patris." The final two pages on the reign of Elizabeth merely mention her restoration of true religion, reform of the coinage, the case of one More who pre- tended to be Christ, the loss of Newport, the plague of such severity "ut Londini, 8 minus mensium spatio, 23660 homines consumpti perierint," and the Rebellion of Northumberland and Westmoreland in the North. The concluding paragraph serves the purpose of a preface and of the author's apology:
Habes tandem, Ornatissime Broncar, usque ad memoriam nostram, de rebus gestis Britanniae commentariolos meos: quos his paucis proximis diebus^ non ut perficerem, aut illustrarem ipse, sed ut aliorum excitarem studia, qui id optime facere possunt, informavi. Dolendum enim est his- toriam hanc, quae tot, tantas, & tarn praeclaras res contineat, ita jacere. Nam cikn non ferenda Anglicanorum turba scriptorum videatur, turn nescio quid in Polidoro desidero. Non quo taraen huic nihil deesse libeUo putera, e6 dico : cui nihil adesse praeter orationis, si forte, quod secutus sum, lumen prae me fero: caetera enim, uti dixi, consult6 praetermisi, atque ad eos, qui historiam harum rerum, aut pauUo plenius, si placet, commentarium aggresiuri sunt, religavi. Haec interim alicui, dum ilia venient, usui esse possunt, & turn fortasse poterint.
I leave to others the investigation of the author's relation to Polydore Vergil and the crowd of English writers.
1 The phrase suggests a space of tune between the writing and the last events narrated.
ANOTHER PRINCIPLE OF ELIZABETHAN STAGING
George F. Reynolds University of Colorado
Scholars are fairly well agreed as to the use of the rear stage of the Elizabethan theater: for practically all discoveries; for scenes using such settings as a shop, study, tent, arbor, cave, cell, tomb — which were either different ways of arranging the rear stage itself or structures placed upon it; for such formal scenes as parliaments, senates, councils, trials before a bench of judges; for scenes requiring three doors — not necessarily for those using merely three entrances; for parts of a scene supposed to be in a room, tent, or the like, when the front stage is the street or space in front of it; and for the gate of a castle or city or when in other ways the entrance to the balcony is emphasized. Some years ago, in discussing these uses ("WiUiam Percy and His Plays," Modern Philology, October, 1914), I suggested that the Elizabethan theater had the custom of holding the rear stage for recurring scenes with properties, even though it led to the placing of some properties in intervening scenes on the front stage. Here I wish to present the evidence in support of this suggestion limiting my field, as before, to the plays given at the first Globe theater and at the first Fortune theater, since we know, from the con- tract for erecting the latter, that these two playhouses were ahke in all important stage arrangements. Such a limitation makes possible greater precision and certainty of statement ' it is easy enough to imagine methods of staging individual plays, but when a plan, pre- cisely indicated by the directions of one play, can be shown to suit all the plays produced in the same circumstances, such an explanation certainly gains in probability and significance.
The idea that a rear stage-setting once arranged was left undis- turbed until no longer required is definitely suggested by the explicit directions of The Honest Whore, Part I. Because this play was acted at the Fortune in the same year that it was published, and because its t-ext is not far removed from that of the performance, as appears
70
ANOTHER PRINCIPLE OF ELIZABETHAN STAGING 71
from the direction, "Enter Towne [an actor] like a Sweeper" (V, 2), its evidence is notably trustworthy. The recurring setting in this play is that of a shop in which "fine hoUands, fine cambrics, fine lawns" are displayed for sale (I, 5; II, 1; III, 1; IV, 3). The significant fact is that properties in intervening scenes are shown by the directions to have been brought in: II, 1, a stool (the text shows more were brought later) and toilet articles; III, 3: "Enter Bellafront with lute, pen, ink, and paper being placed before her"; IV, 1: "Enter a Servant, setting out a table, on which he places a skull, a picture, a book, and a taper." But before and after the shop scenes, the rear stage is used in I, 3 for the discovery of a woman on a couch or bier — before the curtain there was perhaps a table; and in V, 2 for the disclosure of insane people on exhibition. In this play, then, it does seem that the authors intentionally provided for properties on the front stage to avoid interference with the recurring rear stage-setting.
Can this principle be applied more widely ? Certainly the reason is sufficiently general — the desire to avoid labor, delay, and the noise of scene-shifting. Of course, it does not explain why all properties on the front stage were placed there. Banquets, for instance, were commonly not "discovered" but "served in," perhaps for the pro- cessional effect. The stocks in which Kent was placed in King Lear (II, 2) were brought in for no apparent necessity of staging; perhaps it was to get him out on the front stage nearer to the audience. The presence of such properties on the front stage needs thus to be otherwise explained, but this principle of leaving undisturbed a recurring rear stage-setting by placing interfering properties on the front stage seems illustrated in a fair number of the plays given by the Lord Chamberlain-King's company i^
The Captain: 1613, 1647: A room, entrance to which suggests (III, 4; IV, 4) that it was on the rear stage: I, 3; III, 4; IV, 4, 5. On the front stage: seats, III, 3.
Catiline: 1611, 1611: Senate: IV, 2; V, 4, 6. On the front stage: seats, IV, 4.
1 The first date is that commonly assigned to the first performance; the second is the date of publication. In general, front stage properties of only intervening scenes are mentioned.
72 GEORGE F. REYNOLDS
Coriolanus: 1609,1623: Gates to Corioli: 1,4,7. Or the curtains may have remained open, scenes 4-9. On the front stage, two stools, 1,3.
Cymbeline: 1607, 1623: Before a cave: III, 3, 6; IV, 2 and per- haps 4. Dr. Forman described this cave as in a wood.
The DeviVs Charter: 1606, pubHshed as given at court and after- ward revised by the author, 1607. These circumstances give its evidence less weight, but it can be arranged for a public stage, espe- cially if IV, 4, is disregarded, which McKerrow says is an excrescence on the plot and at variance with the rest of the play. Study: I, 4; IV, 1 ; V, 4, 6. On the front stage: in the prologue, one, perhaps two, tents and a chair; chair brought in, I, 5; throne before walls, II, 1; post, III, 4; table brought in, IV, 3; tent, IV, 4; chair, bed, IV, 5; a cupboard of plate brought in and "enter a table spread," V, 4, the scene ending in the study; chair and table, V, 6.
The Merchant of Venice: 1594, 1600: Caskets, I, 2; II, 7, 9; III, 2.
The Revenger's Tragedy: 1606-7, 1607: The "unsunned lodge,"
III, 4; V, 1.
The Tempest: 1610-11, 1623: In or before the cell, I, 2; III, 1;
IV, 1; V, 1. In III, 3, a banquet is brought in and the table later removed.
Troilus and Cressida: 1601-2, 1609: Before the tent of Achilles, II, 3; III, 3; V, 1; of Calchas, V, 2. Act III, 2, has a line "here i' the orchard." Perhaps this play does not illustrate a recurring rear stage scene, since the interior of the tents need not be seen. Possibly only the closed curtains of the rear stage were employed.
Plays of the Lord Admiral's company also show recurring set- tings, but, except for The Honest Whore, raise certain questions. Patient Grissel (1598, 1602) has so simple a recurring property that it may be thought as insignificant as the molehill of Henry VI, Part III, I, 4; II, 5. In Patient Grissel, it is a hat, gown, and pitcher hanging on the wall in II, 2, and III, 1; and taken down in IV, 1. The same scene, without the hat, gown, and pitcher, occurs perhaps in I, 1, and V, 2. If these scenes were on the rear stage, then the growing osiers, cut in III, 2, were probably on the front stage. In IV, 2, a cradle, and in IV, 3, many stools are brought and perhaps a table.
ANOTHER PRINCIPLE OF ELIZABETHAN STAGING 73
Questions raised by the other plays, either of the Chamberlain's or the Admiral's company, are not very serious ones. Resting as it does on convenience, the principle of placing recurring settings on the rear stage is sometimes departed from when to do so is easier than to observe it. Thus in Sejanus (King's, 1603, 1605) the senate sits in III, 1, and in V, 10, but in V, 4, a statue and an altar were used on the rear stage. It should be noted that this play was rewritten before publication and is therefore of uncertain value as to staging, but in any case to hold the rear stage unused through so much of the play would hardly be expected. Similarly, The Brazen Age, a play Mr. W. W. Greg identifies with 1, 2 Hercules, which was given by the Admiral's company in 1595-96, and for which properties were bought in December, 1601, has an altar in I, 3 (p. 183) and in V, 3 (p. 247). Intervening are several different settings probably used on the rear stage. Exceptions of this kind, however, prove little against the general principle.
More important, therefore, are the questions concerned with staging such plays as The Spanish Tragedy, Faustus, and Volpone. The Spayiish Tragedy, first produced about 1586, was revived in 1597, and again with additions by Jonson in 1602. Greg questions whether the quarto of 1602 gives these additions as most scholars have sup- posed, but if it is the version given at the Fortune, there was the recurring setting of the arbor or bower, II, 4; III, 12a; and IV, 2. Besides the orchard in which the arbor stood and seats for Revenge and the ghost of Andrea, there were on the front stage the throne of I, 3, and perhaps III, 1; the banquet, I, 5; the stake, III, 1; and the ladder from which Pedringano was "turned off" in III, 6. Prob- ably the curtain which hid Horatio's body from the court in the gallery was also "knocked up" on the front stage.
In Doctor Faustus, first given, perhaps, in 1588 and provided with additions in 1602 which are supposed to be printed in the quarto of 1616, the recurring setting is the study of Faustus, which is surely used in scenes 1 and 5, and perhaps in scenes 11 and 14 (I use Neilson's numbering, though he prints from the quarto of 1604). As for the front stage, I see no reason for placing scene 3 in a grove as Neilson does, but there is a grove in which soldiers conceal themselves in a scene added after scene 10; there is a banquet and "St. Peter's chair,"
74 GEORGE F. REYNOLDS
to which the Pope mounts from the back of Bruno, in scene 7; and this "chair" probably served as well for the throne of the emperor, mentioned in the 1616 directions of scene 10. The grove scene also uses three doors, so that it is possible that the rear stage was cleared for it, and the rear door exposed. The stage could then have been reset as the study during the first fifty lines of the next scene, before Faustus sits in his chair and sleeps. No other difficulty arises except that in the last scene of the 1616 version there is ''Musicke while the Throne descends" and "Hell is discouered." The descending throne I shall return to later. "Hell" may have been merely a trap- door from which rose smoke and light, but it is described with some detail in the text and may have been spectacularly represented on the rear stage, in which case this was not reset as the study after scene 10. The study setting is not necessarily used after that scene.
Volpone, acted by the King's men in 1605 and published in 1607, offers apparently two series of recurring settings which interfere with each other. The one series is that of the trial scenes, IV, 4-6; V, 10, 12. Act V, scene 11, is almost the best example of an interpolated front stage scene one can find. Volpone, while the Avocatori read over his papers, is left alone on the front stage ; after this short scene of twenty-two lines, the trial is resumed. But it also seems certain that Volpone's room with its couch, treasure, etc., must be on the rear stage, and this setting is used in I, 1-5; HI, 3-9; and V, 1-3. It is significant, however, that in the last group of scenes, which are the ones which break into the other series, Volpone's couch is not shown and Volpone "peeps from behind a traverse." On the front stage, then, there would be in this scene — and they are, we may note, precisely arranged for in the text (V, 2, 81) — a chair, perhaps a table, and a chest of treasure. On the front stage, too, would be exhibited the tortoise shell of Sir Pohtic (V, 4), as well as the platform erected in II, 1-3. Unusual as these last properties may be, they raise no difficulties of staging, and thus Volpone, which seems at first to offer a violation of the principle of recurring properties, really is an especially interesting illustration of it.
What, then, does it all come to ? Here are some fifteen plays from a very limited possible number, in which the principle that a rear stage setting, once arranged, should be left undisturbed until it was
ANOTHER PRINCIPLE OF ELIZABETHAN STAGING 75
no longer needed, never contradicts the definite stage directions, and in a great many cases makes clear why certain properties were brought in instead of "discovered." Except for one or two easily accounted for exceptions, it does not come into conflict with any of the uses I have suggested for the rear stage. Plays at court sometimes may seem to require two rear stages, as, for instance. The Devil's Charter, with its tents and study; l)ut at court the rear stage must have been represented by a special structure, and there might as well have been two or three as one. Thus at court the principle of simultaneous setting was more obviously illustrated than on the public stage. If the court versions were repeated in the theater — and this might well be popular — the rear stage could take the place of one of the struc- tures, as I have suggested for the study in The DeviVs Charter: and the tent, if there was one, would be erected on the front stage as was Richard's in Richard III, V, 3. This would only make more clear what was always true, that the fundamental conception of the Elizabethan stage was medieval, easily admitting simultaneous settings.
For that is what this principle of recurring settings surely con- firms. It explains but has no relation to the discredited "alterna- tion" theory, which, however, Mr. R. Compton Rhodes in The Stagery of Shakespeare, 1922, a book i^ingularly neglectful of Ameri- can research, shows an inclination to revive. That theory, based on modern conceptions, saw every scene with properties as a rear stage scene, but it proved untenable as soon as any general apphcation was attempted. The plays here cited show that the principle of recurring settings places on the front stage seats, tables, the ladder used in executions, and a few less common properties. To these nobody will now probably object, though a few years ago even the two stools of Coriolanus, I, 3, were considered clear indications of a rear stage scene.
But the "trees" and the throne or "state" are also shown to have been sometimes placed on the front stage. It is not necessary to suppose that they were fixtures there, though the "trees" are so casually and so frequently called for despite their almost certain unwieldiness that it does seem they must always have been at hand. Thus in King Lear, V, 2, it was quite unnecessary for Edgar to tell his
76 GEORGE F. REYNOLDS
father, "Take the shadow of this tree For your good host/' and such instances are common. If the "trees" were always on the stage, they surely could not have been placed on the rear stage, and its low ceihng could have allowed nothing more than shrubs. Possibly for the orchard of The Spanish Tragedy or the woods of Cymbeline, small "trees" may have been placed in the rear stage beside the arbor or cave or cell, which would assume that these were structures and not arrangements of the stage itself. But the tree climbed in The Thracian Wonder (1598, 1661; II, 2) could not have stood on the rear stage, for lack of height. Moreover, the preceding scene shows a council, usually set on the rear stage, and the following scene has a table and tapers for a shrine. Old copies have the direction "Pythia speaks in the music room behind the curtain," which Hazlitt interprets as "above." At least it does not sound as if she were on the rear stage. If the tree could have stood on the rear stage, there would have been in such a sequence of scenes inevitable and vexatious delays while the stage was reset, and there are a great many such instances. It seems to me, therefore, that sometimes, at least, "trees" did stand on the front stage, and that, indeed, they usually stood there; hence it is no evidence against the principle of recurring properties that it necessitates this position for them.
And similarly with the throne. Mr. W. J. Lawrence in the Texas Review, January, 1918, argues at some length that it was usually placed on the rear stage. If so, there must have been many delays occasioned by removing it and rearranging the stage, yet the avoid- ance of these delays is the main reason for making any plan of Eliza- bethan staging at all. An example of an instance where such a delay would occur is the added scene to Doctor Faustus where soldiers lie in ambush in a wood for Faustus and three doors are used; the preceding scene uses a throne. What also is to be done with the throne almost certainly used in Hamlet from which the king watches the "play" with its use of the arbor (Qi), and therefore of the rear stage ? Mr. Lawrence tries to explain away the familiar reference to the throne in The Gull's Hornbook, in which the gallant is told to plant himself " on the very Rushes where the Commedy is to danc^, yea and under the state of Cambises himself." But surely the gallant was not to seat himself on the rear stage, where he could neither
ANOTHER PRINCIPLE OF ELIZABETHAN STAGING 77
see nor be seen most of the time. A passage a little farther on supports this objection, for he is directed "to creepe from behind the Arras with [his] Tripos or three-footed stoole in one hand and a teston mounted betweene a fore-finger and a thumbe in the other." Is it too fanciful to think that this throne, surely with its dais and its canopy a cumbersome affair, when not in use, was swung up for storage in the hut above the stage ? At least Henslowe paid £7, 2s. in June, 1595, for constructing one in the "heavens," and for other carpenter work {Henslowe' s Diary, 4, Greg ed.), and Jonson in the prologue to Every Man Out of His Humor ridicules plays in which a "creaking throne comes down the boys to please," that is, as part of the action as in Doctor Faustus, 1616, Act V. How could the throne be lowered from the hut through the balcony to the rear stage ? Nothing would interfere with its descent to the front stage, and once there it would be easier to leave it than to push it back behind the curtains, especially if the floor of the rear stage, was as seems not improbable, raised a little. Mr. Lawrence is quite right in saying that there is nothing to show that the throne stood per- manently on the stage; it may even have been removed in an inter- mission of a play. Finally, it may be worth noticing that we have no directions for putting a real throne in place — the one prepared in Satiromastix and mentioned by Lawrence is only a makeshift — and very few discoveries of persons on it.
There is no very forceful reason for doubting the truth of this principle that recurring settings were held undisturbed on the rear stage, except that it necessitates placing "trees" and the throne on the front stage, and this objection owes most of its weight to our purely modern aversion to properties there. The Honest Whore is enough in itself to show that the Elizabethans did not share in this feeling. The principle seems to me, therefore, worthy of considera- tion, especially since it harmonizes so easily with the suggested uses of the rear stage. In conjunction with those uses and with the various survivals of medieval customs which I have elsewhere described and pointed out in the plays, it provides a fairly comprehen- sive and consistent explanation of the staging of the drama presented at the Globe and the Fortune during the period of Shakespeare.
SHAKESPEARE AS A WRITER OF EPITAPHS
Joseph Quincy Adams Cornell University
Shakespeare is well enough known as a writer of comedies, his- tories, and tragedies, of amorous poems in the jeweled style, of son- nets, and of songs; one hardly thinks of him as a writer of epitaphs. Yet Jonson and other poets of the day exercised their pens in devising monumental inscriptions to their "peace-parted" contemporaries, and Shakespeare may occasionally have done likewise. In early tradition, at least, he enjoyed no little fame as a maker of tomb verses; and, though supporting evidence naturally is for the most part either weak or entirely lacking, mere tradition is of interest when it concerns our greatest literary genius. I have therefore thought it worth while to assemble all that relates to Shakespeare in this curious capacity.
And first, as giving some indication of his style in sepulchral
composition, we may examine the epitaphs embodied in his plays.
We call to mind at once the lines inscribed on the monument erected
to Marina (Pericles, IV, iv, 34^3) beginning:
The fairest, sweet'st and best lies here,
Who wither'd in her spring of year:
She was of Tyrus the king's daughter,
On whom foul Death hath made this slaughter.
Pericles, however, was mainly the work of another playwright, probably George Wilkins, and it is very doubtful whether Shakespeare can be held responsible for the fictitious epitaph of the heroine. Moreover, the lines, in their painful effort at metrical regularity, and their straining for rhyme, are peculiarly characteristic of Wilkins.^ It is more likely that Shakespeare composed, if not both, at least one of the epitaphs carved on the gravestone of Timon of Athens:
Here lies a wretched corse, of wretched soul bereft:
Seek not my name: a plague consume you wicked caitiffs left!
Here lie, I, Timon, who, alive, all living men did hate:
Pass by, and curse thy fill; but pass, and stay not here thy gait.
1 On this point see H. Dugdale Sykes, Sidelights on Shakespeare, 1919, p. 156.
78
SHAKESPEARE AS A WRITER OF EPITAPHS 79
Save when read in character, neither of these Timon epitaphs can be regarded as a very creditable performance; yet they are not inferior specimens of the then popular "sepulchral epigram," and are perhaps no worse than the verses carved on the dramatist's own grave- stone, which early tradition unanimously assigns to the master himself:
Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear To dig the dust encloased here. Blest be the man that spares these stones; And curst be he that moves my bones.
Dowdall, in 1693, quotes the church clerk to the effect that these lines were written by Shakespeare "himself, a little before his death"; and another writer, gathering his information at Stratford in 1694, states that they "were ordered to be cut by Mr. Shakespeare" upon his tomb. The verses, however rude, have a clear meaning, vigorously expressed ; and even their deficiency in hterary merit can be explained. As Wilham Hall, a graduate of Oxford who visited Stratford near the close of the seventeenth century, wrote to Edward Thwaites, later Regius Professor of Greek and Whyte Professor of moral phi- losophy at Oxford:
The little learning these verses contain would be a very strong argument of the want of it in the author, did not they carry something in them which stands in need of a comment. There is in this church a place which they call the bone-house, a repository for all bones they dig up, which are so many that they would load a great number of waggons. The poet, being willing to preserve his bones unmoved, lays a curse upon him that moves them; and having to do with clarks and sextons, for the most part a very ignorant sort of people, he descends to the meanest of their capacities.
That the charnel-house at Stratford was unusually repulsive,
O'er-cover'd quite with dead men's rattling bones. With reeky shanks, and yellow chapless skulls,^
we know from various sources. In Notes of a Visit to Stratford, 1777, printed in Defoe's Tour, 1778, appears the statement: "At the side of the chancel is a charnel-house, almost filled with human bones, skulls, etc."; and Ireland declared in 1795 that it contained "the largest assemblage of human bones" he had ever seen. At Stratford, as elsewhere, the constant interment of new bodies in the church
* So Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, IV, i, 82-83, describes a charnel-house, doubt- less from early recollection of the one in Stratford.
80 JOSEPH QUINCY ADAMS
led to the removal of the remains of persons formerly buried there,
the bones being hurled ''like loggats" into the adjacent charnel,
Shakespeare cj revulsion at the custom, clearly expressed in Hamlet,^
was shared by others; for example, by Sir John Birkenhead, who
ordered that his body should be buried not in the building but in the
yard: "his reason was because, he said, they removed the bodies out
of the church."^ By means of the pathetic appeals, "Good friend,
for Jesus' sake," and "Blest be the man," and of the final vigorous
malediction —
Curst be he that moves my bones,
the dramatist was seeking to prevent the sextons from "knaving him"' out of his grave. In this effort he was successful. Dowdall, who visited Stratford in 1693, quotes the church clerk, said to be then more than eighty years of age, as declaring that "not one" of the sextons, "for fear of the curse above-said, dare touch his gravestone," even though "his wife and daughters did earnestly desire to be laid in the same grave with him." Other persons interred near Shake- speare suffered, we know, the very fate he was trying to avoid; for instance, his own daughter, Susanna, was dug up in 1707, and her bones thrown into the charnel to make room for a certain incon- spicuous Mr. Watts. The poet's shrewd forethought, however, secured adequate protection for his own dust. The workmen who excavated a vault next to his grave in 1796 testified to the fact that the earth over his coffin had never been disturbed; and so, in all probabihty, his body, long ago peacefully compounded with clay, will rest undisturbed until this world wears out to nought.
Thus the lines were admirably adapted as a means to an end. Nor, according to the standards of the day, are they unduly rude in style. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as everyone knows who has studied the mortuary epigram, tombstone verses were not expected to display hterary grace; instead they exhibited a racy style — ^intimate, impertinent, often jocular — which seems to have appealed to men as not inappropriate coming from sepulchres. The older
1 Also in Mad)eth, III, iv, 71.
2 Aubrey, Brief Lives (ed., Andrew Clark, 1898), I, 105.
* Sir Thomas Browne, in Hydriotaphia, chap, iii, complains of the " tragical abomi- nation" of being "knaved out of our graves"; and he asks: "Who knows the fate of his bones?"
SHAKESPEARE AS A WRITER OF EPITAPHS 81
graveyards of both England and America furnish abundant testimony to the taste of our ancestors in this pecuHar form of verse; and John Weever, in his Funeral Monuments, 1631, cites from the churches of his day many examples, one of which will be adequate for the purpose
of illustration :
Here lyeth, wrapt in clay. The body of John Wray. I have no more to say.
As a natural result of this strange taste in sepulchral inscriptions, it became a regular custom among wits at merry gatherings to devise for each other mock epitaphs. Jonson quoted to Drummond of Hawthornden, with obvious relish, the two following efforts at this form of humor:
His epitaph, by a companion written, is: Here lies Benjamin Jonson, dead. And hath no more wit than a goose in his head; That as he was wont, so doth he still, Live by his wit, and evermore will. Another:
Here Ues honest Ben,
That had not a beard on his chen.
The brevity of the second epitaph suggests that it is incomplete; Drummond, we may suspect, in reproducing a lively conversation from vague recollection, could not recall the verses either accurately or fully. Perhaps the deficiency is made good by Archdeacon Plume (quoting Bishop Racket), in his manuscript notebook written about
1657:
Here Ues Benjamin,
With little hair upon his chin,
Who while he lived was a slow thing,
And now he is dead is nothing;
or by an apparently still earlier commonplace book:
Here Ues Jonson
Who was once one.
He had Uttle hair on his chin,
His name was Benjamin.^
1 Cited by James O. Halliwell, The Works of William Shakespeare, I (1853), 157. According to Halliwell, the second line reads "one's sonne."
82 JOSEPH QUINCY ADAMS
The "companion" who devised for Jonson this humorous epi- taph, if we can trust an Ashmole MS of about 1650/ was none other than his good friend Shakespeare :
Mr. Ben Jonson and Mr. Wm. Shakespeare, being merry at a tavern, Mr. Jonson, having begun this for his epitaph:
Here lies Ben Jonson, That was once one,
he gives it to Mr. Shakespeare to make up. He presently writes :
Who while he liv'd was a slow thing, And now being dead, is nothing.
Since even HalHwell-Phillipps finds it "not particularly easy to appreciate the exact force" of this epitaph, and Dr. Ingleby, the editor of the Centurie of Pray se, agreeing, would emend "slow thing" to "show thing," obviously the verses "stand in need of a comment." Just as Shakespeare was remarkably facile with his pen, by common report never blotting out a line he had once set down, Jonson was notoriously slow at composition, a fact which subjected him to much ridicule from his contemporaries. Thus Dekker, in his bitter personal attack in Satiromastix, 1601, exclaims: "You nasty tortoise! You and your itchy poetry break out, like Christmas, but once a year!" And Jonson, in an " apologetical dialogue" affixed to Poetaster, 1601, is forced to admit the charge:
Polyposus: Yes, they say you are slow,
And scarce bring forth a play a year. Author: 'Tis true.
This faihng of his was so generally known that it was commented on at the universities; one of the students in the Cambridge play II Return from Parnassus, 1602, sarcastically refers to Jonson as "so slow an inventor that he were better betake himself to his old trade of bricklaying."
The phrase, "once one," also troubled Halliwell-Phillipps, who, finding no sense in it, declared it corrupt, and proposed the emenda- tion "one's son," an emendation accepted by the latest editors of The Shakespeare Allusion-Book, 1909. It may be worth noting,
1 XXXVIII, 181, in the Bodleian Library.
SHAKESPEARE AS A WRITER OF EPITAPHS 83
therefore, that Shakespeare uses the very same word-play in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, Y, i, 314-15:
Demetrius: No die, but an ace for him, for he is but one. Ly Sander: Less than an ace, for he is dead ; he is nothing.
The disputed lines thus are not without "force," and obviously Shakespeare at times could be guilty of just such humor. Whether he is to be held responsible for this sally at the expense of his friend the reader must judge for himself.
A more famous mock epitaph attributed to Shakespeare is that supposedly written for John Combe, the rich old bachelor of Stratford, whose success in business affairs gave him, it seems, a reputation for usury. He possessed a strong personality, which must have been not unattractive, since, as we know, the dramatist developed a warm friendship for him. Several early writers represent Shakespeare as having devised for Combe a jocular epitaph glancing at his well-known shrewdness in money-lending. Rowe, in his life of the poet, 1709, gives on the whole the best general account of the tradition:
Amongst them [the citizens of Stratford] it is a story almost still remem- ber'd in that country, that he had a particular intimacy with Mr. Combe, an old gentleman noted thereabouts for his wealth and usury. It happen'd that in a pleasant conversation amongst their common friends, Mr. Combe told Shakespeare, in a laughing manner, that he fancy'd he intended to write his epitaph if he happen'd to out-hve him, and since he could not know what might be said of him when he was dead, he desir'd it might be done immediately ; upon which Shakespeare gave him these four verses :
Ten-in-the-hundred^ Ues here ingrav'd;
'Tis a hundred to ten his soul is not sav'd.
If any man ask, "Who lies in this tomb?"
"Oh! ho!" quoth the Devil, " 'tis my John-a-Combe."^
But the sharpness of the satyr is said to have stung the man so severely that he never forgave it.
The last statement is obviously incorrect, for Combe remembered the poet in his will with the generous bequest of £5; and that Shake- speare continued on terms of close friendship with the family is
1 A cant term for usurer; Halliwell-Phillipps {Outlines, I, 246) is in error in stating the contrary, as the literature of the day abundantly proves.
' The name was often written thus; for instance, Adrian Quiney, in 1533-55, refers to "John Combes, sometimes written John-a-Combes " ; see the Athenaeum, September 22, 1906.
84 JOSEPH QUINCY ADAMS
shown by the fact that he left to Combe's nephew and heir, Thomas, his sword — apparently one of his most cherished possessions.
Aubrey, collecting his information at Stratford about 1680, gives us a different version:
One time, as he was at the tavern at Stratford super Avon, one Combe, an old rich usurer, was to be buried, he makes there this extemporary epitaph: Teu-in-the-hundred the Devil allows. But Combes will have twelve, he swears and vows. If any one ask, "Who lies in this tomb?" "Hoh!" quoth the Devil, "'tis my John-a-Combe."
The verses, however, were already long in print. Richard Brath- waite, in his Remains after Death, 1618, quotes them anonymously:
An Epitaph upon ofie John Combe, of Stratford upon Avon,
a Notable Usurer, Fastened upon a Tomb that he had
caused to be Built in his Life-Time^
Ten-in-the-hundred must lie in his grave.
But a hundred to ten whether God will him have.
Who then must be interr'd in this tombe ?
Oh (quoth the Devil) my John-a-Combe.
Brathwaite states that the epitaph was merely "fastened" to the tomb, presumably by some wag; yet two later writers refer to the verses as actually carved on the stone. In a curious manuscript (Lansdowne 213, folio 336), entitled "A Relation of a Short Survey of 26 Counties, Briefly Describing the Cities .... therein, Observed in a Seven Weeks Journey Begun .... on Monday, August 11, 1634," we find the following among the notes on Stratford:^
A neat monument of that famous English poet, Mr. William Shakespeare, who was born here. And one of an old gentleman, a bachelor, Mr. Combe, upon whose name the said poet did merrily fan up some witty and facetious verses, which time would not give us leave to sack up.^
And in a later manuscript, said to have been written between 1679 and 1685,^ we read:
1 The statement that Combe "caused to be built" in the Stratford church a tomb in his honor is correct, but it was not set up until after his death; in his will, 1614, he left for this purpose the sum of £60, with orders that the tomb be erected within one year after his decease.
* Cited by Joseph Hunter, New Illustrations, 1845, I, 88.
^ The writer, in the words "fan" and "sack up," is punning on the word "comb," a measure for grain.
* See the Athenaeum, January 10, 1901.
SHAKESPEARE AS A WRITER OF EPITAPHS 85
In 1673, I, Robert Dobins, being at Stratford upon Avon, and visiting the church there, transcribed these two epitaphs; the first is on WilHam Shakespeare's monument, the other is upon the monument of a noted usurer.
After correctly quoting Shakespeare's epitaph, he cites the following as from Combe's monument :
Ten-in-a-hundred here heth engraved.
A hundred to ten his soul is not saved.
If any one ask, "Who lieth in this tomb?"
"Oh ho," quoth the Devil, "'tis my John-a-Combe."
To this he adds the comment:
Since my being at Stratford the heirs of Mr. Combe have caused these verses to be razed, so that now they are not legible.
According to another version of the story, contained in Ashmole MS, XXXVIII, 180, written about 1630, there were two epitaphs:
On John Combe, a Covetous Rich Man, Mr. Wm. Shakespeare
Writ this at His Request, While he Was yet
Living, for his Epitaph
Who Ues in this tombe ?
Ho, quoth the Devil, 'tis my son, John-a-Combe.
Finis.
But Being Dead, and Making the Poor His Heirs, he after Writes this for His Epitaph
Howe're he Uved, judge not;
John Combe shall never he forgot
While poor hath memory; for he did gather
To make the poor his issue, he their father,
As record of his tilth and seeds
Did crown him in his later needes.
Finis W. Shak.
It is true that upon his death in 1614 Combe left generous bequests to the poor: "Six pounds, thirteen shillings and four pence to buy ten gowns for ten poor people within the borough of Stratford; and one hundred pounds to be lent unto fifteen poor tradesmen of the same borough from three years to three years, changing parties every third year, at the rate of fifty shillings per annum, the which increase he appointed to be distributed toward the relief of the alms-
86 JOSEPH QUINCY ADAMS
people there; more, he gave to the poor of Stratford twenty pounds."^ A still later tradition represents Shakespeare as also composing an epitaph for John Combe's brother, Thomas. Francis Peck, in New Memories of the Life and Poetical Works of Mr. John Milton, 1740, writes:
Everybody knows Shakespeare's epitaph for John-a-Combe ; and I am told he afterwards wrote another for Tom-a-Combe, alias Thin-beard, brother of the said John,^ and that it was never yet printed:
Thin in beard, and thick in purse, Never man beloved worse; He went to th' grave with many a curse; The Devil and he had both one nurse.
And Halhwell-Phillipps, it may be added, states that "in the last century there was a traditionary tale current at Stratford, which included the verses on John and Thomas."*
The cumulative evidence of all these traditions is impressive. And since Shakespeare is known to have entertained a lively regard for the old bachelor, it is not impossible that at some merry gathering he "fanned up" a burlesque epitaph for his friend. On the other hand, the skeptic can point out (if under the circumstances the fact be significant) that the play on words in the first two fines was con- ventional. George Steevens quotes Henry Parrot's The More the Merrier, 1608:
Ten-in-the-hundred hes under this stone, And a hundred to ten to the Devil he's gone.
Malone refers us to Camden's Remains, 1614:
Here lies ten-in-the-hundred In the ground fast ramm'd; 'Tis one hundred to ten But his soul is damn'd.
And several other versions of the jest, later in date and not so close in phraseology, have been noted by scholars.
1 This summary from his will is inscribed upon his monument in the Stratford church.
* This Thomas Combe, brother of John, died in January, 1609, possessed of great weajth.
' Life of William Shakespeare, 1848, p. 242.
SHAKESPEARE AS A WRITER OF EPITAPHS 87
Other and less familiar epitaphs assigned to the dramatist are in a serious vein. The antiquarian, Sir William Dugdale, in his manuscript collection of monumental inscriptions from Shropshire, written in 1663, and now preserved in the College of Arms, states that the verses upon the Stanley tomb in Tonge Church were composed by Shakespeare:
On the north side of the chancel of Tonge Church, in the county of Salop, stands a very stately tomb, supported with Corinthian columns. It hath two figures of men in armour thereon lying — the one below the arches and columns, and the other above them — and this epitaph upon it: "Thomas Stanley, Knight, second son of Edward, Earl of Derby," etc. These follow- ing verses were made by William Shakespeare, the late famous tragedian:
Written upon the East End of the Tomb
Aske who lies here, but do not weep;
He is not dead, he doth but sleep.
This stony register is for his bones.
His fame is more perpetual than these stones ;
And his own goodness, with himself being gone.
Shall live when earthly monument is none. Written upon the West End Thereof
Not monumental stone preserves our fame,
Nor sky-aspiring pyramids our name;
The memory of him for whom this stands
Shall outlive marble and defacers' hands :
When all to Time's consumption shall be given,
Stanley, for whom this stands, shall stand in heaven.
Halliwell-PhiUipps cites from a manuscript' of the time of Charles