



Produced by Bethanne M. Simms, Stephanie Eason, and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries.)









  CENTRE
  for
  REFORMATION
  and
  RENAISSANCE
  STUDIES

  VICTORIA
  UNIVERSITY

  TORONTO




  FIFTEENTH CENTURY
  PROSE AND VERSE




  _AN ENGLISH GARNER_

  FIFTEENTH CENTURY
  PROSE AND VERSE


  WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
  ALFRED W. POLLARD


  WESTMINSTER
  ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND CO., LTD.
  1903



Edinburgh: Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE.




PREFACE


Of the contents of the present volume about a half now appears in the
ENGLISH GARNER for the first time. Professor Arber (whose ready
acquiescence in my meddlings I wish cordially to acknowledge) had
gathered his good corn wherever he could find it without concerning
himself with the claims of the different centuries; and his specimens of
Lydgate and Hoccleve, Robin Hood Ballads, and trials for Lollardy,
needed as much more added to them to make up a homogeneous volume in the
arrangement now adopted. My additions consist of some Christmas Carols,
a Miracle Play, a Morality, and a number of the interesting prologues
and epilogues of William Caxton; also two extracts on the art of
translation and the need for its exercise, and some depositions in a
theatrical lawsuit. The extracts are of the end of the fourteenth
century, but are germane to our period as heralding the numerous
translations by which it was distinguished; the lawsuit is of the
sixteenth century, but throws light on the transition from municipal to
private enterprise in theatrical matters which had then been for some
time in progress. As these pieces are included for their matter, not for
their style, I hope they will not be considered intrusions in a volume
essentially devoted to the fifteenth century, though the extracts on
translation have led me in my Introduction to an excursus on the
authorship of the Wycliffite translations of the Bible, which can only
be excused on the pleas that Purvey and Trevisa both lived on into the
fifteenth century, and that it was in the early years of that century
that the Bibles were most in circulation.

In editing my texts I have availed myself of the help of the edition of
the play of the Coventry Shearmen and Tailors in Professor Manly's
_Specimens of the Pre-Shaksperean Drama_ (Ginn, 1897), of Dr. Henri
Logeman's _Elckerlijk and Everyman_ (Librairie Clemm, Gand, 1892), of
Professor Ewald Fluegel's transcript of the Balliol College Carols
published in the Festschrift presented to Professor Hildebrand in 1894,
of the Caxton Prefaces printed in Blades's _Life of Caxton_, of Mr.
Henry Plomer's transcript of the pleadings in Rastell _v._ Walton in
vol. iv. of the Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, and of
Forshall and Madden's Wyclif Bible. In Professor Arber's text of the
Robin Hood Ballads I have ventured to make a few corrections by the
light of the excellent edition (based on the work of Professor Child),
printed by Professor Gummere in his _Old English Ballads_ (Ginn, 1894).
That of Hoccleve's _Letter of Cupid_, originally printed from Urry's
text, has been revised with the aid of the collations published by
Professor Skeat in his _Chaucerian and Other Pieces_. Professor Arber's
other texts are reprinted substantially as they stood.

In accordance with the plan adopted throughout the _English Garner_, the
extracts in this volume are given in modern spelling. I should have
preferred myself to re-write them in the educated spelling of their own
period, which would offer no obstacle of any kind to a modern reader.
Not only, however, for the sake of uniformity, but because I am so
convinced that this is the right method of dealing with badly spelt
texts that I wish the experiment to be made for the first time by a
better philologist than myself, I have fallen back on modern spelling.
Whatever its disadvantages, they seem to me as nothing compared with the
absurdity of preserving in texts printed for the second, third, and
fourth time the vagaries of grossly ignorant scribes. In the play of the
Shearmen holiness is spelt _whollenes_, merry _myrre_, voice _woise_,
signification _syngnefocacion_, celestial _seylesteall_, and so on.
These spellings are as demonstrably wrong as those of _consepeet_
(concipiet) and _Gloria in exselsis_, with which the scribe favours us.
It is ungracious to find fault with Professor Manly after appropriating
some of his stage directions and his identifications of some French
words, but I cannot think an editor is right in reprinting a text of
which he is obliged to confess 'in general, the sound will be a better
guide to the meaning than the spelling.' In any case I am sure that this
is not the way to win new readers for our earlier literature.

As a matter of literary honesty, as well as for my own comfort, I may be
permitted to state that this is the only volume of the new edition of
the _Garner_ for which I am responsible or can take credit. I have eaten
at least one dinner intended for my friend Mr. A.F. Pollard; my
wastepaper basket has received applications for subscriptions which
prove his reputation for generosity; I have even received a cheque,
which the fact that it is reckoned forgery under some circumstances for
a man to sign his own name forbade my cashing; and I have recently been
more congratulated as the author of his _Henry VIII._ than I have ever
been on any book of my own. So far from being identical, I regret to say
that we are not even related; but as we seem to be as much mistaken as
the two Dromios, I hope that our appearance side by side in this new
edition of the _Garner_ may help to distinguish rather than further
confound us.

ALFRED W. POLLARD.




CONTENTS

                                                                       PAGE

  PREFACE,                                                              iii

  INTRODUCTION,                                                         vii

  John Lydgate (?). The Siege of Harfleur and the Battle of Agincourt,    1

  Thomas Occleve. The Letter of Cupid,                                   14

  A Little Geste of Robin Hood and his Meiny and of the proud Sheriff
  of Nottingham,                                                         35

  English Carols. From a Manuscript at Balliol College, Oxford,          83

  The Examination of Master William Thorpe, priest, of heresy, before
  Thomas Arundell, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1407,                       90

  The Examination of Sir John Oldcastle,                                175

  On Translating the Bible. Chapter XV. of the Prologue to the second
  recension of the Wycliffite version,                                  193

  John Trevisa. Dialogue between a Lord and a Clerk upon Translation,   203

  William Caxton. Prefaces and Epilogues:--
    The Recuyell of the Histories of Troy,                              213
    Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers,                             218
    Boethius de Consolatione Philosophiae,                              222
    Golden Legend,                                                      225
    Caton                                                               227
    AEsop,                                                               230
    Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, second edition,                         232
    Malory's King Arthur,                                               234
    Eneydos,                                                            239

  A Miracle Play of the Nativity. The Pageant of the Shearmen and
  Tailors, from the Coventry Corpus Christi Plays,                      245

  Everyman: A Moral Play,                                               277

  Pleadings in Rastell _v._ Walton, a Theatrical Lawsuit, temp. Henry
  VIII.,                                                                307

  BRIEF GLOSSARY,                                                       323




INTRODUCTION


In the world of politics and statecraft a nation which has once begun to
decline seldom, perhaps never, recovers itself. There are too many other
dogs about for the bone which has once been relinquished to be resumed
later on. It is luck, indeed, if there are any decent scraps to be found
on the platter when it is revisited. In the world of literature and
thought the dogs are better bred, showing each other new
hunting-grounds, and by example and precept often helping to restore a
famished comrade to sleekness and vigour. Political conditions may not
be gainsaid. A nation which has once lost its ideals cannot again
produce a fresh, strong, and manly literature. But the possibilities of
literature remain immense, and we cannot foretell in what country it may
not revive and win fresh triumphs. Hence it is that while the political
fortunes of a nation seem to move mainly along the three straight lines
of ascent, enjoyment, and fall, its literary fortunes express
themselves, when we try to generalise, in a series of curves, alternate
rises and declines, which may be repeated again and again. In English
literature out of the unknown past rose the Anglo-Saxon lyric and epic,
_Deor's Complaint_, _Beowulf_, and the poems of Caedmon and Cynewulf.
From the death-like sleep of our language which followed the Norman
Conquest rose the heights of thirteenth-century romance. From the dull
poetic pedantries of the age which succeeded Chaucer rose the glittering
pinnacles of Shakespeare and his fellows. From the coldness and
shallowness of the eighteenth century rose the rich and varied tableland
of whose occupants Burns was one of the first and Tennyson and Browning
perhaps the last. No other literature has shown such recuperative power,
a thought full of hope and consolation in these days, for those who can
take pleasure in the anticipated joys of their great-grandchildren.

If this philosophising be thought dull, we have only repaid popular
estimates in their own coin; for these sweeping generalisations, which
condemn whole centuries as periods of depression, have been largely made
for us by popular opinion, and like all generalisations, they have to be
very considerably whittled down as soon as we descend to particulars. On
a nearer view we find that the curves of literary progress have not been
rolled smooth by any steamroller, but that the great chain of hills is
connected by numberless ridges, some of which are already rising, long
ere others have touched the plain. A pleasant book by an American
professor (the _History of Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century_, by
Henry A. Beers) has helped to draw attention to many of these rising
ridges of romance in the century which most people connect only with the
name of Pope; and I hope in these few pages to show that the fifteenth
century, of which we are so contemptuous, was at least not all flat
country.

For the poor esteem into which this period has fallen we must lay some
of the blame at the door of the literary historians who have, until
recent days, placed the English Mandeville nearly half a century too
early, postponed the consideration of the dramatic productions till they
reached the middle of the sixteenth century, when they gave a meagre
summary of 'earlier attempts,' and chronicled the industry of
translators, which had been in full swing ever since about 1380, as a
special feature of the sixteenth century, helping thus to account for
the great Elizabethan outburst of original work. No poor period of
literature was ever more mercilessly or wantonly plundered to enrich its
prosperous neighbours on either side; and having thus credited to other
generations all its little claims to distinction, our literary
historians fixed their glance sternly on the court poetry, which is its
weakest feature, and made the case of Hoccleve and Lydgate more pitiful
than it need be by cruelly comparing them with Chaucer. To be
inconvenient to historians is not perhaps of itself a mark of greatness,
but Chaucer's professed lovers may take pleasure in observing how
largely he shares this characteristic with Shakespeare himself. To give
each of them a separate chapter is but a respectful subterfuge, thinly
concealing how unconscionably these two sudden elevations interfere with
that orderly progression which the historian loves. It would be much
easier to tell the story of the Elizabethan-Jacobean drama from rise to
fall if Shakespeare could be left out of it; and if there had been no
Chaucer, how gentle, how almost mathematical, would have been the
progression from the _Cursor Mundi_ and the _Handlyng Synne_ to Gower's
_Confessio Amantis_, from Gower to Lydgate and Hoccleve, and from
Lydgate and Hoccleve to Stephen Hawes! The Italian influence would have
come in for the first time with Surrey and Wyatt, and the whole sequence
would have been just what a plain man would expect. Not only by his
inconvenient possession of genius, but also by his great, if fitful
industry, and by what we can hardly call by any name but good luck,
Chaucer shoots up suddenly between Gower and his natural successors, and
thus revolutionises the standard of poetry by which the next century is
inevitably judged. The effect of his sudden uprising is almost as
confusing to our judgments of his own poetry as of that of his unhappy
'successors.' Brought up, as most of us poor middle-aged critics have
been, on textbooks which grudgingly devoted a scanty thirty or forty
pages to all that happened ere Surrey and Wyatt began to write an
English which literary historians could read without taking any trouble,
we inevitably got it into our heads that with Chaucer we were at the
very beginning; that he was really, as he was called, the Father of
English Poetry, and represented the first blossoming of its spring. The
spring had come and was fast fading when Chaucer began to write. It had
come with the first blossoming of the romances, and with such lyrics as

  'Lenten[1] is come with love to town,
  With blossoms and with birdes rown';[2]

or as

  'Blow, northern wind,
  Send thou me my sweeting';

of which the lightness and spontaneity are represented in only a few
snatches in Chaucer. Other touches of the spring he has, for no man
better loved the merry month of May, and he has sung it until he has
become for ever identified with it in our minds. All the same, he
represents also a reaction which sees the humorous side of the lover's
springtide longings, and views all things very much as they are, without
illusion. Fortunately, in Chaucer's case this prosaic mood was raised
and transfigured by the revelation of Italian poetry, which enabled him
to give us in _Troilus and Cressida_, and the knight's tale of _Palamon
and Arcite_, the most perfect harmony of humour and romance English
narrative poetry has produced. No other poet of his time came under the
same influences, and to this fact, as well as to his possession of
genius, he owes his unique position.


That the worthy Lydgate and Hoccleve, without any of Chaucer's good
luck, failed to tread in his footsteps, is thus hardly surprising. They
took from him as much of his machinery as they could carry, wrote in his
metres with the aid of ears sadly confused by the rapidly weakening
pronunciation of final _-e_ and _-es_, and began the attempt, pursued
all through the century, to make up by magniloquence what they lacked in
poetry. This attempt was not confined to England. In France also there
was the same invasion of long words, and it took our fair neighbour much
longer to get rid of them. As the fifteenth century progressed and its
successor began, it became more and more the object of the poetaster to
end his lines with sounding polysyllables, and verse not written in this
style was regarded as uncourtly and undignified. When we once realise
that this particular experiment in language was one which had to be
made, and that our fifteenth-century poets made it with all their might,
we can understand how Hawes could hail Lydgate as 'the most dulcet
spring of famous rhetoric' (this new poetry being essentially
rhetorical); how Skelton, after condescendingly praising Chaucer for the
'pleasant, easy and plain' terms in which he wrote, hastened to explain
that Lydgate's efforts were 'after a higher rate'; and how the same
Skelton thought it necessary in his _Phylyp Sparowe_ to make his 'young
maid' excuse herself for her ignorance of 'polished terms' and 'English
words elect.' Every one in these days was searching anxiously for the
right word, which is indeed the most proper object of every versifier's
search. Unluckily, they only looked for it among polysyllables.

It will be gathered by this time that I hold no brief for what we must
call the court poetry of the fifteenth century, that is to say, the
compositions by which poets from Lydgate to Skelton sought to ingratiate
themselves with noble patrons and to prove their title to immortality.
When they were off their guard they wrote much better. The reminiscences
of the gay days of his youth stirred Hoccleve's muse to unwonted
vivacity. In the _London Lick-penny_ Lydgate, if Lydgate's it be, wrote
humorous satire with success. Skelton himself, though in his (much too
respectfully spoken of) play _Magnificence_ he could flounder with the
worst of his predecessors, in his light and railing rhymes was nimble