tion to realize them. In the sixteenth century court a large number of individuals were brought together without any regard to congeniality and without very much to do. The duties were trivial. Yet however trivial they might seem abstractly, concretely upon them depended both one's reputation and one's income. The main object of a man's life was to acquire the favor of the monarch. If for any reason good or bad, important or trivial, noble or vile, you attracted the favorable notice of the king, you were successful. Thus all things were reduced to one level; whether you were a skillful statesman, or player on the lute, or a cunning deviser of royal debauch, it was immaterial. On the other hand, failure to obtain this, in the fullest sense of the word, spelled ruin. As the Duke of Norfolk said to More, "by God's body! Mr. More, indignatio principis mors est," and More proved the truth of the statement on Tower Hill. As there was no real dignity back of the life, and as there was no independence of thought, Skelton thinks that to gain this all-important favor of the King is only a matter of chance. And equally, he that possesses it is both flattered and hated by all the rest. The Court is peopled by liars and cheats, by suspicion and disdain. Success there is worse than failure and the honest man jumps over board! If this be the interpretation, only by form does the poem belong to the type represented by the medieval tradition. If on that side it be compared to Hawes, its content recalls Barclay in both his Eclogues and in his Ship of Fools. First there is no question that there was some relation between them. Even granting that Bale's mention of a work by Barclay Contra Skeltonum be mythical, that Barclay did not approve of Skelton is shown in the final stanzas 1 of the Ship of Fools. There he plumes himself upon his virtuous writings, priding himself that It longeth nat to my scyence nor cunnynge To assume, however, that Skelton's verses good-humoredly advising those that disliked Philip Sparrow to do better themselves,2 are a reply to Barclay, is to assume that Barclay was the only critic. Likewise to construe the passage in the Fourth Eclogue 1 Jamieson, op. cit., ii, 331. 2 Dyce, 1, 412. against poet laureates as an attack particularly aimed at Skelton is to state a tempting hypothesis. Of course it may be true, but equally of course it may seem true only because of our lack of data. It is fair, however, to feel that the traditional enmity between the two poets must have had some foundation. But if there be any truth in this tradition it is somewhat surprising to find Skelton enlisted by modern scholarship as a follower of Barclay.1 This is almost certainly an error, due to the inclusion among Skelton's work of the Boke of Three Fooles. As this has been shown by Brie 2 to be merely a part of Watson's translation of the Narrenschiffs, all connection of Skelton with Barclay's Ship of Fools is reduced to the fact that they each use the allegory of a boat. But even in English this metaphor is not uncommon.3 Nor is the employment of it the same. In Barclay the figure of the boat is a mechanism in which to put his innumerable fools; in Skelton the boat itself represents the court. If it be necessary to find an original for the ship of state, the ode of Horace comes at once to mind. Thus, while it may be possible that Locker's version of the Narrenschiffs (1497) suggested the idea, Skelton's employment of it is much more artistic. Much the same may be said of the assumed influence of Barclay's Eclogues, which also attack court life. Barclay's criticisms are after all criticisms of superficial detail; Skelton sensed the fundamental wrong. And this superiority of Skelton is due, in the last analysis, to his deeper perception. Barclay is merely an adapter of other men's work, a humanist by courtesy. Skelton, on the other hand, brought from his wide reading a point of view that made him a sharp and original critic of English conditions. 4 The importance of this argument lies in the fact that the dating of the poem is based on internal evidence. If it shows the influence of the Ship of Fools unless Skelton saw the manuscript it must have been written after 1509; if it shows the influence of the 1 Herford, Literary Relations, pp. 354–355; Rey, Skelton's Satirical Poems, p. 51; Koelbing, Zur Charakteristik John Skelton's, p. 69; in the Chapter on Barclay and Skelton in the Cambridge Hist. of Lit., p. 83, written after Brie's Studien had appeared, Koelbing recedes from this position, substitutes Brandt for Barclay, and tends to date the poem early. 2 Brie, op. cit., p. 18. 'Koelbing op. cit., p. 76, gives a long list of predecessors. • The Fourteenth Ode of the First Book. Eclogues, it must have been composed about 1514.1 But as it does not in any way show the influence of these works, there is no necessity for so late a date. In fact the cumbrous form, the careful following of the medieval tradition, point rather to very early work. Brie here makes a suggestion, entirely without any foundation, but fascinating in connection with my interpretation of the poem. We know that Skelton had been connected with the Court as tutor to Prince Henry. We know also that in 1498 he was ordained successively subdeacon, deacon, and priest.2 But in 1504 he was Rector at Diss in Norfolk.3 It is a not unnatural assumption that he received the rectorship of Diss as a regard for his tutorial services. On the other hand there has never been a reason assigned why a man sufficiently influential to be chosen as tutor to his Prince, and with the reputation of one of the leading scholars of his country, should be willing to bury himself in an obscure country town. Norfolk today is but ninety-five miles from London, but ninety-five miles over sixteenth century roads was a long journey fraught with discomfort and danger. Skelton's own answer perhaps is to be found in the Bowge of Court. From a court in which there was not to be found one good man, where wretches plotted against him, he indignantly sought refuge in exile." This is mere hypothesis, but it does cover all the few facts of the case. This hypothesis also explains the acidity of the poem. The allegory of the Romaunt of the Rose and of Lydgate has been turned into satire! 4 This medieval form, clear and definite, has already been twice modified by the literary necessities of the Renaissance; by Hawes, who combines with it a didactic chivalric romance, and again by Skelton, who forces it into the service of satire. Still another at 1 See Chapter IV, p. 167. The latest date with the curious reason is given by Rey, op. cit. 51: "And what is still more concluding for the posteriority of the 'Bowge of Court' is the circumstance that it was even written after the ‘Garland' which dates, as the title-page indicates, from 1523; as the 'Bowge' does not form part of the list of Skelton's works in the ‘Garland,' the assumption of the posteriority of the 'Bowge of Court' seems quite ascertained." As Dr. Rey states that he has used the three volume American reprint of the Dyce, I refer him to Vol. 2, p. 222 of that edition where in the Garland of Laurel he will find the line, "Item Bowche of Court where Drede was begyled". 2 Dyce, 1, XX. 3 Dyce, 1, XXVI. 1 Ante, pp. 48-49. tempt to use the old formula was made just after the middle of the sixteenth century by John Heywood. John Heywood (1497?-1560?) has at least left behind him the tradition of a fairly definite personality, probably due, however, to the fact that he lived well into the reign of Elizabeth. His work belongs to the earlier period, because he remained faithful to his religion, even to the extent of becoming an exile. That he was possessed of tact is shown by his continued existence without changing his religious beliefs, although he was forced once to a public recantation. His marriage with the daughter of Rastell the printer, the brother-in-law of Sir Thomas More, strengthened him at the Court, which he had entered in the capacity of "singer." In any case he figures in the Court Expenses of three reigns. Although Wood rates him as an Oxford man, traditionally he was valued "for the myrth and quickness of his conceits more than for any good learning."1 Probably he was concerned with the many masques and entertainments at Court, an occupation in which his wit and humor had full play. That that was his reputation is shown by his description of himself.2 "Of Heywood." "Art thou Heywood, with the mad merry wit?" "Art thou Heywood that applieth mirth more than thrift?” "Yea, sir! I take merry mirth a golden gift!" "Art thou Heywood that hath made many mad plays?” "Yea, many plays; few good works in all my days." "Art thou Heywood that would be made merry now?" It is unfair to take a man's description of himself too seriously, but he had the reputation of being a mad merry wit. Even in Puttenham's time, anecdotes were current showing his quickness of repartee. This is particularly shown in his plays. It is by them that Heywood maintains his hold upon the attention of the modern reader. Following the French models in substituting characters drawn from real life for the tedious abstractions of the morality 1 Puttenham, Art of English Poesy, Lib. I, cap. xxxi. 2 100 of Heywood; The Fifth Hundred of Epigrams. Ed. J. S. Farmer. plays, Heywood took a long step forward in the direction of comedy. Hence, in any history of the development of the drama form, Heywood occupies a conspicuous position.1 1 2 But whatever French influence may be shown in his dramatic works, there is none in his poems. His Epigrams, though founded upon humanistic models, are characterized by their idiomatic English. Still more so is this true of his "Proverbs,” a disquisition on marriage in eleven chapters of dialogue. The peculiarity of the poem, however, is that the narrative avowedly serves but as a frame for "our common plain pithy proverbs old." Although both of these are experiments, they both show Heywood as conservative rather than as innovator. The work of Heywood, however, that concerns us here, is his curious allegory The Spider and the Fly. Not the least curious feature about it is the way it has been tacitly ignored. In bulk it occupies one third of his collected writings. It is perhaps on account of this very bulk that it is so seldom read. It belongs in the category of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a book that we never find just the leisure to complete. Consequently if Ward's objection that only those critics that have read the poem discuss the poem holds, I fear that the name would appear even less often in print. But the main reason for this neglect is to be found, not in the size, but in the obscurity of the poem. It is as Heywood says a "parable." In form it belongs to the type now so familiar. In a morning, the description of which is reminiscent of the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, the author sees a fly entangled in the web of a spider. The body of the poem, then, is taken up with these characters,--a method of introduction very similar to that of The Pastime of Pleasure, except that the author remains always the spectator. When it is added that the story is an allegory, that there are personifications, and that it is written in the rime-royal, it belongs obviously to the group. The interest to us lies, however, not in its similarity but in its differences from the type. First and foremost, the characters are not abstractions, such as Danger, Venus, et. al.; they are animals. 1 As the drama has been the subject of so many and such detailed studies, it is simpler here to refer the reader to Professor Brooke's "The Tudor Drama," where this side of Heywood's work is discussed. 2 These are discussed in Chapter III following. |