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. 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. 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.' 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! 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. Dyce, 1, XXVI. ... 4 Ante, pp. 48-49. H 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, 1 Puttenham, Art of English Poesy, Lib. I, cap. xxxi. 2100 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 But whatever French influence may be shown in his dramatic works, there is none in his poems. His Epigrams,2 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. this really init very surprising ! 104 EARLY TUDOR POETRY Thus on one side it is akin to the Second Nun Priest's Tale or Reynard the Fox. Apparently the story breaks into two quite distinct parts. The first twenty-seven chapters consist in the elaborate legal arguments presented by the fly, who has blundered into a spider's web, and the spider's rejoinders. Then arbitrators, an ant and a butterfly, are called. After twenty-two more chapters in which the original issue gets befogged by the introduction of irrelevant issues, the arbitrators leave the case exactly where they found it. Whereupon the spiders retire to their castle in which they are besieged by the flies with the ant as their prisoner. After various fluctuations of the fortunes of war, to save the ant, the spider grants peace but on the condition that the original fly shall die. As this is about to take place, the maid of the house destroys the web with her broom, kills the chief spider, and redresses grievances. This poem has been unfortunate in receiving almost universal condemnation. Only twenty-one years after it had been first printed, William Harrison1 confessed that Heywood "dealeth so profoundlie, and beyond all measure of skill, that neither himselfe that made it, neither anie one that readeth it, can reach vnto the meaning therof." This opinion is endorsed by Warton with the comment "sensible." He adds that in his judgment "perhaps there never was so dull, so tedious and trifling an apologue; without fancy, meaning, or moral. . . Our author seems to have intended a fable on the burlesque construction; but we know not, when he would be serious and when witty."2 Modern criticism quietly but firmly ignores it altogether.3 This opinion is scarcely to be wondered at as the meaning of the poem is undoubtedly obscure. That there is a meaning intended is so stated by the author himself in the Preface.1 A Parable: is properilie one thing, That of an other doth conceiuing bring. One score of things: by one, be vnderstand. 1 Description of England, prefixed to Holinshed's Chronicle. Quoted by Warton. 2 History of English Poetry,—1871—4, p. 85. There seems to be no reference to it in Ten Brink, in Courthope, or in The Cambridge History. 4 The Preface, p. 3. Farmer's ed. |