A Medieval Analogue to As You Like It II. vii. 137-166

Abstract

l i9:E ECENTLY there has been considerable interest in possible sources and analogues of the Renaissance concept of the seven ages of man, a concept exploited with verve and vivacity by Shakespeare for Jaques' All the world's a stage speech in As You Like It II. vii. I37-i66. Since I have nothing of a speculative character to add to, or subtract from, the comprehensive essay on this topic by Professor Samuel C. Chew,1 I shall rest content with presenting a hitherto unpublished Middle English analogue of 6o lines in riming couplets.2 It is preserved in a fifteenth-century apograph fair copy in British Museum MS. Additional 37,049, fol 28v-29r, with no indication of authorship or provenance; it is reproduced and reprinted below, with editorial punctuation and capitalization, through the kindness of the authorities of the British Museum. The poem, which is entitled Of the Seven Ages,3 presents a disputatio between a good angel, the Devil, and a character who may be called Everyman, although his name changes to tally with the seven stages of his natural development. The prize, of course, is possession of the soul of Everyman; and, as is fitting in Christian didactics, the Devil is foiled. The poem thus employs the typical medieval allegorical technique of depicting objectively the subjective crisis of moral choice, which is incorporated later in the morality plays such as Mankind or The Castle of Perseverence.4 The presence of the good angel and the evil angel in Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, to cite but one illustration among many, demonstrates the persistence of this literary and cultural tradition in the later Renaissance. Of the Seven Ages may be compared with the Middle English verses entitled by their editor, Furnivall, The Mirrour of the Periods of Man's Life, or Bids of the Virtues and Vices for the Soul of Man, wherein personifications