Law, Chaucer, and Representation in Lydgate’s “Disguising at Hertford”

Abstract

In John Lydgate’s “Disguising at Hertford,” a group of husbands brings a bill of complaint before the king about the tyranny of their wives.1 Invoking antimatrimonial paradigms, they decry the “bonde of sorowe” that is marriage, claiming that their wives scold, drink, fail to prepare dinner, and beat their husbands with distaffs, fists, and ladles. The husbands request that the king grant them liberty from the bonds of marriage and restore the “nature” and “raysoun” of patriarchal rule. Using a flood of legal terminology, the bill concludes by beseeching the king to use his authority to “graunte hem fraunchyse and also liberte . . . [and] sauf-conduyt to sauf him frome damage . . . Graunt hem also a proteccyoun” (ll. 138–42). For their part the wives defend themselves in equally legalistic jargon, invoking the authority of Chaucer’s Wife of bath who, they say, “cane shewe statutes moo þan six or seven” (l. 169) to prove that law is on their side. They “clayme maystrye for prescripcyoun” (l. 203) and request the king show “his grace” (l. 212) in upholding their domestic sovereignty. Instead of ruling conclusively on the case, the king defers judgment, granting a year-long extension of female rule until the husbands “may fynde some processe oute by lawe” (l. 242) that enables them to “Haue souerayntee on þeyre prudent wyves” (l. 244). Far from offering a defense of female rule, the disguising ends by deeming woman’s sovereignty “a thing vnkouþe” (l. 245) and implying a failure of justice. The “Disguising at Hertford” thus makes the problem of