Skelton's English Works in Manuscripts and Print

While critics today have become accustomed to taking Chaucer and Langland to form an “obligatory conjunction,”1 previous generations were much likelier to deem the attempt to compare these two poets “simply absurd.”2 After all, as Robert Aris Willmott would observe, “the author of Pierce Plowman is a shadowy personage, whom it is impossible to bring clearly before our eyes; but Chaucer stands prominently forward in one of the most interesting epochs of our history.” Chaucer, in sum, is upper class: Langland, with a vigorous mind and abundant powers of satire, spoke in the harshest language and with the most unmusical voice; Chaucer, with a fancy infinitely richer, and a vein of humour, more keen and brilliant, combined all the learning and accomplishments of the time. Instead of wandering among the Malvern Hills, he mingled in the pageantry of Edward's court, and cultivated his taste by foreign travel, and by intercourse, not only with the most distinguished persons of his age and country, but with the poets and scholars of the South.3 Such judgments, of course, are inescapably circular. Bodies of poetry are ascribed to each poet on the basis of assumptions about what those ascriptions should be. As Kathleen Forni has remarked with regard to the Chaucerian apocrypha, “texts, and authors, do not enjoy aesthetic autonomy and their value is ultimately extraliterary and historically contingent.”4 There is no “Chaucer” with a keen and brilliant humor apart from the texts assumed to be his on the grounds of their keen and brilliant humor. If, say, Piers Plowman had been ascribed to Chaucer, Willmott's characterization of the urbane poet would not have held up—which is why Willmott would probably have rejected any such ascription: Piers Plowman does not display the infinitely rich fancy we all know to have been Chaucer's.My hypothetical proposal is itself not so fanciful as it might at first appear, for this brief essay lays bare the existence of a longstanding tradition according to which Chaucer did in fact write Piers Plowman. A few of the items I will survey are not new to Chaucer scholarship, but mistakes of dating and other accidents of history have prevented a proper understanding of them. The others are wholly new. Recognition of this tradition is important on a number of fronts, aside from its inherent interest to students of Chaucer's and Langland's reception histories. For instance, the first item, by far the best known of the group, has substantial implications for the histories of the Plowman's Tale and William Thynne's edition of 1542. A set of eighteenth-century items—published in a massively influential book that has flown below the radar of Chaucerians—is derived wholly from that first item, but in turn sets the stage, somewhat perversely, for the first modern attribution of Piers Plowman to “William Langland.” And the other items are no less interesting as they shed light on the interpretive milieus of figures as disparate as Stephan Batman (a manuscript collector at the center of power in Elizabethan England) and one Elizabeth Johnson (an otherwise unknown reader in whose copy of Piers Plowman was a Chaucerian item that might have influenced her thinking). In sum, this essay contributes something new to the growing body of work on Chaucer reception and to the smaller, companion history of Langland reception. Together, these fields have revealed the power of concepts of authorship and the richness of the early modern archive.5 Perhaps Chaucer did not write Piers Plowman, but the notion that he did had a three-hundred-year run, and it made for some fascinating episodes that underscore the contingency of our own ascriptions of Middle English poetry.John Leland's sixteenth-century De uiris illustribus does not mention Langland or any independent poet of Piers Plowman, but it does include chapters on Gower and a substantial one on Chaucer, whose catalogue of works begins thus: Fabulae Cantianae uiginti quattor, quarum duae soluta oratione scriptaeSed Petri Aratoris fabula, quae communi doctorum consensu Chaucero, tanquam uero parenti, attribuitur, in utraque editione, quia malos sacerdotum mores uehementer increpauit, suppressa est.Twenty-four Canterbury Tales, of which two are written in proseThe Tale of Piers Plowman, however, which is attributed by the common consent of scholars to Chaucer's authorship, has been suppressed in both editions because it vigorously attacked the bad morals of the clergy.6 This item is universally taken to be a confused reference to the apocryphal Plowman's Tale. This assumption has both fueled and been enabled by another assumption: that Leland wrote this in the mid-1540s, a few years after the Plowman's Tale was first ascribed to Chaucer, in William Thynne's 1542 edition.Yet, as Alexandra Gillespie points out, the item was apparently produced before the 1542 edition of The Workes that includes The Plowman's Tale (Leland uses a 1532 edition of Chaucer to list his works), and Leland thinks of Langland's Plowman, Piers, not the unnamed pseudo-Chaucerian Plowman, as he writes up his bibliography.7 Gillespie's crucial point now receives confirmation in James P. Carley's edition of Leland's De uiris illustribus, which shows that this item is part of what he terms “Stage I” of Leland's production, ca. 1535–37, rather than “Stage II,” which began ca. 1542.8 This suggests that Thynne's inclusion of the Plowman's Tale in that edition might well be a sign of the influence of the De uiris illustribus rather than the other way around. That influence might also be seen in Francis Thynne's claim, in 1598, that Cardinal Wolsey had prevented his father from including a “pilgrymes tale,” presumably the Plowman's, in the 1532 Works.9 There is great confusion here, not least in the fact that Wolsey was dead by 1532. One of the likely explanations of the younger Thynne's claim, as Gillespie suggests, is that it developed from Leland's own account rather than from an event known to both of them.10Indeed this redating of Leland's item raises serious questions about whether the Plowman's Tale is his referent at all. Whatever poem he was referring to, he had not read it carefully: the Plowman's Tale has no Piers; Piers Plowman is no fabula, no “Canterbury tale.” On that criterion the two cancel each other out. But every other indication, it seems to me, would favor Piers Plowman alone. Whereas only a single copy of one edition of the Plowman's Tale (securely datable before 1542) is extant,11Piers Plowman was extant in numerous manuscripts, three of which (plus one excerpt) were themselves products of the first half of the sixteenth century.12 If by “Piers Plowman” Leland meant Piers Plowman, the absence of that poem's author from De uiris illustribus is no longer a problem. No one would wonder about the absence of the Plowman's Tale. Finally, Leland would no longer be guilty of a glaring and extraordinarily uncharacteristic error of confusion. (The charge of erroneous attribution would still stand, though.)It is difficult to dissociate these indications from their subsequent influence: The Plowman's Tale, perhaps as a result of Leland's confused remark, soon made it into the Chaucer canon, after which it seemed to be his obvious referent. When John Dryden in his preface to the Fables (1700) asserted that Chaucer “seems to have some little Byas towards the Opinions of Wickliff, … somewhat of which appears in the Tale of Piers Plowman,” he was channeling Leland and certainly meant the Plowman's Tale.13 But whether it was because others were confused by this important comment or because they referred independently to a tradition already known to Leland, the belief that Chaucer had written Piers Plowman and not the shorter Wycliffite poem had taken hold.14On August 22, 1577, a learned commentator inscribed his copy of Owen Rogers's 1561 edition of The Vision of Pierce Plowman and Pierce the Ploughman's Crede (STC 19908) with a treatment of this plowman problem. Simon Horobin has convincingly proposed that the best identification of this hand is Stephan Batman, noted collector of medieval manuscripts and chaplain to Archbishop Parker, who owned and inscribed two manuscripts of Piers Plowman.15 The inscription opens with (item 1 in a list) John Bale's Latin attribution of the “Visionem petri Aratoris” to Robert Langland and description of the poet as a disciple of Wyclif, together with additional thoughts on authorship: 2.Mention is made of Peerce Plowghman's Creede, in Chawcers tale off the Plowman.3.I deeme Chawcer to be the author. I thinke hit not to be on and the same þat made both: for that the reader shall fynde diverse maner of Englishinge on sentence; as namelie, Quid consyderas festucam in oculo fratris tui, trabem autem in oculo tuo etc.4.And speciallie, for þat I fynde Water Brute named in this Creede: who was manye yeeres after þe author off þat Vision.16 The Plowman's Tale is here unquestionably Chaucer's, as is the Crede, of which this annotator “deems Chaucer to be the author” because of its lines “Of Freres I have tolde before/In a makynge of a Crede.”17 But the author of þat Vision is not “on and the same” as Chaucer, a claim made on the grounds of dating and, it seems, the prominence of Latin therein but not in the Crede. Given how conclusively Batman (or whoever is writing this) takes the evidence against Piers Plowman's ascription to Chaucer to be, one wonders why he mentions the possibility at all. The belief must have been prominent enough—whether only in Leland's account, in this annotator's own previous thoughts, or in the literary circles of his day—to merit rebuttal. If not for that belief, however it was manifested, this note would not exist, at least not in this form.An inscription on the title page of a copy of Robert Crowley's first 1550 edition of Piers Plowman (STC 19906)—now Cambridge, CUL (Cambridge University Library), shelfmark Syn. 7.55.12—is explicit about the phenomenon Batman takes for granted: “The Vision of Pierss Plowman sd to be wrote by Chaucer some say by a Wickliffian about Rc 2d time.” This copy is signed “Ez. Johnson” in a seventeenth- or eighteenth-century hand. It seems very unlikely that Johnson was aware of the scholarly debates over the authorship of Piers Plowman that had occupied scholars since at least Leland's time. Had she been, she would have mentioned not Chaucer but instead one or both of the candidates discussed by every other such annotator. Each of these candidates has his own champion in the copy of Crowley's third edition (also 1550; STC 19907) now at the University of Michigan:18[hand 1 (except for = hand 3), 18c?]: N. B The author of this Poem was John Malverne Fellow of Oriel College in Oxford, who finished it in 1342. 16 Edw III.[hand 2, below, 18c?]: Another chronicle MSS attributes it to the Same but says it was finished 1427.See Ames H. Print, p. 270.It seems to be well esteemed as the first [Edn (?)] was in the yea[cropped].Ripe cheries many fol 35. l. 12 [verso in pencil, later hand] measles fo 38 l. 5See more particulars in Wharton's H. Eng. Poetry p 266 Vol 3.[hand 3, below, early 19c?]: I presume, whoever inserted the above names, mistook thus—the seat of the Poem is the Malverne Hills—but the Author was Robert Longlande a secular priest.See Warton, ut supra. So thoroughly intertwined in the consciousness of readers were “John Malvern” (John Stow's ascription, popularized in John Pits's 1619 Relationum Historicarum de Rebus Anglicis Tomus Primus)19 and “Robert Langland” (Crowley's candidate) that Thomas Tanner treats them as equivalents rather than competitors in his influential Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica of 1748.20 And those making such claims in their copies inevitably cite modern scholarly authorities—here, Joseph Ames and Thomas Warton.Johnson was the last in a long line of owners to have marked the Cambridge copy. A sixteenth-century hand inscribes the most comprehensive alphabetical index to the poem's topics I have ever encountered, and this hand makes a number of changes to the text and its punctuation. But if Johnson attended carefully to any of the earlier annotations, the likeliest candidate was another sixteenth-century hand—appearing on the back of the same page upon which she wrote her comment—which wrote: “An abell reader, a good sentence dothe ofte spill./quod Chaucer.” This comment is a digest of a couplet from the Romaunt of the Rose: “For a reder that poyntith ille/A good sentence may ofte spille” (2161–62).21 Here is a nice indication of the ways in which copies of Langland lived the same sorts of lives as did those of more thoroughly studied copies of Chaucer (whether or not these authors were thought to be the same person), for Johnson's edition bears a particularly striking resemblance to a Stow edition of Chaucer in the same collection (Cambridge, CUL, shelfmark Syn. 2.56.2), which, says Seth Lerer, “is littered with a range of marginalia, apparently spanning many years and many hands throughout the seventeenth and probably the eighteenth centuries.” In this book, too, someone has added a Chaucerian passage from Pandarus's speech in Book I of Troilus and Criseyde, which, like the couplet from the Romaunt in Johnson's copy, is “rearranged and slightly mistranscribed” and “carries the flavour of the maximal, or aphoristic.”22The tendency to excerpt Chaucerian aphoristic verse offers a more plausible (if still unlikely) explanation for Johnson's attribution of Piers Plowman to Chaucer than does the scholarly discussion of Robert Langland and John Malvern in the Michigan copy, for it is just possible that she took the “quod Chaucer” to apply to the whole of the poem in her hands. It seems most probable, though, that she is simply reporting what she has picked up from Dryden or a similar source. Whatever the case, in her amateur approach, Elizabeth Johnson had a kindred spirit a century or so later in the person of one Sarah King, who likewise saw an intimate connection between Piers Plowman and Chaucer, as recorded in her 1561 Rogers edition now held in the London Library: “Chaucer lived in 1380 in Richard 2nd time, He often makes mention of Lydagate a monk of Bury and of his good Friend Piers the Plowman ~ Chaucer.”23In the early eighteenth century the attribution of Piers Plowman to Chaucer finally entered the mainstream of scholarly discussion in the form of Humfrey Wanley's catalogue of the Harleian manuscripts. First is this description of MS 875 (H of A), which contains: That well-known Old English Poem, call'dpiers plow-man. Imperf. One of the Printed Editions ascribe it to Robert Longland: and from one of the MS. Copies, some have believed the Author to be one John Malverne: but Leland pag. 423. says, 'twas the Unanimous Tradition or Opinion of the Learned in his Time, that Geffrey Chaucer was the Author of it; which to me seems the most probable, for several Reasons.24 Leland's remarks had just finally been published in 1709, of which Wanley's understanding seemed to him preferable to the two more widely endorsed candidates, Malvern and Robert Langland. Other oddities aside, we might wonder how anyone so well versed in the options could have imagined something so long as Piers Plowman, especially if the A version were assumed to be merely “imperfect,” as a sometime member of the Canterbury Tales.Wanley's description of the next Piers Plowman copy in the Harley collection, MS 2376 (MS N of C), explains: At the End, is this Note, Hic explicit Visio Willelmi de Petro Plowman. Now among the several persons to whom the Poems of Piers Plowman have been ascribed, I remember not any William; so that if Geffrey Chaucer was the man, he disguised his name for fear of the Clergy, who are bitterly inveighed against in these Poems. And to shew that the preceding Note, and another that will soon follow are of some moment, I produce these Verses, extant in fol. 7.b.A louely Lady of lore, in Lynnen y cloþed,Com a-don fro þat Castel, & cleped me by Name,And sayd William, slepes' þu? seyst þu þys Peple, &c.25 “The Poems of Piers Plowman,” plural: Wanley takes this to be a collection of separate items, which his listing of the manuscript's shows to be the Visio first item of the manuscript and what he is here and the three two The is that to MS the that will would certainly have in the description of MS had Wanley lived long This description of MS 2376 has some modern but only in a very confused includes the item in of Chaucer and but she the is it appears as an item the but that is because she was on a of the which had been published in And the item was much earlier than Wanley inscribed on the of of MS 2376 (an of which is now on the and he in Wanley's description of MS 2376 not just as the of the tradition this essay more for its in the of medieval literary For it if somewhat perversely, the of “William Langland” as the name by which we now the author of Piers Plowman, as for the first and perhaps most influential modern of rather than Langland as author of Piers Plowman, by Thomas in his edition of the Canterbury a manuscript and three lines to in the from whom he at least has the to if not by The of Pierce are ascribed to one Robert but the best that I have the name of the author William, his So in at the of p. 1 is this de Willelmi de Petro And in of p. 2, instead The also the account of 2376 in the Harleian of MS rather than MS Harley itself him from that he has here merely Wanley in the As it his copy of Crowley's first now shelfmark is carefully against the manuscript the to the of the manuscript's Wanley than he has or than is to as the the of in the of authorship: a de for Chaucer in Wanley's the name of the poet in is the at the of “William Langland” as author of Piers Plowman. He his power this new ascription is in ways whose has been prevented by modern of Wanley's in eighteenth-century for the of MSS 875 and 2376 were well known among the scholars of the later eighteenth both on their own and reference to the The Richard of College and of Cambridge University Wanley's description of Harley 875 into the of his copy of Rogers's edition shelfmark He its author as Wanley and points as well to the description of MS in the for in his the and literary Joseph says that proposal that the name was is by the evidence that the is some to no more than a of the for which like Wanley and three is if Here just mentions In his own copy of Crowley's first 1550 edition in University shelfmark and on the in says that is for the by an inscription of and on “William claim to very to the of his and with of Wanley's wonders whether readers of published took his of the attribution of Piers Plowman to the as an of Wanley's is still wrote is no to that it was Robert Langland, or John but on the a substantial one that it was At least two scholars would this comment into the of their Piers Richard who that his not that and John literary and of the who also it in his of Thomas In the Crowley's and Bale's attribution of the poem to someone of the name Langland, a man, little since is every to that he was a by at if not by the “John proposal is and the poet seems to be a such to his wholly but no candidate of his it would have been perhaps for his readers to wonder whether was his for fear of from in his on Chaucer as Wanley had disguised his name for fear of the The single with which his account of Chaucer's to, to the that he was entered at the the of that are to that he was two for a in a of Thomas his p. He says that Chaucer copies of the tale of Piers Plowman it is known he did not the wrote a upon The point to Piers Plowman rather than the Plowman's Tale as the referent. The in this would be since all that was well known to most readers was that Langland wrote Piers Plowman, and Chaucer did a belief that a few The of Chaucer a too, was in own as in this display of which a between his and scholarly The are for for he with or with this one and in another a great him I a most and to no For such I me and too, And and And the version of the that by account of the as Sarah points “Chaucer now is to have his his too, was Francis a collector of who had one on him to we know how readers like or to on the authorship of Piers Plowman, we know something to in the of his at in fact did not Wanley's author of this poem … is It is ascribed to Robert Langland a secular in and some have most thought it the work of But whoever the it seems that his name was William, by the of which he is some at often in the of the on every other of the had on this one his was only the author was not William Langland, Robert Langland, or He could do no than ascribe Piers Plowman to and that not in the light of In any case, this comment to the of a belief in Chaucer's authorship that has become wholly to Wanley certainly and might well have been the referent of who have belief to which only a single his name in be to have any the very existence of a tradition that attributes Piers Plowman to Chaucer suggests that perhaps we should not at value the of earlier in which any such is Such claims as if Chaucer's from the unmusical poem with which his name had been in some John notion their to Chaucer to be seen as the and as to Langland's might be a to up important Wanley in that Chaucer had to his because of Piers Plowman's but in he that the two not only in the century and in as suggests, but also in and perhaps throughout tradition by and has so simply in the between Chaucer and Langland have seemed so It probably to anyone to for But another is that some of the most have from histories of reception. into this has long upon a body of the in editions and such as those of or literary histories such as those by and his Thomas and in by like the and & manuscript and the the copies of the and Rogers editions in from to to but on the William at “the of produced by early of and at “the of and they a of about the lives of and their in the lives of their readers that we have only to If this survey of the Langland a tradition that our on so many one wonders what a of the Chaucer which is so much and richer, would bring to

Lost Letters Medieval Life: English Society, 1200-1250. Edited translated by Martha Carlin David Crouch. [The Middle Ages Series.] (Philadelphia: University Pennsylvania Press. 2013. Pp. xxvi, 334. $29.95. ISBN 978-08122-4459-5.)This elegant scholarly volume reproduces a strong proportion the model correspondence contained in two early-thirteenth century formularies, one surviving in the British Library the other in the Bodleian. They both emanate, it seems, from Oxford, both cater to the needs business students. A crisp introduction covers, in addition to description the manuscripts themselves, a history such formularies; the political context; an introduction to contemporary Oxford the study letter writing there; literacy in early-thirteenth-century society; and, most interestingly, a study epistolary conventions with particular reference to forms address dictated by courtesy social status. The subjects range from commercial transactions; processes provisioning accounting; requests for assistance creation reciprocal obligation to issues concerning lordship, administration, war, politics. One the most fascinating sections concerns a knight's correspondence regarding the building a barn. The context is one those grants, so common on the Chancery rolls, where a royal servant is granted oak trees from the royal forest for building works. Few readers these entries will have given much thought, one suspects, to what precisely happens next. Here, however, we have a sequence events that might follow. The recipient writes to a forester, described his friend, asking him to convey the to his men requesting that the recipient supply the oaks but adding that he might increase the royal as you can without betraying the king's trust (p. 278). What does this mean? The forester's response is to comply, adding the crowns the trees and everything that belongs to the forester's office (p. 280) for the knight's hearth, together with all assistance to his carpenters. In a third letter the forester instructs his sergeants to add a fifth oak of our own gift (p. 281) to obtain assistance from the surrounding communities in carrying the oaks to the knight. The knight then hires a carpenter to finish his windmill to build a barn instructs his bailiff accordingly. The latter replies saying that all has been done requested that he has borrowed money to cover the expenses. …

(foriegn text omitted) Oxford, Jesus College, MS zg(II) (J) and London, British Library, MS Cotton Caligula A.ix (C) are two closely related manuscripts dating from the second half of the thirteenth century, each of which contains a number of poetic works in both English and Anglo-Norman.' They now have nine texts in common - The Oil and the Nightingale, which is preserved only in these two manuscripts;2 two hagiographical works by an Anglo-Norman poet known only as 'Chardri' (the Vie des set dormant and He de Josaphaz; an AngloNorman debate-poem called the Petit Plet- also generally ascribed to Chardri;3 and six English religious lyrics. A seventh lyric in C (Will and Wit) was probably also contained in J before the page was lost.4 The only texts in C besides these are a short Anglo-Norman prose chronicle, Li Rei de Engleterre, and a copy of La3amon's Brut- one of only two in existence, the other being London, British Library, MS Cotton Otho C.xiii. The Brut s nineteenthcentury editor, Frederic Madden, believed that the section of the manuscript containing the Brut was originally separate from the rest, but Neil Ker has argued that the two parts belonged together `from the first'.6 J is also a bipartite volume, but, in this case, part ii is entirely unrelated to the much later manuscript with which it is bound.7 As well as the texts held in common with C, J contains eighteen other English religious lyrics (including the wellknown Luue-Ron of Thomas of Hales8 and the Poema morale);9 part of Guillaume le Clerc's Tobie;'o some sayings ascribed to King Alfred; a versified moral treatise, the Doctrinal Sauvage;'2 and two works of reference - a list of the shires of England and a price-setting scale for bread (the only piece in Latin).'3 These two collections have long been regarded as important witnesses to the status and function of vernacular literature in this period. Yet the value of their testimony is greatly reduced by the fact that we know virtually nothing about the actual circumstances in which they were compiled. The linguistic evidence points to a geographical origin in the West Midlands - Herefordshire for J, and Worcestershire for C. There is some circumstantial evidence to support this. Thomas of Hales, whose Luue-Ron survives in J, seems to have taken his surname not from Hales in Gloucestershire but from what was Hales in Shropshire, and is now Halesowen near Birmingham.15 He was apparently a choirboy at Hereford.6 Guillaume le Clerc's Tobie is dedicated to the prior of the canons of St Mary's, Kenilworth, which is in Warwickshire;17 and La3amon, as he tells us himself, was a priest at Areley Kings in Worcestershire. There is nothing to militate against a West Midlands origin for the two manuscripts, either in Betty Hill's study of the owners of J before it was acquired by the College, or in the more recent work by Carole Weinberg on the marginal glosses in Caligula A.ix's copy of the Brut. More difficult to assimilate is the fact that in 1400 several of the texts listed above were recorded in the library of the Premonstratensian abbey at Titchfield in Hampshire.Zo One of the Titchfield manuscripts (Q.III) apparently contained a Vita septem dormientium, a Vita sancti Iosaphat, and an Altercacio inter iuuentutem et senectutem. These three texts are certainly to be identified with the three ascribed to Chardri found in C and J.2' Hill pointed out that Q.III also contained three works labelled Passio Christi, Predicacio sancti Pauli and Vita sancti Thome martiris, just as J contains The Passion of Our Lord (item 1), The Eleven Pains of Hell seen by St Paul (item z9) and The Antiphon of St Thomas (item IG).22 There may also have been a connection between Q.III's Miracula beate Marie and Salutaciones beate Marie and the four Marian pieces contained in J. Elsewhere in the catalogue, in Q.XI, we find more entries for texts on the Passion, this time in company with a work labelled De die iudicij in anglicis exactly the same title as is borne by J's item 12. …

SEER, Vol. 88,Nos. 1/2,January /April2010 PART ONE Lindsey Hughes on Peter the Great: A Personal Memoir JAMESCRACRAFT Well known as she is for her work on Peter theGreat, Lindsey Hughes was drawn to intensive study of his reign only gradually, and then reluctantly. As an undergraduate at Sussex University and a postgra duate at Cambridge she majored inRussian studies, as we would say in the United States, with concentrations in language, literature and visual art. Her Cambridge thesis (1976), a pioneering work in English, was devoted to late seventeenth-century 'Moscow Baroque5 architec ture seen as an instance of early 'Westernization5 inRussia. Portions of the thesis were soon published as articles, which served in turn as my introduction to her work; in my own monograph on architectural developments in Petrine Russia I cited four of these articles as well as the dissertation while quoting from them several times. She was now the unique authority on Moscow Baroque architecture outside Russia and I was pleased to claim a convergence of views on the subject's historical significance.1 She had made an impressive debut as an early modern Russian architectural or more broadly cultural historian, and I was in her debt. But that was scarcely the end of it.Researching the transmission of Baroque architectural forms from Europe to Russia had immersed Lindsey (as I soon came to know her) in the simultaneous transmission of the new (post-Renaissance) graphic art and in the roles of the local people involved, both artists and patrons. An article (1982) and then book (1984) on Prince Vasili Vasil'evich Golitsyn ensued. Golitsyn was a Westernizing patron second in importance only to Russia's 'regent5 in the 1680s, Grand Princess Sofiia Alekseevna, the subject of another series of articles (including a seminal one in this journal) that culmi nated in a major monograph published in 1990.The impactof this James Cracraft is Emeritus Professor of Russian History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. 1 James Cracraft, The Petrine Revolution in Russian Architecture, Chicago, IL and London, 1988,pp. 99, 100,106-07,345 ( ?30>32,44)> 34^ ( .47)>359~6o JAMES GRAGRAFT I5 thoroughly researched, engagingly written and judiciously feminist study remains, I think, incalculable. Sofr?a Alekseevna was thereby not simply restored toRussian history but given at long last her rightfully prominent place in it.2 At some point after leaving Cambridge, possibly while she was lec turingat theUniversity ofReading (1977-87),Lindsey began toying with the idea of writing a biography of Peter the Great, the undeserv ing winner (as shemightwell have thoughtofhim) in the struggle for power with his elder half-sister Sofiia that issued in the latter's deposi tion and virtual imprisonment and the beginning of Peter's (or his party's) de facto rule. A touch of revenge playfully fueled her motiva tion here, I suspect: the debt the crass upstart owed to hisWesternizing half-sister would be revealed together with his quite shabby post-coup treatment of her, and the Petrine 'cult' would be thereby eviscerated for all to see. But an admirable professional restraint held Lindsey back from taking the plunge. She was neither excessively committed, like so many historians, to the period of her debut, determined to defend its importance at all costs; but nor was she as yet confident that she could master themassive documentation and controversial historiography of the Petrine era sufficiently to satisfy her own high standards. And then there were the many repugnant aspects of Peter's long reign to con sider. At any rate, I seem to recall a conversation along some such lines in the course ofmy first,very pleasant meeting with Lindsey over lunch at a restaurant in the shadow of the British Museum (then also the British Library), our mutual workplace in London, in 1979. She told me about her shift in focus from the architectural history of the Moscow Baroque to biographical study of Golitsyn and Sofiia. And I assured her, in response to her cordial inquiry, that I had no intention of writing a biography of Peter while rather needlessly observing that to do so successfully would be a daunting task. Probably...

At the opening of Chaucer's early dream vision, the Book of the Duchess, the narrator describes his insomnia and his general idle malaise: I have so many an ydel thoghtPurely for defaute of slepThat, by my trouthe, I take no kepOf nothing, how hyt cometh or gooth,Ne me nys nothyng leef nor looth.All is ylyche good to me—Joye or sorowe, wherso hyt be—For I have felyng in nothyng.(4–11)1 The relentless negations in these lines—denials of action, thought, being, and feeling—emphasize the narrator's lack of productive intellectual or social influence and his emotional void. Yet “nothing” takes on an allegorical force as it “cometh or gooth” and as the narrator describes his “felyng in nothyng.” This allegory illogically suggests that the Dreamer finds something—a feeling—in nothing, a paradoxical notion that anticipates a deep preoccupation throughout the poem with a making something from nothing, valuing passive as active, and finding productivity in idleness.2Idleness is an important though little-studied aspect of medieval culture, as James Simpson has argued.3 Simpson articulates a literary principle of “idling” based on the repeated echoing of prior sources. In doing so, he suggests, a poem “enacts yet somehow resists the possibility of literary waste; it recycles even as it appears to waste.”4 In her book on medieval gossip, Susan Phillips takes up the issue of idleness much more extensively, making a case for the productive capacity of idle talk.5 Like both of these scholars, I am interested in idleness and its productive potential. I will integrate and expand on their work by approaching the subject of idleness with a particular focus on gender and sexuality. In doing so, I hope to illuminate a queer dimension to the notion of productive idleness by articulating a poetics of idling in Chaucer's first dream vision.The apparent passivity of the melancholic narrator has been a focus for many scholarly treatments of the poem influenced by queer theory and gender studies.6 Most notably, for my purposes, Steven Kruger argues that the Dreamer's melancholia at the beginning of the poem works as a queering force, rendering him passive and effeminate. Kruger further suggests that it is through the Dreamer's homosocial interaction with the Black Knight within his dream that his melancholic state is corrected.7 While such treatments of the poem are valuable, I wonder why we must locate the poem's queer dynamic within a gender inversion, insisting on the equation of a male character's “passivity” with “femininity.” I would like to move beyond this correlation by suggesting that neither “femininity” nor “queerness” must be passive. The Dreamer and the Black Knight mobilize their unproductive physical and mental states—their idleness—toward emotional and creative production. Instead of “being idle,” they are “idling.” This active participial form inscribes a measure of activity into the apparent stagnancy of their idleness.The Book of the Duchess emphasizes idleness at three levels. First, Chaucer thematizes it by highlighting how the Dreamer's melancholia prevents him from writing poetry, rendering his languor akin to a particularly humanist brand of melancholy: accedia, or intellectual and creative torpor. Yet at the end of the poem, as the Dreamer returns to his pen, prompted by his marvelous dream, the melancholic state that has produced his dream is reinscribed as productive. In the figure of the Black Knight, the Dreamer's idleness is extended and magnified, as the Knight's despair at the loss of his wife approaches a kind of spiritual sloth, or acedia. The Dreamer's intervention into the Black Knight's melancholy introduces another idle mode in the poem—one that emerges at the level of narrative and discourse. As R. A. Shoaf has demonstrated, the Dreamer acts as a kind of secular confessor to the Black Knight, probing him about his dead lover in a strategy that resembles the questions of a priest taking confession.8 However, several scholars have pointed out that the intimate personal detail required for confession renders it dangerously close to that most maligned form of “idle talk”—gossip.9 At the same time that the Dreamer acts as a secular confessor to the Black Knight, their conversation also resembles gossip. Yet their idle talk is not passive or unproductive. The confessional, gabby, discursive resonances of the men's verbal exchange elevate the intimacy between the Dreamer and the Black Knight, allowing for the partial consolation of an intimate or queer friendship. This dynamic undermines Kruger's point that their homosocial interaction acts as a corrective force.10 Finally, Chaucer's poetics of idling emerges at the level of poetic form, as the poem ends by rearticulating its own origin. Despite this regressive movement, which imitates an idle mechanism in its deceptive lack of progression or movement forward, the poem gestures outward to Chaucer's future poetic corpus in a way that renders the poem's idle circular structure an active force.The Book of the Duchess offers an early example in an English literary tradition of texts that depict men being idle in an intimate or homoerotic way.11 Such an association highlights the lack of social productivity—and biological reproductivity—in queer relationships, a point that has recently become the focus of a particular strand of queer theory espoused by Lee Edelman and others, known as the “antisocial thesis.”12 Edelman points to the violence of “reproductive futurism,” that is, the social and political emphasis on reproduction, the child, and the future.13 In making this important claim, Edelman nihilistically identifies the “death drive” as a queer imperative. In contrast, I would like to show how the queer friendship in the Book of the Duchess is invested, in its emotional and poetic productivity, in the future. My reading renders queer idleness an active, productive force, and so aligns with queer theorists like Eve Sedgwick, who sees queer as “a continuing moment, movement, motive—recurrent, eddying, troublant.”14 The Book of the Duchess is doubly queer as the intimacy cultivated between men is heightened and as the poem renders idleness into idling—an irrepressible cycle of production.The Book of the Duchess's focus on illness and grief highlights both the Dreamer's and the Black Knight's idle or unproductive conditions and enables their conversation to function as recuperative idle talk. The Dreamer's complicated gender is evident from the outset of the poem, as are the physical and spiritual conditions that inform his dream. Chaucer's narrator emphasizes the Dreamer's physical and psychological infirmity, telling us, “I may nat slepe wel nygh noght;/I have so many an ydel thoght” (3–4). He stresses his overactive imagination, asserting that his dazed languor is a result of “sorwful ymagynacioun” (14) and specifying that he suffers from “melancolye” (23). Moreover, the narrator's illness renders him “a mased thyng” (12), passive and impotent. The narrator tells us that his sickness and insomnia are “agaynes kynde” (16), a phrase that, as Kruger points out, would strongly resonate with moralizing rhetoric focused on sexual behavior contra naturam.15The nuance contained in the notion of the “ydel thoghts” that the Dreamer identifies in line 4 is worth examining in greater detail. The word idel and its variants in Middle English carry associations of laziness, worthlessness, emptiness, and lack of productivity.16 The Dreamer's idle thoughts underscore his overactive imagination. This emphasis on idleness hints at the nature of the Dreamer's melancholic condition. The word suggests that the Dreamer has no outlet for his lively fantasies. His transgression is not the medieval sin of acedia, a temptation that incites flight from spiritual exercises and ultimately produces alienation from God and despair. This spiritual condition emerges later when the Black Knight's malady begins to resemble religious despondency. Instead, the Dreamer's melancholy bears a likeness to the more broadly philosophical Petrarchan concept of accidia: the melancholic inhibition of creative production brought on by despair in the human condition.17 Furthermore, Middle English notions of idleness shifted semantically between intellectual production and biological reproduction. In his Confessio Amantis, for example, John Gower uses the word to refer to fallow land: “And ek the lond is so honeste/That it is plentevous and plein,/Ther is non ydel ground in vein” (7.930–32).18 Though many of the references to idleness denoting physical reproduction refer to land, the word's association with stopped or blocked fertility gives us greater insight into the nature of the Dreamer's ailment. Combining with his melancholic physicality, the Dreamer's idleness separates him from the imperative norm of production.19The Black Knight's depleted vitality echoes that of the Dreamer. Reflecting the narrator's assertion that he is “Alway in poynt to falle a-doun” (13), the Black Knight feels “Hys sorwful hert gan faste faynte” (488). Chaucer zeroes in with minute precision on the physiology of the Knight's swoon: The blood was fled for pure dredeDoun to hys herte, to make hym warm—For wel hyt feled the herte had harm—To wite eke why hyt was adradBy kynde, and for to make hyt glad,For hyt ys membre principalOf the body; and that made alHys hewe chaunge and wexe greneAnd pale, for ther noo blood ys seneIn no maner lym of hys.(490–99) Chaucer's detailed attention to the internal flux of the Black Knight's body reinforces the moist humoral associations accompanying melancholia and ties his experience to the Dreamer's.20 His interior currents seem to feed into his flood of words, as if his “complaynte” (487) were merely another form of fluid in his body's fungible economy of humors.21 The precise description of anatomy recalls Chaucer's account of the death of Arcite in the Knight's Tale, positioning the Black Knight almost at the point of death. Chaucer's assertion that the Black Knight's face is “Ful pitous pale and nothyng red” (470) anticipates an earlier description of the dead body of Seys “That lyeth ful pale and nothyng rody” (143), increasing the urgency of his predicament. The Dreamer's physical infirmity pales—so to speak—in comparison to the Black Knight's sickness.It soon becomes clear that in spiritual terms, too, the Black Knight is in peril. As we recall Chaucer's characterization of the Dreamer's malady as non-creative humanist melancholia, we may begin to read the Black Knight's illness as another form of melancholia—one spiritual rather than intellectual in nature. While the Dreamer's melancholia is Petrarchan, the Black Knight's malady is more elusive. To be sure, it is easily characterized as lovesickness, yet other clues provide a more nuanced reading. Though the “compleynt” the Black Knight utters just before he meets the Dreamer is short and uninspired, its existence suggests that he does not suffer from stunted creativity in the way the Dreamer does. Instead, the Black Knight's grief has reached the point of despair: he fails to imagine solace from anyone or anything. Without hope, the Black Knight laments, “No man may my sorwe glade,That maketh my hewe to falle and fade,And hath myn understondynge lornThat me ys wo that I was born!May noght make my sorwes slyde,Nought al the remedyes of Ovide,Ne Orpheus, god of melodye,Ne Dedalus with his playes slye;Ne hele me may no phisicien,Noght Ypocras ne Galyen;Me ys wo that I lyve houres twelve.”(563–73) Reflecting the Dreamer's negating lament at the poem's start, the Black Knight's list of failed sources for consolation includes ancient authors, mythical figures, and physicians. Nowhere does he imagine spiritual comfort from God or pastoral care from a priest through the sacrament of confession. In this, the Black Knight is guilty of acedia. The Dreamer's cryptic remark to the Black Knight later in the poem, “Me thynketh ye have such a chaunce/As shryfte wythoute repentaunce” (1113–14), reflects the latter's failure to understand the gravity of his spiritual circumstances. His inability to imagine comfort from God suggests a refusal of orthodox religiosity. Physically and spiritually, the Black Knight is in worse condition than the Dreamer. This imbalance requires the Dreamer to adopt the role of intercessory caretaker, spiritual physician, and confessor for the Black Knight.22By introducing confession as a discursive mode, Chaucer engages with one of the central spiritual concerns of the Middle Ages. Indeed, the practice of confession rose in influence in the late Middle Ages, beginning in 1215 with the Fourth Lateran Council's Canon twenty-one, Omnis utriusque sexus. By the late fourteenth century, the courtly culture of which Chaucer was a part stressed the fundamental importance of personal confession.23 Further, the practice and discourse of confession powerfully influenced both the structure and content of late medieval vernacular literature in works by Chaucer and his contemporaries.24As Shoaf has demonstrated, the Dreamer's questioning of the Black Knight illustrates the circumstantiae peccati model of confessional questioning. This model is concerned with eliciting a broad picture of the circumstances surrounding a sin so that the penitent might achieve a more thorough confession. The seven interrogatives designed to promote the more perfect confession were “Quis, quid, ubi, quibus auxiliis, cur, quamodo, quando” (who, what, where, with whose help, why, in what manner, when). After the Black Knight's diatribe against Fortune, the Dreamer probes him for more information, saying, “Good sir, telle me al hoolyIn what wyse, how, why, and wherforeThat ye have thus youre blysse lore.”(746–48) Though the Black Knight's monologues dominate the interaction between the two men, the Dreamer subtly prods the Black Knight for more detail. After the Black Knight has waxed on for over three hundred lines about his first encounter with Lady Whyte, the Dreamer gently urges him to continue with his story, adding more pointed and probing questions in order to achieve a more complete confession: “Ye han wel told me herebefore;Hyt ys no need to reherse it more,How ye sawe hir first, and where.But wolde ye tel me the manereTo hire which was your firste speche—Therof I wolde yow beseche—And how she knewe first your thoght,Whether ye loved hir or noght?”(1127–34; emphasis added) The Dreamer's command to the Black Knight—“telle me alle” (1143)—demonstrates one facet of a confessional rhetorical model underlying the discourse between them.Extending this confessional model, the Dreamer fashions himself a healer of the Black Knight's bruised soul. The concept of confession as psycho-somatic “cure” for sin was commonplace after the Fourth Lateran Council, and certainly was known by Chaucer's contemporaries.25 As spiritual physician, the confessor's responsibility was to heal the sinner's soul rather than expose the sickness and punish the sinner.26 The Book of the Duchess invokes the confessor-physician in a suggestive manner. After apologizing for interrupting the Black Knight's solitude, the Dreamer invites the Knight to speak at greater length about his sorrows, saying, “Me thynketh in gret sorowe I yow see;But certes, sire, yif that yeeWolde ought discure me youre woo,I wolde, as wys God helpe me soo,Amende hyt, yif I kan or may.Ye mowe preve hyt be assay;For, by my trouthe, to make yow hoolI wol do al my power hool.”(547–54) Chaucer's rime riche with the word hool in variant modes—adjectivally as “healthy” to describe the Black Knight in recovery, adverbially as “wholly” to describe the of the Dreamer's the two men from the outset in intimate association with confessional between the Dreamer and the Black Knight underscore the intimacy of their of throughout most of from the in words, the Fourth Lateran the the notion of This the intimacy between confessor and Indeed, as the in of confession was a form of In his have a kind of in the of the of that of and the of it and telling of and by of it in of it out in the of the discourse on has the of the Middle as a time of and sexual confessional discourse had its way with Yet as we have confession was a practice in Chaucer's on the of confession are to the confessional discourse in the Book of the the poem invites us to point as it us of the between the of confessor and lover as two of The of the as for the lover was commonplace in the medieval rhetoric of courtly as the Black Knight when he to as The between and to a of the two adding a to the Dreamer's as By himself as a the Dreamer to the Black Knight's of his and as physician, and to himself in her a with This reading reinforces the queer of his friendship with the Black Knight, Kruger's that the Dreamer a physical and as a result of his dream The confessional associations in the men's conversation and the intimacy between the same the level of intimate emotional detail in the Black Knight's confession is suggestive of another mechanism of one that also works to their queer gossip. As I am suggesting with several scholars, confession and are of discourse are outward and even as they on and line between and may easily and dangerously into the As Phillips the detailed of in their are to idle talk. Like the confessor and the the or in was as a healer of spiritual and emotional was a was a practice by of social and political in the Middle Ages. was a the end of his lament for Whyte, the Black Knight to about the idle and unproductive nature of his his for his he to the I The in Middle English to speak or much like the medieval denoting and The Black Knight's of in this suggests that it is to talk of his she the word points to a on his part that his monologues and interaction with the Dreamer is or in other Despite this the Black Knight for over two hundred more The of his suggests that the Black Knight his and idle of their interaction the intimacy and queer of the between the Dreamer and the Black conversation with the of and to the by as about in a by the Dreamer's and probing the Black Knight's monologues and against are him to his To be sure, the Black Knight about Fortune, her and ys and and that other He on to her to a that Yet his discourse also from a more that reinforces the Dreamer's of the associations surrounding in the Middle and its The Middle English like its English highlights this the Black Knight's of are from he the of his time his In his discourse with if in to his Fortune, the Black Knight the of his and the intimacy of the he with the is a intimate form of gossip. to it about or concerns in a the Dreamer of his own at is an of and exchange in the Dreamer's and rendering the conversation between the two men close to the that emphasizes this of particular attention to in Such when a is telling a story, and a with a or to the first stresses that, from being a to as other have be characterized as an these verbal take in of is a strategy for of the this form of is way in which work to As I have the Dreamer and questions into the Black Knight's to him out and promote a more thorough confession of his thoughts and characterization of and to underscore the intimacy of the discourse between the Dreamer and the Black also assertion that the of on their to men as and that to and in to a male to talk about The for the Black Knight's and his for to the Dreamer is his Indeed, the word and its variants in the of the first lines by the Black Knight to the Dreamer. such as wo and also adding to of the Knight's preoccupation with The word sorwe in in this within the seven lines and with the Black Knight's assertion that am sorwe and sorwe ys the Black Knight is so with his sorwe that, to he has his own to “a of The Black Knight's emphasis on his and later on his Whyte, points a form of discourse that is with the mode of the both and provide of gossip, their introduces a notion that is The that the Dreamer and the Black Knight are in or a discourse that resembles does not or to their by rendering Despite the of that has as a discourse of that was in the Middle Ages, men and Yet to that, of this it is not a form of discourse is was and unproductive by than the Dreamer and the Black Knight by as does its queer work through its associations with idleness and through the intimacy it between the two Despite their this intimacy suggests the productive of idle talk. points to the way that their queer friendship and resists consolation or for their melancholic is, after is into the human confession is The Dreamer's to the Knight's wythoute repentaunce” emphasis added) his to confession. too, is and While their friendship is these of circular and to the of idleness and in the Black Knight and the end of the poem this paradoxical condition as it offers an partial consolation for the Black the he has throughout the poem to his for Whyte, the Black Knight ys to which the Dreamer offers hyt ys This exchange the end of the Knight's conversation with the Dreamer. He his with The phrase also the Black Knight's rhetoric from a courtly to a more vernacular In this the Black Knight's as if his its Yet it is to imagine how the Dreamer's might solace to the Black This apparent of consolation for the Knight suggests an idle lack of in the poem as a the poem's apparent failure to move is at the level of in the from the dream narrative into the the Dreamer on his marvelous ys so a I be of to this in I kan and that was my ys lines to the rearticulating the of the Chaucer's of word that was the late fourteenth as it shifted from an of or the English to the future points to a of so that Chaucer might three in the future and The Dreamer's characterization of his dream as reinforces the circular movement in these The Middle English word or the of the word in this Yet the word also of or The of or and made or Chaucer himself uses the word several in his corpus to and The of is its too, are In the Tale, the word of ful and ful in the to the by To his dream as with Chaucer's of to that the dream he has just has been The circular at the end of the poem to the Black Knight, the and the to an of this of melancholy and its idling the poem a suggesting the productive of queer As his dream his poetry, the Dreamer's idle melancholia is productive Without the dream produced by the Dreamer's melancholic state of the poem would not have into In this of the poem anticipates Chaucer's future literary positioning the Book of the Duchess in a within his body of for his of the the Book of the Duchess was Chaucer's first work in To the poem may of earlier work by courtly such as the and as as and Yet Chaucer made and in the Book of the Duchess that the beginning of his and creative poetic of the first to elevate the English to an level of as the at Despite its the poem gestures outward in a way that with notion of as In their the lines of Chaucer's early poem complete and his poetics of his preoccupation with making something from and with the productive of idleness.The role of idle Chaucer's literary production in the Book of the Duchess anticipates the in discourse in his dream poem, the of This in which the to the of and might be to be concerned with making something from nothing, as it stresses the physical of and the in of and has attention to the influence of on Chaucer's literary production the of Chaucer's first vernacular poem in to these The Book of the Duchess that Chaucer's preoccupation with and further than scholars have and it reinforces the role of and other idle in Chaucer's poetic While this emphasis on the of even the paradoxical that make up Chaucer's poetics of idling passive into active, idle into a queer way to make something from

Georg Friedrich Handel. Aci, Galatea e Polifemo: Serenata a tre, HWV 72. Herausgegeben von Wolfgang Windszus unter Mitarbeit von Annerose Koch und Annette Landgraf. (Hallische Handel-Ausgabe, Ser. 1: Oratorien und gro[beta]e Kantaten, Bd. 5.) Kassel: Barenreiter, 2000. [Editorial policy, pref., in Ger., Eng., p. vii-xvi; facsims., p. xvii-xx; texts and trans., p. xxi.-xxx; score, 105 p.; Krit. Bericht, p. 107-24. Cloth. ISMN M00649585-6; BA 4068. DM 225.] George Frideric Handel's Ad, Galatea e Polifemo, composed in Naples, 1708, tells basically same story as his musically unrelated Acis and Galatea, composed ten years later in England. The English work has eclipsed Italian one in popularity for numerous reasons. Acis and Galatea opens with a depiction of a pastoral idyll punctuated by longing, desire, and exuberantjoy of soprano-tenor couple, and combining humorous parody with ominous foreboding, continues with this reverie's violent interruption by lovesick bass giant. Following Acis's death, Cantata concludes with a wrenching portrayal of Galatea's grief and her transformation of Acis into a (or, metaphorically, a living memory). The Neapolitan cantata (or serenata a tre) lacks all of these elements. Adhering to Italian operatic convention, young lovers in Ad, Galatea e Polifemo are both treble voices, with Aci's soprano role lying higher than Galatea's mezzo-soprano. The lovers are never shown in a happy state b ut are from beginning oppressed by pursuit of giant, who is more conventionally villainous. After Aci's death, Polifemo presses on with his suit of Galatea, who calls on her father, a water god, to transform Aci into a stream as she plunges into ocean to greet his arrival. Left alone, Polifemo hears Aci's voice in flowing stream expressing his eternal love and finally realizes that the constancy of those who once have known true love cannot, nor ever could, change. The three singers then slip out of character and move figuratively (or literally) to footlights to deliver moral that those who love well and are constant are never without hope. The striking contrasts between Italian and English renditions of this story are based on different artistic traditions, and, in particular, divergent choices in terms of vocal range and musical depiction may explain some of relative obscurity of Aci, Galatea Polifemo. Nevertheless, these distinctions, especially given expanding Interest in baroque opera and its conventions, as well as musical riches of score of Aci, Oalatea e Polifemo, do not in themselves explain different receptions of two works. Part of problem has also been that until now there was no complete edition commercially available, for when Friedrich Chrysander prepared this work for publication in Handel-Gesellschaft edition (Geog Friedrich Handels Werke, 53 [Leipzig: Ausgabe der Deutschen Handelgesellschaft, 1892?; reprint, Ridgewood, N.J.: Gregg Press, 1965, etc.]), autograph's final signature of four leaves containing end of Polifemo's aria Del mar fra l'onde (no. 18), his accompanied recitative relating Aci's declaration of eternal love (no. 19), and concluding trio Chi ben ama ha per oggetti (no. 20) had been separated from main manuscript (and was then in private hands). Some of this material was supplied from later sources, but no copy of Polifemo's recitative seemed extant. The missing pages were later discovered bo und into a manuscript copy of Acis and Galatea in Egerton Collection (MS 2953) now housed at British Library. In preparing new edition of Ad, Galatea e Polifemo for Hallische Handel-Ausgabe (HHA), editor Wolfram Windszus, in collaboration with Annerose Koch and Annette Landgraf, used divided, but complete, autograph as primary source, while also consulting an eighteenth-century copy containing no recitatives, from which two nineteenth-century copies were made (one serving Chrysander as a supplement to incomplete autograph; no libretto or any early prints are extant). …

THE story of the 'eaten heart' (AT 992) is known in orally collected versions from India, Hawaii, the Marquesas Islands, North America, Catalonia and the Cape Verde Islands.' It also exists in a variety of literary forms in recorded texts of the Middle Ages and early modern times.2 Some of these are merely allusions, but the majority are fully fledged works in French, Provengal, Italian, Latin, German, Dutch and English. The earliest date from the thirteenth century. There are also Danish and Swedish ballads first printed in the eighteenth century. The inventive and garrulous Madame d'Aulnoy incorporated the theme into a brief episode of her Mimoires de la Cour d'Espagne (first published Paris, 1690), but curiously transposed the roles of husband and wife. To these literary versions may be added an English chapbook version from the early eighteenth century, entitled The Constant, but Unhappy Lovers (London: printed by E.B. near Ludgate, 1707). A copy of this eight-page booklet is held by the British Library and is listed in the British Library Catalogue under 'Butler, Madam' (shelf-mark: 1076.1.22.(14)). To my knowledge, it has not previously been reprinted. The title-page of the booklet, which summarizes the plot, was printed in John Ashton's Chap-Books of the Eighteenth Century.3 However, I was alerted to the existence and subject-matter of this chapbook by the introductory note to the story 'Her Lover's Heart', a retelling of the Indian tale of Raja Rasalu, published in Idries Shah's collection of World Tales.4 The many versions of AT 992 can be divided into two sub-groups: (1) those in which the lover is killed by the jealous husband, and (2) those in which the lover dies separated from his beloved and has his heart sent to her as a token of his love. The English chapbook version belongs to the second sub-group, which also includes: (a) Konrad von Wiirzburg's 'Herzmaere', before 1257, rhyming couplets; (b) Jakemes's Roman du Chdtelain de Couci et de la Dame de Fayel, after 1285, rhyming couplets; (c) a prose version of Jakemes's romance, 15th century; (d) fragments of a Flemish-Dutch poem 'Van den Borchgrave van Couchi' that appears to be dependent on Jakemes, mid 14th century; (e) The Knight of Curtesy and the Fair Lady of Faguell, printed before 1568, stanzaic verse; (f) a Latin exemplum from the Sermones parati de tempore et de sanctis, 14th century, prose. It is obvious simply from the proper names that (b), (c), (d) and (e) are related to each other, while (f) may well be derived from (a). Both of the latter are German by provenance, and both eschew the use of personal names for their characters. The English chapbook version is not derived from The Knight of Curtesy, but is an independent occurrence of the theme. Like most of the literary versions of AT 992, The Constant, but Unhappy Lovers names its dramatis personae and k-1ces them in a carefully sketched historical and geographical setting. The young lady is a Madam Butler, a young gentlewoman at a boarding school in Hackney, whose father forces her to marry a Mr. Harvey, a rich merchant's son near Fenchurch St. She had, however, been courted for above two years by a Mr. Perpoint, a young gentleman of a considerable estate, who then went as a soldier to the wars in Spain and was mortally wounded at the Battle of Almanza (Almansa). The dread

Part 1 Fifteenth-century chronicle sources: chronicles written in - the Henrici (c. 1417, Latin), Thomas Elmham, Liber Metricus de Henrico Quinto (Metrical Life of Henry V), (c. 1418, Latin), Thomas Walsingham, St Albans (c. 1420-22, Latin), Tito Livio Frulovisi, Vita Henrici Quinti (c. 1438, Latin, Pseudo Elmham, Vita et Gesta Henrici (c. 1446-53, Latin), John Capgrave, De Illustribus Henricis (c. 1446-53, Latin), John Hardyng, (1457, 1464, Middle English and Latin), the Chronicle of Peter Basset (1449, French), the Brut (1430, 1436-37, 1460-70, Middle English), the London Chronicles (later 15th century, Middle English chronicles written in - Religieux (Monk) of Saint-Denis, Histoire de Charles (c. 1415-22, Latin), Geste de nobles francois (?late 1420s, French), Pierre Cochon, Chronique normande (?early 1430s, French), Chronique anonyme du reigne de Chales VI (?early 1430s, French), Memoires de Pierre de Fenin (?1430s, French), Chronique de Perceval de Cagny (late 1430s, French), Chronique de Ruisseauville (?1420s-1430s, French), Jean Juvenal des Ursins, Histoire de Charles VI, roy de France (1430-1440s, French), Enguerran Monstrelet, Jean Waurin and Jean Le Fevre (1444-1460s), Edmond de Dynter, Chronique des ducs de Brabant (?early to mid-1440s, Latin), Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris (?1449, French), Le Heraut Berry (the Berry Herald) (?1450s, French, Chronique d'Arthur de Richemont (1458-mid-1460s, French), Chronique de Normandie (1460s, French), Thomas Basin, Histoire de Charles VII (1471-72, Latin), Chronique d'Antonio Morosini )?1430s, Italian. Part 2 Sixteenth-century historians in England: The First English Life of Henry the Fifth (1513, English) Robert Fabyan, The New Chronicles of and France (1516, English) Polydore Vergil, Anglica Historia (1513, published 1534, Latin) Edward Hall, The Union of the Two Illustre families of Lancaster and York (1542, English) John Stow, The Chronicles of England (1592, 1601, English) Raphael Holinshed, Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1586-87, English). Part 3 contemporary reception of the battle and development of the literary tradition: France. Part 4 Interpretations from the 18th to the 20th century. Part 5 Administartive records: English army the French army.(Part contents).

When considering the Tudor dynasty and how it was depicted in sixteenth and early seventeenth-century chronicles, one the most compelling issues is that of succession. Carole Levin and Andrea Nichols consider the importance of the pregnancies, births of heirs to the throne and other royal children, and the difference in depiction between male and female heirs as is seen in English histories printed during or shortly after the Tudor era. The chapter focuses on the Tudor dynasty, starting with the seven children of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York; continuing with the pregnancies, miscarriages, and childhoods of the heirs born by the first three wives of Henry VIII; and ending with the two phantom pregnancies of Mary Tudor. There is an examination of the narratives of the children in a number of chronicles, including Holinshed’s Chronicles and Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, and works by Edward Hall, John Stow, Richard Grafton, William Martyn, Richard Baker, Polydore Vergil, and Giovanni Biondi. The chapter especially highlights the political, religious, and gender issues that intertwined with the topic of producing a healthy royal heir. Moreover, the chapter illuminates how various authors handled the complicated task of relating such sensitive issues as pregnancy, miscarriage, stillbirth, the death of an heir, and the significance of the gender of a royal child.

FOR MANY YEARS it has been widely accepted that four manuscripts written in a similar style were copied by the younger Francis Tregian during a decade of imprisonment for recusancy in the Fleet prison, where he died, it was believed, about 1619. The best known of these is no doubt the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, the first of the manuscripts to be attributed to Tregian; acceptance of the attribution then led later scholars to believe that the three other manuscripts were also his work. Yet closer scrutiny shows the Tregian legend to be based on very little solid evidence. Detailed analysis of the manuscripts themselves casts further doubt on Tregian's involvement with their copying. The physical evidence indicates that the manuscripts were not the work of a single copyist, but were more likely products of a scriptorium closely attached to the royal court. In addition to the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, Music MS 168 [FVB]), the manuscripts generally attributed to Tregian are British Library Egerton MS 3665 [Eg. 3665], New York Public Library MS Drexel 4302 [Dr. 4302] and the second layer of Oxford, Christ Church, Mus. MSS 510-14 [Ch. Ch. 510-14]. The purpose here is to question this long-held assumption, which I shared until physical analysis of the manuscripts themselves raised serious doubts about their accepted origins and it became necessary to re-examine the solidity of the evidence for the theory.' Since the earliest studies to propose Tregian as copyist are all concerned with FVB, it will be useful to preface a brief discussion of them with a list of the titles or notes in the manuscript which refer, or have at various times been thought to refer, to the Tregian family (see Table I). The life of Tregian's father, Francis Tregian senior, who was also a recusant, played a major part in the early stages of this theory.2 The family name Tregian was first mentioned in connection with FVB by William Chappell, in 1855:3

John Shirley compiled and wrote at least three miscellanies, probably more, in the first half of the fifteenth century; and Shirley's books appear to have remained accessible to a number of scribes in the decades following his death, to be used as exemplars for further miscellanies produced mainly in London for a century after his death. This article is an attempt to bring together what evidence we have for the network of scribes who inherited Shirley's books: what they copied from Shirley, what were their interests, how they may have had access to his books. John Shirley compiled and wrote at least three miscellanies, probably more, in the first half of the fifteenth century up to his death in 1456; and Shirley's books appear to have remained accessible to a number of scribes in the decades following his death, by what means we do not know, to be used as exemplars for further miscellanies produced mainly in London for a century after his death. (1) This article is an attempt to bring together what evidence we have for the network of scribes who inherited Shirley's books: what they copied from Shirley, what were their interests, and how they may have had access to his books. In a collection of essays on miscellanies, it will first be necessary to establish that Shirley's books and the books of later scribes who copied some of Shirley's texts can be considered as miscellanies, as understood elsewhere in this volume. Although most scholarly studies of Shirley's books have focused on their literary contents and Shirley's introductions, a closer look at their contents, as laid out so clearly in Tables 1 to 3 of Margaret Connolly's recent book on Shirley (pp. 30-31, 70-74, 146-49), reveals compilations more miscellaneous than these studies suggest. His earliest volume, London, British Library MS Additional 16165, includes besides literary works texts such as the Gospel of Nicodemus, the Master of Game, and a Latin Regula sacerdotalis. His second, as reconstructed from its parts in Sion College MS Arc.L.40.2/E.44, BL MS Harley 78 (fols [80.sup.r]-[83.sup.v]), and Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.3.20, includes besides literary works the translation of Deguileville's Pelerinage de la vie humaine, prognostications, prayers, and proverbs. His third, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 59, while the most exclusively literary of his compilations, nevertheless includes a list of the Knights of the Garter in 1416, the Middle English translation of Augustinus de contemptu mundi, medical recipes, and an account of lucky and unlucky days. Those who copied his texts in succeeding decades also compiled miscellanies of literary, didactic, historical, and practical texts. For instance, BL MS Harley 7333 brings together the prose Brut, Middle English versions of Cato, proverbs, and Lydgate's verses on the kings of England with what we would more clearly define as literary texts. In John Shirley, Chapter 8, Margaret Connolly discusses the manuscripts of Shirley's 'successors', as she calls them. Manuscripts in which are copied one or more texts apparently derived from Shirley's manuscripts are BL MS Additional 34360; BL MS Harley 2251; Cambridge, MA, Harvard University, Houghton Library MS Eng. 530; BL MS Harley 7333; BL MS Cotton Titus A.xxvi (fols 61-207); John Stow's manuscripts, BL MSS Harley 367 and Additional 29729; and possibly BL MS Additional 5467 (Connolly, pp. 172-85). Other manuscripts discussed by Connolly as sharing a number of texts in common with Shirley manuscripts, though showing no signs of direct derivation, are BL MS Harley 7578 and Bodleian MS Rawlinson C.86 (pp. 177-78, 181-82). Others sharing some contents with this group of manuscripts are Leiden, University Library MS Vossius Germ. Gal. Q.9; Cambridge, Jesus College MS 56; Bodleian MS Fairfax 16; Cambridge, Trinity College MSS R.3.19 and R.3.21; BL MSS Harley 2255, Harley 372, Egerton 1995, and Lansdowne 699; and Lambeth Palace Library MS 306. …

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Short Version of The Arrival of Edward IVRichard Firth GreenRichard Firth Green Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 56, Number 2Apr., 1981 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2846938 Views: 3Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1981 The Medieval Academy of AmericaPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Jennifer Jahner, Emily Steiner, Elizabeth M. Tyler Medieval Historical Writing, 81 (Dec 2019).https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316681299

Review Article: William Dugdale, Historian Christopher Dyer and Catherine Richardson (eds), William Dugdale, Historian, 1605-1686: His Life, his Writings and his County, Woodbridge, The Boydell Press, 2009, pp. xvi + 248, h/b. £50.00, ISBN: 978-1-84383-443-4Andrew Marvell's great country-house poem of the early 1650s, 'Upon Appleton House', conjures a whole history of family and place. Dedicated to Lord General Thomas Fairfax, victorious leader of the Parliamentary armies in the Civil Wars, it contrives to celebrate his military prowess, passed down the line from his forebears, while applauding his retirement from public life, in the aftermath of regicide, to his modest North Yorkshire estate. The poem tells the backstory and ponders the future of the place. The very fabric of the house, stone-built from the ruins of a Cistercian Priory, embodies the process of dispossession and acquisition unleashed a century and more before by the Dissolution of the Monasteries from which so many landed families like the Fairfaxes benefited. Before that it was the scene in 1518 of a key episode in Fairfacean fortunes - here relished at some length - when the heiress Isabel Thwaites (beguiled by her guardian the Prioress into entering the cloister) was lawfully freed by force to marry her betrothed, William Fairfax of Seeton, through whom the property, redeemed from popish superstition, eventually descended to Marvell's hero.The gardens, too ('laid ... out in sport / In the just figure of a fort') salute family valour. But the regiments of flowers firing 'fragrant volleys' are timely reminders of what Britain was - 'garden of the world ere while' - before tragically planted with ordinance and sown with powder. The 'meads below', too, remain undesecrated, a living, working landscape of water-meadows, pastures, streams, woods and river. It is a prospect of 'pleasant acts', of shifting scenes pitched between play and earnest, of perplexing perspectives and magical transformations. A theatre, no less, of the elements, of earth, water, air and fire, where poet-tutor (Puck-like thaumaturge) and his pupil (an Astraean goddess-nymph) Mary, the Lord General's heir, act out the deep harmony between man and nature, person and place. Elsewhere all is 'negligently overthrown'; but this family estate, a bastion against Root and Branch upheaval, where the union of the Fairfax-Vere pedigrees is inscribed in the 'double wood of ancient stocks', stands intact and grounded. Here is 'paradise's only map'.In the early 1650s, however, the way ahead was shrouded in uncertainty; and Marvell's poem ends at nightfall withdrawing, with 'Let's in', to the safety of Appleton House. We must wait upon events as Fairfax (unlike restless Cromwell, who has no time for 'the inglorious arts of peace' in Marvell's counterpoint showpiece, 'An Horation Ode') wisely does; and like him, as the poet-prophet puts it, make destiny our choice. This is no more opting out of history, however, than Milton's 'They also serve': 'Let's in', offering sanctuary, is also (a typically Marvellian double entendre) charged with commitment and may well, come the hour, sound a call to action. In 1659-60 - even Marvell cannot have foreseen the moment - that call would come in the shape of General Monck's demarche, when Fairfax returned once more to public life, first at the head of an army and then as negotiator with the King in exile, to play a decisive part in the Restoration of the Monarchy. Back at Appleton House in the early 1650s surveying his patron's property, the poet seems, nonetheless, to be in the know, prefiguring (in general terms) Mary's union of 1657, across the old partisan divide, with the Cavalier George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham. Dynastic marriage and inheritance were central to that world, and the link between land and lineage more than ever vital to continuity and stability in a time shaken by civil war and sequestration. Appleton House estate, still intact, its lawful owner still in place, the soldier home from the wars, pursuing the arts of peace, is something to cherish and celebrate. …

THE fact that an English librarian was asked to describe the work of British municipal libraries, to audiences in Antwerp and Brussels, may be taken as a certain indication that a change is impending in the library world of Belgium. At the invitation of M. Frans Gittens, city librarian, Antwerp, acting on behalf of the Foundation for the Permanent Endowment of the Communal Library and Plantin‐Moretus Museum, and M. Paul Otlet, secretary‐general of the International Institute of Bibliography, Brussels, I had the honour and pleasure of lecturing on English library work and conditions to representative audiences greatly interested in the subject. This, it is understood, is the first time an English librarian has been invited to lecture on such a subject on any part of the Continent, and I certainly felt it a great honour and privilege to be thus selected for such a congenial task. The language difficulty was luckily no great bar, as most of my audiences, both Flemish and French, understood English quite well. In addition, the International Institute of Bibliography had printed a translation of the lecture, as No. 92 of its publications, and this was issued as a twenty‐two page pamphlet entitled Les Bibliothèques municipales en Angleterre, and distributed at Brussels. At Antwerp the programme also contained translations of the titles and remarks about the lantern slides, so that everything was made easy for one who has always deplored his inability to acquire the art of speaking foreign languages. As a further instance of the care and thoughtfulness exercised to provide for my comfort, I should acknowledge the kindness of M. Eugeen Everaerts, town librarian of Ostend, who, on representations from his colleague at Antwerp, met the steamer and passed me and my “projections” through the Custom House without trouble. There is no doubt that our Belgian friends have the knack of making strangers feel thoroughly at home. I am not likely to forget the kindness and hospitality of M. W. von Mallinckrodt, chairman of the Permanent Endowment Commission at Antwerp, who, with his charming wife, invited me to a lunch at which some of the chief residents were present, including Sir Cecil Hertslet, H.B.M. Consul‐General; Mr. Diedrich, the American Consul‐General; M. Henri Hymans, chief librarian of the Royal Library at Brussels; M. Max Rooses, of the Plantin Museum; M. Frans Gittens, with some members of his staff; and other gentlemen connected with the city and municipality of Antwerp. The same kindly hospitality was extended by M. Gittens, of Antwerp, and M. Otlet, at Brussels, and everything was done by all with whom I came in contact to make me feel at ease and nothing of a stranger. In fact it is impossible for anyone who has read Scott, Brontë and Conscience to feel like a stranger in Belgium. The lecture at Antwerp was given in the large and finely decorated hall of the Cercle Royal Artistique, Littéraire et Scientifique d'Anvers, a kind of general Arts Club combining the functions of places like the London Institution with those of an ordinary social club. The hall was capable of seating 1,000 persons, and was rather beyond my poor powers as an elocutionist. About 600 people attended, of whom a large number understood English, and my lecture, luckily for my audience, largely pictorial, was very well received. There was no preliminary introduction of any kind, and my “turn” came on after a concert had been about half heard. The following programme will give an idea of the kind of mixed entertainment which brought out 600 people on a snowy winter's afternoon:—

Those interested in Elizabethan foreign policy as well as historians of later sixteenth-century France will be grateful to David Potter for this scrupulous and erudite edition, which forms volume 25 of the Royal Historical Society's Camden Fifth Series. The first, anonymous treatise exists in two versions, both in French, to be found in the British Library and in the Public Record Office (now the National Archives). The first version is deduced, from internal evidence, to have been drafted in early 1580 but copied and emended towards the end of 1583; the idioms and the errors remaining suggest that its author was an Englishman. In two parts, it first analyses the key players at court, followed by a brief survey of the causes of the major factional conflicts; its second part is a survey of the provinces of France, noting the provincial governors and those of key towns, identifying leading families and their connections, and offering a brief assessment of economic strengths and weaknesses. The second version is identified as being almost certainly a copy of the second part, dealing with the provinces, made by the young Robert Cecil during a visit to the Paris embassy of Sir Edward Stafford in August–September 1584. The second treatise, by a Richard Cooke of Kent, is closely related to the two versions of the provincial survey described above, but offers a great deal more detail, especially in the case of Normandy. In particular he provides assessments of the wealth, age and religious affiliation—Protestant, Papist and a third uncertain category, possibly neutral or royalist—of significant nobles. Unfortunately, Cooke's work has not survived in its entirety and the present treatise covers only Picardy, Brittany, and the Ile-de-France, besides Normandy. Cooke appears to have been in France with Sir Henry Cobham, ambassador to Paris in the early 1580s, but a full account of his career cannot be fully documented. As Dr Potter notes, current historiography reflects several of the concerns of these treatises, whether in prosopographies of the court or analyses of provincial affinities. On the basis of such studies, as well as older standard works of reference, the information in these treatises is shown to be fairly accurate, including the very detailed accounts by Cooke. While this is comforting for those who place their trust in the intelligence community, it is also evident that some information is inaccurate or significantly out-of-date. The editorial apparatus carefully notes many such problems and ambiguities, but introduces some of its own: p. 60, n.30 conflates La Tour vicomte de Turenne, husband of Léonor de Montmorency, with La Trémoille duc de Thouars who married Léonor's sister, Jeanne; and 1572 rather than February 1573 is throughout given as the date of comte de Candale's death at the siege of Sommières, an error that seems to have been taken from Père Anselme's genealogical compilation. Richard Cooke is also somewhat confused about the surviving Montmorency sisters, with only the duchesses of Thouars, whom he omits entirely, and Ventadour living by the early 1580s; he implausibly imputes Protestant views to the Candale and Ventadour offspring though he is correct about Turenne and he could also so have described the La Trémoille children. All the texts correctly have Pibrac's surname as Du Faur, so it seems odd that notes and index give ‘Du Four’. Comments on governors in Languedoc in the first treatise suggest that its first draft drew upon information of 1578 or even earlier. Jean de Nadal, seigneur de La Crouzette (= La Cozette, p. 81) was governor of Leucate from April 1568, where he was perhaps succeeded by Jean de Boursier, seigneur du Barry by 1578, as signalled in n.163. Pierre de Baudéan, captain Parabère (=Pirabel, p. 81) was Beaucaire's governor up to 8 September 1578 when, though once a Montmorency client, his assassination on Damville's orders provoked a siege of the chateau of Beaucaire which seriously threatened the peace until February 1579. Overall, this is a work of magnificent scholarship; the notes evidently draw on a deep and broad familiarity with even obscure corners of the historiography—which perhaps makes it all the more surprising that the note on Bellièvre cites only the slighter, older studies by Kierstead and Dickerman, rather than Olivier Poncet's magisterial life published in 1998.