THE DATE OF "THE OWL AND THE NIGHTINGALE"

Abstract

The conventional dating of The Owl and the Nightingale depends upon a single internal reference. At lines 1091-2, the Nightingale refers to a certain King Henry in such a way as to suggest that he is no longer alive (at underyat be king Henri -/ Iesus his soule do merci!). Most recent commentators have thought that the monarch referred to here must be Henry II of England (r. 1154-89);1 and they have generally accepted Eric Stanley's argument that `since King Henry is not referred to as old King Henry, or by some similar distinguishing mark, it is clear that the poem must have been written before the accession of Henry III in1216',2 On this basis, the composition of the poem is usually assigned to the period 1189-1216.3 Nevertheless, it is by no means certain that the Nightingale is here referring to a historical figure. At this point in the poem, she and the Owl are discussing the story of the jealous husband who murders a nightingale, which is also told by Marie de France and Alexander Neckam.' The Nightingale of the debate is naturally keen to suggest that this sort of behaviour is not acceptable, and she draws attention to the king because he meted out what she regards as a justly severe punishment to the murderous knight. It should be stressed that the birds are here referring to a fiction, and it is conceivable that the Nightingale's King Henry is also fictitious. Perhaps the author inherited the name 'Henri' direct from a now lost version of the tale. The fact that the name was popular with the English monarchy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries certainly increases the likelihood of an allusion here to a historical king, but of course no historical king ever really gave judgement in such a case.5 No dating can be entirely secure which depends upon so delicate a footing as the Nightingale's blessing upon the worthy `king Henri'. That said, it is at least possible to construct an argument to justify the application of the reference to a historical king. It is apparently characteristic of the author of The Owl and the Nightingale to use topical references to the real world in order to authorize his avian speakers as commentators upon human affairs. The poem bristles with tantalizing allusions, and this is one of the most effective ways in which the Owl and the Nightingale are brought to life. Not least, the birds refer several times to one Master Nicholas of Guildford, a man who is a mystery to scholarship but plainly very familiar to those who first received the poem.6 The two birds are extremely complimentary about this person - indeed the worth of Nicholas is about the only thing upon which they are in complete agreement. Some critics have suggested that the poem was written by a generous friend or by Nicholas himself in order to promote his talents, but the birds' adulation is clearly so extravagant that it is much more likely to be have been a gently whimsical joke at Nicholas's expense.7 In a similar way, the Nightingale's reference to the king was perhaps designed to blur the boundary between fiction and reality - and so to mark the birds' participation in the audience's world. Thus, while a note of caution needs to be introduced into discussion of lines 1091-2, it is at least a reasonable assumption that the audience is meant to imagine that they do refer to a real king. Until 1963, it was impossible to think that the reference - if accepted as a topical one - could have applied to Henry III (1272), since it was generally agreed that one of the poem's two extant manuscripts (London, British Library, MS Cotton Caligula A.ix, hereafter C) belonged to the first half of the thirteenth century. This situation was changed by the palaeographer Neil Ker's verdict that it is `not possible to say that one manuscript is earlier than the other. Both seem to have been written in the second half of the thirteenth century. The difference between the hands is a difference of kind, not of date.'8 He suggested that C bears marked palaeographic resemblances to the datable manuscript London, British Library, MS Royal 3 D. …