not until 1599, when poetry had claimed a public role, that Edmund Spenserwas
buried near Chaucer in Westminster Abbey in what became Poets’ Corner. Of
Chaucer’s avowed followers, only the Scots and Spenser approach his quality.
There was good English writing in the 15th century, in lyric and drama and prose,
but no major poet.Thomas Hoccleve(1367–1426) called Chaucer his ‘father’. He
scratched his living as a copyist at Westminster, lacking his master’s skill and his
diplomacy. Academics have recently found a vividness in Hoccleve’s complaints
about his boring job, exigent employers, deteriorating eyesight, depression and poor
pay.
Unlike poor Hoccleve,John Lydgate(?1370–1449), a monk of Bury St Edmunds,
did well out of English verse. He had grand commissions: his Troy Book was written
for Henry V; his version ofThe Pilgrimage of the Life of Man for the Earl of Salisbury;
his Fall of Princes for Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. Here is a stanza from ‘As a
Midsummer Rose’:
Floures open upon every grene,
Whan the larke, messager of day,
Salueth th’uprist of the sonne shene greets rising bright
Most amerously in Apryl and in May; amorously
And Aurora ageyn the morwe gray Dawn at the approach of morn
Causith the daysye hir crown to uncloose: open
Worldly gladnes is medlyd with affray, mingled fear
Al stant on chaung like a mydsomer roose. is at the point of changeStanza-form, image and phrase are from Chaucer; the sonorous moral refrain is
Lydgate’s. Most of Lydgate’s 145,000 lines say the expected thing in a decorated style
without Chaucer’s rhythm, verve and intelligence.
The decasyllable lost its music in the 15th century, as words altered in accent and
inflection. English topped up with prestige words from Latin and French. Doubling
its resources, its eloquence took the form of reduplication, pairing English and
Romance synonyms, as later in Othello’s ‘exsufflicate and blown surmises’.
Drama
Mystery plays
English drama is Catholic in origin. After the 10th century, liturgical drama spread
over Europe, representing Biblical history in Latin and in local tongues. These plays
are known as Miracle or Mystery plays. An early one is the Anglo-Norman Mystère
d’Adam, probably written in England c.1140. Suppressed at the Reformation, these
plays continued in Catholic Europe, as in the Passion Play at Oberammergau,
Bavaria. They were revived in 20th-century England in Nativity plays, in Benjamin
Britten’s Noyes Fludde and in Tony Harrison’s Mysteries.
The Mystery plays were cycles of religious dramas performed by town guilds,
craft associations of a religious kind. The term ‘Mystery’ may derive from two words:
mètier(Fr.) (Latin ministerium), meaning ‘craft’; and mysterium (Lat.), ‘what was
performed’. As Greek tragedy began in religious rite, so medieval European drama
began with the representation of the central Christian story in the Mass, and in the
annual cycle of services developed by the early Church. There were Christmas plays,
beginning with the angel’s declaration to Mary, her reply, and dialogues with Joseph
THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 65