Court Poetry in Late Medieval England and Scotland

The compiler of Rawlinson C. 813 , or of the exemplar behind this section of
the MS, was clearly able to envisage some of the lyric passages inThe Pastime
as a single monologue, cut off from narrative sequel or response.
Amoure’s lyrics, then, posit an unsatisfied desire that suspends narrative,
while the device ofprosopopeiaimplies a narrative already complete. This is
hardly surprising; in Nicolette Zeeman’s words, the verse of courtly love, in
its“hyperboles and tropes of endless possibility,”“espouses a playful yet
resolute commitment to youth, narrative atemporality and poetic stasis, and
deals evasively with all material which might contradict this.”^28 However,
this once again raises generic tension; while the lover may be committed to
narrative atemporality, the pilgrim’s very identity, defined by the span of
man’s earthly existence, is acutely“plotted.”The poem’s conclusion, how-
ever, gradually bringspersonaand personification into disambiguating con-
junction, in the process giving a new meaning to Hawes’s poetics of“fayned
fables”and“cloudy fygures.”

the death of the courtly lover

The lyrics ofThe Pastimecorrespond to Amoure’s eager anticipation of
hisfinal union with Pucell (“For nature thought euery houre a daye / Tyll to
my lady I sholde my dette well paye,” 5297 – 98 ). Their wedding, the
ostensible climax of the poem, is reached, after 5 , 324 lines–and passed,
barely noticed, in a breathlessoccupatio( 5327 – 31 ). Amoure mentions the
“Ioye”in which he lived with his lady“ryght many a yere”( 5333 ), and then
breaks into what seems to be another apostrophizing lyric:

O lusty youth and yonge tender herte,

The trewe companyon of my lady bryght,

God let vs neuer frome other asterte

But all in Ioye to lyue bothe daye and nyght. ( 5334 – 37 )

The recursion to a lyric optative (“God let vs neuer”) suggests that the
speaker wishes to transform his life up to this point into lyric, to maintain
desire in a perpetual present. The narrative, however, is acquiring an almost
unseemly dispatch; after the many lines expended on Amoure’s quest, his
descent into senescence occupies a mere thirty-five. As Death bids Amoure
leave his earthly treasure ( 5388 – 89 ), Amoure’s longing for the payment of
his marital debt yields to the discharge of a grimmer one:

“Alas,”quod I,“nothynge can me ayde;

This worldly treasure I must leue behynde.

For erth of erthe wyll haue his dette now payde.

118 Court Poetry in Late Medieval England and Scotland