leads into the claim that in this world there are only love and hate“the
trouth for to tell”( 121 ), which becomes a roundabout way of expressing
continuedfidelity. There follows a magnificently bizarre stanza:
Thretened with sorowe of ma[n]y paynes grete,
Thre yeres ago my ryght hand I dyde bynde;
Fro my browes for fere the dropes doune dyde sweet.
God knoweth all, it was nothynge my mynde;
Vnto no persone I durst my herte untwynde,
yet the trouthe knowynge, the good gretest P
Maye me releace of all my /p/p/p/ thre. ( 134 – 40 )This is extraordinary, but perhaps no more so than his next words:
Now ryght fayre lady, so sadde and demure,
My mynde ye knowe in euery maner thynge;
I trust for trouthe ye wyll not me dyscure
Sythen[s] I haue shewed you without lesynge,
At your request, the cause of my mournynge. ( 141 – 45 )What, one feels entitled to ask, has this mourning lover disclosed“without
lesynge,”and how could the lady conceivably“dyscure”him when nothing
has been revealed? The historical circumstances behind the poem have so far
remained a mystery. There is allusion to some form of compelled verbal
betrayal on its narrator’s part:
“Alas madame,”vnto her then sayd I,
“Aboue .xx. woulues dyde me touse and rent
Not longe agone, delynge moost shamefully
That by theyr tuggynge, my lyfe was nere spent.
I dyde perceyue somwhat of theyr entente;
As the trouthe is knowen vnto god aboue,
My ladyes fader they dyde lytell loue.
Seynge theyr falshode and theyr subtylte,
For fere of death where I loued best,
I dyde dysprayse to knowe theyr cruelte
Somwhat to wysdome, accordynge to behest.
Though that my body had but lytell rest,
My herte was trewe vnto my ladyes blood.
For all theyr dedes I thought no thynge but good.” ( 162 – 75 )In view of the reference to“my ladyes fader,”and two allusions to the lover’s
continued allegiance to“the reed and the whyte”( 189 , 193 ), most specula-
tion has positioned itself in relation, whether close or more distant, to the
editors’contention that the lady is Henry VII’s daughter Mary Tudor.^59 In
this case the passage would imply that under attack from enemies of the
Mémoires d’outre-tombe 131