“Stephen Hawes”has become his own authorityaprès coup,afigure generated
by the conjunction of two distinct but connected poems. As such, he
guarantees the truth of both amatory and prophetic discourses; love inspires
the poet to write unintentional spiritual truths.The Comforttoo becomes a
“fatalfiction,”allowing the possibility that a text may be unconsciously
prophetic^84 – as Hawes perhaps hopes his own petition will be answered.
But an answer does not and cannot come. The lady, promised by her kin
to“a myghty lorde,”rejects Amoure’s suit. In so doing, she rejects the
fictions that the lover urges, claiming kin with the ladies of Chartier’sLa
Belle dame sans merciand thefifteenth-centuryThe Craft of Lovers:^85
Me for to loue I dyde not you constrayne.
Ye knowe what I am; I knowe not you certayne. ( 816 – 17 )Furthermore, Hawes’s riddling low style returns, leading to some of the
most enigmatic lines in the entire poem:
Surely I thynke I suffred well the phyppe,
The nette also dydde teche me on the waye.
But me to bere I trowe they lost a lyppe,
For the lyfte hande extendyd my Iournaye,
And not to call me for my sporte and playe.
Wherfore by foly yf that they do synne,
The holy goost maye well the batayle wynne. ( 890 – 96 )The possible readings that have been suggested here–rivalry with Skelton
the poet ofPhyllyp Sparowe, the continuation of Hawes’s writing by covert
means, further rivalrywith persons unknown^86 – only underline how far
Hawes has fallen back into something close to silence. Above all, the mysterious
enmity of the“calkers”is now articulatedwiththe lady’s“danger,”both serving
only to hinder the lover. In Chartier’sLa Belle dame, we may recall, the lover
whose claim that he is dying of love is so sensibly rejected by the lady goes home
and reads his own metaphors literally by actually dying for love. In the poem’s
final masculinist turn, the lady who has offered entirely rational objections to
the lover’sfictions is shown up as a callous and insensitive reader.^87 But this
does not occur here; in an ending reminiscent again ofTheTempleofGlas,the
lover is persuaded to abide by the judgement of Venus and Fortune. The poem
ends in deferral, its prophecies still far from fulfillment.
Hawes’s poem traces a path among several sources of authority, at once
related and distinct, with which it seeks to identify. There are the authors
of the past, Gower, Chaucer and above all Lydgate, whose works inspire to
imitation. There is the lady, perhaps the text’s substitute for a real patroness,
who inspires the lover with love and its“troth.”And there is the Holy
140 Court Poetry in Late Medieval England and Scotland