- David Starkey’s comments reveal the element of“symbolic capital”in Lydgate’s
amplification, noting its analogues:“as adjectives andfigures of speech come
cheap in comparison with gold plate (or even with well-carved stone), consid-
erations of prudence put far less of a brake on the tendency to extravagance in
literature than they did in most other areas of artistic activity.”“The Age of the
Household: Politics, Society and the Artsc. 1350 – c. 1550 ,”The Later Middle
Ages, ed. Stephen Medcalf (New York, 1981 ), 225 – 90 ( 260 ). - Antony J. Hasler,“Hoccleve’s Unregimented Body,”Paragraph 13 ( 1990 ),
164 – 83 ( 177 ). - R. James Goldstein,The Matter of Scotland: Historical Narrative in Medieval
Scotland(Lincoln, 1993 ), 239. - All references are to Hary,Wallace, ed. Matthew P. McDiarmid, 2 vols., STS
4 th series 4 , 5 ( 1968 ). - Norman Macdougall,James III: A Political Study(Edinburgh, 1982 ), 117 – 18.
- Mapstone,“Was there a Court Literature?,” 410 – 22.
- On Chaucer’s audience, see Strohm,Social Chaucer, 47 – 83.
- George Ashby,Works, ed. Mary Bateson, EETS ES 76 (London, 1899 ),Dicta
& Opiniones Diversorum Philosophorum, 911 – 17. All references to Ashby’s works
are to this edition, and take the form of the name of the relevant work followed
by line numbers. To clarify Ashby’s handling of the maxim, some contextual
information may be helpful. Ashby’s“Dicta”gathers and translates a small
number of the many maxims in the Liber Philosophorum Moralium
Antiquorum. This collection ofsententiae,first compiled in Arabic, was sub-
sequently translated into Spanish, and from Spanish into Latin: Ezio
Franceschini,“Il‘Liber Philosophorum Moralium Antiquorum,’”Atti della
Reale Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, annocccxxvii, 6 th series, Memorie
della Classe di Scienze Morali, Storiche e Filologiche 3 ( 1930 ), 354 – 99. A French
translation of the LatinLiberwas made by Guillaume de Tignonville towards
the end of the fourteenth century, and a number of English prose translations
of theLiberare based on de Tignonville’s: see Curt F. Bühler, ed.,The Dicts
and Sayings of the Philosophers: The Translations made by Stephen Scrope,
William Worcester and an Anonymous Translator, EETS OS 211 (London,
1941 ), ix–xiii. For each maxim that he translates, Ashby gives the Latinfirst,
following it with his own version. In thesententiacited in the text, he omits the
Latin’s interesting implication of a mutual play of looks between servant and
master. The servant must not inadvertently permit the master to perceive him
as aspiring to an outward as well as inward“equality”:“cum servies alicui
domino, nolifieri equalis sibi nisi infide, sensu et patiencia; in aliis vero
nequaquam,cavens ne te aspiciat equalemin statu aut vestitu vel in suis deliciis”
[“when you serve any master, do not become his equal except in faith, wit and
patience: in no other way do so,taking care lest he see you as his equalin
standing, dress or in his pleasures”] (emphases mine). (I cite theLiberin the
edition by Franceschini,“Il‘Liber philosophorum moralium antiquorum’:
Testo critico,”Atti del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti 91. 1 ,
pt. 2 [ 1931 – 32 ], 393 – 597 [ 472 – 73 ]; the Latin original that heads Ashby’s English
180 Notes to Pages 10 – 12