Princes was a very popular work and survives in a
number of manuscripts.
The Fall is a collection of narratives about famous,
powerful, and noble men and women who fall from
positions of greatness to positions of despair, poverty,
and even death. Their falls are brought about either
through their own vices or sins, or by FORTUNE, whose
capricious nature no person can control. Lydgate’s bio-
graphical encyclopedia includes almost 500 biblical,
mythological, and historical fi gures, beginning with
the Fall of Adam and Eve and ending with the 14th-
century King John II of France. The Fall is divided into
nine loosely organized books; each book begins with a
prologue, and after many of the narratives, Lydgate
offers a moralizing ENVOI addressed to princes who are
exhorted to remember the uncertainty of earthly hap-
piness, the ever-changing nature of Fortune, and the
necessity of avoiding sins and vices.
This text is a collection of “tragedies,” which Lydgate
defi nes as a story that “Gynneth with joie, endith with
adversite” (“Begins with joy, ends with adversity,” l.
3118). Stories of the downfalls of powerful people
were quite popular in the Middle Ages. For instance,
GEOFFREY CHAUCER included his own collection of trag-
edies in The Monk’s Tale. The Fall also serves as a “mir-
ror for princes,” or a text that offers examples for
leaders to avoid or to follow. Lydgate’s envois remind
the leader of the moral that he or she was supposed to
learn from each narrative, and they offer guidelines for
how to govern justly and effectively. The poem itself is
iambic pentameter or decasyllabic (10-beat) lines. The
STANZAs are in RHYME ROYAL form.
A number of scholars have examined how Lydgate
adapted and revised his source material in order to
emphasize different aspects of the narratives, as well as
how much attention he allots to the role of sin versus
that of Fortune in the poem. Many have commented
on how Lydgate’s envois develop the MIRROR FOR
PRINCES aspect of the stories. Scholars have also exam-
ined Lydgate’s treatment of less obvious sources,
including Chaucer, OVID, and PETRARCH.
Recent scholarship has also examined the relation-
ship between Lydgate and his Lancastrian patron Hum-
phrey, duke of Gloucester, focusing on how Lydgate’s
narratives imagine church and state relationships, in
the context of his monastic vocation. This latter idea
was particularly important to early modern imitators.
See also MIRROR FOR MAGISTRATES, A.
FURTHER READING
Mortimer, Nigel. John Lydgate’s Fall of Princes: Narrative
Tragedy in its Literary and Political Contexts. Oxford: Clar-
endon Press, 2005.
Christine F. Cooper“FAREWELL FALSE LOVE” SIR WALTER
RALEIGH (ca. 1582–1585) This highly stylized
poem is a negative defi nition of love, emphasizing its
irrationality. The poem is, essentially, a catalogue of
images exemplifying love’s harmful and irrational
nature, including a temple of treason; a poisonous,
fl ower-covered serpent (l. 7); a “gilded hooke that holds
a poysoned bate” (l. 12); and a maze (l. 15). Many of
the lines begin with “A... ,” and the repetition increases
the feeling of inescapability. The beginning and ending
are somewhat circular, though the fi nal goodbye in line
29 links false love with desire and beauty, whereas the
initial rejection cites only love. Overall, the catalogue
seems to be an exercise in stylistic virtuosity rather than
the expression of any real emotion.
Six contemporary manuscripts indicate that SIR
WALTER RALEIGH circulated the poem widely. William
Byrd set it to music in his Psalms, Sonets, and Songs
(1588), and Sir Thomas Heneage composed a poetic
counterpart, “Most Welcome Love,” praising love and
turning Raleigh’s language and images to positive ones.
Recent critics have attempted to determine which
poem was composed fi rst, but no authoritative answer
has been established. Raleigh’s poem also resembles
two 16th-century continental poems, the French
“Contr’ amour” (fi rst printed in 1573), and the Italian
“La’ve l’aurora” (fi rst published in 1553). Although
there is no evidence of Raleigh’s familiarity with either
of these poems, fi ve of his images are common to the
two earlier poems.
FURTHER READING
Gibson, Jonathan. “French and Italian Sources for Raleigh’s
‘Farewell False Love.’ ” RES (1999): 155–165.
Leah Larson“FAREWELL FALSE LOVE” 187