PIRAMUS ET TISBÉ

Piramus et Tisbé
544 B has an extra octosyllable after v. 544: ‘Por ce que grant doulor le loie’, but v. 544
is corrupt in B, and this extra line may represent an attempt to make some sense of a
garbled text. It may have been intended to read ‘Por ce qu’a grant doulor ie l’oie’.
565-66 There is no equivalent of these lines in BCA, and the irregular v. 565 indicates
that R is corrupt at this point. I have retained these lines, however, since they do make
sense, and B 567 ‘La poons assanbler amis’ is clearly a conflation of v. 568 with
something similar to R’s reading, probably with an –er rhyme. Previous editors have
omitted vv. 565-66 and replaced v. 567 with A ‘Tant que pussons estre assamblé’, but
this is just as likely to represent a scribal emendation as an original reading.
573-75 The text of v. 573 in R (‘A la fontaine irai seoir’) requires us to read si in v. 575
as an affirmative adverb (‘I shall go and sit by the spring beyond the walls, and I shall
find you’). This does not make very good sense here: Piramus has not yet agreed to the
plan, so it is illogical for Tisbé to declare at this point that she will find him. Moreover,
the reference to the spring makes for an awkward anticipation of the very precise details
about the meeting-place given in vv. 580-82. Line 583 (which is found only in R)
implies that Tisbé is challenging her lover to prove that he is as audacious as she is: her
saying that he will definitely find her at the spring is a more natural conclusion to the
speech if some doubt has been expressed earlier about her finding him there. Given that
there are signs that the scribe of R was working from an original that was damaged or
otherwise corrupt at this point (see previous note), I have preferred the reading from B,
and take si in v. 575 to be se + i, giving ‘if I shall find you there’. C ‘Par une nuit irai
savoir la hors / Se troveroie vostre cors’ and A ‘Par mienuit savoir irai / La fors / Se ie
troverai vostre cors’ both support this reading.
582 The MS reads either ninius or (possibly) nimus. B has either gunus or (more
probably) gimus, while C has venus (this line is not in A). In Greek mythology Ninus,
founder of Nineveh, was the second husband of Semiramis, who succeeded him as
monarch and built the fabled city of Babylon. According to Diodorus Siculus, Ninus
was responsible for the death of Semiramis’s first husband, who hanged himself in
despair when the king demanded that he give up his wife to him. Whether this part of
the legend would have been familiar to a twelfth-century writer or his audience is
unclear. If it was, our poet’s decision to retain Ovid’s reference to Ninus can be seen as
further reinforcement of the transgressive aspects of the tale.
631 I take this description of the moon turning dim to be a reference to a lunar eclipse,
often regarded as an ill omen. During totality, the moon remains visible, but loses its
brightness, appearing pale or copper-coloured depending on atmospheric conditions.
632-33 De Boer, Branciforti and Cormier follow CA here: ‘Vit le huan vit (A la chancre
et) la fresaie / Mes nis un sine (A uns signes) ne lesmaie’. In v. 633 Baumgartner
emends to ‘pour ce’ on the basis of B (although this is not listed in the rejected
readings). Given the difficulty of distinguishing c and t in many scribal hands, B ‘por
ce’ could be a misreading of R ‘pointe’, or vice versa. As the AND lists pointe as a
variant of point, and as ne…point is so common as an emphatic negative construction, I
retain pointe and translate it as ‘no hint of’.
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