routledge+history+of+literature+in+english

50 Old and Middle English 600–1485
bringing together myth and history, with an emphasis on chivalry as a
kind of moral code of honour. The supernatural and fantastic aspects
of the story, as in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, are played down,
and the more political aspects, of firm government and virtue,
emphasised. It was a book for the times. The Wars of the Roses ended
in the same year as Le Morte D’Arthur was published. Its values were
to influence a wide readership for many years to come. There is sadness,
rather than heroism, in Arthur’s final battle, quoted in the original:
Kynge Arthur toke hys horse and seyde, ‘Alas, this unhappy day!’
and so rode to hys party, and Sir Mordred in lyke wyse. And never
syns was there even seyne a more dolefuller batayle in no Crytsen
londe, for there was but russhynge and rydynge, foynynge and
strykynge, and many a grym worde was there spokyn of aythir to
othir, and many a dedely stroke. But ever Kynge Arthur rode
thorowoute the batayle of Sir Mordred and ded full nobly, as a
noble kynge shulde do, and at all tymes he faynted never. And Sir
Mordred ded hys devoure that day and put hymselffe in grete perell.
And thus they fought all the longe day, and never stynted tylle the
noble knyghtes were layde to the colde erthe. And ever they fought
stylle tylle hit was nere nyght, and by than was there an hondred
thousand leyde dede uppon the erthe. Than was Kynge Arthur wode
wrothe oute of mesure, whan he saw hys people so slayne from him.
John Skelton was a court poet, but he also wrote of low life and drinking;
he was an outspoken satirist who also wrote, in Philip Sparrow, one of the
most unusual elegies in English to a pet bird. It is almost comic in its grief:
I wept and I wailed,
The teares down hailed,
But nothing it availed
To call Philip again,
Whom Gib, our cat, hath slain.
Gib, incidentally, was short for Gilbert; and was a very common name
for a cat in England in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Another
feline of the same name is found in the anonymous play Gammer
Gurton’s Needle, dating from about 1566; this was one of the earliest
theatrical comedies during the early Renaissance period.