FIFTEENTH CENTURY
PROSE AND VERSE
AN ENGLISH GARNER
FIFTEENTH CENTURY
PROSE AND VERSE
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
ALFRED W. POLLARD
WESTMINSTER
ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND CO., LTD.
1903
Edinburgh: Printed by T. and A. Constable.
PREFACE
Of the contents of the present volume about a half now appears in theEnglish Garner for the first time. Professor Arber (whose readyacquiescence in my meddlings I wish cordially to acknowledge) hadgathered his good corn wherever he could find it without concerninghimself with the claims of the different centuries; and his specimensof Lydgate and Hoccleve, Robin Hood Ballads, and trials for Lollardy,needed as much more added to them to make up a homogeneous volume inthe arrangement now adopted. My additions consist of some ChristmasCarols, a Miracle Play, a Morality, and a number of the interestingprologues and epilogues of William Caxton; also two extracts on theart of translation and the need for its exercise, and some depositionsin a theatrical lawsuit. The extracts are of the end of the fourteenthcentury, but are germane to our period as heralding the numeroustranslations by which it was distinguished; the lawsuit is of thesixteenth century, but throws light on the transition from municipalto private enterprise in theatrical matters which had then been forsome time in progress. As these pieces are included for their matter,not for their style, I hope they will not be considered intrusions ina volume essentially devoted to the fifteenth century, though theextracts on translation have led me in my Introduction to an excursuson the authorship of the Wycliffite translations of the Bible, whichcan only be excused on the pleas that Purvey and Trevisa both lived oninto the fifteenth century, and that it was in the early years of thatcentury that the Bibles were most in circulation.
In editing my texts I have availed myself of the help of the editionof the play of the Coventry Shearmen and Tailors in Professor Manly'sSpecimens of the Pre-Shaksperean Drama (Ginn, 1897), of Dr. HenriLogeman's Elckerlijk and Everyman (Librairie Clemm, Gand, 1892), ofProfessor Ewald Flügel's transcript of the Balliol College Carolspublished in the Festschrift presented to Professor Hildebrand in1894, of the Caxton Prefaces printed in Blades's Life of Caxton, ofMr. Henry Plomer's transcript of the pleadings in Rastell v. Waltonin vol. iv. of the Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, and ofForshall and Madden's Wyclif Bible. In Professor Arber's text of theRobin Hood Ballads I have ventured to make a few corrections by thelight of the excellent edition (based on the work of Professor Child),[Pg iv]printed by Professor Gummere in his Old English Ballads (Ginn,1894). That of Hoccleve's Letter of Cupid, originally printed fromUrry's text, has been revised with the aid of the collations publishedby Professor Skeat in his Chaucerian and Other Pieces. ProfessorArber's other texts are reprinted substantially as they stood.
In accordance with the plan adopted throughout the E