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Gilbert Pilkington Once More
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
In PMLA for December, 1926, Professor Oscar Cargill advanced ingeniously the theory first, that one, Gilbert Pilkington, was the author of the Northern Passion, the Turnament of Totenham, and the Tale of a Basyn in Cambridge University MS. Ff. 5. 48, and second, that, as the author of the Turnament he must also have been the author of the Secunda Pastorum, being thus none other than the “Wakefield Master” as Professor Gayley has taught us all to speak of the great playwright of the Towneley Cycle of mystery plays.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1932
References
1 PMLA, xli, 810 ff.
2 The name in the manuscript is spelled “GILBERTUS PYLKYNGTON.”
3 E.E.T.S., O.S. cxlv, cxlvii, and clxxxiii.
4 PMLA, xliii (March, 1928), pp. 124 ff.
5 Ibid., p. 127.
6 So Hartshorne, in his Ancient Metrical Tales (l., 1829), p. x, had said: “I see no sufficient reason for ascribing even the single poem at the conclusion of which the forementioned rubric is found, to this Gilbert Pilkyngton, much less for making him the author of the miscellaneous contents of the volume.”
7 PMLA, xliii, 130.
8 Ibid., p. 124.
9 Ibid., p. 136.
10 Ibid., pp. 135–136.
11 Drama and Liturgy (Columbia University Press, 1930).
12 Ibid., p. 120.
13 Drama and liturgy, p. 122.
14 PMLA, xli, 828.
15 Drama and Liturgy, p. 121.
16 The Wakefield group in the Towneley cycle,“ Hesperia, xi.
17 Hesperia, p. 234.
18 Hesperia, pp. 234–235.
19 Ibid., p. 236,-So Wann said: “The ascription by Mr. Oscar Cargill of the authorship of Secunda Pastorum to Gilbert Pilkington has much to commend it to serious consideration” (PMLA, xliii, 150, n. 8).
20 Her last statement is: “[They] are closely connected in spirit and in verse though one difference in dialect would make doubtful identity of authorship” (PMLA, xliii, 136).
21 Ibid.
22 Hesperia, xi, 236.
23 The Towneley manuscript (Hungtington Library MSS—HM 1) is dated c. 1460 by the N.E.D., and all datings approximate this. There has been considerable dispute as to the date of the Cambridge manuscript. Thomas Wright would put it back to the very beginning of the fourteenth century (c. 1306), on the ground that otherwise “one article of this MS. … the poetical chronicle of the kings of England” would have been carried later than the reign of Edward II. See Turnament of Totenham (London, 1836), pp. ix-xii. In so dating the manuscript Wright must have overlooked an entry on folio 46 of an account settled in 34 Henry VI to which Thomas Warton calls attention in his History of English Poetry, 1st edition (London, 1781), iii, 106, note t. Warton himself, believing that the author, “to give dignity to his narrative, and to heighten the ridicule by stiffening the familiarity of the incidents and characters, has affected an antiquity of style,” would place it as late as the time of Henry VIII. (ibid., pp. 102 and 106). This notion seems to me fanciful. Professor Murray, who edited the Thomas off Erseldonne from this manuscript for the Early English Text Society, dates the manuscript as in the middle of the fifteenth century (E.E.T.S., O.S., lxi, lvii). As Captain Haselden agrees with this date, I think we may safely assume that the manuscript was completed, or, if Warton is right, assembled, shortly after 1456, the date of the account to which I referred above. MS. Harl. 5396, containing the other extant copy of the poem, is also dated as “about 1456” by Bishop Percy in his Reliques (Philadelphia, 1856), p. 176.
24 I wish here to acknowledge with gratitude the time and interest which Captain Haselden gave to helping me during my study of the manuscripts involved.
25 Drama and Liturgy, p. 120.
26 PMLA, xli, 827.
27 I see no reason to think that a resident of one town is satirizing a neighboring town in the poem. The satire is of the popular romances, as Mr. Cargill says elsewhere (PMLA, xli, 820).
28 See p. 622 above.
29 This word is also spelled “copyl” as above, p. 622.
30 Cargill prints this word “henne,” PMLA, xli, 822.
31 That Tottenham was considered a long journey from Kent is made vivid to us by a passage in The Feest, to which I have already referred. The poem is in the same manuscript as the Turnament to which it is obviously the sequel, telling as it does of the wedding feast of Perkyn and Tyb, the hero and heroine of the other poem. It is printed by Th. Wright in his “Turnament of Totenham” (London, 1836). The passage reads:
Then come in the fruture
With a nobul sauoure
With feterloks fried;
And alle the cart whelis of Kent
With stonys of the payment
Fful wel were thei tried.
(Wright, fol. d 1, r.)
This passage is interesting, not only as showing the effect of the roads on the cart wheels of the day, but also as placing the Turnament even more definitely in the southern location, that is, in Tottenham.
32 The readings of the above passages in the Harl. version of the poem show but slight and unimportant differences from the readings given.
33 A briefe description of the Towne of Tottenham Highcrosse in Middlesex. Wilhlm Bedwell (London, 1631) Fol. C 1, v. The book was written as a supplement to the Turnament of Totenham.
34 The first, Camb. Univ. MS. Ff. 5, 48, was very carelessly printed by Bedwell in 1631, he having obtained it through the good graces of the poet George Withers. It was first well printed by Thomas Wright in 1836. The Bedwell version became the basis for the first printing of it by Bishop Percy in his Reliques. The second, Harleian 5396 in the Museum, was called to Bishop Percy's attention by Tyrhwitt and was so much superior to the Bedwell version that Percy adopted it in his future editions. I shall refer to these MSS hereafter as Camb. and Harl. Bedwell attributed this poem to Pilkington, under whose name it has since been listed.
35 E.E.T.S., O.S. cxlvii, 14.
36 E.E.T.S., O.S., lxi, lvii.
37 The Harl. versions differ from those given in no important detail.
38 The first of the alternative caudas comes off lamely in stanza 14 in the Harleian manuscript. That stanza is concerned with Terry, who is not planning to fight at all, but, while the others are fighting, he plans “to take Tyb by the hand and hur away lede.” He endeavors to carry out this plan in stanza 22, but Perkyn, the hero, “after hym ran” and thwarted him.
39 Hazlitt, Early Popular Poetry, (London, 1866), iii, 88, reads:
“she wil be [re me] a monday”
40 Ritson, Ancient Songs and Ballads, (London, 1829), I, 90, reads:
“Whyls me has left my mer, thou gets hur not swa.”
41 Turnament of Totenham, e 2, v.
42 I cannot forbear quoting one further case of oral transmission, it is so typical. In this case the error favors the Cambridge text. In stanza ten the poet describes the heroine, Tyb, as she goes to the tournament. Two of the lines in the Cambridge MS. read:
“And a garland on hir hed full of ruell bones,
And a broch on hir brest full of saphre stones“ (Wright, B 3, r)
These two lines appear in the Harleian text in the following amazing fashion:
“And a garland on hur hed ful of rounde bonys,
And a broche on hur brest ful of safer stones.“
(Reliques, Philadelphia, 1856, p. 177)
On “ruell bonys” see Wright, op. cit., E 1, r., and Chaucer, Cant. Tales, B 2068.
43 Hesperia, xi, 235.
44 PMLA, xliii, 124.
45 Ibid., 136.
46 Hesperia, xi, 236.
47 E.E.T.S., O.S., cxlvii, 31.
48 PMLA, xliii, 127, n. 18.
49 E.E.T.S., O.S., cxlvii, 14, 15.
50 Ibid., p. 10.
51 Ibid., p. 11. Other marginal notes in this MS. and in Camb. Univ. MS. Ii. 4. 9, Miss Foster ascribes to hands other than those of the original scribes. Typical of them is “be crosse olyf, the tree cedyr.” (Fol. 29, a of Ii, 4. 9) Ibid., p. 14.
52 Ibid., p. 15.
53 “The West Midland dialect (of the Passion) makes it probable that the scribe belonged to some branch of the Lancashire Pilkingtons, but the family records contain no mention of Gilbert” (Foster, E.E.T.S., O.S., cxlvii, 14).