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Was Gilbert Pilkington Author of the Secunda Pastorum?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2021

Frances A. Foster
Frances A. Foster*
Affiliation:
Vatsar College
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Extract

In his recent paper, “The Authorship of the Secunda Pastorum” Mr. Oscar Cargill brings forward an entirely new suggestion. Observing that the same bob-wheel stanza is used in the burlesque poem known as the Turnament of Totenham, he makes a detailed comparison with the Towneley Play which discloses a series of striking similarities in humor and in characterization as well as in metre and language. The reader's surprise when these resemblances are called to his attention is quickly succeeded by astonishment that they had not been observed previously. On the basis of these similarities Mr. Cargill very plausibly concludes that the Turnament is also the work of the Wakefield playwright. And whatever difficulties one may find in following the further steps in Mr. Cargill's argument, he deserves the thanks of all students of the early drama for throwing this new light on the activities of the author of the Secunda Pastorum.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , March 1928, pp. 124 - 136
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1928

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References

1 PMLA, XLI (1926), 810-31.

2 Percy's Reliques (Edinburgh 1858), II, 10-20; Hazlitt's Remains of Early Pop Poetry (London 1866), III, 82-97.

3 See the description in my ed. of the Northern Passion, E. E. T. S., Or. Ser. 147, p. 14.

4 Mr. Cargill's statement: “The colophon appears on fol. 47 in a MS of 132 leaves” (p. 827) is slightly in error. The MS has 140 leaves, and the colophon is on fol. 43a.

5 Mr. Cargill (p. 826) quotes Hartshorne; see also Sir Sidney Lee, D.N.B., XLV (1896), p. 293.

6 P. 826, note 26.

7 Professor C. S. Northup of Cornell University found this reference for me in Flügel's Concordance to Chaucer. The stroke over the n is not given in Miss Hammond's Bibliographical Manual, p. 392.

8 J. A. Herbert, Catalogue of Romances III (London 1910), 254.

9 Ibid., pp. 333, 336.

10 Ibid., p. 521 and cf. p. 315

11 Ibid., pp. 622, 637.

12 Ibid., p. 271.

13 Horstmann, Altengl. Leg., neue Folge (1881), pp. lxvii, lxix.

14 Catalogue of Romances, III, 440.

15 I exclude the two fragmentary MSS, which do not contain the end of the Passion; see EETS, Or. Ser. 147, pp. 9-17.

16 Thomas of Erceldoune, ed. J. A. H. Murray, EETS, Or. Ser. 61, p. lvii

17 EETS, Or. Ser. 147, pp. 39-41, 47.

18 Mr. Cargill (p. 819) accepts my statement that the dialect of F is of the northern part of the West Midlands, and implies that very little difference would be evident between the speech of western Lancashire and that of the East Riding of Yorkshire. Since Mr. Cargill and I agree that the scribe found Pilkington's name in his copy, the real question is not the dialect of F, but of the Passion itself. A study of the rime-words (EETS, Or. Ser. 147, pp. 21-22) indicates that the Passion may have come from the district around Wakefield; but since it shows none of the fifteenth-century characteristics noted below, the language, as well as other considerations, indicates an earlier date than the Secunda Pastorum.

19 Art. cited, p. 829.

20 C. H. Hartshorne, Anc. Met. Tales (London, 1829), p. xiv.

21 Dict. Nat. Biog., XV, 293.

22 P. 823.

23 P. 818.

24 Percy's Reliques (Edinburgh 1858), II, 13.

25 EETS, Or. Ser. 145, pp. 3-5.

26 EETS, Or. Ser. 57, p. 8.

27 P. 816.

28 Cargill, p. 823.

29 EETS, Or. Ser. 37, vv. 1-72.

30 Cargill, p. 824.

31 Cargill, p. 813.

32 Northern Passion, EETS, Or. Ser. 147, pp. 169-73.

33 In an addendum (p. 831) Mr. Cargill finds additional proof for Pilkington's authorship of the Towneley Play in Miss Lyle's discussion of the Northern Passion and the Towneley Passion group (Research Publications of the University of Minnesota, VIII, 3, 1919). The following points deserve mention. (1) The Passion is not “employed extensively in four plays in the cycle.” A critical examination of Miss Lyle's parallels on pages 5-28 indicates that extensive parallels are found in Towneley XX (Conspiracy, though she does not cite the closest parallel of all; see EETS, Or. Ser. 147, p. 87); and fewer parallels in XXII (Scourging) and XXIII (Crucifixion). Those in XXI (Buffeting) are negligible. Mr. Cargill is right that my statement in the Northern Passion introduction needs qualification; it should read (p. 86): “Except in passages due to York influence, the debt of the Towneley cycle to the Passion is confined to Play XX.” (2) The form of the Passion used in the “Pilkington stanza sections” of the Towneley plays is not the original version found with Pilkington's name in Cambridge University MS Ff. 5. 48, but the later expanded form of some MSS of the Northern Homily Collection (see EETS, Or. Ser. 147, pp. 3-6). If the parallels between the Passion and the Towneley plays proved identity of authorship, they would indicate that the Wakefield master is not Gilbert Pilkington but the editor of the Northern Homily Collection in Harleian MS 4196. (3) “Professor Cady's theory that the couplets and quatrains are editorial” (JEGP, X, 572) has been refuted by Mrs. Frank, “Revisions in the English Mystery Plays” (Modern Philology, XV, 565-72)

34 Pp. 811-12.

35 EETS, Ex. Ser. LXXI, pp. xxvi-xxvii

36 P. 812.

37 Chambers, The Mediæval Stage (Oxford 1903), II, 145; Gayley, Plays of Our Forefathers (New York 1907), 130-33.

38 EETS, Or. Ser. 166, pp. xlii-xliii.

39 Gayley, p. 133; Pollard, English Miracle Plays (Oxford 1898), p. xxi, gives 1360.

40 EETS, Ex. Ser. LXXI, p. xxviii

41 Op. cit., pp. xxvi-xxviii; Marie C. Lyle, The Original Identity of the York and Towneley Cycles (Research Pub. Univ. Minn. VIII, 3, 1919), pp. 100-1.

42 Op. cit., pp. 107-8. Miss Lyle's theory is not really so different from Pollard's as at first sight appears. For according to her the parent cycle was formed at York (p. 106) and the Wakefield crafts used the existing York cycle as a basis for theirs; that is, instead of “borrowing” five separate plays, they borrowed the whole set and adapted it to their needs. Since Wakefield was a smaller town with less highly developed crafts, they would need to condense several York plays into one, and thus a play like the Towneley Creation might result

43 P. 107.

44 Lyle, pp. 87-90.

45 Op. cit., pp. 56-60.

46 Op. cit., pp. 83-4.

47 See next paragraph.

48 The first part treating of the actual scourging has been rewritten by the Wakefield master. At stanza 28, the beginning of the processus crucis, the scene changes, John enters with a speech that might well be an introduction to a new play, and the metre is different.

49 EETS, Ex Ser. LXXI, pp xxiii. xxvi

50 Lyle, pp. 47-8,84-5; EETS, Ex. Ser. LXXI, p. xx.

51 See the list in Chambers, II, 340.

52 Lyle, p. 107.

53 Ibid.

54 Lyle, p. 103.

55 Ibid.

56 Op. cit., pp. 46, 107.

57 See The Cambridge History of English Literature (New York 1909), III, 502-3 and Skeat, The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (Oxford 1904), VI, xl-xli.

58 In Noah (Towneley III): st. 4, lord:restord:accord:discord; st. 37, fynd:behynd:pynd; st. 44, here:were; St. 52, here:there; In the First Shepherd's Play (Towneley XII): st. 3, mene:tene; st. 33, nyght:dyght':fryght':benedyght; st. 42, chyld:begyld:myld:unfyld; st. 56, lorde:recorde:restorde:worde. In the Buffeting (Towneley XXI): st 7, dowte:owte:sowked:lowked; st. 17, word:bord:spurd:lorde; st. 24, mene:weyn.

59 EETS, Or. Ser. LXXI, p. xxviii.

60 hy3t:ry3t:seveny3t 33; seveny3t:fy3t:myght 42; bry3t:ly3t 149; ny3t:sy3t:ly3t:ply3t 199.

61 Towneley XIII, swane:wane:fane:payne, st. 5; goys:suppos:noys, st. 25; and see also stanzas 26, 37, 48, and 75.

62 In Towneley I (Creation), V (Isaac), and VI (Jacob), I find only one instance in rhyme: peasses:saysse, I, 122.