Ten Fifteenth-Century Comic Poems ed. by Melissa M. Furrow (review)

104 LETTERS IN CANADA 1986 Unavoidable as some omissions may be, they are all the more surprising because of the number of less significant items included. (BERYL ROWLAND) Melissa M. Furrow, editor. Ten Fifteenth-Century ComicPoems Garland 1985. us $60.00 In Ten Fifteenth-Century Comic Poems, Melissa M. Furrow has produced a valuable edition of poems that sheds light on the fate (often viewed, perhaps with some justice, as a debasement) of medieval literary forms in the fifteenth century. The selection of poems has much to recommend it: in addition to the well-known Friars of Berwick, the volume collects valuable pairings of what E.K. Chambers has termed 'King and the subject' narratives Uohn the Reeve and The King and the Hermit), and of narratives describing a chastity test at King Arthur's court (Sir Corneus and The Boy and the Mantle). The volume also includes an ambitious critical edition of Jack and His Stepdame (also entitled The Friar and the Boy), The Feast of Totlenham, a poem that has close connections with The Tournament of Tottenham, and three short narratives which remind one (as many of the poems do) offabliaux, The Lady Prioress, The Tale ofthe Basin, and Dane Hew. In her introduction, Furrow explains that the title of this collection was designed to make the fewest indefensible claims, yet, as she anticipates, the problematic nature of these narratives challenges even her appropriately circumspect assertions. The Boy and the Mantle, for example, is usually considered a ballad (Child no. 29), and Furrow's book as a whole is strangely silent about ballad traditions which may well have influenced or produced these bourdes (a useful term which occurs in both John the Reeve and Sir Corneus). Nevertheless, this edition performs a valuable service in bringing these poems to the attention of those who are seeking to define a decidedly popular fifteenth-century literary sensibility and audience, as Garbaty has recently attempted to do (Fifteenth-Century Studies, ed R. Yeager, pp 283-301). Yet in explicating these poems, Furrow often resorts to fourteenth-century literary models which seem far removed from these less sophisticated texts: for example, Chaucer's Prioress hardly accounts for the amorous nun in The Lady Prioress (indeed, the association is a slur on Madame Eglantyne), and the use of iambic pentameter couplets and a wanton wife named Alesoun in the Friars of Berwick does not offer convincing evidence that the Miller's Tale is a 'literary influence, a generic model' (p 315) for the Middle Scots poem. On the other hand, Furrow's thorough review of Continental and English analogues demonstrates the wide circulation of considerably different versions of these narratives. Unfortunately, Furrow's transcription of the manuscripts seems somewhat suspect. Having checked her text of The Friars of Berwick against the facsimile edition of the Bannatyne manuscript, I found myself almost always reading with W. Tod Ritchie's earlier transcription of the poem (Scottish Text Society, 2nd series, vol 26 [1930]) against Furrow's. Although I did not have the opportunity to consult the Percy Folio manuscript, a comparison of Furrow's tranScription with Hales and Furnivall 's generally reliable edition of that manuscript revealed an unnervingly high number of discrepancies. In line 31 of The Boy and the Mantle, Hales and Furnivall are almost certainly correct when they read knight (presumably k' in the MS) in a line that does not have a subject in Furrow's text: Then euery [Hales and Furnivall: knight] in the kings court/ Began to care for his' (p 303). Furrow's emendations, especially in rhymed pOSition, are judiciOUS and helpful, though in several places one would like some explanation of an emendation in the notes, as with the otherwise unattested packe-band (John the Reeue, 716). Emendation of MS ffaley !freake to ffolly !freake (John the Reeue, 771) also passes without comment, but the restoration does not seem inevitable; fferly, 'strange: gives a better sense, perhaps, and is corroborated by the Percy Folio scribe's repeated failure to recognize a word that was obsolete when the manuscript was copied in the midseventeenth century (see, e.g., Hales and Furnivall, vol II, p 229, line 36; p 68...