History of William Marshall, Volume I, Text and translation (review)

William Marshall is having his moment in the sun. He is the subject of several historical novels, and his tomb has become the object of tourist pilgrimages. Despite this popular interest, very few primary sources are available in book form. This is partly because the wealth of material on Marshall in archives is harder to present than the single manuscript that survives of the verse thirteenth century L'Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal. This medieval version of his story has deeply informed our interpretation of the man and his life. It is important to have ready access to that tale, to help us understand where our interpretations come from. It is fortunate, therefore that the Anglo-Norman Text Society is reissuing it. The translation and commentary of the Histoire in this series of three volumes is the first English translation of this tale and the only edition since the nineteenth century.

The timing is perfect given the rise in popular interest. Holden, Gregory and Crouch's History of William Marshall has three aspects: an edited text, a facing translation, and a commentary. Volume One contains only the first section of the text and translation, with a very brief introduction.

It would have been preferable to have all volumes issued with a smaller time-gap between them: the clumsiness of notes and commentary so distant from the text is undeniable. The choice of hardback and three volumes will make classroom use of the book prohibitively expensive, although the clothbound, at least, will make it a useful long term library resource. The format as a whole is therefore targeted for research use rather than for student interest, despite the facing translation. The translator has opted for the line by line rather than the poetic which loses some of the feel of the original but more than makes up for it in presenting the literal sense of the tale and enabling readers with some Old French to check specific words and phrases against the original.

The introduction is scanty in terms of background information. It describes the importance of Marshall and the one existing manuscript. It refers to the Meyer edition of the tale and indicates its inaccessibility and that more recent research has overtaken the early edition. It says little more. This makes it harder to use the edited text effectively. An explanation of major points where research has challenged Meyer's decisions would have been useful, for instance.

Specific problems with the manuscript, including comments on all precise issues may or may not be in a later volume, which makes it awkward to check questions to do with the transliteration of the text itself or even to assess it. A brief introduction to the relationship of the Marshall poem with other texts of the period would also be useful to orient readers – while the History was written as a stand-alone narrative, its cultural environs are important to understanding it. These issues may be addressed in a later volume, but there is no table of contents to indicate whether this is so.

While the page layout is attractive and easy to read, footnotes or marginal notes would have helped both student and scholar understand why the editor has chosen specific readings, or whether there are any obscure passages. Referring to a different volume for this kind of information is cumbersome.

I could have wished that this edition had at least partly broken with publishing tradition, or at least indicated the full contents of the complete set of volumes in volume one and maybe issued them in a shorter time frame. Depending on how the final volume is structured, however, this set of caveats might fade into quibbles.

Despite these caveats, when the three volumes are used together they will provide an excellent resource. The Anglo-Norman/English facing translations means that the Holden's translation can be checked against the reader's own understanding of the Old...