“Of the seuen ages”: An Unknown Analogue of The Castle of Perseverance

“Of the seuen ages”: An Unknown Analogue of The Castle of Perseverance Alan H. Nelson “Of the seuen ages,” a poem in Middle English which is still virtually unknown, bears several noteworthy correspondences to The Castle of Perseverance and to other English morality plays. The poem occurs in British Museum MS. Add. 37049, fols. 28v-29. According to The Index of Middle English Verse, the poem is unique to this manuscript.1 The poem’s concern with the Ages of Man, however, is not unique: the Index lists four additional poems on the topic, while Hans Walther’s Alphabetisches Verzeichnis der Versanfange mittellateinischer Dichtungen lists some thirteen analogous poems in Latin.2 Similar concerns are found in English morality plays, particularly in The Castle of Perseverance and Mundus et Infans; and in medieval art, most notably in British Museum MS. Arundel 83, fol. 126.3 British Museum MS. Add. 37049 is a compendium of morality treatises including “The Desert of Religion” and such poems as Christ’s Words from the Cross, the Day of Judgment, the Tree of Life, the Ten Commandments, the Tree of Love, and the Debate of the Body and the Soul. Although the manu­ script cannot be placed or dated precisely, it appears to be northern in origin, from perhaps the first half of the fifteenth century.4 “Of the seuen ages” may therefore be considered roughly contemporary with The Castle of Perseverance, whose most recent editor, Mark Eccles, has wisely refused to date the play more closely than “between 1400 and 1425.”5 Since there is no question here of one literary work being the direct source of the other, the matter of ultimate precedence is of little con­ cern for us. The important point is simply that certain morality topics were “in the air,” available to be seized and made use of by poet and playwright alike. 125 126 Alan H. Nelson Eccles lists several analogues for The Castle of Perseverance, from Prudentius’ Psychomachia and Robert Grosseteste’s Le Chasteau d’Amour, to sermons by Gregory and Bernard and poetic treatises such as The Prick of Conscience and “The Mir­ ror of the Periods of Man’s Life.”6 Edgar T. Schell points to further special affinities between the play and Deguilleville’s Le Pelerinage de la vie humaine (ca. 1330), translated by John Lydgate in 1426 and now entitled The Pilgrimage of the Life of ManJ In several particulars, however, The Castle of Perse­ verance is closer to “Of the seuen ages” than to any of these previously discovered analogues. “Of the seuen ages” is written on two consecutive manu­ script pages, a verso and a recto, covering an entire “opening” of the manuscript. These pages, like much of the manuscript, are decorated with rather crude illuminations which illustrate the text. One illustration or set of illustrations is provided for each age, for a total of seven. The illustrations generally depict the progressively aging mankind figure situated between an angel and a devil, thus conforming to the structural principles of the poem as summarized in the complete title: “Of the seuen ages: note wele the sayng of the gode angel and the yll.” Like The Castle of Perseverance, therefore, the poem embodies two common morality themes: the Ages of Man, and the Debate between the Good Angel and the Evil Angel. The former theme is found in its purest dramatic form in Mundus et Infans; the latter is found, of course, in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. In The Castle of Perseverance, as in the poem, the two themes are found in particularly intimate association with one another. The infant of the first illustration in the manuscript lies naked in his simple bed; in the second he stands barefoot in a simple robe girt with a belt; in the third the youth wears a girt robe or jerkin, a collar, a pointed cap, and shoes; in the fourth the man, bearded, wears a jacket with padded and slashed shoulders and with a rich collar, and carries a battle-ax in his left hand; in the fifth his beard is longer, he wears a merchant’s hat and robe, and holds a sack of money...