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[MS. Bodley 686.]
The modern student perceives no occasion for the re∣production of this entire text in the tapestry, were the re∣production of so long a poem possible; and it is difficult to see how a poem so devoid of dramatic emphasis could have furnished the illustrator with points of attachment for his pic∣tures. A similar question, so far as the length of the text is concerned, might be raised regarding the Bycorne and Chiche∣vache: the mode of illustration is there clearer, because Shirley, in his copy of the poem, has transcribed the instructions for the workman. It is possible that the weaver or painter in∣corporated such portions of the narrative as he could repro∣duce, and ignored the rest; and in the case of the poem here printed we might surmise that the verses were not enwrought
However, history gives us no ground for the suggestion. In the destruction which has overtaken nearly all medieval tapestries and frescoes, we are not in a position to affirm that the use of long or of unpictorial texts in decoration was im∣possible. Two inventories of this period, those of Charles VI of France and of Henry V of England, which still exist, enumerate masses of tapestries. In the French list Bibliotheque de l'Ecole de Chartes, 48: 59ff.; see 90, 109.à personnages, "ou il y a au dessoubz desdits personnages escriptures et leur noms escripz"; and again a tapestry of "plusieurs autres personnages" where "au dessoubz de elles a grans escriptures"; or "ung tappiz . . . ou y a plusieurs escripteaulx". The appraiser of the English king's possessions ettres d'or "Geaus est Agles" ovec les armes de Monsr de Gloucestr". This may have been the St. George tapestry possessed by Thomas Duke of Gloucester Archaeological Journal 54: 275-330.
It might again be possible that beside a long romance, e. g. of Charlemagne, there existed one or many brief forms of the story adapted to wall-decoration; as at the close of the list above mentioned there appears "Sy vees le Roy Charle∣mayn." And a briefer form yet of the Emperor's story must have been used if he appeared modeled by the confectioner,
ure crispes // A sotilte of our lady sittyng & hir child in hir lapp and she holding in hir hond a croun and seynt George knelyng on the toon syde & seynt Denyse on the tothir syde presentyng the kynge knelyng to our lady wt this reson folowing
resent in þer sighteParlement of Foules.
The opening phrases of the "estories" above mentioned, with their "Vessi", should be compared with the opening phrases of the following poem by Lydgate.
[MS. Trin. Coll. Cambr. R. 3, 20.]
These few and meagre stanzas contain some of Lydgate's rare allusions to contemporary events. His huge Falls of Princes, derived ultimately from Boccaccio's De Casibus, and ranging all over Biblical and classical history, closes with the "tragedy" of King John of France and his capture by the English at Poitiers in 1356; it contains thus no material for contemporary history and gives no clue as to its date. But the date of this lesser Falls, possibly not remote from that of the greater, is a trifle clearer; for as John of Burgundy was murdered in 1419, and as Charles VI of France died in 1422, the verses must be later than these events. It need not sur∣prise us that the death of Henry V of England does not appear in the list; Lydgate would not consider his death a "fall."
The murders of Orleans and of Burgundy, even of Richard II, are spoken of by Lydgate with remarkable frank∣ness, as is the death of the duke of Ireland, Robert de Vere, Richard's favorite. The emphasis upon Vere's desertion of his wife, recalled by Lydgate more than a generation later as the prime cause of the duke's fall, is interesting. When we recall that that desertion took place in Chaucer's lifetime, we may wonder again if the unfinished Legend of Good Women or the Complaint of Anelida had in it some disguised reflection of the "gret debate and stryff" to which Lydgate alludes. We may wonder also how the Duke of Gloucester, for whom Lydgate executed the mammoth Falls of Princes, the Duke of Gloucester who in 1425 deserted his wife Jacqueline of Hainault even as Vere duke of Ireland had deserted his, would have relished the last stanza. If however these verses were later than 1425, they were perhaps done for some person in private station. The dynasty of Henry the Fourth might not object to plain speaking as to Richard's "mystreting" of their founder; but the tragical ending of one's own royal and noble contemporaries was hardly the sort of death's head which an English lord desired upon the walls of his chamber or in his banqueting hall.