Everyman
At an uncertain date in the fifteenth century an author whose name is now forgotten wrote the most famous morality play in England. Everyman is an allegory whose characters are pure abstractions: Knowledge, Beauty, Discretion, Strength, the Five Wits, Goods, Good Deeds, Fellowship, Kindred, Confession, Death, Everyman and God.
In the prologue God complains that nine out of ten people ignore his commandments, and he sends Death to earth to warn mortals that sooner or later they must return to him and account for their actions. Death descends at once and finds Everyman thinking of nothing but women and money. He orders him to set out for eternity. Everyman says he has not yet prepared for the journey, begs for a little time, and offers Death a bribe of a thousand pounds. The only concession Death makes is to let him bring along any friend who is willing to make the one-way trip.
Everyman asks Fellowship to join him on the great journey, but Fellowship brazenly makes excuses and refuses. He would keep Everyman company in eating, drinking, merrymaking and the company of lively women. But if Everyman were planning a crime or a killing, he would help from the heart. Everyman appeals to Kindred, who also begs off, claiming that his toe hurts. Everyman goes to Goods, but Goods is so busy that he can offer no help.
At last Everyman goes to Good Deeds. She is glad that Everyman has not forgotten her completely and introduces him to Knowledge. Knowledge leads him to Confession, and Confession washes away the stain of sin. Then Good Deeds goes with Everyman down into the grave, and angels with heavenly voices welcome the repentant, cleansed sinner into heaven.
The Limits of Allegory
The author of this play has nearly succeeded in handling a story with an awkward dramatic form, but not completely. Personifying a quality as a person never works as a person does. A person is a surprising mixture of opposites and, except as part of a group, is unique. It takes great art to embody a group in a distinct individual, as in Hamlet or Don Quixote, Oedipus or Panurge. Another century of experience and mastery was needed before tedious moral plays gave way to the lively dramas of changeable human beings in the Elizabethan theater.
William Caxton and the First English Press
The great literary event of fifteenth-century England was the founding of the first printing house. William Caxton, born in Kent, emigrated to Bruges as a merchant. In his spare time he translated a collection of French stories. His friends asked him for manuscript copies, but his hands, as he says, were "weary and not steadfast with much writing," and his eyes "dimmed with overmuch looking on the white paper."
When he went to Cologne he probably saw the press that Ulrich Zell had set up there. Zell himself had learned the new art at Mainz. In 1471 Colard Mansion set up a press in Bruges, and Caxton used it to multiply his translations. In 1476 Caxton returned to England, and a year later, at Westminster, he set to work the printing equipment he had brought from Bruges.
He was now fifty-five and had only fifteen years left, but in that time he printed ninety-eight books, several of which he translated himself from Latin and French. His choice of titles and his engaging style of writing prefaces left a lasting mark on English literature. When Caxton died in 1491, Wynkyn de Worde, his Alsatian colleague, carried the revolution on.
Sir Thomas Malory
In 1485 Caxton published one of the delightful masterpieces of English prose, The Noble Histories of King Arthur and of Certain of His Knights, now known as Le Morte d'Arthur. The strange author of this book had probably died in prison about fifteen years earlier. Sir Thomas Malory had served in the Hundred Years' War in the retinue of Richard de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. In 1445 he sat in Parliament for Warwickshire.
But, accustomed to the freedom and license of wartime, he grew restless in peace. The record against him is a long one. He is charged with attacking the house of Hugh Smith and assaulting his wife, and with extorting 100 shillings from Margaret King and William Hales by threats. He is said to have returned to the Smith house and committed the same offense again, to have stolen 7 cattle, 2 calves and 335 sheep, and to have raided the Cistercian abbey of Combe twice. He was imprisoned twice.
It is hard to believe that a man of this character wrote the book we now call The Death of Arthur, the last strain of the spirit of chivalry in England. Yet after a century of dispute, everyone has agreed that these tender, cheerful stories are the fruit of Sir Thomas Malory's days in prison.
Arthur's Chivalry
Most of the stories are drawn from the French versions of the Arthurian legends, given a logical sequence here and written in a style with a feminine delicacy and charm. Malory summons the aristocratic society of England, which in the midst of the brutality and treachery of war has forgotten the rules of chivalry, to follow the customs of Arthur's knights and to forget its own and his offenses.
Arthur, after many lusts and unchaste affairs, settles down with his beautiful but adventurous Guinevere and from his capital at Camelot (Winchester) rules England and in effect all Europe. He asks his 150 Knights of the Round Table to swear before him never to commit outrage or treason, never to be cruel but to show mercy to those who deserve it, and always to help ladies of honor with their lives.
The subject of the book, full of the combats of peerless knights over beautiful and indescribable women, is a mixture of love and war. Tristram and Lancelot betray their kings' wives, yet they are brave and noble. Clad in battle armor, with helmet and visor, they meet and, without recognizing each other, fight for four hours, until their swords are dulled and bloody.
At last Lancelot speaks. He tells the knight he fights bravely, that he has never met a knight his equal in battle, and asks his name if the other does not mind. Tristram answers that he is reluctant to give his name, and Lancelot replies that he never refuses to give his own to anyone who asks. Tristram says he would then like to hear it. "My name is Sir Lancelot du Lake." On hearing this, Tristram cries out in dismay at what he has done, for this is the man he loves best in the world. Then he gives his own name: Sir Tristram de Lyones. Lancelot cries, "Jesu mercy, what do I hear?" Lancelot kneels and yields his sword, and Tristram kneels and offers his sword to Lancelot. Then both go to a stone, sit on it, take off their helmets, and kiss each other more than a hundred times.
The Real World of the Pastons
How different this spirited, gentle world is, where nobody struggles for a living and all women are "ladies" and chaste, from the real world of the Paston letters. These formal, passionate letters bind the scattered members of a family, through affection and material need, in fifteenth-century England. John Paston is busy with legal work in London or its neighborhood, and his wife Margaret raises the children on their estates near Norwich. John is the master of everything, stern and tight-fisted but upright, and Margaret is all submission and obedience, a humble, capable, shy woman who trembles at the thought of having displeased her husband. Yes, the real-world Guineveres were like that. Even so, here too there are tender feelings, mutual passion, and even love and adoration.
Margery Brews confesses her love to Sir John Paston the younger. In tears of shame that the dowry she can bring to his house is small beside his wealth, she writes that if he loves her as much as she loves him, he will not leave her or abandon her. He, the heir of the Paston fortune and estates, marries her despite his relatives' complaints. Beneath the rough surface of this turbulent century, there were also delicate and compassionate hearts.