The Squire of Low Degree
The Squire of Low Degree, also known as The Squyr of Lowe Degre, The Sqyr of Lowe Degre or The Sqyr of Lowe Degree, is an anonymous late
Synopsis
It was a squyer of lowe degré
That loved the kings doughter of Hungré.[6]
After seven years of undeclared love the squire opens his heart to the princess. She replies that she loves him, but that as a mere squire he will have to prove himself by fighting his way to Jerusalem and laying his sword on the Holy Sepulchre. Only this, she believes, will be enough to convince her father that they should marry. Their conversation is overheard by the king's steward, who steals off to the king to report it, and adds the malicious lie that the squire has made an attempt on the princess's virtue. The king has a good opinion of the squire and is reluctant to believe this, but tells the steward to watch the princess's room closely to see whether the squire will visit her. The squire now goes to the king to ask his leave to go abroad adventuring. On being given this permission the squire sets out, but turns aside from his way to visit the princess's chamber and make his farewells. There, finding the steward and a numerous body of men-at-arms lying in wait for him, he asks the princess to let him in.
Anone he sayde: "Your dore undo!
Undo," he sayde, "nowe, fayre lady!
I am beset with many a spy.
Lady as whyte as whales bone,
There are thyrty agaynst me one."[7]
But she, as a virtuous unmarried lady, turns him from her door and tells him to win her in marriage. Now the steward and his men approach the chamber to take the squire prisoner. Though he resists to such good effect that the steward is killed, the squire is finally taken prisoner by the steward's men. These men mutilate the dead steward's face, dress him in the squire's clothes, and leave him at the princess's door hoping she will mistake him for the squire. The princess is taken in by this trick, embalms the body of the dead steward and keeps it in a tomb by her bed. Meanwhile the squire is taken to the king, who imprisons him. Finally, finding that his daughter is inconsolable, the king releases the squire and allows him to go abroad.
Anone the squyer passed the se.
In Tuskayne and in Lumbardy,
There he dyd great chyvalry.
In Portyngale nor yet in Spayne,
There myght no man stand hym agayne;
And where that ever that knyght gan fare,
The worshyp with hym away he bare.
And thus he travayled seven yere
In many a land bothe farre and nere,
Tyll on a day he thought hym tho
Unto the sepulture for to go.
And there he made his offerynge soone,
Right as the kinges doughter bad him don.[8]
Having done all this he returns to Hungary. Here the princess, still lamenting her supposedly dead lover, has decided to retire from the world:
And, squyer, for the love of thee,
Her father now belatedly tells her that she has been mourning the steward, and that the squire has returned from Jerusalem. He gives the lovers his blessing, and they marry.
Reception
There are many references to the poem in the works of
We can praise The Squyr of Lowe Degre only with considerable reservations, and do not seek a place for it among the great creative poems of the world. But it is interesting, at times charming, and it more than holds its own among poems of its class.[15]
Modern editions
- William Edward Mead (ed.) The Squyr of Lowe Degre Boston: Ginn, 1904. Reprinted Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger, 2007.
- Walter Hoyt French and Charles Brockway Hale (eds.) Middle English Metrical Romances New York: Prentice-Hall, 1930. Reprinted New York: Russell & Russell, 1964.
- Donald B. Sands (ed.) Middle English Verse Romances New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966. Reprinted Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1986.
- Erik Kooper (ed.) Sentimental and Humorous Romances: Floris and Blancheflour, Sir Degrevant, the Squire of Low Degree, the Tournament of Tottenham, and the Feast of Tottenham Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2006.
Notes
- ^ Erik Kooper (ed.) Sentimental and Humorous Romances: Floris and Blancheflour, Sir Degrevant, the Squire of Low Degree, the Tournament of Tottenham, and the Feast of Tottenham (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2006) p. 132.
- ^ Laura A. Loomis Medieval Romance in England (New York: Burt Franklin, 1969) pp. 263, 266.
- ^ William Edward Mead (ed.) The Squyr of Lowe Degre: A Middle English Metrical Romance (Boston: Ginn, 1904) p. lxxvi; Derek Pearsall "English Romance in the Fifteenth Century", Essays and Studies New Series, vol. 29 (1976) p. 66.
- ^ Francis Henry Stratmann (rev. Henry Bradley) A Middle-English Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1891) p. xx.
- ^ Donald B. Sands (ed.) Middle English Verse Romances (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1986) p. 250.
- ^ Line 1.
- ^ Line 534.
- ^ Line 884.
- ^ Line 939.
- ^ Laura A. Loomis Medieval Romance in England (New York: Burt Franklin, 1969) p. 263; Stephen Guy-Bray Loving in Verse (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006) pp. 50-57; H. R. D. Andes Shakespeare's Books (Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger, 2003) p. 161.
- ^ Thomas Warton Observations on the Fairy Queen of Spencer (London: R. and J. Dodsley, 1762) vol. 1, pp. 139-141; Arthur Johnston Enchanted Ground: The Study of Medieval Romance in the Eighteenth Century (London: Athlone Press, 1964) pp. 45-46.
- ^ Arthur Johnston Enchanted Ground: The Study of Medieval Romance in the Eighteenth Century (London: Athlone Press, 1964) pp. 93, 141.
- ^ Jerome Mitchell Scott, Chaucer, and Medieval Romance: A Study in Sir Walter Scott's Indebtedness to the Literature of the Middle Ages (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1987) pp. 160-162, 169, 178, 195, 215, 227
- ^ James Russell Lowell Literary Essays (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1892) vol. 1, p. 331.
- ^ William Edward Mead (ed.) The Squyr of Lowe Degre: A Middle English Metrical Romance (Boston: Ginn, 1904) p. lxxxii.