John Skelton (c. 1460 – June 21, 1529), English poet, is variously asserted to have
been born in Armathwaite, Cumberland, or to have been a
native of Yorkshire.
He is said to have been educated at Oxford. He certainly studied at
Cambridge, and he is probably the "one Scheklton" mentioned by William Cole as taking his M.A. degree in
1484. In 1490 Caxton writes of him, in the preface to The Boke of Eneydos compyled by Vyrgyle, in terms which prove that he had already won a
reputation as a scholar. "But I pray mayster John Skelton," he says, "late created poete laureate in the unyversite of Oxenforde,
to oversee and correct this sayd booke ... for him I know for suffycyent to expowne and englysshe every dyffyculte that is
therin. For he hath late translated the epystlys of Tulle, and the boke of dyodorus
siculus, and diverse other works ... in polysshed and ornate termes craftely ... suppose he hath drunken of
Elycons well."
The laureateship referred to was a degree in rhetoric. Skelton received in 1493 the same
honour at Cambridge, and also, it is said, at Leuven. He found a patron in the pious and learned
countess of Richmond, Henry VII's
mother, for whom he wrote Of Mannes Lyfe the Peregrynacioun, a translation, now lost, of Guillaume de Deguilleyule's Pèlerinage de la vie humaine. An elegy "Of the death of the noble prince
Kynge Edwarde the forth," included in some of the editions of the Mirror for
Magistrates, and another (1489) on the death of Henry
Percy, fourth earl of Northumberland, are among his earliest poems.
In the last decade of the century he was appointed tutor to Prince Henry (afterwards Henry VIII). He wrote for his pupil a lost Speculum principis, and Erasmus, in dedicating an ode to the prince in 1500, speaks of Skelton as "unum Britannicarum
literarum lumen ac decus." In 1498 he was successively ordained sub-deacon, deacon and priest. He seems to have been imprisoned
in 1502, but no reason is known for his disgrace. (It has been said that he offended Wolsey). Two years later he retired from regular attendance at court to become rector of Diss, a benefice which he retained nominally till his death.
Skelton frequently signed himself "regius orator" and poet-laureate, but there is no
record of any emoluments paid in connection with these dignities, although the Abbé du Resnel,
author of Recherches sur les poètes couronnez, asserts that he had seen a patent (1513-1514) in which Skelton was
appointed poet-laureate to Henry VIII. As rector of Diss he caused great scandal among his parishioners, who thought him, says
Anthony Wood, more fit for the stage than for the pew or the pulpit. He was secretly
married to a woman who lived in his house, and he had earned the hatred of the Dominican
monks by his fierce satire. Consequently he came under the formal censure of Richard Nix, the bishop of the diocese, and appears to have been temporarily
suspended. After his death a collection of farcical tales, no doubt chiefly, if not entirely, apocryphal, gathered round his
name--The Merie Tales of Skelton.
During the rest of the century he figured in the popular imagination as an incorrigible practical joker. His sarcastic wit
made him some enemies, among them Sir Christopher Garnesche or Garneys, Alexander Barclay, William Lilly and the French scholar,
Robert Gaguin (c. 1425-1502). With Garneys he engaged in a regular "flyting," undertaken, he
says, at the king's command, but Skelton's four poems read as if the abuse in them were dictated by genuine anger. Earlier in his
career he had found a friend and patron in Cardinal Wolsey, and the dedication to the cardinal of his Replycacion is
couched in the most flattering terms. But in 1522, when Wolsey in his capacity of legate dissolved convocation at
St Paul's, Skelton put in circulation the couplet:
"Gentle Paul, laie doune thy sweard
For Peter of Westminster hath shaven thy beard."
In Colyn Cloute he incidentally attacked Wolsey in a general satire on the clergy, "Speke, Parrot" and "Why come ye nat
to Courte?" are direct and fierce invectives against the cardinal who is said to have more than once imprisoned the author. To
avoid another arrest Skelton took sanctuary in Westminster Abbey. He was kindly
received by the abbot, John Islip, who continued to protect him until his death. The inscription
on his tomb in the neighbouring church of St Margaret's described him as vales pierius.
In his Garlande of Laurell Skelton gives a long list of his works, only a few of which are extant. The garland in
question was worked for him in silks, gold and pearls by the ladies of the countess of Surrey at
Sheriff Hutton Castle, where he was the guest of the duke of Norfolk. The composition includes complimentary verses to the various ladies concerned, and a
good deal of information about himself. But it is as a satirist that Skelton merits attention. The Bowge of Court is
directed against the vices and dangers of court life. He had already in his Boke of the Thre Foles drawn on Alexander
Barclay's version of the Narrenschijf of Sebastian Brant, and this more elaborate and imaginative poem belongs to the same class. Skelton,
falling into a dream at Harwich, sees a stately ship in the harbour called the Bowge of
Court, the owner of which is the Dame Saunce Pere. Her merchandise is Favour; the helmsman Fortune; and the poet, who
figures as Drede (modesty), finds on board F'avell (the flatterer), Suspect, Harvy Hafter (the clever thief), Dysdayne, Ryotte,
Dyssymuler and Subtylte, who all explain themselves in turn, until at last Drede, who finds they are secretly his enemies, is
about to save his life by jumping overboard, when he wakes with a start. Both of these poems are written in the seven-lined
Chaucerian stanza, but it is in an irregular metre of his own that his most characteristic
work was accomplished.
The Boke of Phyllyp Sparowe, the lament of Jane Scroop, a schoolgirl in the Benedictine convent of Carowe near
Norwich, for her dead bird, was no doubt inspired by Catullus.
It is a poem of some 1,400 lines and takes many liberties with the formularies of the church. The digressions are considerable.
We learn what a wide reading Jane had in the romances of Charlemagne, of the
Round Table, The Four Sons of Aymon and the Trojan cycle. Skelton
finds space to give his opinion of Chaucer, Gower
and Lydgate. He seems fully to have realized Chaucer's value as a master of the English
language. Gower's matter was, he said, "worth gold," but his English he regarded as antiquated. The verse in which the poem is
written, called from its inventor "Skeltonical," is here turned entirely to whimsical use. The lines are usually six-syllabled,
but vary in length, and rhyme in groups of two, three, four and even more. It is not far removed from the old alliterative English verse, and well fitted to be chanted by the minstrels who had sung the old ballads.
For its comic admixture of Latin Skelton had abundant example in French and Low Latin macaronic verse. He makes frequent use of Latin and French words to carry out his exacting system of
frequently recurring rhymes. This breathless, voluble measure was in Skelton's energetic hands an admirable vehicle for
invective, but it easily degenerated into doggerel.
By the end of the 16th century he was a "rude rayling rimer" (Puttenham, Arte of English Poesie), and at the hands of Pope and Warton he fared even worse. His own criticism is a just
one:
"For though my ryme be ragged,
Tattered and jagged,
Rudely rayne beaten,
Rusty and moughte eaten,
It hath in it some pyth."
Colyn Cloute represents the average country man who gives his opinions on the state of the church. There is no more
scathing indictment of the sins of the clergy before the Reformation. He exposes
their greed, their ignorance, the ostentation of the bishops and the common practice of simony,
but takes care to explain that his accusations do not include all and that he writes in defence of, not against, the church. He
repeatedly hits at Wolsey even in this general satire, but not directly. Speke, Parrot has only been preserved in a
fragmentary form, and is exceedingly obscure. It was apparently composed at different times, but in the latter part of the
composition he openly attacks Wolsey. In Why come ye not to Courte? there is no attempt at disguise. The wonder is not
that the author had to seek sanctuary, but that he had any opportunity of doing so. He rails at Wolsey's ostentation, at his
almost royal authority, his overbearing manner to suitors high and low, and taunts him with his mean extraction. This scathing
invective was not allowed to be printed in the cardinal's lifetime, but it was no doubt widely circulated in manuscript and by
repetition. The charge of coarseness regularly brought against Skelton is based chiefly on The Tunnynge of Elynoare
Rummynge, a realistic description in the same metre of the drunken women who gathered at a well-known ale-house kept by
Elynour Rummynge at Leatherhead, not
far from the royal palace of Nonsuch.
"Skelton Laureate against the Scottes" is a fierce song of triumph celebrating the victory of Flodden. "Jemmy is ded And closed in led, That was theyr owne Kynge," says the poem;
but there was an earlier version written before the news of James IV's death had
reached London. This, which is the earliest singly printed ballad in the language,
was entitled A Ballade of the Scottysshe Kynge, and was rescued in 1878 from the wooden covers of a copy of
Huon de Bordeaux. "Howe the douty Duke of
Albany, lyke a cowarde knight" deals with the campaign of 1523, and contains a panegyric of Henry VIII. To this is attached an envoi to Wolsey, but it must surely have been
misplaced, for both the satires on the cardinal are of earlier date.
Skelton also wrote three plays, only one of which survives. Magnificence is one of the best examples of the
morality play. It deals with the same topic as his satires, the evils of ambition; its
moral, "how suddenly worldly wealth doth decay," being a favourite one with him. Thomas
Warton in his History of English Poetry described another piece Nigramansir, printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1504, and dealing with simony and the love of money in the church; but no copy is
known to exist, and some suspicion has been cast on Warton's statement.
Illustration of the hold Skelton had on the public imagination is supplied from the stage. A play (1600) called Scogan and
Shelton, by Richard Hathway and William Rankins, is mentioned
by Henslowe. In Anthony Munday's Downfall of
Robert, earl of Huntingdon, Skelton acts the part of Friar
Tuck, and Ben Jonson in his masque, The Fortunate Isles, introduced Skogan and
Skelton in like habits as they lived.
Very few of Skelton's productions are dated, and their titles are here necessarily abbreviated. De Worde printed the Bowge
of Court twice. Divers Batettys and dyties salacious devysed by Master Shelton Laureat, and Shelton Laureate agaynste a
comely Coystroune have no date or printer's name, but are evidently from the press of Richard Pynson, who also printed Replycacion against certain yang scalers, dedicated to Wolsey.
The Garlande or Chapelet of Laurell was printed by Richard Faukes (1523); Magnificence,
A goodly interlude, probably by John Rastell about 1533, reprinted (1821) for the
Roxburghe Club. Hereafter foloweth the Boke of Phyllyp Sparowe was printed by
Richard Kele (1550?), Robert Toy, Antony
Kitson (1560?), Abraham Veale (1570?), John Walley,
John Wyght (1560?). Hereafter foloweth certaine bokes compyled by mayster Shelton ...
including "Speke, Parrot," "Ware the Hawke," "Elynoure Rumpiynge" and others, was printed by Richard
Lant (1550?), John King and Thomas March (1565?), by
John Day (1560). Hereafter foloweth a title boke called Colyn Cloute and Hereafter
... why come ye nat to Courte? were printed by Richard Kele (1550?) and in numerous
subsequent editions. Pithy, plesaunt and profitable workes of maister Shelton, Poete Laureate. Nowe collected and newly
published was printed in 1568, and reprinted in 1736. A scarce reprint of Filnour Rummin by Samuel Rand appeared in 1624.
Five of Skelton's 'Tudor Portraits', including 'The Tunnying of Elynour Rummyng' were set to music by Vaughan Williams in or
around 1935. Although he changed the text here and there to suit his music, the sentiments are well expressed. The other four
poems are 'My pretty Bess','Epitaph of John Jayberd of Diss', 'Jane Scroop (her lament for Philip Sparrow)', and 'Jolly
Rutterkin'. The music is rarely performed, although it is immensely funny, and captures the coarseness of Skelton in an inspired
way.
See The Poetical Works of John Shelton; with Notes and some account of the author and his writings, by the
Rev. Alexander Dyce (2 vols., 1843). A selection of his works was edited by WH Williams
(London, 1902). See also Zur Charakteristik John Skeltons by Dr Arthur Koelbing (Stuttgart, 1904); F Brie, "Skelton
Studien" in Englische Studien, vol. 38 (Heilbronn, 1877, etc.); A Rey, Skelton's Satirical Poems... (Berne, 1899);
A Thummel, Studien über John Skelton (Leipzig-Reudnitz, 1905); G Saintsbury,
Hist. of Eng. Prosody (vol. i, 1906); and A Kolbing in the Cambridge History of English Literature (vol. iii,
1909).
References
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