The high dramatic quality of the Secunda Pastorum raises a recurrent interpretive question: does the play function as a unified religious statement in a traditional craft cycle, or does it function primarily as a secular farce with a Nativity scene added? Critics of this supremely sophisticated medieval play have moved from the early view that the long secular prologue was unrelated to, and detracted from, the Christ Nativity, to the more recent opinion that the stage business involving Mak is an artful parody of the true Nativity and is structurally adapted to the religious end for which the play was designed.

The verse romance King Robert of Sicily (King Roberd of Cisyle) is the Middle English version of a well-known legend about The Proud King Humiliated (Deposed)—an arrogant and boastful king whose throne is taken over by an angel-substitute until the beggared monarch learns proper humility. Told of the Emperor Jovinian in the Latin Gesta Romanorum, the story had also appeared in other contexts in almost all the vernacular languages of Europe before the end of the fifteenth century. The tale must have been especially appealing to the English, to judge from the number of extant manuscripts heretofore known, nine manuscripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This paper calls attention to still another manuscript, folio 2 of BM Additional MS. 34801. It has, strangely enough, never been noticed, although its existence was recorded in a catalogue over sixty years ago.

The International character of Christine de Pisan's writings has long ago been investigated where it concerns her familiarity with the works of her compatriots Dante and Boccaccio or her relations with the English court during the early years of the fifteenth century. Considerably less well known is the Portuguese translation of her Livre des trois vertus, which is to be found in MS. 11,515 of the National Library in Madrid. This translation was, furthermore, published in Lisbon in 1518. Although two copies of the edition still exist and are listed in Portuguese bibliographies, the only mention of such a translation among studies devoted to Christine de Pisan is a passing refererence in Mathilde Laigle's Livre des trois vertus: son milieu historique et litteraire (Paris, 1912). Here a footnote promises further information in a projected edition of the Trois vertus which has never appeared. Several years later the Portuguese translation was referred to by Aubrey Bell in his Portuguese Literature, but with several errors of detail. As the existence of the manuscript and the two printed copies cannot fail to arouse the curiosity of any student of Christine de Pisan's writings or, indeed, of the intellectual currents of the late Middle Ages, it would seem worth while to attempt a plausible explanation of the circumstances which brought the Portuguese version into being.

Nearly half a century has passed since Kittredge made his famous critical pronouncement that Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims “do not exist for the sake of the stories, but vice versa.” Despite occasional objections, Kittredge's observation has received wide general acceptance and its application to the tales by him and subsequent critics has yielded many fruitful insights into the direction of Chaucer's art. The Nun's Priest's Tale, however, apparently defies analysis along the lines suggested by this statement, for the Priest is not described in the “General Prologue” but is merely mentioned as one of three priests travelling with the Prioress. With this fact in mind, R. K. Root has rejected the Nun's Priest completely: “Neither in the General Prologue nor in the links which fit the tale into its framework has Chaucer taken any pains to characterize the ‘gentil Preest’ who tells this tale. So we may dismiss him without ceremony, and imagine ourselves face to face with Chaucer.”

Some admirers of More's Utopia have used the term “satire” to prove that it is essentially a jeu d'esprit. Others have used it to contend that Utopia is essentially a serious didactic argument. But while both schools of criticism use the term “satire” to wrestle with the problems presented by Utopia's form and technique, neither has employed it consistently to resolve the major problems raised by More's little book. How is one to reconcile More's “real intention” (however defined) with his “manner of alternating seriousness and parody?” Why should a canonized Lord Chancellor ever have constructed an “ideal” commonwealth so manifestly antithetical to his orthodoxy? Can the textual and personal sources of More's ideas explain Hythloday's arguments in Book I, or the institutions of Utopian society? These questions remain after half a century of intense scholarship and impassioned appraisal. The latest and most exhaustive study of More's book, having explicitly separated Utopia's “matter” from its “style and form,” concludes that “dashes of wit, satire, and irony add zest to [Utopia's] perusal but make its interpretation intriguing and perplexing … Utopia, it seems almost futile to say, is a complex and enigmatic book.”

The high value of Everyman has been provocatively asserted in T. S. Eliot's description of it as “perhaps” the only English drama “within the limitations of art.” Eliot writes this while discussing the lack of form in post-Kydian drama and thus implies that the source of this value is the play's formal unity. David Kaula has taken Eliot to mean “that nothing in the play is extraneous to the central homiletic purpose, that all elements of style, structure, and theme are governed by the conventions of allegory.” Yet the emphasis on Everyman's homiletic purpose and allegorical conventions does not sufficiently explain either its critical esteem or its theatrical popularity. Fortunately, Eliot has enlarged upon his original assessment in a later work. He argues that religious drama, to be successful, must combine its doctrine with “ordinary dramatic interest.” Everyman fulfills his requirement:

The New Year is almost here. Once again—sooner, it seems, each time around—we face the time to make resolutions and the time to take stock and to foretell our own destiny. Having just helped nurse another United Nations General Assembly to bed, I already have my fill of resolutions. But I would like this evening to make and defend a prediction.

Among the various features of Anglo-Saxon verse technique, none has so successfully eluded explanation as the use of expanded verses. Impetus for a further investigation of the expanded verses is provided by certain conjectural remarks made by Magoun in his highly provocative initial article on Anglo-Saxon oral verse-making: “There is perhaps much that will never be known about the origin and special function, if any, of the expanded or hypermetric verses, but a casual survey suggests that, whereas the second measure of each verse seems to be formulaic and out of its context would form a complete verse, the organization of the first measure would appear to be somewhat different, perhaps somewhat less rigid in structure, thus perhaps allowing the singer certain freedoms not available in a normal verse.” This essay will follow up the suggestions made by Magoun and will re-examine the expanded verses from the point of view, not of their metrics, but rather of their formulaic structure. The evidence will show, I think, that the superior singers allow themselves far less freedom in the opening measure than may appear to be the case from a cursory analysis.