Skelton's Garland of Laurel has received less critical consideration and praise than his other major works.¹ Yet the poem deserves attention because it evaluates, in a lively and imaginative manner, Skelton's poetic career and the meaning of literary fame.² Like Chaucer in the House of Fame, to which the Garland is indebted, Skelton takes a skeptical view of Fame and her favors; but unlike his master, he finally celebrates his own apotheosis with the spirit of a Renaissance poet.

The Garland, as A. C. Spearing has shown, belongs to a tradition of medieval dream-poetry.³ Skelton finds himself alone in the Forest of Galtres near Sheriff Hutton castle where he serves as the “clerke” of the Countess of Surrey. Half-drunk and soaked in mire, he falls asleep and dreams he sees a wondrously decorated pavilion where a debate ensues between Pallas, the goddess of wisdom, and the Queen of Fame concerning the merits of his literary reputation. The question of Skelton's success at the court of Fame is not settled, however, until the end of the poem when the poets laureate judge his poetic “recorde”—in this case a long bibliography—and enthusiastically receive him into their illustrious company. In the meantime, Skelton meets the famous poets, including England's own Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate; witnesses the treacherous activities that go on at the court of Fame; visits the garden of the Muses accompanied by Fame's registrar, Occupation; and is welcomed into the household of the Countess of Surrey. After Skelton's bibliography is read before the laureate senate, the poets let out a tremendous cry of triumph that wakes Skelton from his dream, and the poem closes with two envoys.

That Skelton should write a self-congratulatory poem about his own laureation seems fitting considering that the degree of poet laureate was conferred upon him by the three universities of Oxford (1488), Louvian (1492), and Cambridge (1492-3). In Skelton's day, poet laureate could refer to a person who had been given a university degree in grammar, rhetoric, and versification, or to one who should have been awarded the degree, such as any of the classical, continental, and English writers who appear in the Garland and make up the laureate senate.⁴ Skelton no doubt considered his laureation a great honor, and the enthusiastic reception he receives at the end of the Garland might wel recall an actual ceremony:

At kyng to me myn habyte gave:
At Oxforth, the universyte,
Avaunsid I was to that degre;
By hole consent of theyr senate,
I was made poete lawreate.(5)

The poet's self-dramatization in the Garland vacillates between notes of bravado and humility.⁶ A Latin verse preceding the poem proclaims the poet another Adonis whose illustrious name shall reach the sky.

Hinc nostrum celebre et nomen referetur ad astra,
Undique Skeltonis memorabitur alter Adonis.

Here Skelton clearly displays the Renaissance pride in the permanence of poetic achievement. These lines anticipate the end of the poem where he triumphantly declares himself England's Homer, Catullus, and Adonis. Skelton aligns himself with classical culture, just as later in the poem he will align himself with English culture. Through the poet laureate, he implies, these traditions continue and are glorified.

But the opening of the poem itself registers a less triumphant mood. Skelton considers that “fortune varyeth” (11) as suddenly as clear weather changes to a stormy shower. The image of fickle fortune, though conventional, anticipates Occupation's metaphor of the tempest-tossed ship (540-6) which she uses to describe the poet's dangerous journey through the world. The oak stump upon which Skelton rests is similarly suggestive for his carreer as a poet: once a mighty tree “of a noble heyght” that “grew full streyghte,” its beauty has been “blastyd … with the boystors wynde” (18-20). Because of its solidity and endurance, the oak is “a symbol of the strength of faith and virtue, and of the endurance of the Christian against adversity.”⁷ Hence Skelton, whose satires condemn the viciousness and hypocrisy of the court, nobility, and clergy, appropriates this metaphor as a way of suggesting the spiritual strength of the just poet living in a precarious world. To a certain degree, then, the Garland is a defense of its author's career.

The uncertainty conveyed by these images is extended by the Chaucerian uncertainty of the poet's dream as he falls asleep. Skelton is unsure whether his dream is a somnium animale, naturale or coeleste:⁸

And whether it were of ymagynacyon,
Or of humors superflue, that often wyll crepe
Into the brayne by drynkynge over depe,
Or it procedyd of fatall persuacyon,
I can not wele tell you what was the occasyon.

(31-5)

But of course the picture of the half-drunken poet soaked in mire dreaming of fame reminds us that Skelton is not above mocking his own concern for literary reputation. Similarly, when he announces the names of the famous poets laureate, Skelton associates poetic inspiration with Bacchus, the god of wine, thus adding a wonderful touch of humor to that moment of self-advertisement (334ff.).

The debate between Pallas and Fame raises serious issues about Skelton's merits as a poet. Fame accuses Skelton of being “sum what to dull” (79), for he has abandoned the aureate style and its conventions, and does not attempt to win the favors of the noble ladies with “wordis electe” (76). Skelton's failure to live up to the Queen's standards seems all the more remarkable considering that he has “tastid of the sugred pocioun / Of Elyconis well” (73-4), as line that may recall Caxton's praise of the poet in his dedication to the Boke of Eneydos.⁹ We, however, recognize that Fame's standards are too narrow. Skelton, afterall, writes other kinds of poetry, and not merely to please a noble audience. Yet whether he chooses to write in an aureate or satirical style, he always runs the risk of being misunderstood:

For if he gloryously pullishe his matter,
Then men wyll say how he doth but flatter;
And if so hym fortune to wryte true and plaine,
As sumtyme he must vyces remorde,
Then sum wyll say he hath but lyttill brayne,
And how his wordes with reason wyll not accorde;
Beware, for wrytyng remayneth of recorde;
Desplease not an hundreth for one mannes pleasure;
Who wryteth wysely hath a grete treasure.

(83-91)

Pallas compares Skelton's precarious situation to that of those outspoken ancient poets, Ovid and Juvenal:

Also, to furnisshe better his excuse,
Ovyde was bannisshed for such a skyll,
And many mo whome I cowde enduce;
Iuvenall was thret parde for to kyll
For certayne envectyfys, yet wrote he none ill,
Savynge he rubbid sum upon the gall;
It was not for hym to abyde the tryall.

(92-8)

Later, in a Latin address to his book, Skelton prepares himself to endure the attack of mad dogs, for even Virgil and Ovid's muses encountered similar threats (1530-3). As Skelton writes in his second envoy, he has had to lead his life between “hope and drede” (1594).

Pallas' warning that writing “remayneth of recorde” extends the ambiguity of reputation: the poet's works may be used as evidence against him, a danger no doubt well-known to the author of numerous satires on Wolsey. A “memoryall” (118) or record of the poet's achievement, such as the long bibliography at the end of the poem is therefore both precarious and desirable. While it may endanger the poet if he speaks true and plain, it may also win fame for himself and those whom he celebrates in his poems. The ambiguity of “recorde” is further suggested by Pallas' line “Who wryteth wysely hath a grete treasure.” She may mean that he who writes wisely, in the sense of the poet who honors his audience with aureate verses and does not displease “an hundreth for one mannes pleasure,” is safe and will accumulate a treasure such as fame or some other reward. But in this case, he who writes wisely does not write true and plain like Skelton, Ovid, and Juvenal. Pallas may also mean that Skelton, Ovid, and Juvenal are poets who write wisely in a moral sense and therefore earn a treasure, perhaps immortality, awarded only to worthy poets. The uncertainty regarding writing and the meaning of its record is surely intentional on Skelton's part.

Like Chaucer's Fame, Skelton's queen favors men arbitrarily: “whom that ye favoure, I se well, hath a name, / Be he never so lytell of substaunce” (176-7). Moreover, we see that she does not evenly weigh her judgments, for she supports wisdom as well as folly. This, then, is the unstable and dangerous side of fame. “Reporte,” warns Pallas, “ryseth many deverse wayes” (181): its meaning is inconsistent and easily shifts. Pallas contrasts her servant with others who have appeared in Fame's court:

Some have a name for thefte and brybery;
Some be called crafty, that can pyke a purse;
Some men be made of for their mokery;
Some carefull cokwoldes, some have theyr wyves curs.

(183-6)

This threatening rout, reminiscent of the vicious courtiers who seek favors in the Bowge of Court, represents the forces of disorder that surface occasionally in the Garland. The suspicious activities within the Queen's palace recall Chaucer's House of Fame:

Some came to tell treuth, some came to lye,
Some came to flater, some came to spye.

(510-11)

Later Skelton beholds an evil hoard of ribalds, dicers, card players, hypocrites, bawds, rioters, and flatterers who “come crowdyng to get them a name” (621). These figures of disorder surrounding Fame suggest that we cannot trust her ability to judge a “good recorde” since the seekers of favor within her court “make but a mummynge” (200) or mockery of true merit.

The appearance of the poets laureate, led by Apollo himself, raises the question of Skelton's place among the poets of all ages and lands. Pallas, Fame and Skelton view the assembly

To se if Skelton wyll put hymselfe in prease
Amonge the thickeste of all the hole rowte.

(239-40)

Famous Greek and Latin writers appear including Quintilian, Homer, Cicero, Ovid, Virgil, and Macrobious; then a few Italian and French writers from the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, including Boccaccio and Petrarch; and finally the three famous English poets, Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate. The list is both a modest and arrogant act: it establishes Skelton's debt to his forbears and implies that these great poets have taught him. It recalls the House of Fame where Chaucer provides a list of poets he venerates, and the Palice of Honour where Douglas provides a long list of poets led by Calliope, thus advertising his way to honor.¹⁰ The list, then, is one way Skelton places himself firmly within a literary tradition.

The sense of a native English literary tradition was itself well-established in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, as Skelton's description of the founding poets suggests:

I saw Gower, that first garnisshed our Englysshe rude,
And maister Chaucer, that nobly enterprysyd
How that our Englysshe myght fresshely be ennewed;
The monke of Bury then after them ensuyd;
Dane Johnn Lydgate.

(387-91)

He invokes the same famous triad celebrated in Douglas' Palice of Honour, Dunbar's “Golden Targe,” and “Lament for the Makaris,” James I of Scotland's Kingis Quair, and Hawes' Pastime of Pleasure, to mention several outstanding examples from the period. In this way, Skelton acknowledges his indebtedness to a rich poetic tradition going back to Chaucer.

But even as Skelton shows concern for his place within this celebrated literary tradition, he presents a witty and sophisticated view of himself in relation to his English masters. Although the four poets all embrace “as brethern” (393), the three famous poets want “nothynge but the laurell” (397). Unlike Skelton, they have not actually been awarded the academic distinction of poet laureate. At the same time that Skelton recognizes these poets as his masters, he cleverly implies that he is the culmination of their literary tradition. The English triumvirate supports Skelton's claim to fame:

Brother Skelton, your endevorment
So have ye done, that meretoryously
Ye have deservyd to have an enplement
In our collage above the sterry sky.

(400-3)

This is surely blatant self-praise. Yet Skelton continues to treat his ambitions with humorous irony:

Maister Gower, I have nothyng deserved
To have so laudabyle a commendacion:
To yow thre this honor shalbe reserved,
Arrectinge unto your wyse examinacion
How all that I do is under refformation,
For only the substance of that I entende,
Is glad to please, and loth to offend.

(407-13)

A mixture of respect, humor, and false modesty contribute to the charm and brilliance of this scene between Skelton and his masters. Of course we never doubt that beneath Skelton's show of humility there lies enormous assurance regarding his own poetic powers.

Skelton's desire for fame, moreover, does not conflict with his wish for a peaceful old age and his hope that God will now serve as his steersman. When Occupation appears in order to act as Skelton's guide throughout the rest of his dream journey, she, in effect, promises him safe harbor: having already rescued him during more difficult times, she has repaired his “storme dryven shyppe” anew so that no “stormy tempeste” shall overthrow it (544-6). Her lines recall that moving moment in Colin Clout, probably written only a year or two earlier, when Skelton prays that his ship may

glyde and smothely slyp
Out of the wawes wod
Of the stormy flod,

so that he may safely steer it “Toward the porte salu / Of our Savyour Jesu.”¹¹ Later in the Garland, Skelton, pretending humility before addressing the Countess of Surrey and her ladies, uses the same metaphor as he commits all to God: “So I beseke Jhesu now to be my gyde” (835).

When Skelton reaches the paradisal garden of the Muses, he beholds a remarkable sight:

I saw growyng a goodly laurell tre,
Enverdurid with levis contynually grene;
Above in the top a byrde of Araby,
Men call a phenix; her wynges bytwene
She bet up a fyre with the sparkis full kene
With braunches and bowghis of the swete olyve.

(665-70)

Above the laurel tree, the symbol of poetic fame, he sees the phoenix, a symbol of immortality. This passage makes more sense if we consider that Skelton, in Ware the Hawk (1508), had proclaimed himself the phoenix of Britain:

Sic velut est Arabum phenix avis unica tantum
Terra Britanna suum genuit Skeltonida vatem.(12)

Significantly, the phoenix cultivates a fire within the boughs of the “swete olyve,” a symbol of peace. As a poet who desires fame and immortality, Skelton implies that he must cultivate the arts of peace. The passage may explain why the Garland of Laurel is not an invective against Wolsey (unlike Why Come Ye Not to Court, probably written just before the Garland and conspicuously absent from Skelton's bibliography), and at the end includes a dedication to both the King and Cardinal. Possibly Skelton, as he grew older and yearned for poetic immortality, began to feel the need for reconciliation and peace; but we should not assume, then, that he suddenly changed his mind about Wolsey.¹³

The poem takes an enchanting turn as Occupation and Skelton enter the world of the Countess of Surrey and her ladies. As in Speke Parrot, the poet finds himself at the center of a feminine household, and he indulges in the pleasure of presenting himself along with the noble ladies he seeks to honor. The warm welcome he receives at Sherrif Hutton throws into relief the humiliation he has suffered at the Tudor court. The ladies are making him a garland of laurel in order to reward him for his service as the Countess' clerk. In turn, the poet promises to make the ladies' names “endure perpetually” (861) by devising a series of complimentary poems. In this way, Skelton exercises the power of poetry to make its subjects immortal: the Garland celebrates not only Skelton's fame as poet laureate, but also his ability to bestow “inmortall fame” (967) upon others.

Skelton's verses compare his female patrons, members of the Howard and Dacre families, to famous ladies of former times. The Countess, for instance, is compared to “Prudent Rebecca, of whome remembraunce / The Byble makith” (845-6). Commentators have observed, however, that Skelton occasionally makes unflattering comparisons.¹⁴ Thus it seems curious that the poet should refer to the Lady Elizabeth Howard as a Cresseid who would arouse the appetite of Pandarus. Lady Anne Dakers, whose fidelity is equal “in honour unto Penolepe” (899), is also compared to Helen of Troy. Similarly, Mistress Margaret Tylney is likened to Canace and Phaedre, both guilty of incest, while Mistress Gertrude Statham is invited to see herself as Pasiphae, mother of the monster Minotaur.

As extraordinary as these comparisons seem, we need not conclude that Skelton is being ambiguous in his praise of these noble ladies. Several comparisons are surely meant to be amusing: Anne Dakers, for example, is also invited to see herself as Diana whose lusty looks “make hevy hartis glad” (903). Skelton humorously qualifies his praise of Lady Muriel Howard's courteous and gentle heart and mind by adding that Fortune and Fate have allowed her to enjoy “plesure, delyght, and lust” (882), and then comparing her to Cydippe, the maid who embarrased herself by unwittingly reading aloud a billet-doux sent from her lover Acontius. Moreover, Skelton can deftly turn an unflattering remark into praise. The humorous note of restraint that begins the tribute to Mistress Jane Blenner-Haiset is turned into a compliment:

What though my penne wax faynt,
And hath smale lust to paint?
Yet shall there no restraynt
Cause me to cese,
Amonge this prese,
For to encrese
Yowre goodly name.

(954-60)

The satirical edge to these portraits is in character with Skelton who makes fun of “duly ordred obeisaunce” (836), even as he appears to respect it. If Skelton mocks anything by such teasing comparisons, it is the convention of praise itself rather than the ladies.

Some of the complimentary lyrics, moreover, are remarkably beautiful. The younger ladies, especially, are compared to flowers and birds as Skelton thanks them for their part in making the laurel wreath. Thus he gracefully addresses Mistress Margery Wentworth, neatly punning on her name in the first line:

With margerain ientyll,
The flowre of goodlyhede,
Enbrowdred the mantill
Is of your maydenhede.

(906-9)

Similarly he greets Isabel Pennel:

Envwyd your colowre
Is lyke the dasy flowre
After the Aprill showre;
Sterre of the morow gray,
The blossom on the spray,
The fresshest flowre of May.

(985-90)

Through these verses, Skelton, devoted clerk to the Countess and her ladies, has indeed immortalized their “goodly” names.

His enormous bibliography reminds us that he is a “remembrauncer” (864) not only for the noble ladies, but for himself as well: the catalogue provides a summary of his achievement as a poet and the justification for his laureate triumph in the court of Fame. By including a bibliography at the end of the Garland, Skelton recalls Chaucer who, in his Introduction to the Man of Law's Tale, his Prologue to the Legend of Good Women, and his Retraction, is the first English poet to present a bibliography of his works. The catalogue of over 300 lines, including both well-known and lost works, celebrates the range and versatility of Skelton's achievement (among the items mentioned are translations, satires, elegies, a comedy, a morality play, tracts of an educational and moral nature, and religious works), and fulfills more than adequately Fame's demand to see what he “hath compilid and wryton” (1151). But when Skelton interrupts Occupation to beg that a work be erased from the record, Fame refuses to comply with the poet's request: once something is spoken within her court it must then “rin all the world aboute” (1483). As this ambiguous moment suggests, Fame's power may constitute as much of a threat to the poet's reputation as it does an asset.

This long list concludes with what is presumably Skelton's greatest achievement-the Garland of Laurel itself:

But when of the laurell she made rehersall,
All orators and poetis, with other grete and smale,
A thowsande thowsande, I trow, to my dome,
Triumpha, triumpha! they cryid all aboute;
Of trumpettis and clariouns the noyse went to Rome;
The starry hevyn, me thought, shoke with the showte;
The grownde grondid and tremblid, the noyse was so stowte.

(1503-9)

In one of his most ingenious and self-conscious moments, Skelton overextends his fantasy to the point where it includes the very poem we are reading. This is, in effect, the Garland's celebration of itself. The poets' shouts of “Triumpha, triumpha!” express their enthusiastic approval of both the laurel devised by the ladies and the poem devised by Skelton. Part of Skelton's triumph lies in the fact that, at least within his dream-poem, he has found a “noble audyence” (1123) which recognizes his achievement as a poet and supports his literary fame. He has won his cause before the laureate senate and triumphed over Fame's narrow standards. Thus with a mixture of amusement and seriousness, Skelton celebrates his own apotheosis.

But Skelton's fantasy overreaches itself: the shouts of triumph grow so loud that they carry all the way to Rome, the classical city of poets laureate, and Skelton suddenly wakes up from his dream. As he looks toward heaven for some meaning, he sees double-faced Janus. The poet, several Latin lines explain, must look forward and back:

Mens tibi sit consulta, petis? sic consule menti;
Aemula sit Jani, retro speculetur et ante.

(1519-20)

Skelton, through his “boke of remembraunce” (1149), has looked back and justified his carreer as poet to his noble audience. The concluding part of the poem will triumphantly proclaim Skelton the British laureate, and look forward to the time when his “fame may sprede / In length and brede” (1551-2).

As we have seen, Skelton's Garland is enlivened by much self-parody, humor, and exaggeration. To suggest that the poem reveals only its author's enormous vanity is surely to miss much of its point. Skelton's vanity is not, of course, merely a literary device: he does see himself as a poet who deserves an honored place in society and a “name inmortal” (119). Like Chaucer, Skelton takes a skeptical view of Fame and her favors, but unlike his master, “that famus clerke” (as he calls Chaucer in Phyllyp Sparrow, 1. 800), he would never write about his own reputation:

Sufficeth me, as I were ded,
That no wight have my name in honde(15)

Nor do we find Skelton in his old age writing, like Chaucer, that “al shal passe that men prose or ryme.”¹⁶ As a younger man, Skelton had been proclaimed by Erasmus England's Homer and Virgil:

For he from Latium all the muses led
And taught them to speak English words instead
Of Latin; and with Skelton England tries
With Roman poets to contend the prize.(17)

That Skelton never forgot such praise is clear from the Garland:

Ite, Britannorum lux O radiosa, Britannum
Carmina nostra pium vestrum celebrate Catullum!
Dicite, Skeltonis vester Adonis erat;
Dicite, Skeltonis vester Homerus erat.

(1521-4)

Like a poet of the Renaissance, Skelton exhibits a concern for fame that might endure as long as time itself.¹⁸

As England's Catullus, Adonis, and Homer, Skelton suggests that his nation is heir to classical culture and learning, even if only through its poet laureate. Yet the true medium of the laureate's fame must be the English tongue itself. His English poetry, Skelton declares, runs an equal race with Latin verse:

Et licet est verbo pars maxima texta Britanno,
Non magis incompta nostra Thalia patet,
Est magis inculta nec mea Calliope.

(1526-8)

Skelton's claims for his native language here recall the epilogue to Colin Clout, where he announces that this rustic songs will be celebrated everywhere so long as the English people remain famous. As the national poet, Skelton preserves England's language and literature. Gower, speaking for the famous triad of English poets, tells him:

ye encrese and amplyfy
The brutid Britons of Brutus Albion,
That welny was loste when that we were gone.

(404-6)

Skelton concludes the Garland with two envoys that support his use of the “Englysshe letter” (1538), and then demonstrate his expertise in Latin and French. Thus he indicates that, as poet laureate, he plays both a national and international role.

In the Garland, Skelton appears to hold two contrary views concerning the value of literary fame. The poet's Chaucerian skepticism and Renaissance pride seem to coexist. But as he considers his poetic career and places himself firmly within an English literary tradition, it is surely the Renaissance desire for fame and praise that emerges most strongly. Concerning the value of the laurel, Skelton would have agreed enthusiastically with the first and most famous Renaissance poet laureate, Petrarch, in his “Coronation Oration,” delivered on 8 April 1341, around the very time of Chaucer's birth.¹⁹ The “Oration,” perhaps “the first manifesto of the Renaissance,”²⁰ celebrates the occasion of Petrarch's laureation in Rome, and makes many claims for the nature and dignity of poetry that were to become commonplaces in apologies for poetry in the period. Among other claims, Petrarch asserts that the poet's reward is the immortality of his name and the names of those whom he celebrates. Further, Petrarch makes claims for the poet laureate as a national spokesman, international figure, and inspired prophet. Many of his ideas concerning fame and poetry, then, are remarkably similar to Skelton's in the Garland of Laurel. But it is Petrarch's remarks about poetry, dreams, and truth that most clearly remind us of Skelton: “when a person who is asleep is touched with laurel his dreams come true … truth is contained in poetic writings which to the foolish seem to be but dreams—the poet's head being wreathed with the leaves that make dreams come true.”²¹ We immediately think of Skelton crowned with his laurel proudly facing the international senate of poets as their cries of “Triumpha, triumpha!” reach all the way to Rome: to some this might seem merely a dream, but to Skelton it was also the truth.

Notes

1. Alexander Dyce, in his introduction to The Poetical Works of John Skelton (2 vols., London: Thomas Rodd, 1843; rpt. New York: AMS Press, 1965), asserts that the Garland, “one of Skelton's longest and most elaborate poems, cannot be reckoned among his best” (p. xlix). Certain recent critics have shown a similar lack of enthusiasm about the poem: C. S. Lewis, in English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1954), believes that “All that is of value in this production is contained in the seven lyric addresses to ladies which are inserted at the end” (p. 141); Peter Green, in John Skelton (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1960), considers the Garland an “odd poem” though it contains some passages “as powerful as anything Skelton ever wrote” (p. 35); Edwin B. Benjamin, in “Fame, Poetry, and the Order of History in the literature of the English Renaissance,” Studies in the Renaissance, 6 (1959), thinks the Garland's treatment of Fame is not novel: “the Fame it centers on is nothing more than conventional fame” (p. 68).

2. I assume that the poem, by the very fact that it assesses Skelton's poetic achievement and includes a bibliography of works as late as 1522 (not to mention the Garland itself, 1503 ff.), was written at the end of his career, most likely in 1523. Several commentators have considered the question of the poem's date. Robert S. Kinsman, ed. John Skelton: Poems (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1969), p. 195, argues that the poem's astronomical opening indicates that its original version was composed in 1495. See also Owen Gingerich and Melvin J. Tucker, “The Astronomical Dating of Skelton's Garland of Laurel,” Huntington Library Quarterly, 32 (1969), 207-20, and Melvin J. Tucker, “Skelton and Sheriff Hutton,” English Language Notes, 4 (1967), 254-9.

3. A. C. Spearing, Medieval Dream-Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1976), pp. 211-18.

4. Stephen Hawes, in the Pastime of Pleasure, ed. William E. Mead, Early English Text Society, orig. ser. 173 (London, 1928), introduces Lady Rethoryke as wearing “a garlande / Of the laurell grene” (1.658). See H. L. R. Edwards, Skelton: The Life and Times of an Early Tudor Poet (London: Jonathan Cape, 1949), pp. 34-6, and William Nelson, John Skelton: Laureate (New York: Russel & Russell, Inc., 1964), pp. 40-58, for further discussion of the meaning and practice of laureation in the early sixteenth-century.

5. “Poems Against Garnesch,” Works, I, 128. All quotations from Skelton's works are taken from Dyce's edition. I have normalized the printing of u's and v's.

6. Some commentators have seen the poem merely as an expression of its author's vanity. See Dyce's introduction, I, xlix; Eleanor P. Hammond's introduction to the poem in English Verse between Chaucer and Surrey (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 1927), p. 340; and Edwards who argues that the poem is devoted to “pure self-praise” (p. 22). As my reading of the poem suggests, this interpretation is too reductive since it fails to account for Skelton's ambiguous (not to mention witty) treatment of the relation between poetry and fame.

7. George Ferguson, Signs & Symbols in Christian Art (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1954), p. 35. Cited by Stanley E. Fish, John Skelton's Poetry (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1965), pp. 233-4. Cf. Alciati's emblem of the sacred oak which is so firmly rooted that the violent winds cannot blow it down; see Andrea Alciati, Emblemata (Lyons, 1551), p. 49.

8. Spearing, p. 213.

9. The Prologues and Epilogues of William Caxton, ed. W. J. B. Crotch, Early English Text Society, orig. ser. 176 (London, 1928), p. 109.

10. In Chaucer's poem many of the poets are associated directly with fame: Statius bears the fame of Thebes; “grete Omer” and others bear the “hevy … fame” of Troy; Ovid bears the fame of the God of Love; Virgil bears the fame of Aeneas; Lucan bears the fame of Caesar and Pompey; and Claudian bears the “fame of helle.” See the House of Fame, 11. 1451-1512, in The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. F. N. Robinson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1957). Douglas' list resembles Skelton's except that it also includes Dunbar and his antagonist Kennedy. As Priscilla J. Bawcutt points out in her edition of The Shorter Poems of Gavin Douglas (Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, Ltd., 1967), p. xlii, Douglas' method foreshadows Skelton's in the Garland of Laurel. Moreover, Calliope's intervention on Douglas' behalf is a sort of poetic self-advertisement not unlike Pallas' defense of Skelton in the “noble court of Fame.”

11. Colin Clout, 11.1254-6, 1262-3.

12. The passage appears as a cryptogram in the poem:

    Sicculo lutueris est colo buraara
    Nixphedras visarum caniuter tuntantes
    Raterplas Natabrian umsudus itnugenus

    18. 10. 2. 11. 19. 4. 13. 3. 3. 1. tevalet.

    It was decoded by Henry Bradley, “Two Puzzles in Skelton,” The Academy, 50 (1896), p. 83.

13. John C. Colley, in “John Skelton's Apologia: The Medieval Sciences, Wolsey, and the Garlande of Laurell,” Tennessee Studies in Literature, 18 (1973), pp. 19-32, believes that the poem, like Skelton's other satires, is full of anti-Wolsey criticism. But I agree with Nan C. Carpenter, John Skelton (New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1967), pp. 105-6, who argues that although Skelton probably did not change his mind about Wolsey, the Garland is a poem where satire of the Cardinal would be essentially out of place.

14. See for example, Edwards, pp. 234-6; Fish, pp. 228-30; and Hammond's notes to the poem, pp. 518-20.

15. House of Fame, 11, 1876-7.

16. Lenvoy de Chaucer a Scogan, 1. 41.

17. Trans. by Preserves Smith in Erasmus (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1923),, p. 62.

18. For a good discussion of the idea of fame in the Renaissance, see Ricardo Quinones, The Renaissance Discovery of Time (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1972), especially pp. 22-6.

19. The “Coronation Oration” was relatively unknown in the Renaissance, and it is unlikely that Skelton would have been familiar with it. See Ernst H. Wilkins' introductory remarks to his translation of the “Oration” in Studies in the Life and Works of Petrarch (Cambridge, Mass.: The Medieval Academy of America, 1955), p. 300; his translation appears on pp. 300-13.

20. Wilkins, p. 300.

21. Wilkins, p. 311.