Specular Narrative: Hoccleve's Regement of Princes
[In the following essay, from her study of mirror metaphors in medieval English literature, Torti discusses Hoccleve's Regement of Princes in terms of its function as autobiography. Torti argues that in his construction of a “mirror” in which Prince Henry can see examples of statesmanship, Hoccleve often reflects an image of himself.]
Critical evaluation of Thomas Hoccleve as a mere imitator of Chaucer has had too long a currency,1 and Hoccleve himself is partly to blame for this. His references to Chaucer are numerous. In the Regement of Princes he apostrophizes his ‘maister’ as ‘flour of eloquence, / Mirour of fructuous entendement, / O, vniuersel fadir in science’ (1962-4), and, using the diminutio technique, contrasts Chaucer's excellence with his own inability to express himself correctly: ‘My yonge konyng may no hyer reche, / Mi wit is also slipir as an eel’ (1984-5).
In recent years, however, critics like S. Medcalf and J. Burrow have stressed the autobiographical substratum—which thrusts itself to the surface in the ‘Prologue’ and in the so-called Series2—that makes Hoccleve's narrative uniquely his notwithstanding his observance of medieval conventions. His use of different literary genres, such as the petition that parodies the penitential lyric3 in ‘La Male Regle’ and the consolatio4 in the ‘Prologue’ and in the Series cannot prevent his readers from receiving an impression of ‘modernity’ from Hoccleve's poetry, especially when he offers them a minutely-detailed description of his deeply depressive state.5
Hoccleve's Regement of Princes is divided into two parts: the ‘Prologue’ and the Regement proper. The ‘Prologue’ has a quasi-typical dream setting. The poet cannot sleep: he is too worried about the world's problems and his own misfortunes. The next morning he goes out and meets an old beggar. They start a conversation, with Hoccleve showing moments of self-revelation and the Beggar trying to comfort the poet with long didactic sermons and by talking about his past life. At line 750 Hoccleve tells the Beggar about his melancholy. Being poor he fears for his old age. He then gives a detailed account of his work in the Privy Seal and of his annuity and complains about the troubles to which scribes are subject. After other allusions to his life, he laments the death of Chaucer, the flower of eloquence. Then the Beggar goes away and the poet announces that he will write a poem for Prince Henry.
At the beginning of the Regement proper, Hoccleve indicates his sources and refers again to Chaucer, whom he praises greatly. The Regement was divided by the editor into fifteen sections named after the virtues that Hoccleve considers necessary for a king. The sections vary in length and in the number of the examples introduced to describe the various subjects. Personal allusions are also present, as in section 11 where he presses the prince for his annuity. The concluding section is on peace. To restore peace Hoccleve suggests the marriage of Prince Hal and the Princess of France.
The Regement of Princes is the work in which Hoccleve's personal history is allowed to merge most transparently with a theme of public importance, in this case the timeless history of princes. He achieves this blending by means of the mirror metaphor:6 it is the way in which he juxtaposes two specula that constitutes the particular interest of the Regement. The ‘Prologue’ is the mirror of Hoccleve's life for Prince Henry, and the Regement is the mirror of the good ruler,7 i.e. Henry, for Hoccleve as subject and poet. By his own admission Hoccleve used three auctoritates (‘Aristotle’, Jacobus and Aegidius)8 for his speculum principis, but he prefaces his treatise with the story of his life at the time of composing the Regement.
Hoccleve's attempt to put micro-history—his own life history—and macro-history—exempla for the prince—on the same plane becomes apparent when the structure and language of the two parts that make up the work are carefully examined. As Medcalf points out,9 Hoccleve is firmly attached to the principles of order and planning set out by Geoffrey of Vinsauf in the Poetria Nova and celebrated by the narrator in Chaucer's Troilus (I, 1065-9). In the ‘Dialog’ he asserts:
Thow woost wel / who shal an hous edifie,
Gooth nat ther-to withoute auisament,
If he be wys, for with his mental ye
ffirst is it seen / pourposid / cast & ment,
How it shal wroght been / elles al is shent.
Certes, for the deffaute of good forsighte,
Mis-tyden thynges / þat wel tyde mighte.
(638-44)
It is to satisfy these principles of order and architectonic construction that Hoccleve juxtaposes the two parts in a play of reflected images, of analogies and dissimilarities. The length of the ‘Prologue’ is in itself an indication of the importance Hoccleve wishes to give the dialogue between the first-person narrator and the Beggar, the wise old man who has learned life's lessons.
The opening of the poem is constructed according to the canons of the dream vision tradition.10 The poet is worried, ‘Mvsyng vpon the restles bisynesse / Which that this troubly world hath ay on honde' (1-2), and cannot sleep, because ‘Thought’ (7) keeps him awake. He adds that he has many a time suffered the same anguish and felt the need to flee the world to remain alone with himself, ‘To sorwe soule, me thought it dide me good’ (91).
Constance Hieatt11 holds that the structure of the dream-vision admits of a subdivision into four parts: Prologue, Break in Consciousness, Guidance and Epilogue. If this subdivision is applied to the Regement, Hoccleve's second part can be seen as a substantial modification. After the ‘stormy nyght’ (113) the poet wakes and, while walking through the fields, meets the Beggar—who is a character from real life. That he does not belong to the dream is made clear from his first words, ‘Awake! & gan me schake wonder faste’ (132), and ‘“I,” quod þis olde greye, / “Am heer”’ (134-5), almost as if to point out the necessity of distinguishing between the imaginary world created by the poet's oppressed mind and the everyday real world. Moreover, as we will see, Hoccleve is so taken up with his financial problems that he makes everything turn towards his own personal advantage, and here outer motives and inner reasons merge and mingle.
In his deeply depressive state Hoccleve shows from the very beginning that he is certain of at least one thing: that his poetry is a possible stepping-stone to personal and social success. Unlike Skelton in the Garlande of Laurell, Hoccleve does not exalt his poetic craft, but, from the moment he meets the Beggar, he speculates on the value of writing and the possibility of exploiting it for his own ends. According to the Beggar, men of letters have ‘gretter descrecioun’ (155) and put their faith in ‘resoun’ (157), thus distancing themselves much more rapidly from ‘folye’ (158) than ignorant men who have no ‘maner of lettrure’ (160). Hoccleve gives weight to his role as a writer by quoting Chaucer as his master on many occasions: he declares that Chaucer is too exalted a model for others to imitate, but he nonetheless makes a direct association between his writings and Chaucer. Hoccleve goes even further: he passes over Lydgate and inserts himself after Chaucer and Gower as the third element in the literary triad, even though he does so to the accompaniment of yet another declaration of his inferiority. The ‘Prologue’ ends on his expressed intention to write the Poem for Prince Henry.
Two characteristics, which are common to the two parts, emerge from a careful analysis of the structure of the ‘Prologue’ both by itself and in connection with the actual Regement. These characteristics are, firstly, the close similarity between the ordo of the treatment of the subjects and, secondly, the affinity between Hoccleve's position and that of the future king. As regards the first element held in common, the ‘Prologue’ is subdivided into: (1) Indication of the causes of the deeply depressive state; (2) Meeting with the guide, (2a) Exempla from the Bible and from contemporary society for didactic purposes (to fit Hoccleve's circumstances), (2b) Beggar's confession and repentance; (3) Hoccleve's life history with exempla from the Bible and from contemporary society, with no repentance but with a petition to Prince Henry. The Regement instead is subdivided into: (1) Proem with acknowledgment of the three authorities, ‘Aristotle’, Jacobus and Aegidius, whose words the author intends to transcribe into the vernacular for the future king's benefit; (2) Fifteen Sections given over to the virtues to practise and the vices to shun; (3) An Envoy with the customary reference to the inadequacy of the ‘litell booke’.
The structural links between the Regement and the ‘Prologue’ can be recognized in the content of the single sections. Section 11, entitled ‘De Virtute Largitatis & De Vicio Prodigalitatis,’ is a case in point. The first part refers to ‘Aristotil, of largesse’ (4124), thus establishing the auctoritas. The second part consists of the exemplum of John of Canace, a very popular story in the Middle Ages, intended as a warning to Henry about when and how to distribute benefices. The novelty of the work, however, lies in the fact that it also connects the a-temporal nature of exemplification to Hoccleve's temporal condition. He admits he has been too prodigal with his money, yet, on this occasion just as in the ‘Prologue,’ he fails to repent and immediately goes on to his petition to the prince. He admits ‘I me repent of my mysrewly lyfe’ (4376), but adds ‘My yeerly guerdoun, myn annuite, / That was me graunted for my long labour, / Is al behynde, I may naght payed be’ (4383-5). The originality of Hoccleve's speculum lies, then, in his going on from his own impoverished condition to the likelihood of the king's own destruction if he allows himself to be pressed into distributing benefices by the bad advice of his flatterers. Hoccleve is aware of the irony of his position as a petitioner12 presenting a book to obtain money. He asserts, however, that his sole purpose in writing is to add to the ‘renoun’ of the prince, seeing that his words are dictated by good faith.13 Hoccleve hits out at flatterers in an attempt to persuade the king to loosen his purse-strings for the poor scribe's benefit.
The short section 13, ‘De regis prudencia,’ where Hoccleve deals with the customary commonplace of the moral virtues to be cultivated, is another example of structural likeness. Hoccleve addresses the prince directly, urging him ‘Be prudent, as þat þe scripture vs lereth’ (4752) and thus quoting his auctoritas. Of moral virtues the sovereign must possess above all prudence, by the light of which he will be enabled to observe ‘in euery herne / Of þynges past, and ben, & þat schul be’ (4765-6).14 The poet continues talking about the necessity for prudence and then falls at once into the usual pattern of associating the king's conduct with his own condition, although this time the allusion is indirect. In reality, Hoccleve implores the future king to keep the agreements he has put his seal to, taking the pensions granted to subjects as an example: ‘Now, if þat ye graunten by your patente / To your seruauntes a yeerly guerdoun, / Crist scheelde þat your wil or your entente / Be sette to maken a restriccioun / Of paiement’ (4789-93). In this case too the obsessive reference to the failure to pay his stipend appears.
In the last section, entitled ‘Of Peace,’ which is the most ‘public’ part of the Regement in that Hoccleve here declares himself in favour of the fusion of the royal houses of England and France through Henry and Catherine's marriage,15 the motif of the two evils the sovereign must avoid, Avarice and Flattery, is introduced. These evils lead back inevitably to Hoccleve's situation. On one hand Avarice (embodied in the Roman populus) puts ‘profyte singuler’ (5249) before ‘profyt commun’ (5250)—the implication here is that the sovereign thinks neither of the people's welfare nor of Hoccleve's tranquillity; on the other, Flattery rules over the country to the extent that the livings and the various ecclesiastical benefices go to the flatterers rather than to the Oxford and Cambridge ‘worthi clerk famouse’ (5272), i.e., the intellectuals do not receive privileges worthy of their reputation, and Hoccleve too is damaged by this situation. Hoccleve's intention to relate the various issues to himself is therefore evident. Hoccleve introduces commonplaces familiar to the public into the Regement and these allow him to locate his poem within a well-defined tradition that can be traced through Boethius, the psychomachia and the specula principum. He modifies this tradition, however, in terms of his own self, by setting his own story and that of the prince side by side.
As we have already seen, the structure of the dream vision poem has been maintained almost intact,16 even if the basic premise, the dream itself, is lacking. The subject on which it is centred is a commonplace handed down from Boethius—how to parry Fortune's blows—but this is paradoxically whittled down to a single opposition that was vital for Hoccleve: poverty/material well-being. Hoccleve endeavours to camouflage this obsession of his—the fruit, certainly, of an objective situation—by using the genres with the widest circulation for the purposes of his petition. In this operation Hoccleve shows himself to be very skilful. Just as a figure of consolation appeared to Boethius, so the Old Beggar appears to Hoccleve. This Beggar, while he allows him to put all the available commonplaces on show, neither consoles him nor induces him to repent. Like the Beggar, Hoccleve has sinned, but the central problem, the cause of all the ills that beset him, is not sin alone but above all lack of money:
It goht ful streite and scharp or I it haue;
If I seur were of it be satisfied
ffro yeer to yeer, than, so god me saue,
My deepe rootid grief were remedied
Souffissantly; but how I schal be gyed
Heer-after, whan þat I no lenger serue,
This heuyeth me, so þat I wel ny sterue.
(827-33)
In the two parts of the Regement, the motif of the need for material well-being recurs again and again, and in this way traditionally allegorical themes and motifs are subjected to a de facto secularization. The poem reveals the considerable influence of morality-play subject matter. One might even say that Hoccleve anticipates what Skelton was to do in Magnyfycence, where he combines precepts for the prince with an attack on his sworn enemy, Wolsey. Here Hoccleve keeps a thematic and structural distinction between the two parts, the ‘Prologue’ and the speculum, even though this distinction is more apparent than real. Unlike Skelton, he does not hurl invective. However, what I have said in the foregoing pages gives an idea of how the poet endeavours to exploit for his own individual purposes the Boethian theory of opposites,17 and together with this the tradition of allegorical personifications of evil which were already in the process of dramatic transformation towards more realistic presentation in the morality play.18
According to Diane Bornstein,19 the main interest of the Regement lies in the fact that Hoccleve deals with the problems that the men of his times felt most keenly, such as absenteeism, adultery, injustice and corruption, but this is no more than standard practice, seeing that he is writing an exemplum for the prince's benefit. Instead, the real focus of interest is in the emphasis given to the role of the poet and his ability to manipulate literary tradition in favour of his petition. Boethius is certainly the authority the ‘Prologue’ refers to and De Consolatione Philosophiae the work taken by Hoccleve as his model, to judge from the opening to the poem:
And how in bookes thus I wryten fynde,
‘The werste kynde of wrecchednesse is,
A man to have been weelfull or this.’
(54-6)
Immediately prior to these lines, however, Hoccleve establishes the opposition that will be the referent for the two parts:
I seey weel povert was exclusion
Of all weelfare regnyng in mankynde.
(52-3)
This opposition, which is formally of a moral nature but was in fact realistically present in Hoccleve's life, is connected with the structure of the morality play. Here the opposition is fall/salvation, the fall caused by the vices (especially certain vices) and salvation due to the grace of God, by means of the help the virtues confer on man.20
At this point it is interesting to see what vices Hoccleve intends taking as his target, and what virtues are to be practised. Just as the slow process of secularization of the drama was reducing the figures of evil and centring their role in a particular vice,21 so in Hoccleve's poem the two evils considered to be worst with reference to the prince and to his people are Flattery and Avarice. On the other hand the virtues that the common people (in the ‘Prologue’) and the prince (in the Regement) must cultivate are Chastity, Humility, Prudence, etc., all of which tend towards the well-being of the sovereign but also of his subjects.
Both formally and thematically the poem has a circular structure, as the play of symmetries and variations shows. In the ‘Prologue’ Hoccleve is consumed by anxiety and cannot rest; he then meets the Beggar, whose tale relates to the poet's past life and indicates the vices to shun and the virtues to practise; and finally there is the announcement that he will write a poem for Henry. In the Regement Hoccleve proposes to put together the stories he has found in his three authorities, and hopes that
Yf þat you liste of stories to take hede,
Somwhat it may profite, by your leve:
At hardest, when þat ye ben in Chambre at eve,
They ben goode to drive forth the nyght;
They shull not harme, yf þey be herd a-right.
(2138-42)
He makes didactic use of the stories that refer to real or imaginary happenings involving sovereigns of past ages, and finally there is the Envoy to the book that has been completed, and which begins with the sleepless night. The circular structure of both the ‘Prologue’ and the Regement can be described in synthesis as follows:
‘PROLOGUE’
Hoccleve's sleeplessness and the uselessness of his tale. Beggar's exempla (need for virtue). Usefulness of the poet's writing (Chaucer's help).
REGEMENT
Prince's sleeplessness and the usefulness of Hoccleve's tale. Exempla for the prince (need for wealth, for himself and his subjects; need for virtue). Chaucer's sanctification. Appeal both for internal pacification and external pacification with France. The book ends with a section dedicated to peace.
The complexity and symmetry of the structure show how deeply aware Hoccleve is, even when he denies it, of his role as poet. As such he is able to imitate the great authors of the past—and he adds quite openly that he may be able to make practical use of his writing. Hoccleve then uses the most traditional of genres and themes, but what he is really stressing is that certain values from the past, valid though they may still be, are less impelling than they once were. In the final analysis the psychomachia is reduced to the struggle between poverty and riches, these riches being individual and social welfare. Like the Regement, Piers Plowman suggested equality and social justice as the starting point for spiritual salvation, but Hoccleve seems to attach a different importance to the two poles. There are many episodes in the Regement—like the story of John of Canace—that urge the sovereign not to place his trust in transient riches. However, John of Canace's story relates to Hoccleve's poverty if the prince does not pay him his annuity, even though the poet hints at his folly and repentance: ‘I me repent of my mysrewly lyfe; / Wherfor, in þe wey of sauacioun / I hope I be’ (4376-8); and it is the conclusion to this story that reveals how material well-being is considered as important as spiritual well-being, and that the intellectual, like the rest of the king's servants, has a right to a just reward. The identification and denunciation of the social ills of his time serve Hoccleve's purpose, which is to show the need to eliminate poverty, and so attain to a more acceptable standard of living. This does not mean that Hoccleve is a kind of Everyman, an emblem of humanity as a whole, but rather that he, like all men, has a right to survive. As a poet his right is to have patrons that protect him by holding his work in due esteem and saving him from ruining his eyesight as a scribe.22 In order to explain the reasons for a lack of social justice he uses what were destined to become the worst sins a century later, in the full reawakening of humanism—Flattery and Avarice in close connection. That the account of the ills that threaten his subjects, and Hoccleve in particular, anticipates and is then incorporated into the description of the ills that the sovereign must avoid inflicting on his subjects and on Hoccleve himself, is a demonstration of the specular nature of the two parts of the poem.
Both in the ‘Prologue’ and in the Regement Flattery and Avarice join forces to lead man to wretchedness. In those who embody these sins this wretchedness will be of a moral kind; in those who are subjected to the effects of these sins, it will be material. In the ‘Prologue’ the Flatterer is described by the Beggar as a man dressed in costly, sumptuous clothes; only by eliminating the squandering of money induced by Pride will there be more for the people: ‘Than myghte siluer walke more thikke / Among þe peple þan þat it doþ now’ (526-7). Hoccleve is alluding to the fact that the Lords are lavish with money for their own interests, but not equally so for the benefit of their subjects. Towards the end of the ‘Prologue,’ after Hoccleve's insistence on the need for a regular stipend, the Beggar reintroduces the theme of the flattery the Lords, unaware of their unpopularity, are subject to. In the ‘Prologue,’ therefore, the Lords' flattery towards the king and the king's avarice towards the people combine to bring about the ruin, that is, the material poverty of the people and of the poet in particular. While the ‘Prologue’ is characterized by the emphasis on the poet's personal situation, the Regement stresses above all the vices to be shunned, and this is the case even in the sections dedicated to a single virtue. It is here that Flattery and Avarice assume a principal role. As early as the fourth section, ‘On Observing of the Laws,’ there is the description of the Flatterers who have already made a place for themselves at court and prevent the Lords from acting justly:
But certes, fauel hath caght so sad foote
In lordes courtes, he may naght þens slyde;
Who com or go, algate abyde he moote;
His craft is to susteyne ay þe wrong syde;
And fro vertu his lorde to devide.
(2941-5)
There is also here an insistence on the division, in this case inner division, which adulation effects; this will lead to social division and hence to civil war. Further on, in ‘De Pietate’ (section 5), Hoccleve hurls wrathful invective at the Flatterers:
ffor þu hast neuer þi lordys estate
To herte chere, but al þi bysynesse
Is for þi lucre, and þi cofres warmnesse.
(3057-9)
In language taken from the world of commerce he compares them to blind merchants:
O ffauel! a blynde marchant art þou oone,
That, for wordly goode, & grace and fauoure.
(3074-5)
From the ninth to the fifteenth section Hoccleve exploits the examples taken from the auctores to show the connection between Flattery and Avarice. Given that for Avarice there is no remedy (section 12) and that it is ‘Roote of al harmes, fo to conscience’ (4734), it is against this evil that the king must take precautions. He must practise the opposite virtue, that is, generosity, liberality, if he has his people's good at heart:
… a kyng moot algates flee
A chynches herte, for his honeste
And for þe profyte, as I seide aboue,
Of his peple, if he þynke wynne here loue.
(4659-62)
Section 11, dedicated to liberality (and also to its abuse, prodigality) lays stress on the king's not giving heed to the Flatterers: he must follow the advice of his true counsellors and know how to make a correct choice of men to give to and the amounts to give them. Seeing that Hoccleve is asking the king for the payment of his annuity, his way of relating the general question of the liberality of the king to his personal problem as an individual and as a poet is evident. The fact is that he intends to be paid not only for his ‘long labour’ (4384), but also for the book he is writing (and for other works he has already written). The book in hand will serve to increase the king's ‘renoun’ (4400) and is dictated by good faith. In section 13, headed ‘De regis prudencia,’ he returns to the subject of the payment of pensions, which a king must keep up if he wishes to retain his people's confidence. He deals with this subject indirectly, but he uses the same terms ‘yeerly guerdoun’ (4790). The close connection between Flattery and Avarice is repeated in section 14, and here Hoccleve advises the prince to avoid both these most dangerous evils:
In auxenge eeke of reed, ware of fauel;
Also ware of þe auariciouse;
ffor none of þo two can conseile wel;
Hir reed & conseil is envenymouse;
Þei bothe ben of golde so desirous,
Þei rekke naght what bryge her lorde be Inne,
So þat þei mowen golde & siluyr wynne.
(4915-21)
The conclusion to be drawn from the foregoing is that the attack on Flattery and Avarice is no mere expression of a traditional attitude to two allegorical personifications whose negative role had already been brought out in the morality plays; it is above all an attack that Hoccleve makes on the inordinately powerful members of the camera regis:23 these give the sovereign bad counsel, and he makes no objection. Hoccleve does not stop at a simple description of the ills of his time but suggests an alternative: in time of peace as in time of war the king must be counselled by elderly men and not young ones, who often prove to be fool-hardy. At this point he introduces the ‘sanctification’ of Chaucer,24 who is invoked as ‘The firste fyndere of our faire langage’ (4978), ‘my fadir’ (4982), ‘My worthi maister Chaucer’ (4983).25 The terms used are connected with the terms in which Hoccleve's previous recommendation of elderly, expert counsellors was couched. The question raised here is what Chaucer's presence, iconographic though it may be, signifies in this part of the work.
In the first place, Chaucer is recalled as an author of sacred texts, in particular of prayers to the Virgin Mary. Then there is his portrayal in colours, as a permanent reminder for those who have perhaps forgotten him and in opposition to those who argue that images are false. Hoccleve stresses the positive value of holy images, because
… whan a þing depeynt is,
Or entailed, if men take of it heede,
Thoght of þe lyknesse, it will in hem brede.
(5003-5)
In this way he creates an association between the picture of Chaucer and likenesses of the saints, thus making of Chaucer's image an object of adoration. Just as the Beggar recalled Hoccleve's friendship with the great Chaucer in the ‘Prologue’—to the accompaniment of professions of modesty on the poet's part—so the figure of Chaucer, father and master, stands out, iconographically, at the end of the Regement. Chaucer's ‘sanctification’ is placed directly after the admonition to the king to take heed of older counsellors and before the reference to the limitations of his book:
More othir þing, wolde I fayne speke & touche
Heere in þis booke; but such is my dulnesse—
ffor þat al voyde and empty is my pouche,—
Þat al my lust is queynt with heuynesse,
And heuy spirit comaundith stilnesse.
(5013-17)
In this way Hoccleve justifies his own writing, putting his work, inadequate though it may be, in relation to the master, who is also the symbol of the type of counsellor a king should give heed to.26 Thus the reference to those who have perhaps forgotten the master may be read as a specular allusion, which relates to the reality under Hoccleve's eyes: he is an honest labourer who, unlike the farmer, uses a pen; he deserves to be paid for what he does, because his work as an intellectual is performed in good faith, for the prince's honour, with as guide and mentor the poet who was the first to join the tradition of the classical writers. ‘Aristotle’, Jacobus and Aegidius are his auctoritates, and he can benefit by their example because he has been a disciple in direct contact (as he asserts) or in indirect contact with the teachings of Chaucer.
This is not the end of the Regement, however, even though Hoccleve considers the following section (15, ‘Of Peace’) as a corollary and a hoped-for condition of moral and material tranquillity that would favour writing:
And haue I spoke of pees, I schal be stille;
God sende vs pees, if þat it be his wille.
(5018-19)
In this concluding section Hoccleve indicates on the one hand the causes of civil and foreign wars, and on the other expresses his hope for peace as the fruit of man's spiritual life, from which material peace may ensue. Stanza 723 is highly autobiographical, contrasting as it does the state of tranquillity of men at peace with themselves with the terrible state of a man without peace of mind, a man identifiable with the poet himself:
The thrid is eke tranquillite of þought,
Þat gydeth man to pees; for as a wight
May in a bedde of þornes reste noght,
Rizt so, who is with greuous þoughtes twight,
May with himself nor othir folk a-rizt
Haue no pees; a man mot nedys smert
When irous þoughtes occupye his hert.
(5055-61)
Here ‘tranquillite of þought’ is in contrast with ‘greuous þoughtes’ and ‘irous þoughtes’, which refer back to the beginning of the ‘Prologue,’ when the poet tossed and turned in bed, a prey to disquietude. The image of the bed returns as a synecdoche in the following stanza:
And euene as vppon a pillow softe,
Man may him reste wele, and take his ese,
Rizt so þat lorde þat sittith in heuen a-lofte,
Herte peisible can so like and plese.
(5062-5)
In the ‘Prologue’ the poet's sleeplessness, which has his spiritual and material insecurity at its root, is described with sea metaphors expressing instability, such as ‘And when I hadde rolled vp and doun / This worldes stormy wawes in my mynde’ (50-1), ‘þe þoghtful wight is vessel of turment’ (81), and ‘Passe ouer whanne þis stormy nyght was gon’ (113). Here instead the state of tranquillity that his inner peace has created suggests images of stability associated with the house: ‘To crist ordeyneþ he a mancioun, / Which in his hertes habitacioun’ (5023-4) and ‘In place of pees, resteth our saviour’ (5068).
Heart's ease and civil peace are however a hardly attainable Utopia while Flattery and Avarice still reign, and Hoccleve is obliged to admit:
Þis is no doute, þat ambicioun
And couetyse fyre al þis debate;
Tho two be of wikked condicioun.
(5223-5)
By-hold how auarice crepith inne,
And kyndlith werre, and quenchiþ vnite!
O fauel! þou myghtest ben of hir kynne,
(5251-3)
The two vices are the cause of inner division (‘This fauel is of pees a destourbour; / Twix god and mannes soule he werre reisith;’—5258-9) and war between Christian nations (‘Alase! Also, þe greet dissencioun, / The pitous harme, þe hateful discorde, / þat hath endured twix þis regioun / And othir landes cristen!’—5314-17). It is the insatiable hungering after wealth that is the cause of war, and war's effects are devastating for society as a whole:
What cornes wast, and doune trode & schent!
How many a wif and maide haþ be by layn!
Castels doun bette, and tymbred houses brent,
And drawen downe, and al to-torne and rent!
(5336-9)
Certain categories, like the ‘worthi clerk famouse’ (5272) and ‘The knyght or sqwier, on þat other syde, / Or Ieman’ (5279-80) are particularly hard hit by the injustices to which Avarice and Flattery give rise.
The poet has no need to refer to famous examples from the past to illustrate the ills of division and warfare. The disasters are there for everyone to see:
Now vnto my mateere of werre inwarde
Resort I; but to seke stories olde
Non nede is, syn þis day sharp werre & harde
Is at þe dore here, as men may be-holde.
(5286-9)
In the ‘Prologue’ Hoccleve establishes the space-time co-ordinates with particular accuracy, giving his location ‘At Chestre ynne, right fast be the stronde’ (5), insisting on the sequence of sleepless nights, and then specifying the events of one particular night and the day of his meeting with the Beggar. Similarly, at the end of the Regement, in the Epilogue, he makes use of the Hundred Years' War between France and England and of the state of civil strife by way of exemplification.
Like most dream poems, this work too has a circular structure,27 in that the epilogue refers back to the prologue: if social peace is an impossibility, there is no hope of individual peace. Assuming unity to be a basic element of peace, then the marriage of the king with Catherine of France (which was indeed celebrated in 1420) would open the way to a fusion of the two nations, France and England, and might ensure lasting peace and the people's welfare as its consequence:
Purchaseth pees by wey of mariage,
And ye þerinne schul fynden auauntage.
(5403-4)
With these lines Hoccleve's obsession comes to the surface again: he considers the attainment of material well-being as the solution to all his problems.
The structural circularity of the Regement is made clear by the repetition, at the end, of subject-matter expressed in the same terms as are to be found at the beginning of the ‘Prologue.’ In the meditation that foreshadows the meeting with the Beggar the most frequently used terms are ‘poverte’, ‘povert’, ‘thoght’ (‘Who so þat thoghty is, is wo-be-gon’—80), as well as terms alluding to inner division—‘þe place eschewit he where as ioye is, / ffor ioye & he not mowe accorde a-ryght; / As discordant as day is vn-to nyught’; 94-6. In the last section the three components of peace, ‘Conformyng in god’, ‘in our self humblesse’ and ‘And with our neigheboures tranquillite’ (5035-6) are described in terms of ‘concorde’ (5032) and ‘vnite’ (5054), which may be read on both the individual and social plane.
In this way Hoccleve very skilfully induces the reader to connect the question of civil peace with man's inner peace. But the individual man who is the direct and indirect subject of the speeches of the two personae in the ‘Prologue,’ the poet and the Beggar, is Thomas Hoccleve, product of a sinful life that has reduced him to penury, but victim also of the unjust workings of the court, which often reward the unworthy and disregard the efforts and usefulness of the intellectual. If society is divided, this division and the resulting lack of security have their repercussions on the intellectual, who cannot write because
A writer mot thre thynges to hym knytte,
And in tho may be no disseuerance;
Mynde, ee, and hand, non may fro othir flitte,
But in hem mot be ioynt continuance.
(995-8)
If a man's thoughts are taken up with economic worries, he cannot concentrate on his writing.
The mirror of Hoccleve's life (which is also reflected in the tale of the Beggar's life) is joined to the mirror of the prince's life (for which the histories of the powerful are the image). Both mirrors function positively and negatively, with vices to shun and virtues to practise. The term ‘mirour’ is used by Hoccleve twice only in this structural sense:28 the first instance is at the end of the ‘Prologue’ and the reference is to Chaucer, ‘Mirour of fructuous entendement’ (1963); the second is a reference to the governments of France and England at the end of the Regement, ‘Yeue hem ensamplen! ye ben hir mirrours’ (5328). The peoples of France and England must see themselves reflected in their rulers, as Hoccleve, because he is a poet, must see himself reflected in his master, Chaucer. The correlation Hoccleve r Chaucer and people r sovereign can also be read as Hoccleve h people and Chaucer h sovereign, for Hoccleve, as we have seen, seems to imply an allusion to the need to place intellectual and ruler on the same plane.
The mainspring of the poet's writing is his concern about ways and means to solve his pressing everyday financial problems. He goes beyond this aim, however, to the point of asserting that the welfare of the nation depends on a state of peace, and that the sovereign must preserve this peace with the support of able counsellors fulfilling their purpose of constant moral admonition.29 As the 45 extant manuscripts of the Regement itself attest, the literary genre of the speculum was very popular in Hoccleve's time, and he exploits it to these ends.30
In conclusion, the interest of Hoccleve's work lies in the close connection between the first and second parts, the ‘Prologue’ and the Regement, and in the ‘new’ use of literary genres and traditional commonplaces. On the one hand the poet uses the ‘Prologue,’ the more personal part, to exalt his role as writer in its most laborious and painful aspects, and the Regement to show his skill in putting his literary ability to good account in a work designed to suit the widespread taste for tradition. On the other hand, as I have attempted to show, his use of the conventions is very different. There are all the most fashionable literary genres from the dream vision to the speculum principis, but these are copied in different ways and to a greater or lesser degree to tie in with Hoccleve's personal history. Thus there are descriptions of illness and social satire both in the ‘Prologue’ and the Regement together with moral reflections on Hoccleve's own life and on the events of contemporary history, from the Lollard movement31 to the greed and injustice of men at court. All these elements, however, bear the hallmark of the author's strong personality. Thus not even the sections of exemplification in the Regement can be considered a catalogue of more or less famous stories drawn out with the amplificatio technique that Lydgate was to master both in the Troy Book and in the Fall of Princes; on the contrary, there are these exemplary stories, but their purpose is continually to draw the future king's attention to the present—often Hoccleve's own present.
The aim of every speculum is certainly to advise the prince, or ruler in general, against falling into the errors of past rulers, errors which could lead ultimately to the ruin of the prince himself and of his people. The novelty of the Regement lies in the close connection between the prince's education and the poet's personal situation. The ills of early fifteenth-century English society are brought continually under the future king's eyes with their devastating effects: the concentration of benefices in the hands of the ecclesiastics, the greed of the gentry, the prevailing injustice that caused the old soldiers of the French wars to be forgotten, just like the ‘clerkes’ of Oxford and Cambridge. Both Lydgate and Hoccleve are authors of long poems, but if one may complain of the lack of invention and structure in the former,32 the situation is different with the latter. He can be credited with considerable skill in knitting the two parts of the work together with parallels and dissimilarities so as to allow a mirror reading.
Specularity normally permits the presence of reality in a literary text33 only by means of allusion, but in the Regement, Hoccleve's tales, mirroring each other, finally return the reader to the reality of the poet's own life—or at least the fictional account of it. Thus the poet's wretched situation in the present is reflected retrospectively in the past life of the old man, and the parallel ‘complaints’ for the soldiers and intellectuals at the beginning and end of the work respectively relate to the double role that Hoccleve is trying to assume at court, that of professional writer34 and therefore worker, and that of poet whose originality can achieve the fusion of his personal anxieties with the traditional presentation of exempla for the future sovereign. And Hoccleve's achievement is all the more to be commended in that he has succeeded, not without some stylistic weaknesses and certainly with obsessive references to his lack of means, in communicating the effort needed to write, and in addition to this, the essential role of the intellectual, in a court given over to corruption, by the side of a sovereign who must abandon his policy of warfare and ensure lasting peace. Peace will bring in its train social and individual tranquillity, which is the first essential for economic prosperity and for the inner harmony Hoccleve needs to be able to write.
Notes
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Beginning with E. P. Hammond, English Verse between Chaucer and Surrey (Durham, North Carolina, 1927), pp. 53-6, who observes, however, that ‘his constant tendency to the autobiographical is the most interesting of his qualities’, p. 54, and up to J. Mitchell, Thomas Hoccleve: A Study in Early Fifteenth-Century English Poetic (Urbana, Illinois, 1968). On Chaucer's influence, see D. Pearsall, ‘The English Chaucerians’, in D. S. Brewer, ed., Chaucer and Chaucerians (London, 1966), pp. 222-5, and on his metrical debt to Chaucer, cf. I. Robinson, Chaucer's Prosody (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 190-9. Robinson points out that it is not technique but temperament that distances Hoccleve from Chaucer, p. 197. For a brief but fact-filled history of Hoccleve criticism, see the introduction in B. O'Donoghue, ed., Thomas Hoccleve. Selected Poems (Manchester, 1982), pp. 7-17.
The edition used throughout is F. J. Furnivall, ed., Hoccleve's Works: III. The Regement of Princes and Fourteen of Hoccleve's Minor Poems, EETS, ES 72 (London, 1897); for the other minor poems the edition used is F. J. Furnivall and I. Gollancz, eds., Hoccleve's Works: The Minor Poems, EETS, ES 61 and 73, 1892 and 1925, revised and reprinted as one volume by J. Mitchell and A. I. Doyle (London, 1970).
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Medcalf in S. Medcalf, ed., The Later Middle Ages (London, 1981), pp. 124-40, quotes the impressions of a psychoanalyst as backing for his assertion of the autobiographical interest of Hoccleve's works, which may be considered as an account of the various phases of his depressive illness. J. Burrow examines Hoccleve criticism and analyses various meanings of the term ‘autobiography’ as applied to medieval and late medieval literature. He concludes that a careful examination of all Hoccleve's works ‘implies, not only that Hoccleve really does talk about himself in his poetry, but also that his departures from the imaginary norm of simple autobiographical truth are themselves best understood by reflecting upon his particular circumstances’ (J. A. Burrow, ‘Autobiographical Poetry in the Middle Ages: The Case of Thomas Hoccleve’, Proceedings of the British Academy 68 (1982) 389-412, p. 412. On recent bibliography and the Series see the two articles of respectively J. Mitchell, ‘Hoccleve Studies, 1965-1981’, pp. 49-63, and J. A. Burrow, ‘Hoccleve's Series: Experience and Books’, pp. 259-73, in R. F. Yeager, ed., Fifteenth Century Studies: Recent Essays (Hamden, Conn., 1984).
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The analogy between themes present in the tradition of the penitential lyric and Hoccleve's poetry is shown in E. M. Thornley, ‘The Middle English Penitential Lyric and Hoccleve's Autobiographical Poetry’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 68 (1967) 295-321.
-
On the influence of Boethius, see, among others, P. B. R. Doob, Nebuchadnezzar's Children: Conventions of Madness in Middle English Literature (New Haven, Conn., 1974), pp. 216-19, where Hoccleve's obsessive preoccupation with physical and mental illness as a consequence of sin is particularly stressed (pp. 208-31).
-
Lewis, while he devotes very few lines to Hoccleve, yet associates him with Aeschylus for his skill in describing the anxiety of a man who is the prey to his own preoccupations, personified in Thought—C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love (Oxford, 1936), pp. 238-9.
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On metaphor frequency in general, cf. Mitchell, T. Hoccleve, p. 60.
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On the mirror for the prince as a popular genre in fifteenth-century English literature, see D. Bornstein, ‘Reflections of Political Theory and Political Fact in Fifteenth-Century Mirrors for the Prince’, in J. B. Bessinger, Jr. and R. R. Raymo, eds., Medieval Studies. In Honor of Lillian Herlands Hornstein (New York, 1976), pp. 77-85. See also A. M. Kinghorn, The Chorus of History. Literary-historical relations in Renaissance Britain (London, 1971), ch. 11.
-
The texts used by Hoccleve are in fact the Secreta Secretorum, considered as a collection of Aristotle's admonitions to the young Alexander, Aegidius Romanus' de Regimine Principum and Jacobus de Cessolis' Liber de Ludo Scaccorum. On these sources of Hoccleve's see W. Matthews, ‘Thomas Hoccleve’, in A. E. Hartung, A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050-1500, iii (1972), pp. 903-8; A. H. Gilbert, ‘Notes on the Influence of the Secretum Secretorum’, Speculum 3 (1928) 84-98, especially pp. 93-8, and the introduction to the facsimile edition in N. F. Blake, ed., Jacobus de Cessolis, The Game of Chess. Translated and printed by W. Caxton, c.1483 (London, 1976).
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Medcalf, The Later Middle Ages, p. 131.
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See P. Boitani, English Medieval Narrative in the 13th & 14th Centuries (Cambridge, 1982), ch. 4.
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C. B. Hieatt, ‘Un Autre Fourme: Guillaume de Machaut and the Dream Vision Form’, Chaucer Review 14 (1979) 97-115, especially pp. 105-8.
-
On the circulation and the importance of petitions in Hoccleve's time see A. L. Brown, The Privy Seal in the Early Fifteenth Century (D.Phil. thesis, Oxford, 1954), ch. II. See also R. F. Green, Poets and Princepleasers: Literature and the English Court in the Late Middle Ages (Toronto, 1980), pp. 42-3 and J. A. Burrow, ‘The Poet as Petitioner’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 3 (1981) 61-75.
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Regement: ll. 4399-403.
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On the portrayal of Prudence as triple-faced as well as double-faced in the iconography of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, see H. Schwarz, ‘The Mirror in Art’, The Art Quarterly 15 (1952) 97-118, especially pp. 104-5.
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On the question of peace through union of the two kingdoms of France and England, cf. R. P. Adams, ‘Pre-Renaissance Courtly Propaganda for Peace in English Literature’, Papers of the Michigan Academy 32 (1946) 431-46, especially pp. 440-3; Bornstein, ‘Reflections of Political Theory’, pp. 81-2. On dual monarchy in the reign of Henry VI, see J. W. McKenna, ‘Henry VI of England and the Dual Monarchy: Aspects of Royal Political Propaganda, 1422-1432’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 28 (1965) 145-63, especially pp. 145-53.
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On the popularity of dream poetry among middle-class readers, cf. W. F. Schirmer, John Lydgate. A Study in the Culture of the XVth Century, trans. A. E. Keep (Westport, Conn., 1961), pp. 36-7. In addition see P. Strohm's interesting article, ‘Chaucer's Audience’, Literature and History 5 (1977) 26-41, which, although it deals with the public reached by Chaucer, can also be partly applied to Hoccleve.
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De Consolatione Philosophiae IV, pr. 2.
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Cf. A. Torti, ‘La funzione dei “Vizi” nella struttura del Morality Play del Primo Periodo Tudor’, Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell' Università di Perugia 14 (1976-1977) 177-217.
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Bornstein, ‘Reflections of Political Theory’, p. 81.
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On the structure of the morality play, see the excellent, still valid introduction to the edition of Magnyfycence in R. L. Ramsay, ed., Magnyfycence, by J. Skelton, EETS, ES 98 (London, 1908); see also E. N. S. Thompson, ‘The English Moral Play’, Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences 14 (1910) 291-414.
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In The Castle of Perseverance, the oldest morality play in English that has come down to us with an unmutilated text and the whole range of vices and virtues, one among the Seven Deadly Sins, Covetousness, dominates all the others on stage.
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On the complex relationship between poets and court in the late Middle Ages, see Green, Poets and Princepleasers. In his capacity as clerk of the Privy Seal, Hoccleve was not in a very high social position, as R. F. Green shows in his essay ‘The Familia Regis and the Familia Cupidinis’, in V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherborne, eds., English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1983), 87-108, p. 106. On Hoccleve's work as scribe, cf. H. C. Schulz, ‘Thomas Hoccleve, Scribe’, Speculum 12 (1937) 71-81 and A. Compton Reeves, ‘Thomas Hoccleve, Bureaucrat’, Medievalia et Humanistica 5 (1974) 201-14.
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On the role of the king's chamber in the late Middle Ages, see Green, Poets and Princepleasers, especially ch. 2.
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On the importance of the iconographic representation of Chaucer in the Regement and on Chaucer's role as a sort of prototype counsellor of princes, see J. H. McGregor's interesting article, ‘The Iconography of Chaucer in Hoccleve's De Regimine Principum and in the Troilus frontispiece’, Chaucer Review 11 (1976-77) 338-50.
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On the difficult Chaucerian heritage received by his fifteenth-century followers, see the enlightening essay by A. C. Spearing, ‘Chaucerian Authority and Inheritance’, in P. Boitani and A. Torti, eds., Literature in Fourteenth-Century England (Tübingen and Cambridge, 1983), pp. 185-202, especially pp. 199-202.
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Cf. McGregor, ‘The Iconography of Chaucer’, pp. 342-5.
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On the circular structure of Pearl, for example, see ‘Pearl: the circle as figural space’, in C. Nelson, The Incarnate Word. Literature as Verbal Space (Urbana, Chicago and London, 1973), pp. 25-49.
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If exception is made for verse 1441: ‘Hem hoghte to be mirours of sadnesse’, referring to Parsons who give themselves up to lustful living instead of cultivating humilty and moral virtue.
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Cf. McGregor, ‘The Iconography of Chaucer’, p. 342.
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See Green, Poets and Princepleasers, especially ch. 5.
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On Hoccleve's attacks on the Lollards, also in the ‘Address to Sir John Oldcastle’, cf. Green, Poets and Princepleasers, pp. 183-6.
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D. Pearsall, Gower and Lydgate (London, 1969), p. 27.
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On textual specularity, from Homer to modern literature, see Françoise Létoublon's article, ‘Le miroir et la boucle’, Poétique 53 (1983) 19-36, especially pp. 21-4.
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On the possibility of Henry V's having commissioned Hoccleve to write the Address to Oldcastle as a form of propaganda against the Lollards, see Green, Poets and Princepleasers, pp. 185-6.
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