Originally published as Skelton and the Dignity of Poetry in ‘Adelphi’, XIII (1936–7), pp. 154–63.
Fraser (1915–80) was a British poet and critic. This essay was written while he was still an undergraduate.
The fifteenth century is the dullest period in the history of English poetry. But anatomy is easy on the dead model, and the period has a fascination for the critic. For him, its interest is that it shows, with extraordinary clearness, the dangers of an unbroken tradition. After Chaucer had died, Gower went on writing like Chaucer, and not so well. After Gower had died, Lydgate and Hoccleve went on writing like Chaucer and Gower, and not so well. They, too, had died. And at the very end of the fifteenth century, poor Stephen Hawes went on writing like Chaucer and Gower and Lydgate and Hoccleve — and not so well. Hawes is the final dilution of the pure Chaucerian spring, the last splash of soda in the stale nectar. Chaucer was to be, after Hawes, a dead influence, until Spenser recreated him, looking on him with an eye not dazed by custom. It is easy to point out, by taking a random sample of his verse, just how and why Stephen Hawes is not good. Consider the rhymes of this stanza.
The boke of fame, which is sentencyous
He drewe himself on his own invencyon:
And than the tragidyes so pitous,
Of the XIX ladyes was his translation;
And upon his ymaginacion
He made also the tales of Canterbury:
Some vertuous, and some glad and mery. (1)
It is a complicated stanza, and Hawes is writing a long poem, ‘The Pastime of Pleasure.’ He makes the rhymes ridiculously easy. There is a predominance especially of rhymes on the weak and meaningless suffixes of words, an unnatural predominance, since even in these days and even with borrowed French words (naturalised, mostly, since Chaucer's day) the beat of English words was on the root. Hawes is always racking the natural accent of English. It is too painful to keep up this distortion in reading, and one tends to read Hawes with as little emphasis on the beat as possible, a modulation more or less syllabic and French, a dreary slurring, a drawl on the unimportant. This fault also, of course, affects Hawes’ vocabulary. For the sake of rhyme he uses the trite adjective,
And than the tragidyes so pitous,[line 1326]
the heavy abstraction,
Over the waves of grete encombraunce,[line 1299]
the abstraction almost resoundingly hollow of meaning,
Remember thee of the trace and daunce
Of poetes old, with all the purveyance. [lines 1315–16]
With all the purveyance! With all, one supposes charitably, that the poets purveyed, but what an effect of hopeless floundering. Typically, too, Hawes uses this damp, trailing word ‘purveyance’ to close a couplet with, instead of the sharp, suitable word (which he has to hand), ‘daunce.’ For anyone who cares for the craft of poetry, Stephen Hawes is a depressing study.
Now Hawes, as I have said, was simply following a tradition. It is easy, of course, to blame tradition. One does not suppose that, with the best of advantages, poor Hawes would have become a very exhilarating poet. Yet it does seem that there comes a stage in every tradition when it is quite fully diluted. Every great and original poet gets such a crowd of second-rate imitators that other great and original poets, following him, react against his influence, and go back to some other and older tradition. They break, that is, with the immediate past if it does influence good poets, often influences them from a foreign source. The fifteenth century is anything but the dullest period in the history of Scottish poetry. It is probably the greatest period. Yet James I, Dunbar, Henryson, ‘good Gawaine Douglas, Bischop of Dunkell’ were, like Lydgate, like Hoccleve, like Hawes, Chaucerians. The difference is that for [them] the Chaucerian tradition was a foreign influence, a grafting, what the second Samuel Butler calls a ‘cross.’ In England, unfortunately, there was no tradition older than Chaucer for a man like Hawes to fall back on. There was no alternative, foreign tradition, Chaucer was France and Italy and England, an all-embracing orthodoxy. Skelton is the one living poet of the fifteenth century in England. He is living only because he managed without a tradition. He is that very rare thing, an original artist.
‘Skeltonic’ is a word still used for any jogging doggerel metre. Skelton's metre is, in itself, an anomaly. There are no rules for it except that it shall have go, push, vigour. This metre is perfectly intelligible, however, if one considers it as a reaction against the decadent Chaucerian tradition, against the verse of people like Hawes. Skelton is determined, above all things, not to be dreary. The tendency of Hawes' verse, we have seen, is to rack the natural accent of English, to approximate unhappily to syllabic modulation and French. Skelton completely ignores syllables. His lines move wholly on the beat. He emphasises this by his rhymes: unlike Hawes’ rhymes, they are usually rhymes on short, sharp, single-syllabled words. The same rhyme is carried on, often, for five or six lines. The effect is like tap-dancing or rub-a-dub.
[Quotes ‘Colin Clout’, lines 16–26.]
There is no more music in that than in a percussion drum. On the other hand, like the dancing of Fred Astaire, (2) the repetition of one small trick, again and again, till it surprises and interests us, the sudden finish,
Or if he speak plain, [line 26]
a transition, in the poem, from patter to anger, it is undeniably an evidence of training and skill. This is language in trim, Hawes' verse is language run to seed. It is not, perhaps, wholly fantastic to see in Skelton's doggerel line Hawes’ sorry, slurring iambic pentameter squeezed: all the superfluous epithets, cumbrous abstractions, ‘aureate terms,’ wrung out of the bag; a hard, tough curd of language left.
There is a current phrase, originally used about some of Mr. Auden's productions — ‘buffoon-poetry.’ (There is something exhilarating, said Baudelaire, about the company of buffoons.) This phrase applies very well to Skelton. It is not that he has not beauty. He has, quite frequently; the cock, for instance, in ‘Philip Sparrow,’ who was never taught
by Ptolemy,
Prince of Astronomy,
Nor by Haly;
And yet he croweth daily
And nightly the tides
That no man abides,[lines 503–8]
the other birds,
The goose and the gander,
The swan of Menander,[lines 435, 434]
the phoenix,
The bird of Araby
That potentially
May never die.[lines 513–15]
these creatures, undeniably have a brittle and angular beauty. The verse, too, is skilful. The passage about the phoenix shows Skelton's use (very ‘modern’ and with him sometimes highly successful) of repetition: the ‘phoenix kind’ —
[Quotes lines 540–9.]
It is the echo ‘plain, plain’ that gives a sort of sinister and resonant tone to this passage, the muttered repetition of that one short line — ‘Plain matter indeed’ [line 548] — casts a quiver of doubt back on the firm climax,
Saving that old age
Is turned into courage
Of fresh youth again,[lines 544–6]
and this doubt, again, seems half resolved by the new firmness, the sharp, flat
Whoso list to read.[line 549]
This may seem fanciful. But if other people agree with me that the lines do express this ambivalent mood, they will agree with me that Skelton can use verse, when he cares, with quite subtle skill. But both beauty and subtlety are incidental, are perhaps even accidental in Skelton's poems. They are by-products. Of what?
It is hard to put it precisely. Anyone reading Skelton can see just what he was aiming at, but the proper word for it, the exact, just phrase is, somehow, elusive. Fun, satire, energy? Energy is perhaps nearest it. There is fun, it is true; Skelton has an astonishing eye, an astonishing gusto. But the scenes he chooses are often not intrinsically funny. It is rather that he deliberately makes them funny, that he sustains the reader's amusement with his own energy of vision. On a much greater scale, of course, Rabelais does the same sort of thing. Think of the famous twenty-seventh chapter of ‘Gargantua,’ Friar John's defence of the Abbey. It is an orgy of blood and slaughter, bowels, brains, bones flying everywhere. Why do we laugh at it, on the deepest analysis of the matter, but because Rabelais wants us to? It is his amusement which makes the scene comic, we laugh for company. This ability then, to make one laugh at anything is not so much the character of a humorist as of an orator; it is a way not of increasing perception, but of exerting power.
This quality of Skelton's is seen very well in his poem, ‘The Tunning of Eleanor Rumming.’ This picture of ale-house manners is as good, in its way, as Rowlandson. Nobody has ever seen, not even in Rowlandson, quite such lewd carbuncular bloatedness in life. Nevertheless, while we look at these exquisite drawings, Rowlandson's people convince us. They seem portraits of monsters, not caricatures of men. They exist in their medium. As a mere artist, Skelton is much the inferior of Rowlandson, who can build up a complete effect of brutal strength by individual touches as light and sensitive as possible. But Skelton's figures are also portraits not caricatures. Eleanor Rumming, regrettably, exists:
[Quotes line 17–21.]
one sees vividly. Every detail (and the details grow more and more unsavoury) adds to her reality. Skelton, moreover, knows exactly how people eat and drink:
[Quotes lines 303–8.]
How shocking that last couplet, how memorable, how true! Finally, from this remarkable poem, let me quote the description of a cheese.
[Quotes lines 431–5.]
‘It was tart and punyete,’ [line 435]. Does that not strike you as an unusually felicitous phrase? It is obvious, of course, that ‘punyete’ means ‘pungent.’ The odd thing about Skelton, however, is that he is continually using phrases which strike one as felicitous if one could fathom what they meant. It is this (too absolute an up-to-dateness, probably, in idiom) which prevents him from being a really witty poet. For instance, I have quoted already,
But drink, still drink,
And let the cat wink.[lines 305–6]
Why let the cat wink? The phrase, perhaps because of the sly, conniving cat in ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ we are apt at first to let pass without question. But what does it really mean — and how does it manage, still, to convey a sense of comic mischief? There are other more obvious instances of this sort of phrase.
What hath lay men to do
The gray goose to shoe?[‘Colin Clout’, lines 197–8]
This mocks the language of churchmen, we know by the context. We feel it has energy, we are at a loss about what it refers to? Even more obviously in, say,
For a simoniac
Is but a hermoniac,[‘Colin Clout’, lines 298–99]
while the energy is still communicable, has the meaning lapsed. (When, with the aid of the professors, we do root out the meaning of ‘hermoniac’ — Armenian and hence, possibly, heretic; there is still some doubt where the wit lies. ‘Simony is only a kind of heresy.’ ‘Burglars are only Bolsheviks,’ might be equivalent for us. This, of course, cuts both ways, according to your feelings about Bolsheviks, and so may have Skelton's joke.) It is here that Skelton is inferior to Samuel Butler, of ‘Hudibras,’ who, with a regular metre, is very like Skelton in energy of humour. Skelton is too profuse or too particular, he cannot gather himself together for the general statement. Compare Butler's
This we among ourselves may speak.
But to the wicked or the weak
We must be cautious to declare
Perfection-truths, such as these are. (3)
with
Their mules gold doth eat,
Their neighbours die for meat,[‘Colin Clout’, lines 321–2]
the embryo of an epigram, lost in the rush of Skelton's rhymes. Yet Skelton is in many ways a pleasanter poet than Butler. ‘Hudibras’ is too full of plums to be very digestible. Butler has a dry, dull attitude towards his characters. They are lay figures to build jokes around. He has no charm. Skelton has charm, and his attitude towards his characters, a sort of mock identification of himself with them, is much more sympathetic than Butler's .
Skelton is damned for many people as a poet because he lacks dignity. Hawes has, I suppose, in his dreary way, dignity. His incompetence is heavy, is tragic with the weight of a century's deterioration. He is, after all, the last man of the Middle Ages, the last Chaucerian voice. There is nothing of this atmosphere in Skelton, this atmosphere of the breaking of gray daylight into a heavy dream. ‘Buffoon-poetry’ is typical, always, of a man living between two sets of values, two ways of looking at life. Skelton lacks both the melancholy of the Middle Ages and the grandiose manner of the Renaissance. He is a man, for once, just writing as he likes, and giving us verse for talk. He uses both Mediaeval theme and Renaissance learning. The catalogue of birds or beasts or flowers is a favourite item in Mediaeval poems of the type of ‘The Romaunt of the Rose.’ But in the ‘Kingis Quhair,’ for instance, the effect of such a catalogue is that of being conducted, too slowly, past dark and threadbare tapestries. In ‘Philip Sparrow,’ the catalogue of birds shows knowledge and imagination. The interest, however, is not that of Faustus, ‘the lust of the eye.’ It is rather, again, the interest of patter. What, another bird still! How long will he keep it up?
Is poetry an essence or a medium? That is the question by which Skelton must stand or fall. Is poetry something which is achieved only occasionally, achieved with great difficulty — a blaze, as Mr. Peter Quennell has figured it, which will flare up only for a second, after one has been rubbing for ages together the dry sticks of verse? So many estimable people (and particularly Platonists) think. Or is poetry just a medium like prose (prose for statement and poetry for expression, prose for thought and poetry for feeling?) a medium which it is difficult to become a master in? The alternatives are crudely stated, and most people will dislike intensely the implication that prose which is expressive and emotional is poetry; though nobody, again, so far as I know, has denied the possibility of writing a ‘prose poem.’ I agree, however, that most expressive and emotional prose is not poetry. Poetry implies intensity, consistency, concentration, and most writers, to attain these qualities when they are expressing their feelings, require the discipline of verse. I incline, myself, to the theory that poetry is a medium. Such a theory, at least, leaves little room for charlatanerie in critics. We can all judge pretty well whether a poem expresses a man's personality with honesty and economy. We will quarrel till doomsday about what (and where) is ‘beauty.’ If poetry is a medium, Skelton, is seems to me, is a fair master in it.
Skelton, in our day, has enjoyed a certain popularity. He has interested and influenced Mr. Robert Graves. Mr. Auden has written (in a compilation vaguely called ‘The Great Tudors’) an essay about him, with a brilliant choice of quotations. Skelton seems, also, to have influenced Mr. Auden in his poems, particularly in his ‘buffoon-poetry.’ Like Skelton, Mr. Auden always misses wit; his idiom is private, precious, and he is thinking of too small and intimate an audience. Like Skelton, he has charm. I do not think he beats Skelton at his own game. Here are two passages for comparison, both expressing an exasperation at listless people.
| This is Auden's .
Fitters and moulders, |
This is Skelton's ,
He is but a fool [‘Colin Clout’, lines 28–37] |
The poor, the unemployed have, of course, more immediate interest than the thick-skins whom Skelton is mocking.
On the other hand, Skelton's strategy of identifying himself with the enemy is much cleverer than Auden's plain grumble. Merely as verse, however, Skelton's passage seems to me to have much more drive than Auden's . The trochaic movement and feminine rhymes of Auden's passage rob it, obviously, of a good deal of energy. You get a slightly plaintive, querulous note, a thing fatal to satire. Auden is trying to be tough about these people, but they are getting into his nerves. It is Skelton's voice which is better than Auden's for ‘buffoon-poetry,’ on the whole. Auden's voice has the miaulement which lurks at the bottom of the lyric, and a hint of that is in his satire, giving it — I admit, on a second reading — a slightly fractious air. I suppose this fractious tone (I have noticed it in people expensively brought up) is a legacy of the English public school. Skelton was more like George Robey, (5)
[Quotes ‘Colin Clout’, lines 944, 946–49, 951.]
Auden's ‘schoolmaster writing “Resurgam” with his penis in the sand’ is aimed at a more special and less central audience.
What is the justification for ‘buffoon-poetry’? The example of Skelton suggests that it is justifiable to write ‘buffoon-poetry’ when a tradition is exhausted and when there is no other obvious tradition to turn to. This, I believe, was Auden's case as well as Skelton's . What is remarkable about Auden is that, not content with ‘buffoon-poetry,’ he has also created for himself a tradition. A person of desultory reading, turning over Auden's pages, will recognise uses of Freud, case-books of psychology, geology, folk-plays, spy stories, military manuals, and what not. Skelton (who was admired by Erasmus and Pico della Mirandola) had the same sort of harum-scarum erudition. He had not the miaulement, the lyric cry. He had not the paranoia (to use Salvador Dali's terra) by which all this discrepant stuff could be used to illustrate one heroic obsession. He achieves, in his few lyrics, only (as here and there throughout his longer poems) a brittle and angular beauty:
[Quotes ‘Garland of Laurel’, lines 1004–7.]
He created no tradition, therefore. He is quite unique in his kind. The great stream of English literature would have taken much the same course if he had never written. But I have never held to the theory that a poet is only justified, in the end, by the saturation of his tradition, by the number and final deadness of his imitators. Shakespeare stands without Shirley. Skelton will always remain an example for poets caught up in the coils of a tradition, a decent way of writing, which they feel to be constricting their lives. It is better, always, to be a buffoon than a bore.
1 Hawes, ‘Pastime of Pleasure’, lines 1324–30.
2 An American film star and dancer.
3 ‘Hudibras’, First. Part, Canto II, lines 1099–102.
4 From Auden's ‘The Orators’ (1932), Ode III.
5 An English comic actor.