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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
The verse romance King Robert of Sicily (King Roberd of Cisyle) is the Middle English version of a well-known legend about The Proud King Humiliated (Deposed)—an arrogant and boastful king whose throne is taken over by an angel-substitute until the beggared monarch learns proper humility. Told of the Emperor Jovinian in the Latin Gesta Romanorum, the story had also appeared in other contexts in almost all the vernacular languages of Europe before the end of the fifteenth century. The tale must have been especially appealing to the English, to judge from the number of extant manuscripts heretofore known, nine manuscripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This paper calls attention to still another manuscript, folio 2 of BM Additional MS. 34801. It has, strangely enough, never been noticed, although its existence was recorded in a catalogue over sixty years ago.
1 See the forthcoming article, L. H. Hornstein, “King Robert of Sicily: Analogues and Origins,” to be published in PMLA. I thank the Trustees and Keepers of Manuscripts of the British Museum, Bodleian, Cambridge University Libraries, and Mr. Paul D. A. Harvey, Assistant Keeper of Manuscripts of the British Museum, for their generous responses to my queries and for permission to reproduce mss. The Trustees of the British Museum have kindly granted me permission to reproduce in this article folio 2 of BM Additional 34801 [Plate I]. I am grateful to Mr. C. E. Wright, Deputy Keeper of Manuscripts of the British Museum, to Professor Kemp Malone of the Johns Hopkins University, to Professor John H. Fisher of New York University, all of whom graciously gave advice and assistance in the transcription of the manuscript.
2 The Middle English version probably received its written form in the late fourteenth century, composed in a South easterly Midlands dialect, in four-stress lines rhyming in couplets. The poem survives in ten manuscripts which (to gether with their respective editions) are listed below: (1) Bodleian 3938 (MS. English Poetry A.l, Vernon MS.), ff. 300a (col. 3)-301a (col. 3), 444 lines, ca. 1390 (Brown, Reg., I, 49, 68); ed. by C. Horstmann, Roberd of Cysyle, in Samm-lung altenglischen Legenden (Heilbronn, 1878), pp. 209–219, critical edition, combined with Oxford Trinity, with variants in the notes; R. Nuck (Berlin, 1887), critical ed., largely based on Vernon MS. and Horstmann's edition; W. H. French and C. B. Hale, in Middle English Metrical Romances (New York, 1930), pp. 933–946. (2) Trinity College Oxford D 57, ff. 165a –167a, 440 lines, ca. 1375 (Brown, Reg., I, 151, 156); ed. by Horstmann in conjunction with the Vernon MSS., see above Sammlung a.e. Legenden, p. 209. (3) Cam bridge Univ. Library Ff. 2.38 (olim More 690), ff. 254a 257b, 516 lines, 1475–1500 (Brown, Reg., I, 179, 181); ed. by J. O. Halliwell [—Phillipps], Nugae Poeticae (London, 1844), pp. 46–63, notes p. 71; W. C. Hazlitt, Remains of the Early Popular Poetry of England (London, 1864), I, 264–288, with alterations derived from the editions of Utterson (see below), and Halliwell [—Phillipps]; C. Horstmann, “Nachtrage zu den Legenden,” Archiv, LXII (1879), 426. (4) Cambridge Univ. Library I. 4.9, ff. 87 b –93 b, 374 lines, ca. 1450 (Brown, Reg., I, 194); ed. by C. Horstmann, Archiv, LXII (1879)416. (5) Caius Cambridge 174, pp. 456^68, 470 lines, 1475–1500 (Brown, Reg., I, 204); occasional variants from this ms given in the notes by Horstmann, Archiv, LXII (1879), 426. (6) BM Harley 525, ff. 35a –43b, 472 lines, ca. 1450–75 (Brown, Reg., I, 307); ed. by E. V. Utterson, Kyng Roberd of Cysylle (London, 1839), privately printed, with variants noted from BM Harley 1701; another edn, London, Beldornie Press, 1839. (7) BM Harley 1701 (ohm Harley Plutarch 1701), ff. 92a –9S, 486 lines, 1425–50 (Brown, Reg., I, 311, 312); variants printed in the notes by Horstmann, Sammlung a.e. Legenden, by Nuck in the critical analysis which precedes his edition, by Utterson, by Halliwell [—Phillipps], Nugae Poeticae, p. 474. (8) BM Additional 22283 (Simeon MS.), ff. 90b (col. 3)–91b (col. 2), 454 lines, ca. 1400 (Brown, Reg., I, 395); occasional variants from this ms given in the notes by Horstmann, Sammlung a.e. Legenden, and by Nuck. (9) Trinity College Dublin 432 B, ff. 60a –61b, 79 lines (the narrative proper, comprising 72 lines, is preceded by a prologue of one stanza in seven-line rime royal), 1458–61; ed. by R. Brotanek, Mittclenglische Dich-tungen aus der Hs 432 des Trinity College in Dublin (Halle, 1940), p. 36 (reviewed by F. Holthausen, Anglia B, LI (1940), 97; W. Horn, Archiv, cLxxvii (1940), 120; H. Marcus, DLz, LXI (1940), 668; F. Schubel, Englische Studien, LXXV (1942), 88–91; A. A. Prins, ES, xxv (1943). This version, the shortest one, is an abridgement, beginning with the “Deposuit” and falling asleep; it is so condensed that Brotanek concluded it was not derived from any extant manuscript. The Vernon MS. Index, influenced by the South Shropshire-Staffordshire dialect-area, shows more westerly forms than the other manuscripts (see M. Serjeant-son, “The Index of the Vernon MS.,” MLR, XXXII (1937), 246, no. 342. Francis Berry, “Roberd of Cisyle” in The Age of Chaucer, ed. Boris Ford, A Guide to English Literature, I (Pelican Books A290, London, 1954), pp. 289–301, prints a “normalized” text omitting lines 318, 361–364 (which appear in the Vernon MS.); he “translates” the opening stanza. See also M. S. Ogden, C. E. Palmer, R. L. McKelvey, A Bibliography of Middle English Texts (Preface to the Middle English Dictionary) (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1954), pp. 71, 86; C. Brown and R. H. Robbins, Index of Middle English Verse (New York, 1943), no. 2780 (in some ways superseding Brown's Register of Middle English Religious Verse, New York, 1920, ii, xii, 250, no. 1711); see also L. Hibbard, Mediaeval Romance in England (New York, 1924), pp. 58–64; new ed. (1960), pp. 58–64, 350; J. E. Wells, Manual of the Writings in Middle English (New Haven, Conn., 1916, and nine Supplements, 1919–52), Ch. i, p. 162, no. 113 (currently being revised under the auspices of the Middle English Group of MLA); H. L. D. Ward and J. A. Herbert, Catalogue of Romances in the British Museum (London, 18831910), i, 763; iii, 202, 214, 247.
3 E. J. L. Scott, ed., Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum, 1894–99 (London, 1901), p. 91. This fragment is not mentioned by Ward and Herbert nor, so far as I can discover, by any commentator or editor.
4 Scott, Catalogue. Mr. C. E. Wright (of the British Museum) in a letter to me, dated 19 September 1962, also places the handwriting as “early in the 15th century.” See also S. Anglo, “Financial and Heraldic Records of the English Tournament,” Journal of the Society of Archivists, II (1962), 189.
5 Additional notes on the script of BM Add. 34801: line 14: o, m in rome—left side of o is faded; first leg of m is faded; line IS: emporo[ur]—half of o is gone, only the left stroke remains; line 17: left stroke of a in angel is very faint; bottom of g has faded; line 18: /—lich is written separately; hnast. Professor Kemp Malone suggests that the scribe may have started to write h[ast] but shifted to nast—hence this odd word; lines 19 and 21: these lines are more faded and blurred than any others.
6 I have also compared the ‘new’ manuscript with parallel passages of BM Additional 22283, a version (very close to the Vernon MS.) which has not heretofore been published. The variations between this portion of BM Addit. 22283 and MS. Vernon are normal scribal variations.