Produced by Bethanne M. Simms, Stephanie Eason, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries.) CENTRE for REFORMATION and RENAISSANCE STUDIES VICTORIA UNIVERSITY TORONTO FIFTEENTH CENTURY PROSE AND VERSE _AN ENGLISH GARNER_ FIFTEENTH CENTURY PROSE AND VERSE WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ALFRED W. POLLARD WESTMINSTER ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND CO., LTD. 1903 Edinburgh: Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE. PREFACE Of the contents of the present volume about a half now appears in the ENGLISH GARNER for the first time. Professor Arber (whose ready acquiescence in my meddlings I wish cordially to acknowledge) had gathered his good corn wherever he could find it without concerning himself with the claims of the different centuries; and his specimens of Lydgate and Hoccleve, Robin Hood Ballads, and trials for Lollardy, needed as much more added to them to make up a homogeneous volume in the arrangement now adopted. My additions consist of some Christmas Carols, a Miracle Play, a Morality, and a number of the interesting prologues and epilogues of William Caxton; also two extracts on the art of translation and the need for its exercise, and some depositions in a theatrical lawsuit. The extracts are of the end of the fourteenth century, but are germane to our period as heralding the numerous translations by which it was distinguished; the lawsuit is of the sixteenth century, but throws light on the transition from municipal to private enterprise in theatrical matters which had then been for some time in progress. As these pieces are included for their matter, not for their style, I hope they will not be considered intrusions in a volume essentially devoted to the fifteenth century, though the extracts on translation have led me in my Introduction to an excursus on the authorship of the Wycliffite translations of the Bible, which can only be excused on the pleas that Purvey and Trevisa both lived on into the fifteenth century, and that it was in the early years of that century that the Bibles were most in circulation.