INTRODUCTION.[5]

There are three early humorous tracts in verse upon the subject of marriage, all printed by Wynkyn de Worde: only one of them has a date, 1535, but we can have little difficulty in assigning the two others to about the same period. They have the following titles.

1. “A complaynt of them that be to soone maryed.”

2. “Here begynneth the complaynte of them that ben to late maryed.”

3. “The payne and sorowe of evyll maryage.”

The last we have printed entire in the following pages, and of the two others, Dr. Dibdin has inserted a brief account in his edition of Ames (Typ. Ant. II. 384). We propose to go more at large into a description of the contents of these ancient and facetious relics.

We have reason to believe that the two first are translations; and in default of English expressions, especially in the second piece, the writer[6] has employed, and sometimes anglicised, several of the French words, which he thought better adapted to his purpose. To this production, “the Auctour,” as he calls himself, has subjoined a sort of epilogue, which ingeniously includes the printer’s colophon, as follows:

At the conclusion of the “complaynt of them that be to soone maryed,” the date of 1535 has also been interwoven. Wynkyn de Worde’s will was proved the 19th January, 1534, which, according to our present mode of computing the year, would be the 19th January, 1535; so that either this piece came out after his death, or it was printed just before that event, and in anticipation of the new year, which would not then commence until the 26th March.

Each of the tracts has a wood-cut on the titlepage, but only that called “The payne and sorowe of evyll maryage,” can be said to have anything to do with the subject, and that no doubt had been used for other works: it represents[7] a marriage ceremony,—a priest joining the hands of a couple before the altar.

The “complaynt of them that be to soone maryed” opens with the following stanza:

Thence the author proceeds to give some very sage and serious advice upon the evil of too hasty matrimonial alliances, but he does not attempt much humour until he comes to describe the conduct of his wife (for he writes in the first person throughout) when they had been married eight days: until then he had not been “chydden ne banged,” but he suffered for it bitterly afterwards;

It may here be observed that the stanza is peculiar, and consists of eight lines, the four first lines rhyming alternately, the fifth rhyming with the fourth, then a line with a new rhyme, while the seventh line rhymes with the third and fourth, and the eighth with the sixth. He continues the narrative of his sufferings in the following manner:[8]

The second piece of ancient facetiæ, “the complaynte of them that ben to late maryed,” is[9] written with much more humour, and is far better worth preservation, but it is disfigured by indelicacy, though not of the grossest kind, and never introduced but for the sake of heightening the drollery. It is the lamentation of an elderly gentleman, who after a youth of riot had married a young frolicksome wife, and he relates very feelingly the inconveniences, annoyances, and jealousies to which he is thereby exposed. After two introductory stanzas, (all of them are in the ordinary seven-line ballad form) he thus states his resolution late in life to commit the folly of matrimony.

Hence he proceeds to narrate his early courses, especially his amours with “mercenary beauties.” He says:—

His male companions were about upon a par with his female, and upon both he wasted his substance; but having at last married, he imagined that he had only to enjoy tranquillity and happiness, and exclaimed:—

On trying the experiment, he by no means finds it answer his expectation. Besides other evils, he says, “constrayned I am to be full of jalousy;” and he admits in plain terms that his young wife[11] has no great reason to be satisfied with her old husband. He observes:—

In the subsequent stanza, which occurs soon afterwards, the author seems to allude to the first of the three tracts now under consideration.

This stanza affords an instance of the employment[12] of an anglicised French word because it happened to answer the translator’s purpose as a rhyme to “age.” His objection is not to marriage generally, but to marriage when a man has ceased to be the subject of amorous affection; for he says expressly,

He adds just afterwards:—

In the second line we ought to read “sayes[13]” for “sayth,” as the rhyme evidently shews. The last stanza of the body of the poem is in the same spirit.

The three terminating stanzas consist of a supplementary address from “the Auctour,” the last containing the imprint or colophon as already inserted. The work is ended by Wynkyn de Worde’s well known tripartite device.

We now proceed to insert, in its entire shape, the third tract upon this amusing subject, premising that (like our preceding quotations) it is from an unique copy. It will remind the reader in several places of passages in the Prologue of Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath,” especially where she remarks,

But the Wife of Bath does not quote Solomon for the proverb, as we find him referred to on[14] p. 20. Again, in a subsequent stanza, p. 21, we are strongly reminded of the lines where the Wife of Bath thus describes her conduct after she had married her fifth husband:—

The main difference is that instead of saying, with Chaucer, that women frequent “playes of myracles,” the author of the ensuing tract tells us that they delight “on scaffoldes to sytte on high stages,” from whence they usually beheld such performances. Throughout, the writer seems to have had our great early poet more or less in his eye, and hence we may possibly conclude, that if the two other pieces on the same subject were translations, this was original. It, therefore, deserves the more attention.[15]

THE PAYNE AND SOROWE OF[17] EVYLL MARYAGE.

FINIS.

Here endeth the payne and sorowe of evyll maryage. Imprynted at London in Fletestrete at the signe of the Sonne, by me Wynkyn de Worde.

C. RICHARDS, PRINTER, 100, ST. MARTIN’S LANE, CHARING CROSS.