Robert Henryson was the outstanding Scottish
poet of the 15th century, and author of one of the
finest late medieval narrative tragedies, The Testament of Cresseid. For centuries Henryson was classified among a group of poets known as the
“Scottish Chaucerians,” a group that included King
JAMES I, Gavin DOUGLAS, David LINDSAY, and
William DUNBAR. That term is no longer used with
Henryson, since it implies his poetry is derivative,
which it is not, and ignores his originality, which
is significant.
For such a well-known poet, Henryson’s biography is almost a complete mystery. We know that
he was dead by 1508, when Dunbar mourned his
death in his elegiac Lament for the Makars. He
probably was born in the 1420s or early 1430s. He
lived in Dunfermline, where he is believed to have
been a schoolmaster at the grammar school in the
Benedictine abbey in that city. It has also been suggested that he was a notary with some legal training, which would mean that he had studied at one
of the Scottish universities (possibly Glasgow) or,
as some have proposed, in Italy at Bologna. The
only thing that is certain is that he was well read in
the church fathers, in BOETHIUS, and in Aristotle, a
fact that is evident in his poetry.
Henryson’s first major work was The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian, a collection of 13 beast
fables in the manner of Aesop, written probably in
the 1480s. It is the oldest collection of fables in the
Scots language, and is probably based chiefly on a
13th-century collection attributed to a certain
Walter the Englishman. In this work, Henryson’s
morals are far more complex than Aesop’s, and encourage his readers to think carefully about the implications of the tales. At the center of the
collection is the fable of “The Lion and the Mouse,”
which Henryson introduces with a DREAM VISION
prologue in which Aesop visits the dreamer to discuss the importance of fables. In the tale, the
trapped Lion is saved by the Mice who gnaw on the
ropes that have snared him. In his moral, Henryson argues that the fables should be interpreted
politically, suggesting that the Lion signifies the
king, and the Mice the common people, so that the
fable indicates the mutual dependence of all segments of society. In the significant fable that follows, called “The Preaching of the Swallow,” the
birds are all warned by the Swallow that the Fowler
is growing flax to snare them, but they ignore the
warning and follow their own immediate passions.
The citizens of the commonwealth, the fable seems
to say, must be prudent. Henryson’s Moral Fables
are based on the common medieval assumption
that in the created world in general, and in animals
in particular, are lessons for human behavior. In
Henryson’s case, he is most interested in lessons for
the political realm, which in Henryson’s Scotland
was beginning to disintegrate.
Some of Henryson’s other poems include Orpheus and Eurydice, a retelling in RHYME ROYAL stanzas of the classical legend, based on Book 3, meter
12 of Boethius’s CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY. Like
the Fables, the story ends with a moral, which Henryson sets off by composing it in couplets. He interprets the tale allegorically, equating Orpheus with
the intellect and Eurydice with the appetite. Orpheus’s journey to hell to rescue Eurydice is an
image of the intellect trying to recover the passions
enticed by the physical world. Of his 12 other
shorter poems, one that stands out is the poem
called The Bludy Serk, a poem in BALLAD-like stanzas
that narrates the story of a knight who is killed while
rescuing a maiden from a giant, and who gives the
maiden his bloody shirt as a memento. Henryson
interprets the story as an ALLEGORY of Christ’s sacrifice. Another allegory is The Garmont of Gud Ladeis,
in which the allegorical garment is constructed of a
variety of virtues. Another minor poem, Robene and
Makyne, is a pastoral poem in eight-line stanzas. But
Henryson’s most important poem by far is his Testament of Cresseid, an alternative ending to
Chaucer’s TROILUS AND CRISEYDE.
Henryson’s poetry is fresh, vivid, witty, and
sometimes powerful. As an artist, he owes a great
deal to Chaucer, but was skilled himself in the use
of dramatic irony and in the use of colloquial dialogue to create a sense of immediacy. As a Scotsman in a period of discord between the king and
barons, conflict with England, economic and social
turbulence, and political uncertainty, Henryson
was also particularly interested in morality, politics, and the good society.
Bibliography
Benson, C. David. “O Moral Henryson,” in FifteenthCentury Studies, edited by Robert F. Yeager. Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1985, 215–236.
Fox, Denton, ed. The Poems of Robert Henryson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981.
Gray, Douglas. Robert Henryson. Leiden: Brill, 1979.
MacQueen, John. Robert Henryson: A Study of the
Major Narrative Poems. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1967.
Patterson, Lee.“Christian and Pagan in The Testament
of Cresseid,” Philological Quarterly 52 (October
1973): 696–714.
Powell, Marianne. “Fabula Docet”: Studies in the Background and Interpretation of Henryson’s Fables.
Odense, Denmark: Odense University Press, 1982.