The Parliament of the Three Ages is a late 14thcentury alliterative poem of some 660 lines, composed somewhere in the north Midlands. The poem
survives in two manuscripts, and is part of the ALLITERATIVE REVIVAL, a trend among MIDDLE ENGLISH
poets of the west and north to write in the alliterative style that had characterized poetry in OLD ENGLISH. The Parliament presents a DREAM VISION in
which the narrator witnesses a dispute among
Youth, Middle Age, and Old Age.
The poem begins with a youthful narrator riding into the woods on a May morning in search of
deer to poach. He brings down a great stag, and a
detailed description follows in which he butchers
and dresses the dead deer, a description not unlike
the hunting scenes in the contemporary SIR
GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT. Tired from his exertion, the narrator falls asleep. In his dream he
sees three figures: a bold knight on his horse, a
wealthy man dressed in gray, and a white-haired
man clad in black. The first man, representing
Youth, vows to fight in a tournament to prove himself worthy of his Lady’s love. The second man,
representing Middle Age, begins immediately to
upbraid Youth and to advise him to acquire some
land, wealth, and security. Their argument is cut
short by Old Age or “Elde,” who dominates the last
two-thirds of the poem. Asserting the inevitability
of death and loss through the turning of Fortune’s
wheel, Elde asserts the transitory nature of all
things worldly, and so the futility of both the pleasures of Youth and prudence of Middle Age.
The greatest part of Elde’s monologue is taken
up by a lengthy account of the NINE WORTHIES—
world conquerors from the pagan era (Hector of
Troy, Alexander, and Caesar), from the biblical Jewish era (Joshua, David, and Judas Maccabeus), and
from the medieval Christian world (King ARTHUR,
CHARLEMAGNE, and Godfrey de Bouillon). Elde describes how each of these great figures lost everything through the turning of Fortune’s wheel. He
then more briefly lists the wisest men of history
(Aristotle, Virgil, Merlin, and Solomon) and the
greatest lovers (IPOMADON, Amadas, Samson, TRISTAN, Dido, Guenevere, and others), and shows how
these, too, were destroyed in the end. The tone and
subject of Elde’s speech recall those of CHAUCER’s
MONK’S TALE with its relentless focus on tragedy
and loss. The poem ends as the dreamer awakens
and gives a brief prayer to God and to Mary to
amend his sins.
Scholars have sometimes faulted the poem for
the disproportionate speech of Elde, which seems
tangential to the initial and somewhat undeveloped
argument between Youth and Middle Age. But the
poem is only apparently a DEBATE POEM. In fact
Death shuts down all debate and Elde is its messenger. Parallels have been drawn between The Parliament of the Three Ages and a similar Middle English
alliterative dream vision/debate poem, WINNER AND
WASTER. Both appear in the same British Library
manuscript, and the frugal Middle Age and prodigal
Youth seem representations of “Winner” and
“Waster” respectively. It has even been suggested
that the same author wrote both poems. That view
is not generally accepted, however, and in any case
the emphases of the poems are different: While
Winner and Waster focuses on the reform of the political and economic world, The Parliament of the
Three Ages, with its gloomy concentration on Fortune, focuses on the transience of all worldly things.
Bibliography
Gardner, John, trans. The Alliterative Morte Arthure,
The Owl and the Nightingale, and Five Other Middle English Poems. Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1971.
Ginsberg, Warren, ed. Wynnere and Wastoure and the
Parlement of the Thre Ages. Kalamazoo, Mich.:
Published for TEAMS by the Medieval Institute,
1992.
Offord, M. Y., ed. The Parlement of the Thre Ages.
EETS 246. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959.