Dame Siriþ
Dame Siriþ is the only known English fabliau outside Chaucer's works. It uniquely occurs at folios 165 recto 168 recto of Digby 86, where it is preceded by a Latin text on truths and followed by an English charm listing 77 names for a hare. It appears that the text originally part of a separate booklet inserted into its current place in the manuscript when the volume was bound.[1] Dame Siriþ is based on a traditional story that has analogue in a number of different languages and that might ultimately have been oriental in origin.
As a fabliaux (fablel, 'little story' in the manuscript title), it is bawdy, and the action revolves around a trick (or cointise, 'strategem') played upon one of the characters, an illicit love interest, localized action, and non-aristocratic protagonists. As Bennett and Grey point out, there is very little narrative description in the text; instead, its dynamic is dialogue.[2]
Dame Siriþ might have been performed orally by a poet reading the different roles in a variety of voices with identifiable props; in some ways, then, it could be considered as a proto-dramatic text. This text is written in tailrhyme stanzas, made up of three- or four-beat lines. In the earlier part of the manuscript text, letters placed in the margin indicate a change of speaker in the text; these are the produced Testator (T), Clericus (C), Uxor (U) and Femina (F), representing the narrator, Wilekin, Margery and Dame Siriþ respectively.[3][4]
References[]
- ^ Tschann and Parkes, Facsimile of Digby 86, pp. xliii-xliv
- ^ Bennett, Middle English Literature, p. 18.
- ^ As suggested by J. A. W. Bennett and G. V. Smithers, eds, Early Middle English Verse and Prose, with a glossary by N. Davis, 2nd edn. (Oxford, 1968), p.306
- ^ E. Treharne. Old and Middle English c. 890-c.1450 An Anthology. 3rd edn. p.423
Fein, Susanna, ed. Interpreting MS Digby 86: A Trilingual Book from Thirteenth-Century Worcestershire. Woodbridge: York Medieval Press/Boydell Press, 2019. ISBN 978-1-903153-90-1.
External links[]
- Middle English literature
- Fabliaux