In Wynnere and Wastoure we are faced with a poem which is artistically complex, physically incomplete and textually corrupt. This situation intensifies the imperative to bring all the available evidence to bear on critical interpretations. The 'generous production of meanings and voices'¹ which successive generations of scholars have discerned in the poem is partly a reflection of its internal complexity but also a function of continued uncertainty about its date, original milieu and ending. What is needed to stem the multiplication of possible meanings is a fixed and reliable perspective from which to approach the text. Historical, generic and political contexts have been proposed, yet surprisingly little attention has been paid to one of the most authoritative framing-devices available to us: that of British Library MS Additional 31042, the only manuscript in which Wynnere and Wastoure survives. I would like to suggest that Wynnere and Wastoure addresses topics and articulates attitudes which are pervasive in Robert Thornton's manuscript and that consideration of how this text relates to several others in the volume can suggest fresh and illuminating readings of the poem's ambiguities. Interpretation is often a matter of deciding what degree of emphasis should be assigned to each part of the text. This is particularly true of an incomplete work like Wynnere and Wastoure. Since the manuscript appears to be the product of a single shaping consciousness, an examination of preoccupations evident in the other contents of Robert Thornton's manuscript can give some indication of which aspects of the poem the scribe valued most. By definition such an approach aims to interpret the poem as Thornton himself would have read it and, naturally, it must be born in mind that there is no guarantee that the scribe's reading concurred with that of the original author. As many as a hundred years may separate Thornton's copy from the poem's original composition. There is little doubt that Wynnere and Wastoure contains references which seem to allude to a particular historical moment sometime in the middle of the 14th century. However it seems likely that Robert Thornton took far more general lessons from the poem when he chose to copy it sometime between the 1430s and 1450s. Given that Thornton was (unlike us) privy to the entire text, and since he appears to have been a reasonably discriminating reader, he must be considered the most authoritative interpreter available.

The fragmentary state in which the London Thornton Manuscript survives obscures considerable thematic unity. John J. Thompson's suggestion that the manuscript may have functioned as an 'overflow volume' for Thornton's more impressive Lincoln codex² does not sit well with the homogeneity of the volume's principal concerns. Its contents certainly range across many genres: romance, English history, moral and penitential lyrics, the carol, debate poetry, prayers and devotions, Latin proverbs, Biblical paraphrase and pious legend.³ However, as Derek Pearsall has argued, it is both anachronistic and misleading to lean too heavily on generic classifications proposed by modern literary criticism when dealing medieval texts.⁴ Considered from a thematic, rather than a generic, perspective the range of material contained in the London Thornton Manuscript is relatively narrow. Indeed, BL MS Add. 31042 collects a more closely-knit range of texts than the larger and supposedly more 'planned' Lincoln manuscript. George Keiser has described the London manuscript as a 'spiritual history', noting how much more religious its interests are than those of its Lincoln sibling.⁵ Even the romance material is of the pious and more austere kind. Chivalry and warfare are treated in laudatory, if often graphically bloody terms, in The Siege of Jerusalem, Richerd þe Conqueroure and the two 'Charlemagne romances' The Sege of Melayne, and Rowland and Otuell. The manuscript is marked by a sense of nostalgia for a lost chivalric past and a deep anxiety about present day moral decay. Another recurrent theme is kingship, with six major texts featuring prominent kingly figures. The morality of the manuscript's texts tends to be overt and uncompromising. Waste makes a kyngdom in nede (henceforth Waste makes) and Be weste vndir a wilde wodde syde (Be weste) are lengthy complaints on the times. They are grouped with two other lyrics which may be classed as penitential: By one foreste als j gan walke (By one foreste) and There es no creatoure bot one. The Quatrefoil of Love contains a section which laments present-day ignorance and evil.⁶ An incomplete lyric beginning on f.97v has the heading 'A gud schorte song of this dete: The werlde es tourned vp sodowne' and presumably contained similar material. The three Latin aphorisms which are copied on the same page dwell on death and the corruptibility of man.⁷ Haue mercy on me (a unique paraphrase of Vulgate Psalm 50), The Parlement of the Thre Ages and Lydgate's Virtues of the Mass deal with the imminence of judgement and the greatness of God's mercy. The apocalyptic overtones and eschatological concerns of Wynnere and Wastoure are general in BL MS Add. 31042 and, as such, to read Wynnere and Wastoure as anything other than a deeply moral and serious poem, as many critics have done,⁸ is to ignore the evidence of its manuscript context.

The moral vision to which most of the manuscript's dramatic and lyrical texts conform is articulated most clearly in the group of four didactic poems copied between folios 120 and 124. The tone of these texts is penitential and anxiety about the moral decay of the contemporary world is voiced in a very specific range of terms. In three of the poems, Waste makes, Be weste and By one foreste, this degeneration is repeatedly related to the corruption of 'witt' and the rejection of true wisdom. There is general agreement that the means by which conventional morality is twisted and even inverted is the misapplication or the abuse of reason. The author of Waste makes, for instance, laments that:

The term 'vp so doune' is used twice more in the poem, once to describe the misuse of words in prayer and once to describe the state of a man whose riches have diverted him from the path of wisdom.¹⁰ 'Witt' when correctly employed is linked to God's grace, as noted by the figure of Mercy in By one foreste:

The correct use of reason is represented not merely as a practical imperative but as a moral one and Mercy's rational triumph in the debate with Righte vindicates the superiority of her argument. This theme is taken up again in The Parlement of the Thre Ages where true wisdom is extensively praised.¹²

It is striking how many of these themes are taken up by the prologue to Wynnere and Wastoure. Read in the light of the manuscript's other texts, the importance of the prologue becomes even more apparent. It may well be as, Stephanie Trigg suggests, 'the interpretative key to the poem as a whole'.¹³ The heading Thornton supplies for Wynnere and Wastoure may also provide an indication of what qualities he, or an earlier copyist, valued in the poem.¹⁴ He calls it a 'tretys and god schorte refreyte bytwixe Wynnere and Wastoure'.¹⁵ The designation of the poem as a 'tretys' implies moral seriousness and instructional value. The only other text which Thornton refers to as a 'tretys' is his copy of Rolle's discussion of the Ten Commandments in the Lincoln manuscript.¹⁶ Syntactically it is not possible to deduce with certainty whether the term 'tretys' is meant to refer to the entire poem or to the section preceding the 'refreyte'. If the latter, it implies that Thornton assigned considerable importance to the opening section of the poem.

The issue of the misuse of wisdom is addressed within the first six lines of Wynnere and Wastoure:

The poet goes on to invoke a 'sawe of Salomon the wyse', implicitly aligning himself with this exemplar of the wisdom of the utopian past who has been the subject of a panegyric in The Parlement of the Thre Ages, the text which precedes Wynnere and Wastoure in the manuscript.¹⁸ The decay of wisdom is linked to the misuse of words:

The lines recall the concerns expressed in Waste makes, though in that poem the link is not between vice and the decline of poetry but between vice and false words more generally:

Waste makes also shares Wynnere and Wastoure's concern with the relation of words and works.

The prologue of Wynnere and Wastoure concludes with a particularly sophisticated take on this relationship. The undesirable dichotomy between words and works is elided still further as the poet promises that the two may be redeemed and reintegrated in the form of his poem: his words as work. In light of the poem's incomplete state it is particularly surprising that the poet's promise to reveal moral truth before the end has not received more critical emphasis.

It seems to me that Thomas H. Bestul's identification of Wynnere and Wastoure as personified vices,¹⁹ helpful though it is, should be questioned. It is possible that in Wynnere and Wastoure we are not dealing with one-dimensional allegorical vices but with tragic perversions of virtue. Such a reading would chime with the poem's sense of nostalgia for a more virtuous past, a yearning which pervades the manuscript in both implicit and explicit form. In its extensive complaint on the times, Be weste laments the corrupt culture in which 'vertus are tournded into vyce', a phrase that describes the figures of Wynnere and Wastoure admirably.²⁰ This inversion is framed in nostalgic terms:

The figures of Wynnere and Wastoure (who accuse each other of womanising, 'rebaudrye' and sloth) embody the 'up sodowne' nature of the world so often condemned in the manuscript. Wynnere may be read as pious humility given over to covetousness and indolence, while Wastoure appears to represent the aristocratic chivalric ideal descended into gluttony and pride. Wynnere's association with the grasping mendicant orders underscores his distortion of religious idealism.²² Nicholas Jacobs has read an implicit preference for Wastoure into the poet's undoubted fascination with chivalry;²³ however it is clear that the truculent and embittered Wastoure is a long way from the chivalric ideal lauded elsewhere in the manuscript. Indeed, Wynnere twice upbraids Wastoure for the fact that he and his kind 'folowe noghte 3oure fadirs'. He goes on to describe the joy Wastoure's 'forfadirs' took in showing visitors their lands and hunting upon them.²⁴ One of the few things these two do not disagree on is the glory of the courtly past. Wastoure's own self-justifications are grounded in an (albeit distorted) regard for courtly ideology, while Wynnere reflects wistfully that since Wastoure has had to sell his ancestral lands to pay his debts his own 'sorowe is þe more' (408). Where they differ is in their opinion on the degree to which Wastoure is an authentic representative of such a past. Each can see the truth about the other, but is blind and deaf to the truth about himself.

If Wynnere and Wastoure can be read as virtues turned into vices, their debate may also be read as an example of the misuse of reason which leads to such an inversion. Stephanie Trigg typifies critical assumptions about Wynnere and Wastoure in taking it for granted that for the poet 'the chief point of contention is the relationship between winning and wasting'.²⁵ In view of the link that several of the manuscript's texts make between the misuse of reason and moral corruption, it seems quite possible that the poet is more interested in the form of the debate than in its substance. I would argue that the debate on the nature and relationship of winning and wasting may merely be the means by which the central problem of the misuse of wit is articulated. Once again a glance at another text in the manuscript is suggestive: like Wynnere and Wastoure, Waste makes condemns wasting and, less frequently, winning,²⁶ however both are represented as mere symptoms of the moral decay at issue. The real root of the problem is repeatedly located in the misuse of 'witt':

These lines are readily applicable to the 'quarelle' between Wynnere and Wastoure. It may be perverse dishonest and inconclusive, but it is certainly not lacking in mental ingenuity. Both disputants martial Biblical and proverbial wisdom to their defence. In protesting his own simplicity of life Wynnere appeals to the authority of the simple herdsman:

The sentiment was obviously not unusual, Waste makes includes a proverb of identical import,²⁷ but in the mouth of an individual like Wynnere, who cares nothing for the poor, it is patently inapt. Wynnere condemns Wastoure's 'spedles speche' (325) and Wastoure accuses Wynnere of using 'vayne' words (294). Both show considerable 'witt' in twisting the precepts of courtliness and religion to serve their own ends. Wastoure justifies his lavish expenditure on his wife by suggesting it will buy her love which in turn will inspire him to valour. In suggesting this, Wastoure perverts the courtly ideal even as he claims to uphold it. Similarly, Wynnere abuses the pious code to which he claims to adhere in presenting the example of the Virgin Mary as part of his arrogant self-justification. Wastoure even goes so far as to turn one of Wynnere's criticisms to his own advantage. Wynnere observes that Wastoure's excess has meant he has had to cut down much of his woodland to settle his debts. A few lines later, in an unabashed attempt to represent vice as virtue, Wastoure justifies his lack of concern for the future by pointing out that life should be enjoyed now since it will only become more difficult. He justifies this prediction by reference to the fact that as time goes by he must ride further to gather wood than his forefathers did²⁸ – a direct result of the extensive tree felling he has undertaken. The entire debate is a master class in the misapplication of rational and rhetorical skills. Neither Wynnere nor Wastoure is lacking in 'witt' but any semblance of wisdom or truth is absent. The gulf between their 'hye wordes' and their works is obvious.

If the figures of Wynnere and Wastoure and the form of their debate are read as indicative of the moral perversion condemned in the prologue and elsewhere in the manuscript, it remains to be established from where the revelation of truth, promised in the prologue, will come. Much hinges on how we interpret the figure of the king who is the dominant figure in the remainder of the poem. Kingship is a recurrent theme in the manuscript. Lydgate's Verses on the Kings of England and a lengthy poem on Richard the Lionheart rub shoulders with the legend of the Three Kings and the towering (if sometimes ambiguous) figure of Charlemagne in Rowland and Otuell and The Sege of Melayne. The complaint lyrics praise good kingship but inevitably set up a contrast with its contemporary practice. With these examples in mind, the natural and crucial question that arises is: do we assign the king of Wynnere and Wastoure to the former predominantly exemplary category or to the latter degenerate one? Wynnere and Wastoure's king has frequently been read as weak-willed, expedient and lacking in moral seriousness.²⁹ However it seems to me that this reading places too much emphasis on an evaluation of his judgement (a particularly hazardous course considering its incomplete state) to the neglect of the narratorial account of him which precedes it. These earlier descriptions are couched in laudatory terms. Dorothy Everett tacitly acknowledges this dichotomy but still maintains that the poem exposes the monarch's shortcomings 'in spite of its respectful references to the king'.³⁰ If the references were merely 'respectful' they could perhaps be dismissed, but they go far beyond the formulaic. The king is first introduced as a worthy judge whom both armies await with anticipation:

His wisdom is, tellingly, described as peerless and there is no hint of criticism. Subsequent descriptions reinforce this impression. The herald praises the king's capacity for judgement 'fro he wiete wittirly where þe wronge risyth' (200). In a poem and a manuscript where wisdom is almost a synonym for virtue, there is every reason to read these references as emphatic statements of praise. Such a wise king is worthy of the highest admiration since, in the words of another of the manuscript's texts:

The physical description of the 'comelich kynge' is similarly glowing. The king's triumphant progress through France and thence to the shrine of the three kings at Cologne Cathedral appears to be held up for the audience's approval. The symbolic cachet of such shrines which 'imaged for medievals the New Jerusalem' has been noted by Thomas L. Reed³² and it appears that Wynnere and Wastoure's king is being represented as modelling himself on the biblical kings who are themselves identified as wise in Matthew 2:1. The Magi feature prominently in three other texts in the manuscript: the surviving sections of the Cursor Mundi, Ypokrephum and a verse account of their lives unique to BL MS Add 31042: The Three Kings of Cologne.

Such unequivocal statements of praise necessitate a closer consideration of the possibilities suggested by the judgement. The king's ruling has been variously read as expedient, morally questionable and foolish. If such a judgement were the final word (very little of the manuscript appears to have been lost)³³ the poet would seem to have constructed an entirely inconsistent portrait of the king and failed to make good on his promise of revealing 'truth'. However, since the judgement is incomplete I think it is wiser to rely on the narrator's descriptions in evaluating the king's character and re-examine what remains of the judgement.

If the king is initially depicted as an admirable figure, how then are we to interpret his curious judgement? David Harrington reads the king's ruling as an exposure of 'his own irresponsibility'.³⁴ Having acknowledged that the prologue announces a poem concerned with morality, Trigg feels that something has 'happened in the debate, to render a moral, personal resolution impossible'.³⁵ On the face of it, a close reading of the text only serves to underline the seeming perversity of the ruling. In many ways it seems calculated to provoke rather than to placate. The king sends Wynnere and Wastoure to the place that would be least appealing to each. The miserly Wynnere who constantly protests the simplicity of his life, is sent to be pampered at the Papal court. Wastoure, with his chivalrous pretensions, is sent to live the life of a scoundrel. It is Wastoure who is most frequently identified as martial, yet Wynnere is to aid in the king's wars. Wastoure relishes the ritual of gift-giving, yet Wynnere is called upon to take part in it.³⁶ Most strikingly, the king seems to sanction the opinion of the other in his judgement on each: Wynnere had accused Wastoure of being a 'thefe' and a haunter of taverns, while Wastoure charged Wynnere with sloth and luxuriating in bed all day.

Assuming the poem is internally consistent, a reading must be developed which will fulfil the prologue's promise to reveal moral truth while accounting for the apparent contradiction between the portrayal of the king and the wisdom of his ruling. I believe such a reading is possible if we regard the apparent extremity of the monarch's ruling as a manifestation of his wisdom. The king's commands strip Wynnere and Wastoure of their respective pious and courtly pretensions and place them situations which most clearly reflect their degeneracy. Although the manuscript leaves off before the account of the judgement is complete, it would accord with the stated purpose of the poem (the revelation of truth) and the narrator's glowing portrait of the king to suggest that this may be a Solomonic judgment, similar to the celebrated ruling related in 1 Kings 3:16-28. Just as the seeming perversity of Solomon's judgement on the women provokes them to self-revelation, the king's extreme directives may be designed to bring about a similar disclosure about the true natures of Wynnere and Wastoure. The fact that the king seems to sanction the opinion of the other in his judgement on each of the disputants raises several intriguing dramatic possibilities. The accusations which had already provoked such anger in both Wynnere and Wastoure cannot have been accepted readily by either. The removal of their carefully crafted masks may have induced shame, bitterness or further anger. The possibility that one or both may have been moved to penitence and reformation by this stark revelation remains open. Both are, after all, depicted as fallen virtues, not irredeemable vices. Whatever the case, truth seems likely to have emerged triumphant. A reading which interprets the king's judgement as Solomonic would reconcile the apparent perversity of the ruling with the vivid portrayal of the king as wise and virtuous. Such an interpretation would also underscore the undoubted poetic power of Wynnere and Wastoure by dispensing with the need to assume internal inconsistency or artistic ineptitude in the face of the work's apparent contradictions. In view of the manuscript's concern with untangling 'truth' from lies, it is not too much to expect that the judgement of Wynnere and Wastoure would result in a reassertion of clear-cut moral norms as promised in the prologue.

Of course, in the absence of the final folios of the manuscript, any over-arching interpretation of this text must be highly speculative. However, I believe a close consideration of the poem's relation to its manuscript context narrows the range of possibilities substantially and allows alternative suggestions to be tentatively made. The evidence of the London Thornton manuscript calls into question several influential readings of the poem. While acknowledging that the apocalyptic language of the poem's prologue makes the stakes of the king's judgement seem 'extraordinarily high', Reed suggests the ruling provides an escape from such rhetoric rather than a response to it.³⁷ The poem, in his view, moves from 'realistic apprehension to recreational relaxation'.³⁸ This, and other such ludic interpretations, rely on seeing the prologue as a phase in the poem's dramatic progress rather than as its unmoving moral touchstone. The striking resemblance of tone and content between the prologue and the manuscript's other complaints (all of them unequivocally serious) and the fact that the prologue explicitly signals the manner in which the poet intends the work to conclude, make this reading improbable. Similarly, the economically expedient Wynnere and Wastoure envisaged by Lois Roney and others, which accepts the necessity of both winning and wasting to the 'circular flow of economic phenomena',³⁹ would be out of place in the London manuscript. Thornton's texts are uniformly and uncompromisingly moral rather than expedient. Considered in the light of the concerns of the manuscript and the rest of the poem, the fragment of the judgement that survives may be plausibly read as a just king's attempt to unravel the obscuring words used by Wynnere and Wastoure in order to expose them for what they really are. Such a use of reason in the service of truth goes some way to rehabilitating the 'witt' which the disputants had turned 'up sodown'.

In his discussion of the complexities and possibilities presented by Wynnere and Wastoure, David Harrington observes that, '[n]o single passage… is difficult in itself. The problem is in finding important and consistent value by relating the separate parts'.⁴⁰ I believe that the neglected context of BL MS Add. 31042 provides a frame through which such 'consistent value' may be discerned. Consideration of its manuscript context goes some way to narrowing the range of interpretative possibilities which the text of Wynnere and Wastoure appears to suggest. The attitudes and opinions voiced by the other texts in the manuscript constitute a coherent and fixed perspective from which to approach the poem. The Wynnere and Wastoure that emerges is a poem of unequivocal moral seriousness. It is less concerned with the moral use of wealth than it is with the moral use of 'witt' since it locates the corruption of the contemporary world in the misuse of reason and the abandonment of true wisdom.

Aisling Byrne (MPhil), University of Cambridge

Primary Sources:

Manuscripts:

British Library MS Additional 31042

Editions and Facsimiles:

By one foreste als j gan walke, ed., Karl Brunner, 'HS. Brit. Mus. Additional 31042', Archiv Für Das Studium Der Neueren Sprachen und Litteraturen, 132 (1914), pp. 319-321.

Be weste vndir a wilde wodde syde, ed., Karl Brunner, 'HS. Brit. Mus. Additional 31042', Archiv Für Das Studium Der Neueren Sprachen und Litteraturen, 132 (1914), pp. 323-327.

Haue Mercy on Me (Psalm 51) ed. Susanna, Greer Fein, 'Haue Mercy of Me (Psalm 51): An Unedited Alliterative Poem from the London Thornton Manuscript' Modern Philology, Vol. 86, No. 3. (Feb., 1989), 223-241.

The Quatrefoil of Love, eds. I. Gollancz and M.M. Weale, EETS OS, 195 (1935).

Rowland and Otuell, ed., S.J.H. Herrtage, The English Charlemagne Romances II: The Sege off Melayne and The Romance of Duke Rowland and Sir Otuell of Spayne, EETS ES, 35 (1880).

The Sege off Melayne, ed., S.J.H. Herrtage, EETS ES, 35 (1880). The Siege of Jerusalem, eds., E. Kölbing and Mabel Day, EETS OS, 188 (1932).

The Virtues of the Mass, ed., H.N. MacCracken, John Lydgate: The Minor Poems I, EETS ES, 107 (1911) pp. 87-117.

Verses on the Kings of England, ed., H.N. MacCracken, John Lydgate: The Minor Poems II, EETS ES, 192 (1934).

There es no creatoure bot one, 'HS. Brit. Mus. Additional 31042', Archiv Für Das Studium Der Neueren Sprachen und Litteraturen, 132 (1914), pp. 321-323.

The Thornton Manuscript, Lincoln Cathedral MS 91, eds., D.S. Brewer and A.E.B. Owen, (London, 1975).

The Three Kings of Cologne, ed., H.N. MacCracken, 'Lydgatiana: III. The Three Kings of Cologne', Archiv Für Das Studium Der Neueren Sprachen und Litteraturen, 129 (1912), 50-58.

The Parlement of the Thre Ages, ed., M.Y. Offord, EETS OS, 246 (1959).

Waste makes a kyngdome in nede, ed., Karl Brunner, 'Spätme. Lehrgedichte' Archiv Für Das Studium Der Neueren Sprachen und Litteraturen, 161 (1932), pp. 178-99.

Wynnere and Wastoure, ed. Stephanie Trigg, EETS 297 (1990).

Ypokrephum, ed. Carl Horstmann, 'Nachtäge zu den Legenden', Archiv Für Das Studium Der Neueren Sprachen und Litteraturen, 74 (1885), pp. 327-39.

Secondary Sources:

Bestul, Thomas H., Satire and Allegory in “Wynnere and Wastoure” (Lincoln, 1974).

Everett, Dorothy, 'The Alliterative Revival', in P.M. Kean, ed., Essays on Middle English Literature, (Oxford, 1955).

Harrington, David, 'Indeterminacy in Winner and Waster and The Parliament of the Three Ages', The Chaucer Review, 20 (1986), 246-258.

Harwood, Briton J., 'Anxious over Peasants: Textual Disorder in Winner and Waster', Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 36 (2006), 291-320.

Jacobs, Nicholas, 'The Typology of Debate and the Interpretation of Wynnere and Wastoure', Review of English Studies 36 (1985), 481-500.

Keiser, George, 'Lincoln Cathedral Library MS 91: The Life and Milieu of the Scribe', Studies in Bibliography, 32 (1979).

Pearsall, Derek, Old and Middle English Poetry, (London, 1977).

Reed, Thomas L., Middle English Debate Poetry and the Aesthetics of Irresolution, (Colombia, 1990).

Roney, Lois, 'Winner and Waster's "Wyse Wordes": Teaching Economics and Nationalism in Fourteenth-Century England', Speculum, 69 (1994), 1070-1100.

Salter, Elizabeth, 'The Timeliness of Wynnere and Wastoure', Medium Ævum 47 (1978), 40-65.

Thompson, John J., Robert Thornton and the London Thornton Manuscript: British Library MS Additional 31042, (Woodbridge, 1987).

Trigg, Stephanie, 'The Rhetoric of Excess in Winner and Waster', The Yearbook of Langland Studies, 3 (1989), 91-108.

Turville-Petre, Thorlac, 'The Prologue of Wynnere and Wastoure', Leeds Studies in English, 18 (1987), 19-29.

Westphall, Allan F., 'Issues of Personification and Debate in Wynnere and Wastoure', English Studies, 82 (2001), 481-496.

Westphall, Allan F., 'Issues of Personification and Debate in Wynnere and Wastoure', English Studies, 82 (2001), 481-496.

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