Caxton, Anthony Woodville, and the Prologue to the Morte Darthur

Abstract

Caxton, Anthony Woodville, and the Prologue to the Morte Darthur S. Carole Weinberg Caxton, in his well-known and often-quoted preface to Malory's Morte Darthur, declares that his initial answer to a request from certain noble gentlemen to print the story of King Arthur was that "dyvers men holde oppynyon that there was no suche Arthur and that alle suche bookes as been maad of hym ben but fayned and fables bycause that somme cronycles make of hym no mencyon ne remembre hym noothynge ne of his knyghtes."1 To counter this assertion, one of the noble gentlemen cites evidence for Arthur's existence, evidence which includes his sepulcher in Glastonbury, the account of his life in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia, the skull of Gawain which is to be seen in Dover castle, and the large number of books written about Arthur in several European languages. Faced with such evidence, Caxton appears to concede the case, stating that "al these thynges forsayd aledged, I coude not wel denye but that there was suche a noble kyng named Arthur and reputed one of the ixworthy, and fyrst and chyef of the Cristen men" (108). And so Caxton accedes to the request to publish in English a book of the noble histories of the said King Arthur and certain of his knights, using a text which [End Page 45] Sir Thomas Malory "dyd take oute of certeyn bookes of Frensshe and reduced it into Englyshe." By reading this book, "noble men may see and lerne the noble actes of chyvalrye, the jentyl and vertuous dedes that somme knyghtes used in tho dayes by whyche they came to honour, and how they that were vycious were punysshed and ofte put to shame and rebuke." Caxton assures his potential readership of "noble lordes and ladyes wyth al other estates of what estate or degree they been" that "for to passe the tyme thys book shal be plesaunte to rede in," then follows this statement with the one that has perplexed modern readers: "But for to gyve fayth and byleve that al is trewe that is conteyned herin, ye be at your lyberte" (109). We know that Caxton was aware of two other English versions of the Arthurian narrative. One was contained in the Chronicles of England, first printed by him in 1480, and again in 1482, the other in John Trevisa's translation of Higden's Polychronicon, which Caxton printed in 1482. Masako Takagi and Toshiyuki Takamiya point out that the Chronicles of England and the Polychronicon were not compatible with each other in their treatment of Arthur, and go on to state that "the issue about Arthur's historicity . . . was probably Caxton's own problem, raised by the discord of his two previous publications. If that was what happened, it is natural for him to question the appropriateness of publishing the Morte as a historical account."2 But if Caxton regarded the Malory text as a less historical version of the Arthurian narrative, why did he choose to print this particular version? If we look at what Caxton says in the preface, we note that he claims he undertook (enprysed) to print a book "of the noble hystoryes of the sayd Kynge Arthur and of certeyn of his knyghtes after a copye unto me delyverd" (108-9). It strikes one as a very convenient match between what the said noble gentlemen required Caxton to put into print ("th'ystorye of the sayd noble kyng and conquerour, Kyng Arthur, and of his knyghtes wyth th'ystorye of the Saynt Greal and of the deth and endyng of the sayd Arthur" [107]) and the actual contents of Malory's Morte Darthur. An interesting parallel in French, content-wise, is London, British Library MS Royal 14.E.iii, a fourteenth-century manuscript with the French prose Saint Graal, the Queste del Saint Graal, and the Mort Artu, bequeathed in 1482 by Sir Richard Roos to his niece Alaynor Hawte and passed fromher to Elizabeth [End Page 46] Woodville.3 (I will return to Elizabeth Woodville a little later in this paper.) In the Book of the Order of Chivalry, a text translated from...

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