"IT IS THE FASCINATION with the name, with the investment of authority in the sign of the writer, that John Skelton raises almost to an obsession. Skelton's poetry is in a large degree about self-naming and self-titling," Seth Lerer has written.1 A first glance at the standard edition of Skelton's works bears out this claim: the title laureate recurs on almost every page, frequently accompanied by those of orator regius and vates.2 A number of these designations form an integral part of the text of the poems; that of laureate is on several occasions used as a rhyme word. Such usage shows that these titles do indeed hold a particular importance for Skelton. Although their meaning proves complex, even at the simplest level of reference to his academic credentials they are weighty enough to be deployed in real or imagined confrontations to assert Skelton's superiority over his opponents. Such instances of indisputable "self-titling," however, are comparatively rare; in the majority of cases the titles are deployed not in the body of Skelton's poems but in the paratext that surrounds his writings.3 In consequence, not every occurrence of a title is attributable to Skelton. Before we can make any claim about Skelton's obsession with his laureate status, we need to consider the impact that his early printers or copyists might have had on the layout of his works.

The ascription of paratextual titles must take account of the way in which Skelton's works have come down to us. With the exception of the short "Lawde and Prayse" in celebration of Henry VIII's accession, Skelton's writings do not survive in holograph. Relatively few witnesses to his work were produced in his lifetime, and not all of these are directly associated with him.4 Nor was there any attempt to publish anything like a "collected works" prior to John Stow's edition of the Pithy pleasaunt and profitable workes of maister Skelton in 1568, almost forty years after the poet's death. The very idea is a near anachronism. For a vernacular poet, Thynne's 1532 edition of Chaucer was the only such undertaking that was even nearly contemporary. For living poets, the nearest equivalent was the production by a single printer of a sequence of works, as in the case of De Worde's publication of each of Stephen Hawes's major poems and Pynson's printing of many of Alexander Barclay's works. Although several printers of the 1540s and 1550s were sufficiently interested in Skelton to produce editions of individual works in a consistent format, they did not aim at comprehensiveness.5 The formats of the editions of Skelton's works printed in 1527 and 1528 by Rastell and Pynson are also uniform, and there is evidence of at least one (probably Tudor) Sammelband in which these were bound together. But as Alexandra Gillespie argues in this volume, Skelton Sammelbände of the 1520s were most likely nonce or customer-initiated volumes. There is no evidence that Skelton had a special relationship with any one printer who might have then assembled collections of his individual works during his lifetime.6

The most obvious effect of the relatively haphazard transmission of Skelton's writings is the large number of "lost" works attributed to him,7 yet it should also qualify our understanding of Skelton's reputation in the decades after his death. From the frequency with which Skelton's title laureate appears in sixteenth-century witnesses to his works, it initially seems that he was remarkably successful at impressing this status upon a posthumous audience. Even at a time when we can document a decline in his reputation for learning, the paratext of his works continued to confirm it.8 In the following discussion I consider whether this was the result of a considered policy, and whether it signals Skelton's own, or his printers', intentions. I shall argue, first, that if the conditions of production are taken into account, it becomes apparent that the almost obsessive emphasis on the title of laureate in later Tudor editions of Skelton's works is less the result of conscious choice than of a conspicuous lack of interest on the part of his printers. I then suggest that it is only in those printed works produced within Skelton's lifetime that the deployment of his titles is consistent and controlled and that the obsession with the author's status may be construed as the poet's own.

The treatment of the title laureate, it is important to note, is different in manuscript and printed witnesses to Skelton's works. While the paratext in the vast majority of printed editions suggests that the title was in effect established as part of his name, in the majority of manuscript witnesses there is no paratext. The copy of "Manerly Margery Milk and Ale" in BL, MS. Additional 5465 is altogether without attribution. The copy of A Garlande in BL, MS. Cotton Vitellius E. X similarly begins without any reference to its author, as does the extract from Why Come Ye Nat to Court? in Bodleian Library, MS. Rawlinson C. 813.9 Although the extract from Collyn Clout in BL, MS. Lansdowne 762 is attributed to Skelton, even here he is referred to by name alone, without mention of his laureate status. In each of these manuscripts the relative lack of attention to the attribution of Skelton's works could have been the result of one of two distinct sets of circumstances. The manuscript in which "Manerly Margery" appears seems to have belonged to the organist of St. Albans, Robert Fairfax, whose major concern is apparently the notation of the music for a miscellaneous assortment of secular and religious lyrics; the majority are attributed, but to the composers rather than to the lyricists.10 Among manuscript witnesses to Skelton's works, MS. Additional 5465 is unique. The other manuscripts mentioned above are of an entirely different kind: broadly speaking, they are commonplace books of London provenance.11 Here the content of Skelton's poems is clearly of more importance than their authorship. Just as Fairfax's interest was in music rather than words, the compilers of these London manuscripts were concerned with contemporary events rather than contemporary poetry. In each case Skelton's work is copied alongside other anti-Wolseian satires, comments on topical events, and prophecies. Even in BL, Lansdowne 762, where part of Collyn Clout is neatly copied on a single recto and ascribed "The prophecy of Skylton 1529," the focus is not on Skelton's status as author. It is his proper name that is significant, on a par with the names of Merlin, Thomas of Erceldon, and"Hogon";12 it is the fact of the attribution that matters rather than the status of the authors to whom the works are attributed.

Among the London manuscript witnesses there is one exception to the general lack of interest in Skelton's titles. It is to be found in BL, MS. Harley 2252, the commonplace book of the London merchant John Colyns. His copy of Speke Parrot opens with a Latin epigraph containing an oblique attribution:

Crescet in immensem me vivo pagina presens

Hinc mea dicetur Skeltonidis aurea fama.

It concludes with a statement of both of Skelton's formal titles: "Quod Skelton lawryat / Orator Regius." Colyns's version of Collyn Clout too ends with a reference to "Skeltonus lawreatus."13 Colyns's manuscript therefore seems to align itself with the print witnesses to Skelton's works in its provision of titles. But it also offers evidence to suggest that Colyns, like the compilers of the other London manuscripts discussed above, was less concerned with the status of the author and the integrity of his works than with shaping those works to his own needs. Just as the compilers of Lansdowne 762 and Rawlinson C. 813 preserve only those parts of Collyn Clout and Why Come Ye Nat to Court? of interest to them, so too does Colyns. His copy of Speke Parrot is initially detailed, providing the only surviving witness to its Latin epigraph and glosses, yet he omits altogether that part of the poem dealing not with contemporary political abuses but with the Grammarians' War of 1519-21. His omission is a demonstration of the final authority of the compiler, rather than the author, in manuscript transmission. Despite Colyns's transmission of Skelton's title in the paratext to Speke Parrot, he does not treat the authorial text with any great regard, and this suggests that the appearance of the title here is incidental, rather than part of a considered presentational strategy.

Even the version of the Dolorus Dethe of the Erle of Northumberland in BL, Royal MS. 18. D. II proves no exception to the dominance of the compiler's interests over those of the author. Apart from the holograph "Lawde and Prayse" and the manuscript of Speculum Principis (BL, MS. Additional 26787) presented to Henry VIII shortly after his accession, this is the only manuscript witness to Skelton's work to emphasize his accreditation consistently, as part of a coherent attempt to enhance Skelton's status. Yet while the epigraph refers to him both as "poeta Skelton laureates" and "Skelton laureat," the use of the title serves the interests of the compiler. Royal 18. D. II, which included Lydgate's Siege of Thebes and Troy Book, originally belonged to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. When it subsequently came into the possession of the fifth earl of Northumberland, he arranged for the addition of a number of works with a direct bearing on his own history. Central to these was Skelton's elegy for the death of the fifth earl's father, whose importance is signaled by a degree of ornamentation unmatched in any of the other sixteenth-century entries.14 The inclusion of Skelton's titles serves a similar purpose, dignifying the poet who laments the family member and so by extension dignifying the earl. Here, as in Colyns's book, the transmission of evidence of Skelton's laureate status reflects the compiler's needs and habits just as much as the omission of such information does elsewhere.

At first, then, the appearance or non-appearance of the title seems to be attributable to the differing demands of print and manuscript transmission. Whereas in manuscript transmission the question of authorship is of less importance than the immediate interests of the compiler, printed versions of the same texts may insist on the identity of the author as a ready means for giving both coherence and uniqueness to a fixed text that cannot be freely altered by the copyist. In a discussion of print and authorship Cynthia Brown argues:

Because each copy of a work was now "an exact replica of every other," in contrast to manuscript books, which differed from one another in both their external and internal presentation, one can see that a printed work's "uniqueness" came to be associated more and more with a particular person. That person, however, was not the patron or the bookowner, whose name became increasingly anonymous with print and the circulation of many copies of a work. The individual associated with the book was someone whose name appeared on the title page of the publication: the author, printer, or bookseller.... the image of the contemporary vernacular writer, in both its literal and metaphoric sense, gained prominence and visibility with the advent of print.15

Just as the transmission of Skelton's works in manuscript reflects the predominance of the scribe or compiler, the transmission of his works in print initially seems to confirm the printer's need for a readily identifiable author-figure. Each of the separate editions of Collyn Clout, Why Come Ye Nat to Court?, Phyllyp Sparowe, and Elynour Rummyng grants Skelton his title, while Henry Tab's Certayne bokes of 1545 and John Stow's more substantial edition of 1568 include it repeatedly, attaching it to the majority of the poems in each volume.16 However, the very proliferation of titles in these later editions casts doubt on the assumption that they were included purposely to enhance the poet's-and by extension the text and/or the printer's-status. On closer examination it appears that the frequent repetition of Skelton's title was the result of hasty rather than careful production.

This point may be illustrated by an examination of Stow's Pithy pleasaunt and profitable workes of 1568. Although this is the sixteenth-century edition of Skelton with the greatest claim to present him as an authoritative writer, there is evidence throughout Stow's edition that his printer, Thomas Marshe, reproduced the copy-text available to him without much discrimination.17 The defense of Phyllyp Sparowe and Skelton's "creed" each appear twice in Stow: the former is attached to Phyllyp Sparowe itself and is also part of A Garlande of Laurel; the latter appears both as part of Why Come Ye Nat to Court? and as a complete poem in its own right.18 While the first instance of repetition may be attributable to Skelton's own duplication of material, the latter case shows that Marshe's close adherence to his source text extends even to matters of typography and layout. It appears from typographical evidence that Marshe's source for those works of Skelton's previously gathered together in print was John Day's 1563 reprint of Tab's edition of 1545.19 Among other correspondences, Stow's edition follows that of Day in the form and positioning of Skelton's titles. Like Day, Marshe gives two different versions of the laureate title at the conclusion of the two parts of the Chorus de Dis, the first of which is in the unique form "Laureatus Skeltonidis Regine orator (Figures 1 and 2)."20 Like Day, Stow's edition prints "Quod Skelton laureate" as the heading to Skelton's creed rather than as the conclusion to Ware the Hawke.21 Once this habit of repetition has been identified by comparison of Stow's and Day's editions, it is possible to trace comparable instances where Stow's source is not Day's edition. Stow's version of The Bowge of Court, taken from one of Wynkyn de Worde's unattributed editions, persists with no paratext at all.22 Similarly, Stow's version of "Epitaphes of two knaues of Dis" shows a printer reproducing a manuscript colophon, complete with an attribution to a Skelton who is far from an academic laureate: "Auctore Skelton Rectore de Dis. Finis &c. Apud Trumpiton scripter per Curatum eiusdem quinto die Ianuarij anno domini secundum computat Anglie M.D.vij."23

Such instances suggest that the title laureate may have been adopted equally unthinkingly and that its sheer frequency in Stow's edition is the result of his use of a number of editions of individual works as copy-text for a single printed book. A great deal of Skelton publishing in the sixteenth century depended on the copying of previous printed editions; if Marshe's practice is typical, the most that can be assumed about the source of Skelton's titles is that they were provided by the first printer of each work and rather slavishly copied in all subsequent editions combining individual works. The frequent repetition of the title is thus much less significant than it first appears. The "fixity" of print may do more than fix the text here: it may also multiply a single instance of self-titling in such a way as to render it an unintended commonplace. An examination of Marshe's treatment of his copy-text therefore calls into question the assumption that he, or any early modern printer, had any real interest in emphasizing the status of the author Skelton.24 To the extent that there is a difference between manuscript and print transmission of Skelton's title, it is apparently consequent on the degree of deliberation in the means of transmission: in manuscript versions of Skelton's works the text is reproduced with thought, even if selectively; in print the reproduction, while more comprehensive, is metaphorically as well as literally mechanical. The frequent occurrence of Skelton's title laureate appears to have more to do with the printer's concern for speed than with his strategies for publicity. It certainly cannot be taken as evidence of a consistent concern to enhance Skelton's authorial standing in the mid-Tudor printed editions of his works.

FIGURE 1. John Skelton, Certayne bokes (London: John Day, 1563?),
STC 22600; BL, c.21.a.14(2), B3v. By permission of the British Library.

FIGURE 2. John Skelton, Pithy pleasaunt and profitable workes,ed. John Stow (London: Thomas Marshe, 1568),
STC 22608; HEHL 69481, H7r.

The printed editions of Skelton's works produced within his lifetime-A Garlande of Laurell, printed by William Fakes in 1523; Rastell's Dyuers balettys and Against a Comely Coystrowne, printed about 1527; and Pynson's 1528 Replycacion-tell a different story.25 Each of these books pays particular attention to the presentation of the poet. A Garlande opens with two woodcuts. One of these woodcuts, adapted from a cut in the French Compost et Kalendrier des Bergeres printed in Paris in 1499, shows a young man holding a laurel branch, with the superscription "Skelton Poeta."26 The other, on the title page, shows an elderly man examining a book at a writing desk and watched from the margins by some courtiers. The image borrows from other woodcut presentation images of the period but appears to have been used exclusively in this edition:27 the seated figure may be taken as a stylized representation of the poet at work.28 Rastell's editions each consist of just a single quire containing some relatively slight lyrics that are thought to have been composed during the 1480s or 1490s, making them some of the earliest of Skelton's surviving works. It is perhaps surprising, then, that Rastell too makes use of a woodcut in both editions: a laureated figure sitting in a high-backed chair or cathedra, with a motto adapted from the text of A Garlande: "Arboris omne genus viridi concedie lauro" (Figure 3).29 A Replycacion does not include any woodcuts, but Pynson's treatment of the preliminaries shows evidence of careful attention to layout. The text begins with a long Latin dedication to Wolsey, followed by the title itself, an allusive Latin outline of the "argument," and Pynson's assertion of his own authority to print the work: "Cum privilegio a rege indulto."30 The separate parts are carefully distinguished by the alternate use of roman and black-letter type (Figure 4). The verso of the title page shows a similar concern to give a typographic semblance of coherence to wildly disparate matter; it too alternates black-letter and roman fonts, uses paragraph marks and indentations to distinguish headings from text, and allows a margin sufficient to accommodate the first of the copious marginal glosses to the poem.

FIGURE 3. Title page, John Skelton, Agaynste a comely coystrowne (London: John Rastell, 1527?),
STC 22611; HEHL 59200, A1r.

Such attention to detail is to a lesser extent shared by Fakes's and Rastell's editions. Other than Pynson's Replycadon, Fakes's Garlande is the only printed edition to present Skelton's work in glossed form.31 Despite its slight content, Rastell re-emphasizes Skelton's laureate status in Dyuers balettys by the use of heavy ornamental borders surrounding several of the instances of the formulaic signing-off of each poem, "Quod Skelton laureate." Typographically, these attributions outweigh the lyrics to which they are attached (Figure 5).32 In posthumous editions, as I have suggested, the apparent emphasis on Skelton's laureateship was largely the result of a lack of printerly interest; but in each of the editions produced during his lifetime the prominence of his title is consequent on considerable attention to detail, ranging from the alteration and commission of woodcuts to the painstaking typesetting of marginal glosses.

Blurred boundaries between text and paratext in the 1520s editions of Skelton's Replycadon and A Garlande suggest further intentional manipulation of textual format. A Garlande is provided with a highly circumstantial introduction: "A ryght delectable treatyse upon a goodly Garlande or Chapelet of laurell by mayster Skelton Poete laureat studyously dyuysed at Sheryfhotton Castell. In ye foreste of galtres / wherein ar comprysyde many & dyuers solacyous & ryght pregnant allectyues of syngular pleasure" (STC 22610, A1r). The title is like those given to poems by Richard Tottel in his famous miscellany, Songes and sonettes (STC 13860, 1557), additions that, Arthur Marotti argues, should be read as a printerly effort to recreate the texts' social context.33 In the case of A Garlande, the introduction blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction in a way that seems startlingly in keeping with the tenor of the poem as a whole-and perhaps more authorial than printerly. The reference to Sheriff Hutton collapses the distinction between poem and reality by identifying the place of composition with the setting of Skelton's dream vision. In Marotti's terms, the identification appears to give the reader a privileged insight into the circumstances of the poem's composition, implicitly drawing him or her into the exchange of lyrics or laurels in the charmed circle centered on Elizabeth Howard, Countess of Surrey. Yet in doing so it glosses over the confused chronology of the poem's composition. By stressing unity of place it implies a unity of time also-one whereby the writing of the poem occurs during the very New Year's celebrations that frame the dream. In view of the publication date, early in 1523, it was long assumed that the Near Year of 1522-23 was indicated. However, as Melvyn Tucker has demonstrated, there is no evidence that any branch of the Howard family was in residence at Sheriff Hutton at that time, nor do the names of the ladies addressed in Skelton's lyrics tally with those of Elizabeth Howard's ladies-in-waiting in the 1520s. But the names do correspond to those who attended her husband's grandmother, also Elizabeth Howard, in the early 1490s.34 Thus the circle of intimates into which the reader is invited is a literary fiction. In itself this may seem little more than an extension of the conventional playfulness of the dream vision. However, the way that the paratext infers that Skelton's association with the Howards continued into the 15205 may also have political ramifications: it hints at A Garlande's claim to an authority for poetry beyond that conferred on this work by Skelton's patron in 1523, Cardinal Wolsey (a point discussed further, below). Alternatively, the fiction may be one of many references in the poem that seem deliberately designed to entangle the overenthusiastic interpreter. Skelton delights in laying false trails in the strongly autobiographical Garlande, as when an enigmatic Latin verse implying that the priest Skelton may have an illegitimate son is followed directly by a reference to red herrings.

FIGURE 4. John Skelton, A replycacion against certayne yong scolers (London: Richard Pynson, 1528),
STC 22609; HEHL 59202, A1r.

FIGURE 5 (ABOVE AND OPPOSITE).
John Skelton, Dyuers balettys and dyties solacyous (London: John Rastell, 1528?),
STC 22604; HEHL 59201, A1v-A2r.

FIGURE 5 (ABOVE AND OPPOSITE).
John Skelton, Dyuers balettys and dyties solacyous (London: John Rastell, 1528?),
STC 22604; HEHL 59201, A1v-A2r.

The tenor of the introduction to the 1523 edition of A Garlandeis thus so in keeping with parts of the poems itself that it is tempting to ascribe the para textual addition to the poet-to give it status as part of the "text." However, the possibility that the printer supplied the introduction cannot be ruled out. In contrast, the conflation of text and paratext in A Replycacion cannot be wholly the work of a printer. The "argument" consists of a Latin epigraph (for which no source is known) followed by an English outline of the poem's purpose-to write against heresy-that, in its use of doublets and alliteration, bears all the hallmarks of Skelton's prose. This is followed by a Latin consolation addressed to the University of Cambridge for having produced such heretics, after which the "argument" continues, shifting from prose to verse, to a Latin syllogism, then back to prose; on A3r it finally settles into verse. Further, the Latin marginal gloss that accompanies the entire work makes its first appearance alongside the "Eulogium consolationis" addressed to Cambridge. Even without entering into a discussion of the authorship of this text's glosses, it is clear that the glossator made little if any distinction between paratext and text.

Such elision of the boundaries between text and paratext raises the question of whether the printers of the 1520s were themselves responsible for decisions concerning presentation or acted in collaboration with others, perhaps Skelton himself. The circumstances surrounding the printing of A Garlande and A Replycacion are relatively well known. Both poems were published in the years following the composition of his three virulent anti-Wolseian satires during 1521-22, yet seem to attest Skelton's reconciliation with the cardinal. A Garlande retreats from contemporary politics to the highly literary world of dream vision and, at least in some versions, includes a dedication to Wolsey as one of its envoys. A Replycacion still more markedly aligns itself with Wolsey; its dedication and argument stress the poet's determination to submit his work to "tanto tamque magnified digna principe sacerdotum [such a magnificent and worthy prince among priests]" and twice refer to Skelton not only as laureate but also as orator regius, thus emphasizing his allegiance to the king and (by extension) his ministers. As Greg Walker argues, it seems likely that this sudden reversal on Skelton's part may be traced to his failure to gain sufficient financial reward from his anti-Wolseian writings and to Wolsey's promise of patronage in exchange for a cessation of the satires.35 In this reading, then, the revision and publication of A Garlande are the result of a conscious decision on Skelton's part, signaling his acceptance of Wolsey's terms.36 A Replycacion-an attack on the two convicted heretics Thomas Arthur and Thomas Bilney-is the result of an official commission: Wolsey's partial fulfilment of his side of the bargain. Such an interpretation of the evidence would also suggest that Skelton himself had a degree of control over the publication of A Garlande and that either he or Wolsey controlled that of A Replycacion.

Dyuers balletys and Against a Comely Coystrowne may also be fitted into this scheme.37 It appears from the envoys to both A Garlande and Howe the Douty Duke of Albany, the first known poem of Skelton's to be written at Wolsey's command, that Skelton had considerable difficulty in holding Wolsey to his promise of ecclesiastical preferment.38 If the publication of two elaborately ornamented pamphlets of Skelton's in about 1527 were intended as a further reminder to Wolsey, this would go some way toward explaining the discrepancy between form and content. Like the dream vision of A Garlande, the innocuousness of the lyrics in Dyuers balletys and Against a Comely Coystrowne indicates the distance that Skelton has come from his previous satire. Even the use of circumstantial introductory titles in these editions seems to contribute to the impression of harmlessness. Far from being a polemical writer, Skelton here appears as one who writes "at the instance of a nobyll lady," and whose venom is reserved for one who "mokkyshly made agaynste the ix Musys of... poettys matryculat."39 At the same time, the authoritative presentation of the writer of these "little books," like the rather insistent reference to the Muses, forms a reminder that the poet is not in himself negligible, even though he chooses to write of slight matters.

However, I would like to suggest that the emphasis on Skelton's laureateship in works published within his lifetime may have another, more subversive purpose. It has been argued that A Garlande does not attest a complete reconciliation with Wolsey, merely an uneasy truce. Even if the dedication to Wolsey is not thought to be antagonistic in tone, at the very least the comment that writing "remayneth of recorde" (line 89) suggests a reference to the continued survival of Skelton's earlier anti-Wolseian satires.40 Similarly, A Replycacion contains a well-known reference to Wolsey's former association with one of the condemned heretics (lines 146-50). If such lines imply an at least incidental irony in the depiction of Skelton's new patron, the way that the poet is presented in his printed works in the 1520s suggests a more sustained opposition, one that in fact hinges on ambiguity in the meaning of the title laureate. This is most obvious in A Replycacion, where the academic title lays explicit claim to an association with both the title of orator regius and that of vates. The former implies a view of the educated poet at the service of the monarch: a royal apologist. It was a title that Skelton was formally granted in 1513 and that is still implicit in his fulfilment of the commission from Wolsey.41 Yet later, in A Replycacion, the poet's academic training is linked not with service to the state but conversely with his position as vates. In a movement reminiscent of that in Continental humanist defenses of poetry of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Skelton argues that training in the liberal arts is the necessary precursor of divine inspiration. The poet does not locate authority in his connection with the monarch; he draws on a source wholly outside of royal jurisdiction. A comparable movement is arguably evident in A Garlande. Where A Replycacion defines the poet as authorized directly by God, A Garlande places the narrator, poeta Skelton, in the company of acknowledged classical and vernacular authors of the past.42 Each poem thus stresses the poet's ultimate independence from all temporal patrons, instead claiming that his authority is literary and prophetic. Insofar as Skelton claims to be seeking or acting in accordance with his commission as orator regius, the poems' emphasis on Skelton's laureateship can be read as a form of continued defiance as much as an act of conciliation.

Finally, it may be possible to extend this reading to the anomalous publication of Dyuers balettys and Against a Comely Coystrowne. As both Julie Smith and Mary Erler have demonstrated, Rastell's woodcut (see Figure 3)-unlike the cuts in A Garlande-emphasizes the academic aspect of the laureate; he appears laureated, but also iconographically bound to the position of the schoolmaster. Arguably, the image presents the poet as the authoritative but unthreatening ally of the ruler, deploying his title as a reminder that he deserves promised patronage. However, the motto attached to the woodcut rather changes the case. It is not taken from any of the works in either of Rastell's editions but refers back to A Garlande, adapting a line from a Latin praise of the laurel attached to the longer work in Fakes's edition, "Arboris omne genus viridi concedite lauro"43 The line may be a reminder of Skelton's earlier defiant stance before Wolsey. Even leaving aside such a polemical interpretation, the motto suggests, by referring to an earlier and substantive work of Skelton's, a deliberate attempt to establish a consistent authorial identity, in which the printed works become visible signs of the poet's existence independent of patronage.

It may even be possible to trace a reflection of these concerns in the subsequent use of the Rastell woodcut in later editions of Collyn Clout and Why Come Ye Nat to Court? In STC 22601 (the 1445? Collyn Clout) and 22615 and 22616 (the 1545? and 1555? editions of Why Come Ye Nat to Court) the Rastell woodcut is reused as a tailpiece. The title "Skelton poete" is substituted for Rastell's allusion to A Garlande. The Huntington copies of STC 22615(44) and STC 22616 both use, on the verso of the title page, a different woodcut in which an old man advises a young courtier. The factotum figures have been adapted for these editions: the old man has the name "Skelton" in each case (Figure 6).45 Although there is no question, as there was in the 1520s editions, of specially commissioned woodcuts, the use of the images does suggest concern about the representation of Skelton the poet that contrasts with the largely mechanical repetition of text and paratext in these editions. It is significant that the works singled out for such treatment are those that most explicitly articulate Skelton's opposition to clerical abuses, and that formed the basis for his occasional appropriation as a proto-Protestant in the mid- to late sixteenth century.46 Here, as in A Garlande and the Rastell editions, Skelton's authorship-his status as "poete"-is conceived as a form of dissent, even if the precise nature of that dissent is reinterpreted.

Several possible conclusions are suggested by this examination of the representation of Skelton in sixteenth-century witnesses to his works. Lerer has argued that Skelton's "laureate authority" is "centered in manuscript reading, rescription, and recirculation."47 To say that Skelton's natural allegiance is to manuscript rather than to print is-in Lerer's formulation-as symbolic as it is factual. It is a means of arguing that Skelton treats his works as mutable, amending and augmenting them in response to changing circumstances. In the last decades of Skelton's life, this fluidity appears to have encompassed the use of print. Both the "authority" of the printed word and the carefully managed and allusive relationships between printed texts established Skelton's status as an independent author. To this extent, the works published during his lifetime confirm the impression that Skelton had an obsessive fascination with name and reputation. However, the evidence does not support the idea that the replication of Skelton's title and name in mid-Tudor printed books is also part of his successful strategy of self-fashioning. While his own use of his title is quite possibly political, and certainly politic, in witnesses over whose production he had no control it is either omitted (in the case of manuscripts) or reproduced mechanically (in the case of printed editions) so that it becomes less a shorthand for his status than simply a shorthand. Both responses to Skelton's poems appear incidental rather than strategic. The complexities inherent in earlier uses of his title are obliterated. From the mid-sixteenth century onward, Skelton becomes a laureate in name alone.

ST. EDMUND HALL, OXFORD

FIGURE 6. John Skelton, Why come ye nat to court (London: Robert Copland for R. Kele, 1545?),
STC 22615; HEHL 69485, A1V.

[Footnote]

1 Seth Lerer, Chaucer and His Readers: Imagining the Author in Late-Medieval England (Princeton, N.J., 1993), 193.

2 The standard edition is John Skelton: The Complete English Poems, ed. John Scattergood (Harmondsworth, England, 1983). Unless otherwise stated, citations from and titles for Skelton's works are from this edition.

3 Skelton's title appears within the body of the text in Phyllyp Sparowe (line 1261), Agenst Garnesche (v: lines 84, 90), Against Dundas (lines 19-20), and A Replycacion (lines 300-301). For a definition of "paratext," see Richard Mackscy, preface to Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Jane E. Lewin (Cambridge, 1997), xviii. I follow the common practice of using the term to refer to all matter produced alongside a text.

4 The holograph of "A Lawde and Prayse" is PRO, London, MS. E. 36/228, fols. 7-8. A description, transcript, and facsimile may be found in P. J. Croft, Autograph Poetry in the English Language: Facsimiles of Original Manuscripts from the Fourteenth to the Twentieth Century, 2 vols. (London, 1973), 1:6-8.

5 Richard Kele, William Copland, and John Day all published uniform editions of Phyllyp Sparowe, Collyn Clout, and Why Come Ye Nat to Court?-some of which survive in bindings with other Skelton items. See Robert S. Kinsman and Theodore Yonge, John Skelton: Canon and Census, Renaissance Society of America Bibliographies and Indexes, no. 4 (1967), 38-46. For Thynne's Chaucer and Stephen Hawes, see A. S. G. Edwards, "Skelton's English Poems in Print and Manuscript," Trivium 31 (1999): 88, and "Poet and Printer in Sixteenth-Century England: Stephen Hawes and Wynkyn de Worde," Gutenberg Jahrbuch (1980): 82-88. For Barclay, see David Carlson, "Alexander Barclay and Richard Pynson: A Tudor Printer and His Writer," Anglia 113 (1995): 283-302.

6 A contemporary or near-contemporary Sammelband first identified by Seymour de Ricci, formerly in the possession of Richard Heber, originally contained Rastell's editions of Agaynste a comely coystrowne (London, 1527), STC 22611, now HEHL 59200, and Dyvers balettys and dyties (London, 1528?), STC 22604, now HEHL 59201; and Pynson's Replycacion agaynst certayne yong scolers (London, 1528), STC 22609, now HEHL 59202, along with other items. See Alexandra Gillespie's article in this volume.

7 See Kinsman and Yonge, Canon and Census. For subsequent additions and corrections, see A. S. G. Edwards and Lynne R. Mooney,"A New Version of a Skelton Lyric," Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 10 (1994): 506-10; F. W. Brownlow,"The Date of the Bowge of Courte and Skelton's Authorship of 'A Lamentable of Kyng Edward the IIII,' " English Language Notes 22 (1984): 12-20; and Richard Firth Green, "The Verses Presented to King Henry VII: A Poem in the Skelton Apocrypha," English Language Notes 16 (1978): 5-8.

8 For Skelton's changing reputation in the decades following his death, see A. S. G. Edwards, John Skelton: The Critical Heritage (London, 1981), 7-12.

9 BL, Cotton Vitell. E. X is a relatively late binding of earlier material, at least some of which was in the possession of John Stow, whose signature appears on folio 2V. Owing to the extensive damage suffered by the manuscript in the Ashburnham House fire, none of the original quiring survives. However, to judge by the begrimed state of folio 207V and the inscriptions of ownership there, A Garlande forms the beginning of a booklet. This is confirmed by the signature mark"Aij" in an early hand on the second folio of the poem. It suggests this part of the booklet is complete with the exception of its outermost leaf, although it is possible that the verso of this recorded ascriptions or epigraphs, as does the version of Speke Parrot in BL, MS. Harley 2252. For a full description see John Skelton, The Book of the Laurel, ed. F. W. Brownlow (Newark, Del., 1990), 17-20.

10 For a brief introduction to the manuscript and its context, see John Stevens, Music and Poetry in the Early Tudor Court (London, 1961), 3-8.

11 For discussion of these manuscripts, see John Scattergood,"The London Manuscripts of John Skelton's Poems," in his Reading the Past: Essays on Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Dublin, 1996), 275-87; Carol Meale, "The Compiler at Work: John Colyns and BL MS Harley 2252," in Derek Pearsall, ed., Manuscripts and Readers in Fifteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1983), 82-103; and Sharon L. Jansen and Kathleen H. Jordan, The Welles Anthology: MS Rawlinson C. 813 (Binghamton, N.Y., 1991). Jansen also gives a useful description of the contents of BL, Lansdowne 762 in "The Paston Family, 'Hogan the Prophet,' and Sixteenth-Century Political Prophecy," Manuscripta 39 (1995): 140-41.

12 On Hogon, see Jansen, "Paston Family"; on Skelton's search for patronage, see Greg Walker, John Skelton and the Politics of the 15205 (Cambridge, 1988), 53-123.

13 BL, Harley 2252, fols. 133*V, 140,153. Scattergood translates the epigraph: "The present book will grow greatly while I am alive; thence will the golden reputation of Skelton be proclaimed" (Complete English Poems, 454).

14 See Scattergood, "London Manuscripts," 276.

15 Cynthia J. Brown, Poets, Patrons, and Printers: Crisis of Authority in Late Medieval France (Ithaca, N.Y., and London, 1995), 33, 62. For a summary of differences between bespoke manuscripts and printed editions and the relative importance of the paratextual arrangement including the ascription of each, see Alexandra Gillespie, " 'These proverbes yet do last": Lydgate, the Fifth Earl of Northumberland, and Tudor Miscellanies from Print to Manuscript," Yearbook of English Studies 33 (2003): 215-32 at 219.

16 The separate editions are STC 22594-96b, STC 22600.5-3b, STC 22615-17a.5, and STC 22611.5-14. Tab's edition is STC 22598; Stow's is STC 22608.

17 For a discussion of Stow's edition, see Jane Griffiths, "Text and Authority: John Stow's 1568 Edition of Skelton's Works," in Ian Gadd and Alexandra Gillespie, eds., John Stow: Author, Editor, and Reader (London, 2004), 127-34.

18 U3r-U5r and D1r-D2v; L4r-L4v and H7r.

19 All the material variants from Lant's edition that occur in Day's edition (STC 22600) recur in Stow. Moreover, in one instance Marshe's printer appears to have been misled by ambiguities in the appearance of Day's text. In the BL, c. 21. a. 14 (2) copy of Day's edition there is a blotch in line 67 under the o of sanno, which makes it resemble a "g." It was apparently a feature of the edition (it is faintly visible on the Bodleian Library copy, 8° L 79(10) Art), as Marshe's edition hero reads saung for sanno.

20 STC 22600, B3v; STC 22608, H7r.

21 STC 22600, C3v; STC 22608, J6r.

22 STC 22597; STC 22597.5.

23 STC 22608, Y3r.

24 Marshe is not the only one to copy indiscriminately. In Tab's edition as well as Stow's, Elynour Rummyng is given a double title that perhaps suggests the reproduction of the wording on both the title page and the first leaf of an earlier individual edition (possibly that of 1521, STC 22611.5). See STC 22598, C5v- C6 r.

25 Fakes's edition of A Garlands (STC 22610) is dated in the colophon. For the dating of Rastell's editions (STC 22604 and STC 22611), see R. S. Kinsman, "The Printer and the Date of Printing of Agaynste a Comely Coystrowne and Dyuers Balletys" Huntington Library Quarterly 16 (1953): 203-10. On A Replycation, see Greg Walker, "The Image of Dissent: John Skelton, Thomas More and the 'Lost' History of the Early Reformation in England," in his Persuasive Fictions: Faction, Faith, and Political Culture in the Reign of Henry VIII (Aldershot, England, 1996), 166-77.

26 Edward Hodnett, English Woodcuts, 1480-1535 (London, 1935; reprint ed., Oxford, 1973), no. 2058.

27 The image, discussed further below, is Hodnett, English Woodcuts, no. 2056, reproduced in the introduction to this volume (Figure 1). The seated figure wears a costume identical to that in a presentation woodcut first used in England by Pynson for his 1506 Kalender of shepherdes (STC 22408), originally made for the French printer Anthoine Vérard who used it in his French Kalender (Hodnett, English Woodcuts, no. 1512). See Alexandra Gillespie, "The Lydgate Canon in Print from 1476 to 1534," Journal of the Early Book Society 3 (2000): 59-95.

28 For a relevant discussion of similar French author portraits in the shift from manuscript to print, see Brown, Poets, Patrons, and Printers, 97-151.

29 For discussion of the woodcuts, see Julie A. Smith, "The Poet Laureate as University Master: John Skelton's Woodcut Portrait," in Maryanne Cline Horowitz, Anne J. Cruz, and Wendy A. Furman, eds., Renaissance Rereadings: Intertext and Context (Urbana, Ill., 1988), 159-83; and Mary C. Erler,"Early Woodcuts of Skelton: The Uses of Convention," Bulletin of Research in the Humanities 87 (1986-87): 17-28. The woodcuts from A Garlande are reproduced in ook of the Laurel, ed. Brownlow, 57,59.

30 See STC 22609, A1r. On the use of this formula for a printer's royal "privilege" to print a work, see Meraud Grant-Ferguson, "A Study of English Book-Trade Privileges during the Reign of Henry VIII" (D.Phil, diss., University of Oxford, 2001).

31 For evidence that at least one sixteenth-century printer, Richard Lant, omitted marginal glosses available to him, see Griffiths, "Text and Authority."

32 See STC 22604, A2r.

33 Arthur F. Marotti, Manuscript, Print, and the English Renaissance Lyric (Ithaca, N. Y., 1995), 219.

34 Melvin J. Tucker, "Skelton and Sheriff Hutton," English Language Notes 4 (1967): 254-59, and "The Ladies in Skelton's 'Garland of Laurel,' " Renaissance Quarterly 22 (1969): 333-45. see also Owen Gingerich and Melvin J. Tucker, "The Astronomical Dating of Skelton's Garland of Laurel," Huntington Library Quarterly 32 (1968-69): 207-20; and for further discussion, The Book of the Laurel, ed. Brownlow, 17-36.

35 Greg Walker, Skelton and Politics, 188-217.

36 As Alexandra Gillespie suggests in the introduction to this volume, a rereading of the woodcut image at the front of the edition of A Garlande is possible. The figure at the writing desk is in clerical costume, perhaps that of a cardinal. Pynson appears to have used a similarly clothed figure in 1527 to allude to Cardinal Wolsey (Gillespie, "The Lydgate Canon in Print," 70-72; see also Brown, Poets, Patrons, and Printers, 117-18; and Hodnett, English Woodcuts, no. 1512, for the description of the figure as that of a cardinal). If a depiction of Wolsey was intended, Skelton may be among the marginal onlookers, watching for Wolsey's reaction to his text.

37 On Skelton's control over the publication of A Garlande, see Julia Boffey, '"Withdrawe your hande': the Lyrics of 'The Garland of Laurel' from Manuscript to Print," Trivium 31 (1999): 81-83. On A Replycacion, see Walker, "The Image of Dissent." In "Early Printers and English Lyrics: Sources, Selection, and Presentation of Texts," Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 85:1 (1991): 23-24, Julia Boffey suggests that Skelton was responsible for publication of Agaynste a Comely Coystrowne and Dytiers balettys.

38 See A Garlande, lines 1587-1602; Howe the Douty Duke, lines 523-32.

39 STC 22004, A4v; STC 22611, A1r.

40 See, for example, A. S. G. Edwards, "Dunbar, Skelton, and the Nature of Court Culture in the Early Sixteenth Century," in Jennifer Britnell and Richard Britnell, eds., Vernacular Literature and Current Affairs in the Early Sixteenth Century: France, England, and Scotland (Aldershot, England, 2000), 128-33; and Griffiths, "Text and Authority."

41 For a discussion of the circumstances around Skelton's appointment, see Walker, Skelton and Politics, 44-46.

42 For a full discussion of the views of the poet in A Garlande and A Replycacion, see Vincent Gillespie, "Justification by Good Works: Skelton's The Garland of Laurel" Reading Medieval Studies 7 (1981): 19-31. and "Justification by Faith: Skelton's Replycacion" in Helen Cooper and Sally Mapstone, eds., The Long Fifteenth Century: Essays for Douglas Gray (Oxford, 1997), 273-311.

43 "All kinds of tree, give place to the green laurel" (Complete Poems, ed. Scattergood, 513).

44 According to STC, "copies vary: with (HN, N, PFOR) or without (L, CH) woodcuts on A1V."

45 The cuts of the old man and courtier in STC 22615 and 22616 both derive from Laurence Andrewe's 1527 edition of The Myrrour of the Worlde (STC 24764), although that in STC 22615 has been much adapted; see Hodnett, English Woodcuts, no. 1973.

46 See, for example, Index Britanniae Scriptorum: John Bale's Index of British and Other Writers, ed. R. L. Poole and Mary Bateson (Cambridge, 1990), 253; for discussion, see David Norbrook, Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance, rev. ed. (Oxford, 2002), 38.

47 Lerer, Chaucer and His Readers, 195.

[Author Affiliation]

Jane Griffiths, a lecturer at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, has recently completed a book on Skelton, forthcoming from Oxford University Press. An essay on the sixteenth-century editions of Skelton's texts is forthcoming in John Stow and the Making of the English Past.