The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume II. The End of the Middle Ages.
XVIII. Political and Religious Verse to the Close of the Fifteenth Century—Final Words.
§ 6. Jack Napes’s Soul.
The last political poem to which reference need be made here is a mocking dirge, called forth by the death of the king’s favourite the duke of Suffolk, on 3 May 1450, “a dyrge made by the commons of Kent in the tyme of ther rysynge when Jake Cade was theyr cappitay…writn own of david norcyn his book by John stowe.” 16 The poem describes how “bisshopes and lordes, as grete reson is,” took their several parts in his funeral services, and it deserves mention by reason of the prosodic art shown in the refrain, “in which the passing-bell slowness of the first half
| For | Jack | Napes’s | soul pla- | |
suddenly turns head over heels into a carillon of satiric joy and triumph with
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| Note 16. Political, Religious and Love Poems, Lambeth MS., etc., ed. Furnivall, F. J., E.E.T.S. 1866, new edition, 1903. [ back ] | | Note 17. Saintsbury, G., A History of English Prosody, vol. I, P. 261. [ back ] |
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