Verse Narrative

The high esteem in which the early Tudor readers held the moral worksof Lydgate has been evident in many of the poems hitherto discussed; butnothing in Lydgate appealed more than the series of tragic histories whichhe had borrowed from Boccaccio under the title of The Fall of Princes, and which the lurid revolutions of Fortune’s wheel in the second quarterof the sixteenth century brought back to men’s attention with a melancholyimmediacy. It is very natural, therefore, that two new editions of Lydgate’s Fall were printed early in Queen Mary’s reign. One was published by Tottelin 1554; the other by the Queen’s printer, John Wayland, in 1554 or 1555.Wayland’s intention was originally more ambitious, for there exist, in asingle copy, a canceled title-page and prefatory note, stating that the bookcontained, in addition to Lydgate’s work, “the fall of all such as since thattime were notable in England, diligently collected out of the chronicles,”and “penned by the best clerks in such kind of matters that be this dayliving, not unworthy to be matched with Master Lydgate.” However, QueenMary’s chancelor, Stephen Gardiner, prohibited the modern section, whichwas not permitted to appear till Elizabeth had succeeded to the throne. Itwas first published in 1559 under the title, A Mirror for Magistrates, 1 and,separate henceforth from Lydgate, ran a career perhaps more complex andinfluential than that of any other Elizabethan book.