Poem on the Evil Times of Edward II, also known as The Simonie and Symonie and Couetise, is a Middle English poem in three distinct versions probably composed and modified over a century by anonymous authors. The original poem, perhaps not exactly reproduced by any of the surviving texts, has been dated to 1321 by Thomas Wright (1839), to 1327 by J. Aberth (2000), and to 1322-30 by Dan Embree and Elizabeth Urquhart (1991).
Version A is in Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS Advocates 19.2.1. It is 476 lines long, breaking off in mid-stanza. It can be s dated to the 1320s or 30s.
Version B is in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 48. It is 413 lines long, but 216 lines have been cut from the manuscript. It can be dated to the 1320s
Version C is in Cambridge, Peterhouse MS 104. It is 468 lines long, apparently complete. It might be dated to any point up to the date of the manuscript itself -- 1375-1425.
The three versions vary radically from one another -- much more extensively than is usual for a text that has been merely copied and much more chaotically than is plausible for a text revised by its author. Each version has unique inclusions and omissions; only 35 percent of the lines in A are shared by B and C.
It was a "social protest" poem that arose in the aftermath of the Great Famine of 1315-1317. It clearly targeted the negligences and vices of specific social groups, such as the clergy and nobility, within the context of the failures of the Great Famine and wars of the early 14th century. The tradition of social protest poems in England would later culminate with Piers Plowman – see Piers Plowman tradition for further discussion.
Famous quotes containing the words poem, evil and/or times:
“A poem is like a person. Though it has a family tree, it is important not because of its ancestors but because of its individuality. The poem, like any human being, is something more than its most complete analysis. Like any human being, it gives a sense of unified individuality which no summary of its qualities can reproduce; and at the same time a sense of variety which is beyond satisfactory final analysis.”
—Donald Stauffer (b. 1930)
“The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin’.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.”
—Bob Dylan [Robert Allen Zimmerman] (b. 1941)