Wynnere and Wastoure - The Poet

The Poet

The writer of Wynnere and Wastoure was clearly a very sophisticated poet, confident in both the alliterative verse-form and in handling complex satire. However, we know nothing about the author's identity other than what can be deduced from the poem's language. Modern opinion identifies the dialect, and therefore the author, as originating from the north-west Midlands, possibly as far north as southern Lancashire (the poem may make reference to a rebellion that occurred in Chester, so a north-western provenance is likely). The presence of some East Midland forms - those of the contemporary dialect of London - has led to the suggestion that the poet may have been part of the household of a lord whose seat was in the north-west, but who had connections with London and the court. The academic Thorlac Turville-Petre has proposed that the king's herald in the poem can be identified as Sir John Wingfield, steward of the Black Prince's lands around Chester in 1351. In this interpretation, the poet could have travelled with Wingfield and Chief Justice Shareshull to Chester for a judicial enquiry, or eyre, recorded in 1353; the poem would have been a suitable entertainment for the banquet held by the Prince at Chester Castle for local administrators.

The author laments at the start of Wynnere and Wastoure that poetic standards and appreciation have degenerated alongside society; where once lords gave a place to skilled "makers of myrthes" (21), the serious poets have been supplanted by beardless youths who "japes telle" (26), having "neuer wroghte thurgh witt three wordes togidere" (25). This complaint could indicate a certain conservatism on the poet's part, though it could also be merely conventional, as similar passages are quite common.

It has been argued (following the poem's first editor, Israel Gollancz) that the similar alliterative work The Parlement of the Thre Ages, which shares the same dialect and which Thornton also copied into BL Add. MS. 31042, is by the same author, although there is no conclusive evidence.