Abstract
p ]As romanticized as Alexander Bicknell’s 1776 introduction to his biography on Edward the Black Prince seems to be, it is not very much different from near contemporary praise of this leader of men, praise that similarly focuses on chivalric inner worth and military prowess. Writing at the end of the fourteenth century, for example, the Herald of Sir John Chandos valorizes the Prince of Wales by emphasizing his virtues. The narrator introduces audiences to him thus:2
The Prince, whose history is the principal subject of the annexed sheets, appears to have been graced with every quality natural or acquired which constitute the real Hero: to these were superadded the more important ones that form the virtuous man. Take him for all in all, estimate his worth from this union of characters, and we may safely pronounce, that England, or indeed any other country, never gave birth to a person whose actions more justly claimed the notice, or deserved the encomiums of Historians.1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Alexander Bicknell, The History of Edward Prince of Wales, Commonly Termed the Black Prince, Eldest Son of King Edward the Third, with a Short View of the Reigns of Edward I, Edward II, and Edward III, and a Summary Account of the Institution of the Order of the Garter (London: J. Bew, 1776), pp. v–vi
Edition used: Thomas Wright, ed. Political Poems and Songs Relating to English History, Composed during the Period from the Accession of Edw. III. to that of Ric. III, vol. 1 (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1859).
See Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England, II: c. 1301 to the Early Sixteenth Century (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), pp. 58–115.
In trying to reconstruct the Battle of Poitiers, A. H. Burne, “The Battle of Poitiers,” The English Historical Review 53 (1938): 21–52
Herbert James Hewitt, The Black Prince’s Expedition of 1355–1357 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1958).
See John Le Patourel, “The Treaty of Brétigny, 1360,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 19 (1960): 19–39
Edward III certainly was the subject of much praise in popular verse, as conveyed in Laurence Minot, The Poems of Laurence Minot 1333–1352, ed. Joseph Hall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1887).
T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays, 1917–1932 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964), pp. 124–125
See J. Enoch Powell and Keith Wallis, The House of Lords in the Middle Ages: A History of the English House of Lords to 1540 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968), pp. 353–355
Edition used: Jean Le Bel. Chronique dejeanle Bel, vol. 2, ed. Jules Viard andEugène Déprez (Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1905).
Edition used: Thomas Rymer, ed. Foedera, conventiones, literae, et cuiuscunquegeneris acta publica, inter reges Angliae, et alios quosvis imperatores, reges, pontifices, principes, vel cominunitates, vol 3 (Farnborough, UK: Gregg Press Limited, 1967), p. 129
James Bothwell, Edward III and the English Peerage: Royal Patronage, Social Mobility and Political Control in 14th-Century England (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2004), p. 44
James Bothwell, “Edward III and the ‘New Nobility’: Largesse and Limitation in Fourteenth-Century England,” The English Historical Review 112; 449 (November 1997): 1128
Edition used: A. E. Prince, ed., “A Letter of Edward the Black Prince Describing the Battle of Nâjera in 1367,” The English Historical Review 41 (1926): 415–418.
See Thomas P. Campbell, “Liturgy and Drama: Recent Approaches to Medieval Theatre,” Theatre Journal 33 (1981): 289–301
Cecilia Pietropoli, “II dramma ciclico inglese come teatro popolare: Forme della consolazione e forme della celebrazione,” Quaderni di filologia germanica 2 (1982): 45–60
See Richard Beadle, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994)
David Bevington, ed. Medieval Drama (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975)
See Martin Stevens, “Illusion and Reality in the Medieval Drama,” College English 32 (1971): 460–464
Clifford Davidson, Festivals and Plays in Late Medieval Britain (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 49–79
James F. Hoy, “On the Relationship of the Corpus Christi Plays to the Corpus Christi Procession at York,” Modern Philology 71 (1973): 166–168
Roger E. Reynolds, “The Drama of Medieval Liturgical Processions,” Revue de Musicologie 86 (2000): 127–142
Gerd Althoff, Die Macht der Rituale: Symbolik und Herrschaft im Mittelalter (Darmstadt: Primus, 2003).
See Ernst H. Kantorowicz, “Mysteries of State: An Absolutist Concept and Its Late Mediaeval Origins,” Selected Studies (Locust Valley NY: J. J. Augustin, 1965), pp. 381–398.
Steven Gunn and Antheun Janse, eds. The Court as a Stage: England and the Low Countries in the Later Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006).
Martin Stevens, “The Intertextuality of Late Medieval Art and Drama,” New Literary History 22 (1991): 317–337
See D. A. Bullough, “Games People Played: Drama and Ritual as Propaganda in Medieval Europe,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 24 (1974): 97–122
David Bevington, “Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday: Theatre as Holiday,” in The Theatrical City: Culture, Theatre and Politics in London, 1516— 1649, ed. David L. Smith, Richard Strier, and David Bevington, (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995): 101–102
See Diana B. Tyson, “The Epitaph of Edward the Black Prince,” Medium Aevum 46 (1977): 98–104
See Rachel Ann Dressier, Of Armor and Men in Medieval England: The Chivalric Rhetoric of Three English Knights’ Effigies (Aldershot, UK; and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004).
Copyright information
© 2010 SunHee Kim Gertz
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gertz, S.K. (2010). Edward the Black Prince, the Future King. In: Visual Power and Fame in René D’Anjou, Geoffrey Chaucer, and the Black Prince. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230106536_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230106536_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-53215-5
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-10653-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)