In terms of literary history, the relationship of Chaucer and Bohemia is not easy to document. Unlike the Bohemian connections of other English literary figures, such as Wyclif and Rolle, whose works are known to have circulated in Bohemian circles, Chaucer's links were forged through the presence in the English court of Richard II's queen, Anne of Bohemia (1366–94). She is acknowledged in his deft compliment early in Troilus and Criseyde: ‘Right as oure firste letter is now an A’ (Tr i, 171). And Alceste's injunction in the F Prologue to the Legend of Good Women that the completed work be given to ‘the queen, / On my behalf, at Eltham or at Sheene’ (LGW F496–7) suggests that Chaucer wished to perform an act of literary submission that would present her as having an important role in the circumstances of the poem's creation. The nature of Anne's role in the genesis of the Legend remains unresolvable. Lydgate's claim in his Fall of Princes, made more than half a century after the event, that Chaucer wrote the Legend ‘at request off the queen’ (i, 330) cannot be wholly discounted given his own evident access to members of the Chaucer family; but it may have been made on the basis of hearsay or wishful thinking. It is clear, however, that Alceste's injunction forms part of a larger texture of literary reference in which Anne seems to have played an important part.

Thomas Berthelette’s 1532 edition of the Confessio Amantis (STC 12143) is one of the important landmarks in the history of the printing of English literary authors, making available, in an impressive folio volume, the best-known work of one of the poets who, in Skelton’s words, “first garnisshed our Englysshe rude.” Appearing in the same year as William Thynne’s folio edition of The workes of Geffray Chaucer (printed by Thomas Godfray: STC 5068), Berthelette’s Confessio took its place among a succession of printed titles whose publishers seem to have been especially concerned to construct and promote a history of poetry written in English, and (in Gower’s words) “for Engelondes sake.” Such concern was manifest not only in the publishers’ choice of works to print but also in the varieties of paratextual apparatus with which the chosen works were set forth. Thynne opted for a preface addressed “To the kynges hyghnesse” as the primary means of establishing the credentials of his edition of Chaucer’s works. Berthelette, who was both editor and printer of the 1532 Confessio Amantis, followed suit with a dedication to Henry VIII (whose service he had joined as King’s Printer early in 1530) and some other prefatory gestures. These two dedications are instances of the kinds of printed paratextual material that has come to attract some attention, particularly in relation to Chaucer and Lydgate, and to the varieties of cultural capital to be claimed by making their works newly available in print. Other forms of paratextual experiment have been highlighted in early printed editions of Skelton’s works, where the significance of elements such as printed annotations and woodcuts to the construction of authorial presence has been noted. Gower’s early existence in print has not gone unmarked, but while Berthelette’s 1532 edition of the Confessio Amantis has been the subject of valuable recent studies, less has been said about the extent to which the construction of “Gower as author” in this book might reflect the larger landscape of authorial promotion during the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The discussion that follows here will attempt to situate the 1532 Confessio in that landscape, outlining some of the forms of attention given to authorship in English books printed before 1532, and concentrating especially on discernible continuities and innovations in the printing of poetry in English.

Although the body of Skelton's surviving independent lyrics is not a large one, his interest in short verse forms and their potential is evident in many aspects of his writing, infiltrating longer poems in a variety of ways – sometimes simply in the form of quoted titles or snatches of song, like those of Hervy Hafter and Ryotte in The Bowge of Courte (235–59, 360–71; for discussion of these and the songs mentioned by Skelton elsewhere see Carpenter 1955). His interest in short forms reflects knowledge of both Latin and English traditions, and some of the works which might invite consideration as part of his lyric corpus are either in Latin or in combinations of Latin and English (see for example the ‘elegy’ in Phyllyp Sparowe, 826–43; and the mixed English and Latin of Epitaphe and Against Dundas). One major challenge in discussing Skelton's lyrics is simply deciding what they are, since they are not always easily separable from their surroundings. Some are interpolated in longer works, such as the Garlande or Chapelet of Laurell, others sewn together in loosely connected strings, as in Agenst Garnesche, a series of ‘flytyngs’ from the years 1513–19, retrospectively assembled in one manuscript booklet (CEP: XIII; and see LW). A ‘creed’ for noblemen, consisting of a burden and two stanzas of skeltonics, is printed as an independent lyric in Certayne bokes compyled by Mayster Skelton (printed by Lant, c. 1545; STC 22615), and in Stow's 1568 edition of the Pithy pleasaunt and profitable workes of maister Skelton (printed by Marshe; STC 22608), where it has its own title in the list of contents (‘The relucent mirror’); but it appears in other witnesses attached to the start of Why Come Ye Nat to Courte?. These are just some of the kinds of textual uncertainty which can stand in the way of identifying Skelton's lyrics.

Even more than is the case with Skelton's other works, uncertain attributions in surviving witnesses mean that the canon of short poems is hard to define.

In about 1520 Wynkyn de Worde published Undo Youre Dore (STC 23111.5), elsewhere titled The Squire of Low Degree, a verse narrative in couplets, with no known source, and no surviving early manuscript witnesses. Usually classified as a romance, the poem gestures in various ways to the conventional features of romance narrative, and de Worde's decision to print it may reflect his sense that the market for romances, one for which he had catered for some decades, remained a strong one. Yet in some respects de Worde's printing of The Squire of Low Degree seems to mark a pivotal point in the history of his engagement with this form, and to indicate a recognition on his part that the previous commercial appeal of the genre might be extended in different directions. Some of these new directions are thrown into relief when The Squire of Low Degree is compared with other printed romances and with other forms of verse narrative printed by de Worde during the 1520s. As we will suggest, de Worde's sense of the continuing appeal of this genre seems untypical of the general level of interest among printers in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, a point when their engagement with romance seems to have been flagging.

The plot of The Squire of Low Degree can be summarised as follows. The squire of the work's title falls in love with the King of Hungary's daughter, whom he serves with silent devotion. Although the princess discovers his love at an early stage and reciprocates it, an unscrupulous steward, who himself wishes to marry the princess, reveals their love to the king. The squire seeks permission from the king for a period of exile ‘to be proved a venterous knight’ (478). Before departing he returns to his lady's chamber to bid her farewell. But the steward has been charged by the king to be ready for such a contingency with ‘men of armes’ (416). They attack the squire, and a melée ensues in which the squire kills the steward but is himself seized by the king, who sends him into exile for seven years, in which he does ‘great chyvalry’ (886).

The aim of this collection of essays is to remind readers of the extraordinary richness of the body of Middle English poems conventionally, if not always unproblematically, held to be lyrics. ‘The reader of Middle English lyrics need never want for variety’, as Thomas G. Duncan noted in the introduction to the first of two anthologies of lyrics that he compiled for Penguin Classics. Well over two thousand of these poems survive from the years between about 1066 and 1500, strikingly variegated in terms of subject matter, length and form, and constituting an important point of entry into an understanding of medieval English culture. They illuminate religious teaching and pious practice, contemporary conditions and events, the history of feelings and emotions, and reveal much about the ways that speech, song, image and performance related to the written word. Outside the contexts of cultural and literary history, their modes invite analysis of some of the abiding concerns of poetics: voice and moment, shape and cadence. Surviving as inscriptions on tombstones, as graffiti, and on artefacts such as rings and jugs as well as in a variety of written forms in manuscripts, they are testimony to the range of functions fulfilled by medieval verse in many contexts, and to the value and significance that was attached to it.

The variety that characterises this body of poems has proved in the past to be something of an impediment to sustainedly productive scholarship and analysis. Although much industry went into the early collection and editing of ballads, when it came to lyrics most nineteenth-century editors of Middle English verse were understandably more attracted by the challenge of longer works than by the prospect of assembling anthologies from short poems scattered in a range of geographically dispersed witnesses. The earliest relevant collections produced for the Early English Text Society, Furnivall's Political, Religious and Love Poems from Lambeth 306 and Other Sources and Hymns to the Virgin and Christ and Other Religious Poems, Kail's edition of the Digby lyrics and Murray's editions of variant texts of Erthe upon erthe, focused specifically on single manuscripts or small groups of witnesses, and in the last case on just a single poem.