Hawes was born about 1475, was over-educated at Oxford, and was Groom of the Chamber to Henry VII. He made the words of a ballet for the Court in 1506 (ten shillings) and, for Henry VIII. (1521) a play, now lost, (£6 13s. 4 d.). He also wrote "The Example of Virtue," and several poems, some of which have not been found in print or manuscript. The "Passetyme of Pleasure" is of 1506. It is in rhyme royal, with more or less humorous interludes concerning the facetious Godfrey Gobelive, a dwarf who tells tales against women, in rhyming "heroic" couplets. "The Example of Virtue," another moral and allegorical poem, is in the same measures. Spenser may have known the works of Hawes, there are coincidences in the allegorical details of both which can scarcely be all accidental. Hawes, in a sense, would "have raised the Table Round again," if he could I He knew Malory's great prose work, the "Morte d'Arthur," and would fain have restored ideal chivalry.
But chivalry died at the burning of Jeanne d'Arc, under the eyes of "the Father of Courtesy," the Earl of Warwick. The Flower of Chivalry was sacrificed like Odin, "herself to herself" (1431).
Hawes was a chaotic versifier: it is not easy to guess how he scanned many of his own lines. In the "Passetyme" the words of the hero's epitaph are probably a versified proverb,
For though the day be never so longe,
At last the belles ringeth to evensonge.
Long were the poems, and long the day of the followers of Chaucer. Now for its even song the bells were rung.
[CHAPTER XII.]
LATE MEDIAEVAL PROSE.
As far as literature is concerned the poetry of the period which we have been considering is infinitely more important than the prose. For most prosaic purposes, Englishmen still wrote in Latin: Richard Rolle, that eccentric hermit, and Wyclif, the premature Reformer, were even more prolific in Latin than in English. Prose was used in writing of science, as in Chaucer's treatise concerning the Astrolabe; for translation out of Latin, as in Chaucer's translation of Boëthius, and Trevisa's rendering of Higden's chronicles; in sermons, and by Wyclif and his followers for their tracts against the rich; against the Friars; against the endowments of the Church (constantly threatened in Parliament); and against the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist; and for their translations from the Latin Bible.