169 [date of day]] day of date MS.
172 [hem]] hen MS.
178 [and]] & & MS.
186 [ilyche]] īlyche MS.
243 [ilyche]] inlyche MS.
VII THE GEST HYSTORIALE OF THE DESTRUCTION OF TROY ABOUT 1375.
The Fall of Troy was one of the most popular subjects of mediaeval story. Lydgate wrote a Troy Book about 1420; fragments of another are attributed to 'Barbour', whose identity with the author of The Bruce has been questioned; a third version, anonymous, is known as the Laud Troy Book; and Caxton chose as the first work to be printed in English the Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye (about 1474). More famous than any of these full histories are two single stories detached from the cycle: Jason's Quest of the Golden Fleece, which is admirably told by Gower in the fifth book of his Confessio Amantis; and the Love of Troilus and Cressida, which gave a theme both to Chaucer and to Shakespeare.
The Gest Hystoriale of the Destruction of Troy, from which our extracts are taken, is a free rendering of the prose Historia Troiana finished in 1287 by Guido de Columna (most probably the modern Terranova in Sicily). The translation, which appears to have been made in the North or North-West Midlands in the second half of the fourteenth century, is preserved only in an imperfect fifteenth-century MS. at the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow. In the Early English Text Society's print, edited by Panton and Donaldson, the text extends to over 14,000 lines.
The table of contents prefixed to the MS. promises 'the nome of the knight þat causet it [sc. the story] to be made, and the nome of hym that translatid it out of Latyn into Englysshe'; but the extant MS. does not fulfil the promise. The execution suggests a set task and a journeyman poet. Phrases are repeated carelessly; there is a great deal of padding; the versification is monotonous; and the writer is too often at the mercy of the alliteration to maintain a serious level. Yet he is not a slavish or a dull translator. The more romantic elements of the story, such as the matter of the Odyssey, had already been whittled away in his original, and he shows little desire or capacity to restore them. But he knew as well as the Old English poets the forcefulness of alliterative verse in scenes of violence, and describes with unflagging zest and vigour the interminable battles of the siege, and storms such as that which wrecked the fleet of Ajax.