IX.
SIR LANCELOT DU LAKE.
This ballad is quoted in Shakespeare's second Part of Henry IV. act ii. The subject of it is taken from the ancient romance of K. Arthur (commonly called Morte Arthur) being a poetical translation of chap. cviii. cix. cx. in Pt. 1st, as they stand in ed. 1634, 4to. In the older editions the chapters are differently numbered.—This song is given from a printed copy, corrected in part by a fragment in the Editor's folio MS.
In the same play of 2 Hen. IV. Silence hums a scrap of one of the old ballads of Robin Hood. It is taken from the following stanza of Robin Hood and the Pindar of Wakefield.
"All this beheard three wighty yeomen,
Twas Robin Hood, Scarlet, and John:
With that they espy'd the jolly Pindàr
As he sate under a thorne."
That ballad may be found on every stall, and therefore is not here reprinted.
[This is a rhymed version of some chapters in Malory's Mort d'Arthur (Book vi. of Caxton's edition), said to have been written by Thomas Deloney towards the end of Elizabeth's reign. It first occurs in the Garland of Good Will, reprinted by the Percy Society (vol. xxx.)
The ballad appears to have been highly popular, and it is quoted by Marston in the Malcontent and by Beaumont and Fletcher in the Little French Lawyer, as well as by Shakspere.