GEORGE Ellis attributes the present poem to the end of the fourteenth or beginning of the fifteenth century. “I think,” he says in his Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances, ed. Halliwell, p. 380, “it would not be difficult to prove from internal evidence, that the present translation[80] cannot be earlier than the end of the fourteenth or beginning of the fifteenth century.” [‹xlvi›]
Having seen from the summary of grammatical peculiarities that there is a great similarity between the language of Chaucer and that of the composer of this romance, we might be inclined to consider the latter as a contemporary of Chaucer. From some passages of the Sowdan, which seem to contain allusions to Chaucerian poetry, we may conclude that the poet must have known the Canterbury Tales. Thus ll. 42–46:—
“Whan kynde corage begynneth to pryke,
Whan ffrith and felde wexen gaye,
And every wight desirith his like,
Whan lovers slepen with opyn yȝe,
As Nightingales on grene tre” . . .
appear to be imitated from the Prologue of the Canterbury Tales, ll. 10–12:—
“And smale fowles maken melodie,
That slepen al the night with open eye,