HAWES, STEPHEN

(ca. 1475–ca. 1523)

Stephen Hawes was an English poet at the dawn of the Tudor age whose poetic inspirations were his major medieval predecessors in English poetry: CHAUCER, GOWER, and the dominant 15th-century poet, John LYDGATE. Hawes, who was groom of the chamber to King Henry VII, is best known for his allegorical love poemThe Pastime of Pleasure, or The Historie of Graunde Amoure and La Belle Pucel(ca. 1506).

Little is known with certainty of Hawes’s life. Probably he was born in Suffolk.He seems to have been educated at Oxford, and to have learned languages visiting universities on the continent, but much of what is assumed of his life is conjecture.Tradition says that Henry VII was attracted by Hawes’s learning, particularly his prodigious memory that allowed him to recite by heart long passages from Chaucer and from Lydgate. Henry gave him a position in his household, making him groom of the chamber.

Hawes’s surviving poems all tend to be moral or love allegories in a medieval courtly style reminiscent of Lydgate and, ultimately, theROMAN DE LA ROSE. HisExample of Virtue(ca. 1504) is written in the RHYME ROYAL stanzas popularized by Chaucer, and is a conventional moral allegory concerning a life spent seeking purity.The Comfort of Lovers(first printed 1510) is a love allegory, whileThe Conversion of Swearers(printed 1509) is a condemnation of blasphemy, particularly the typically medieval custom of swearing by the body of Christ. In 1509, Hawes also wroteA Joyful Meditation, his celebration of Henry VIII’s coronation. But Hawes is known mainly for hisPastime of Pleasure, which was first printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1509, and went through several subsequent editions in the 16th century. The poem is dedicated to Henry VII, and is conceived as a chivalric romance in an allegorical landscape, in which the knight Graunde Amoure strives to win the fair Lady La Belle Pucel.Written, like hisExample ofVirtue, in rhyme royal stanzas,Hawes’s poem runs to 45 chapters and almost 6,000 lines. Some half of these describe Graunde Amoure in the Tower of Doctrine, where he receives a grounding in the seven Liberal Arts to make him worthy of his beloved. From here he moves to the Tower of Chivalry and learns what he will require to battle the allegorical forces he needs to conquer in order to win his lady’s love. Most critics see Hawes as chiefly medieval in his allegorical style and his emphasis on such things as Fortune’s wheel and earthly life as a pilgrimage, but see his interest in the education of a prince and worldly accomplishments as looking forward to poets of the Renaissance. Indeed Hawes’s text certainly must have influenced Spenser’sFaerie Queene. But Hawes was not optimistic about the future of poetry in English: In section 14 of hisPastime of Pleasure, he depicts himself as the only remaining devotee of true poetry—certainly he was the last English poet in the Chaucerian courtly tradition.

■ Edwards, A. S. G.Stephen Hawes. Boston: Twayne, 1983.

■ Gluck, Florence W., and Alice B. Morgan.Stephen Hawes: The Minor Poems. EETS, no. 271. London: Published for the Early English Text Society by the Oxford University Press, 1974.

■ Mead,William Edward, ed.Pastime of Pleasure. EETS, o.s. 173. London: Published for the Early English Text Society by H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1928.