which literary historians are fond of describing as the darkest period in
English literature, the working man had won for himself what seemed a
secure place in poetry. Narrative, lyric and dramatic poetry had all
opened their portals to him, and made his life and aims their theme. Side
by side with the courtly verse romances, which were read in the bowers of
highborn ladies, were the terse and popular ballads, which were chanted by
minstrels, wandering from town to town and from village to village. Among
the heroes of these ballads we find that "wight yeoman," Robin Hood, who
wages war against mediaeval capitalism, as embodied in the persons of the
abbot-landholders, and against the class legislation of Norman game laws
which is enforced by the King's sheriff. The lyric poetry of the century
is not the courtly Troubadour song or the Petrarchian sonnet, but the
folk-song that sings from the heart to the heart of the beauty of Alysoun,
"seemliest of all things," or, in more convivial mood, accounts good ale
of more worth than a table set with many dishes:

Bring us in no capon's flesh, for that is often dear,
Nor bring us in no duck's flesh, for they slobber in the mere,
But bring us in good ale!
Bring us in good ale, and bring us in good ale;
For our blessed Lady sake bring us in good ale.

Most remarkable of all is the history of the drama in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries. The drama was clerical and not popular in its
origin, and when, in course of time, it passed out of the hands of the
clergy it is natural to suppose that it would find a new home at the
King's court or the baron's castle. It did nothing of the kind. It
passed from the Church to the people, and it was the artisan craftsmen of
the English towns, organised in their trade-guilds, to whom we owe the
great cycles of our miracle plays. The authors of these plays were