(fl. 1327)
William of Shoreham was a MIDDLE ENGLISH lyric poet of the early 14th century who authored seven extant poems, all of which have survived in a single manuscript (British Museum Additional MS. 17,376). A colophon (or scribal notation) to the manuscript mentions Simon, the archbishop of Canterbury—a fact that dates the manuscript to the beginning of the reign of King EDWARD III (1327–77) and suggests that William was active at that time. Little is known of William’s life, other than his association with the village of Shoreham, near Sevenoaks in Kent (perhaps he was born there). He was made vicar of Chart Sutton in Kent in 1313, and because that position was connected with Leeds Priory, it has been suggested that William was an Augustinian canon at that priory.
William’s seven poems are all religious and didactic, and deal with some of the favorite topics of medieval preachers. Four of them are concerned with Christian doctrine and theology, and include lyrics on the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church, on the Ten Commandments, and on the Seven Deadly Sins. A longer poem, the final poem in the manuscript, is a more substantial treatment of topics like the nature of the Trinity, the fall of Satan, and the Fall of Man, and apparently would have dealt with the Redemption as well, but is incomplete, as the manuscript breaks off after the temptation. One ofWilliam’s other lyrics concerns the five joys of the Virgin, and another is a hymn to Mary apparently translated from a Latin text by Robert GROSSETESTE. The latter is perhaps William’s best-known poem, appearing in anthologies of medieval English lyrics. It is made up mainly of conventional allegorical symbols of Mary. Its first stanza gives a good illustration of William’s lyric style:
Marye, maide, milde and fre [noble],
Chamber of the Trinite,
One while lest [listen] to me,
Ase ich thee grete with songe.
Thagh my fet [vessel] unclene be,
My mes [meal] thou onderfonge [receive].
(Davies 1964, 103, ll. 1–6)
Generally writing in six- or seven-line stanzas, William’s versification is often somewhat rough. But the sometimes difficult theological concepts he discusses are communicated clearly and simply, and his poetry’s melancholy focus on the transience of earthly life is typical of medieval lyric religious verse.
It was once believed that William was also the author of a prose translation of the Psalms that appears in the same manuscript as his lyrics and is written in the same hand. But because the lyrics are in William’s native Kentish dialect, while the Psalm translation is in a Midland dialect, it seems unlikely that William wrote the English Psalms.
Bibliography
■ Davies, R. T., ed. Medieval English Lyrics: A Critical Anthology. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1964.
■ Konrath, M., ed. The Poems of William of Shoreham. London: Published for the Early English Text Society by K. Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., Limited, 1902.
Encyclopedia of medieval literature. 2013.