inasmuch as theories of voice prescribe normative vocalizing practices, the ways in which lyrics move among writing and performance encourages, even necessitates, a tactical approach to these prescriptions. The rhetorical figure known as “ethopoeia,” which went under several different names in the Middle Ages, is helpful for understanding these tactics. As we shall see, this figure unites the affective, social, and circumstantial particulars of a speaker in literary voice.
The scribe-compiler of MS Harley 2253 interleaves prayers, dialogue poems, refrain poems, and single-voice poems in ways that draw on features of medieval and proto-modern theories of voice. Although not anthologized by genre, lyrics constitute an important class of texts within this compilation. As critics have increasingly noted, the relationship between the Harley lyrics and the other texts of this manuscript is less that of figure to ground than of tile to mosaic.4 Yet, as we shall see, these lyrics exemplify medieval theories of the relationship between voice and speaking subject that at once resonate with the manuscript’s nonlyric texts and distinguish lyric as a specific class of texts among them. The social, performative, and textual qualities of this kind of voice create not a single lyric “speaker” but rather voices for lyric readers, performers, and audiences that express tactical relationships to normative structures.
Most critics have agreed that the speaker of a medieval lyric is a chimera, less a definitive subject than a placeholder for successive writers, readers, or performers of the text.5 As we have seen in the previous chapter, the idea of a lyric speaker derives largely from post-Romantic definitions of the genre. If instead we consider lyric in terms of voice, we can draw on a rich body of medieval philosophical and scholastic theory. As the lyrics of MS Harley 2253 demonstrate, voice inheres in both performance and text in medieval theory and practice. To begin to understand how this works, consider the well-known Harley lyric, “When the Nightingale Sings”:
| When the nyhtegale singes, the wodes waxen grene; | grow |
| Lef ant gras ant blosme springes in Averyl, Y wene, | burst forth |
| Ant love is to myn herte gon with one spere so kene! | |
| Nyht ant day my blod hit drynkes. Myn herte deth me tene. | grieve |
| Ich have loved al this yer that Y may love namore; | |
| Ich have siked moni syk, lemmon, for thin ore. | favor |
| Me nis love never the ner, ant that me reweth sore. | regret deeply |
| Suete lemmon, thench on me—Ich have loved the yore! | for a long time |
| Suete lemmon, Y preye the of love one speche; | word |
| Whil Y lyve in world so wyde, other nulle Y seche. | seek |
| With thy love, my suete leof, mi blis thou mihtes eche; | increase |
| A suete cos of thy mouth mihte be my leche. | kiss; medicine |
| Suete lemmon, Y preye the of a love-bene: | love-token |
| Yef thou me lovest ase men says, lemmon, as Y wene, | believe |
| Ant yef hit thi wille be, thou loke that hit be sene. | |
| So muchel Y thenke upon the that al Y waxe grene. | |
| Bituene Lyncolne ant Lyndeseye, Norhamptoun ant Lounde, | London |
| Ne wot Y non so fayr a may as Y go fore ybounde. | bound to |
| Suete lemmon, Y preye the, thou lovie me a stounde! | soon |
| Y wole mone my song | |
| On wham that hit ys on ylong.6 | the one who caused it |
This lyric interleaves the conventions of the solitary love lament and the performative and petitionary love complaint. Beginning with the conventional reverdie opening, it situates itself within a tradition of erotic poetry: “When the nyhtegale singes, the wodes waxen grene.” Nature’s eros makes a poignant, if conventional, contrast to the lover’s pain: “Love is to myn herte gon with one spere so kene.” The lover’s sighs in the second stanza demonstrate how voice is a tactic of both performance and text. Sarah McNamer remarks that the devotional lyric, “I syke when y singe,” “script[s] sorrowful sighs for the reader to perform”; saying “I syke” compels the speaker to perform the sigh that the song describes.7 However, in its use of the past tense, “When the Nightingale Sings” textualizes this performance: “Ich have siked moni syk, lemmon, for thin ore.” The immediate performance context of this verse, then, is not that of pain but of petition: “Suete lemmon, thench on me.” As a complaint, this lyric “negotiates between feeling and form,” in the words of Lee Patterson.8 The lyric’s perpetuation of the textual voice—its knowing participation within the traditions of reverdie, love lament, and complaint—depends on the lover’s consent to its performance, as suggested in the final stanza. The direct address to the “suete lemmon,” prominent at the beginning of two stanzas, anticipates an audience that is at once present (as the addressee of these lines) and absent (as the audience of the deferred performance). As heartfelt as it seems, the voice of the love petition is not private but invokes a wider community (“Yef thou me lovest ase men says”; “loke that hit be sene”).
Although the poem’s final stanza has generally been understood as simply another quatrain, on stylistic grounds I would speculate that this stanza acts as an envoy, perhaps even a later addition, to the first four quatrains. The final line of the fourth stanza ends “al Y waxe grene,” an ironic echo of the first line’s “the wodes waxen grene.” “Grene” works as a pun in the fourth stanza, suggesting that the lover grows ill or lustful—or both—with thoughts of his beloved. Ending the poem here gives it stylistic closure that is of a piece with the use of repetition elsewhere in these stanzas, such as the anaphora of “suete lemmon.” The final stanza amplifies or transforms earlier lines, for instance, giving “world so wyde” the geographic specificity of “Bituene Lyncolne ant Lyndesey, Norhamptoun ant Lounde” and offering another “suete lemmon” line. The last line of the poem as it stands opens up a new frame, shifting from the implied immediate presence of the beloved (the “suete lemmon” addressed in the imperative) to the deferral of her presence (“Y wole mone my song”). This shift calls our attention to a second lyric voice (even if it is that of the same speaker). This stanza’s change in voice recalls the envoys or tornadas of French medieval poetry, from troubadour lyrics to motets, which often employed such a shift.9 As Judith Peraino puts it, French lyricists often used the final stanza to “graft” multiple voices into a single lyric, whether these were the voices of lover and beloved, master and minstrel, or even the public and private personae of the poet himself.10
The final stanza of “When the Nightingale Sings” is in many ways similar to the French envoy tradition, but certain differences are worth noting. Many of
