Beves of Hamtoun (poem)
[4] For centuries Beves of Hamtoun was one of the most popular verse romances in the English language, and the only one that never had to be rediscovered, since it has been circulated and read continuously from the Middle Ages down to modern times, in its original form, in prose adaptations, and in scholarly editions.
[f][g] The guilty pair become engaged to be married the very next day[8] taking over Guy's earldom, and she hands over the 7 year-old Beves (who calls her a whore[h]) to his fosterer (Middle English: meister) Saber, with the intention that he be dispatched.
Saber readies bloody clothing to fake the death, disguising Beves as a shepherd, planning to send the boy to be groomed under an earl so he can later recover his rights in his maturity.
The boy however angrily crashes the festivities, staff in hand, demanding the return of the estate and striking the emperor thrice, into unconsciousness.
There he finds refuge at the court of Ermin, king of Ermonye (Medieval Armenia)[i][13] and gains royal favor, growing to age fifteen.
[16] Beves beheads the boar,[17] and in an encounter with foresters,[k][l] kills all with a broken lance (and in the A version, obtains the sword Morglay (Morgelai) from the steward.
[22] Imprisoned in Damascus[o] Beves takes Brademond captive and subjugates him under Ermin, also freeing two knights in the process, and returns triumphant to court.
[40] Yvor's henchman King Garcy remains behind, but he is put to sleep with a soporific (wine drugged with herb) by Josian's chamberlain Bonifas.
When Garcy awakens, he uses a magic ring to learn what happened, and leads a party in pursuit, but is unable to track down Beves to the cave where they find shelter.
The family return to England to seek retribution on King Edgar for confiscating Saber's son's estate,[72] and though the King was willing to restore the estate, the steward was hard-lined[73] and sought to rile the people of Cheapside, London into taking Beves prisoner,[74] and after the ensuing battle with Londoners,[75] the false news reaches Josian and her sons that Beves has fallen, and at London-gate (Ludgate[76]) they massacres all who oppose[77] (and in the interpolated text, Sir Guy here uses the sword Aroundight or Aroundyȝt which once belonged to Sir Lancelot of the Lake[ac][ad][79][80]).
[91] In the early 16th century Beves was only one of many popular romances, so that William Tyndale could complain of the flood of such works: "Robin Hood and Bevis of Hampton, Hercules, Hector and Troilus with a thousand histories and fables of love and wantonness".
They follow the plot of the poem reasonably closely, though some, such as The Famous and Renowned History of Sir Bevis of Southampton (1689), also add new episodes and characters.
[100] Such books were often read by the common people, including such children as the one described by the 18th century essayist Richard Steele: "He would tell you the mismanagement of John Hickerthrift, find fault with the passionate temper in Bevis of Southampton, and loved St. George for being the champion of England; and by this means had his thoughts insensibly moulded into the notions of discretion, virtue, and honour".
[107] A similarity has been noted with the scene of the "Death of Begon" over a boar hunt, appearing in the epic Garin le loherin, and the possibility of plot-element sharing with the Beuve d'Hanstone has been suggested.
A version of Beves probably related to C or M was the direct source of an Early Modern Irish romance, untitled in the sole surviving manuscript but now sometimes called Bibus.
[116] The Beves dragon-fight was also used as the template for Richard Johnson's version of the story of St. George and the dragon, in his immensely popular romance The Famous Historie of the Seaven Champions of Christendom (1596–97).
[117][118] Shakespeare's lines in Henry VIII, Act I, scene 1, "that former fabulous story/Being now seen possible enough, got credit,/That Bevis was believed", show his knowledge of the romance.
[119] Mention of Beves and his horse Arundel,[121] were made by the Elizabethan playwright Ben Jonson[ah][122] and Jacobean poet Henry Vaughan.
[123][124][126] John Bunyan's A Few Sighs from Hell records that in his unregenerate youth he had been more fond of secular works than of the Bible: "Alas, what is the Scripture, give me a Ballad, a Newsbook, George on horseback, or Bevis of Southhampton".
[127][128][129] In 1801 the young Walter Scott, alluding to Chaucer's description, told his friend George Ellis that it rivaled Sir Guy in being "the dullest Romance of priis which I ever attempted to peruse".
He noted that "Whatever the fable of Bevis of Southampton, and the gyants in the woods thereabouts may be deriv'd from, I found the people mighty willing to have those things pass for true".
[131] The "Bevis and Ascupart Panels" that once flanked the Bargate entrance to the town of Southampton was taken indoors in 1881 and restores, and still remains preserved in museum.
In his Observations on the Faery Queen of Spenser (1754, revised 1762) Thomas Warton explored the possibility of Spenser's debt to romances such as Beves and Richard Johnson's The Seven Champions of Christendom, and though he learned the latter publication post-dated Faery Queen,[ak] Warton was then informed that Seven Champions, Part 1, had been constructed from Bevis in correspondence from Thomas Percy.
[147] In 1805 the historian and satirist George Ellis included a lengthy abstract of Beves, based on E and on Pynson's edition, in his Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances.
[91] "The strain in which this work [Beves of Hampton] is written, is serious, even severe" according to the text's editor Eugen Kölbing, quoting Leopold von Ranke's opinion.
[155] Others have stressed the work's humor or comic tone, as Derek Pearsall more recently: "Beves of Hamtoun makes every possible concession to popular taste.
[157] In other words, the poem is often treated as an example of what G. K. Chesterton and George Orwell called the "good bad book", having the characteristics that make for readability and popular success rather than high literary quality.
William R. J. Barron was not enthusiastic about works of this kind: "The English versions of Bevis and Guy are competent but somewhat vulgarized, given to the reduplication of striking effects, paying lip-service to the heroes' values while almost wholly preoccupied by their adventures".
George Kane wrote that it "has a better effect than its component material would seem to warrant, for this almost formless story, with its miracles and marvels, ranting Saracens and dragons, is told without any polish or skill in a style generously padded and tagged, with little sense of poetic or narrative art, and still the romance is more than merely readable.
As with Horn and Havelok we tolerate its artistic crudity for the sake of the company of the hero and heroine, Beues and Iosiane, who reflect the warm humanity of the imagination that created them".
