A Speech of 'Delight'

Sometimes history is a bitch.  A tiny fragment of a play appears from no where and it's beautiful and lovely and interesting and that's all you get.  A Speech of 'Delight' is one such bittersweet pill.  It is one of two bits of medieval drama known as the Reynes extracts, dating to sometime in the late fifteenth century.  It is a chunk of dialogue by a character in (probably) a morality play – a character called Delight.  He (most probably young, as he is called a lad) is in conversation with other characters about his nature – and another character (female) hopes out loud that he isn’t someone interested in the 'holy'.  Which he isn't as Delight tells us how he delights in the world, on physical pleasures and the beauty of the world around it.  This would, in the original play, almost certainly have been a bad thing – being too attached to the physical world rather than the spiritual - his delight in the world probably leading to temptations and sin.  But, whilst a proud figure, it is also a really rather lovely speech – taken out of context it’s a joyful account of what the world has to offer.  Beautiful scenery, animals and, towards the end, beautiful women – which contains my favourite part of the speech.  Sadly, when he has finished introducing himself, he stops talking and, apart from an even shorter epilogue to the piece (to be looked at later), we know no more about it.

Below is the text I performed on my radio show, which I have recorded again as a dialogue.  I’ve made modernisations to the text, trying to leave in as much that is comprehensibly old as possible.  

We open with an exchange of dialogue – but without any indications who is speaking what.  Delight obviously enters to other characters already on stage.  The group already onstage is mostly male, but contains a woman.  In my recording I've had her speak both the opening lines and the reply, but it is possible that another male of the group speaks the first three lines instead.  You could cut it up a number of ways - but this is the most logical.

listen to ‘A Speech of 'Delight' - A Medieval Fragment’ on Audioboo

Enter DELIGHT

UNKNOWN CHARACTER/S:  

Lo, here is a lad light

All fresh I you plight

Gallant and jolly.

DELIGHT:  Will ye know what I hight?

My name, sirs, is Delight.

UNKNOWN CHARACTER (FEMALE):

I hope not full holy!

DELIGHT:

Holy, quoth she?  Nay, let be!

By Christ, it accordeth not with me

But sport, mirth and play

Me rejoiceth for to see

The world’s wonders and vanity

Therein delight I ay.

For me semet it is to delight

To behold the firmament light

The course of stars to ken

The sun with his beams bright

The moon how he refulsyth the night

The planets in her circumference ren.

The skies in her colours rake

The therke [dark] sladdes of clouds black -

This rejoiceth me above.

Then of the earth delight I take

To see the florent woods their leaves shake

The rivers running by, there in divers fishes move.

I see these high hills where is the wholesome air

Beneath, the redolent meadows with their flowers fair

The therke mists how it ascends

In the valleys of the corns ilke air

I see divers fowls to the woods repair

There sweetly singing me mekyl amends.

I see in these gay gardens, where wholesome herbs spring

There pererys [pear-trees], the pomerys [orchards], the vines that sweet fruits bring

The red roses and the lilies white

I see in the great sea there, ships ever sailing

Also how it ebbit and flowit and fishes there in swimming

The waves how they waltyr [roll] and see the qwall [whales or similar] fight.

In the hore heaths I see the hare start

The forant dear hunted, the buck and the hart

And the swift greyhounds run;

The fox hunted with hounds in the great covert

The swift flight of hawks, the fowls revert

The falconers running through thick and through thin.

Also I am greatly delightand

In fair course swiftly runand

In harneys [armour] glidring bright;

Stately houses beheldand

Glassed with stories glassand

Pinnacles full of flags gloriously dight.

Precious array, that pleaseth me greatly,

The sweet musician in divers melody

The comeliness of each creature

And the beauty of women specially

With their white paps, popped up prately –

They passeth all other, as me semet in sure.

Me seeing now these salacious siths

Therefore in them all my delight is

So sovereignlyche [supremely] aboven all

This world so preciously pight is

Therein delight I with all mine mirth is

As for well most special.