SOURCE: Gustafson, Kevin L. “Rebellion, Treachery and Poetic Identity in Skelton's Dolorous Dethe.” Neophilologus 82, No. 4 (October 1998): 645-59.

In the following essay, Gustafson claims that Skelton's earliest English verse, the Dolorous Dethe, is more politically and poetically sophisticated than most critics have allowed, arguing that it demonstrates Skelton's concern with the court poet's “place—and complicity—in a world of political subterfuge,” which became one of Skelton's preoccupations in his later career.

When he first praised John Skelton for having “dronken out of Elycons well,” William Caxton may have had in mind what is now generally accepted as the poet's earliest extant work in English: a 200-odd-line lament occasioned by the murder in 1489 of Henry Percy, fourth Earl of Northumberland, at the hands of an angry mob.¹ Since then, however, the Dolorous Dethe has had few admirers. Skelton did not list it among his works in the Garland of...