SOURCE: Spearing, A. C. “Skelton: The Bowge of Court.” In Medieval Dream-Poetry, pp. 171-218. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976.

In the following excerpt, Spearing claims that with The Bowge of Courte, Skelton offers a new and frightening use of the medieval dream-poem, as it depicts the everyday reality of court to be a nightmare from which there is no awakening.

The Bowge of Court is John Skelton's earliest surviving major work, dating from 1498, yet it already brings a number of innovations to dream-poetry. The spot where the narrator falls asleep is identified more specifically than ever before as a real place, Powers Key at Harwich (34-5);¹ as Dreamer, the narrator acquires the identity of a personification, Drede (fear, anxiety); and the setting of the dream is on board a ship—though admittedly it is an allegorical vessel, the Bowge of Court (court rations). In the brief waking section at...