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Robert Henryson's Robene and Makyne (e. 14 70), the earliest surviving pastoral poem recorded in the English language, remains one of Henryson's best known works; "the excellence of this poem has long been recognized even by those who do not appreciate Henryson's other works"1 notes critic Robert Kindrick, and he is correct hi that assessment. The comical story of die shepherdess Makyne's advances towards die reluctant shepherd Robene, and the ensuing reversal of fortune that finishes the work, have delighted audiences for centuries. Well-andiologized and studied often in British literature survey courses, Robene ami Makyne, with its pithy nature, uncomplicated structure, comical subject material, and "cliarmhig"" language, stands as a good example of die work of a poet often considered one of the last great medieval makars.
In terms of literary criticism, though, Robene and Makyne remains largely ignored by Henryson scholars and is considered a minor footnote to this poet's Testament ofCresseid and his Morali Fabillis, mainly because most critics are not sure how Robene cena Makyne fits into the Henryson canon. Exemplifying die prevalent critical interpretation of the man and his works, Denton Fox labels Henryson a "dour moralist"; Henryson's conservatism, though, appears largely at odds with both the burlesque, almost bawdy, subject material of Robene and Makyne and the accepted moreditis (moral meaning) of the poem as found hi lines 91-92: "The man that will nocht quhen he may / sail haif nocht quhen he wald"1 (the man that will not when he may / shall have not when he would). Henryson's conclusion of a missed sexual opportunity clashes with the seeming ideology of a poet writing so piteously of Cresseid's punisliment and moral redemption, or of the heavy-handed fabler whose Aesopic tales often include morals as long as the original stories. More than most medieval authors, Henryson and the body of his work are frequendy considered from a universal, almost apostolic perspective, and he is seen as a conservative moralist whose personal ideologies permeate his poems. The question is thus broached: can one reconcile the Henryson we have come to expect from Cresseid and die Fabillis with die poet of the burlesque Robene and Makyne?
Most Henryson critics do not ask the question posed here; those who do attempt to place...