Romance

Sir Orfeo

Date of composition	Late thirteenth or early fourteenth century
Place of composition	Westminster-Middlesex area
Form	Rhyming couplets: aa₄bb₄etc
IMEV	3868
Keywords	Accused Queen Ekphrasis Exile Familial Discord Forest Friendship Marriage Other-world Secular Spaces Sexual Encounters Supernatural Treachery Urban Spaces

After an introduction on the Breton Lay, the poem introduces Sir Orfeo, the king of England, who is also a skilled harpist. One day in May, his wife Herodis falls asleep under a grafted tree in their orchard. When she awakes, she begins to scream and claw her face; the king of the fairies has visited her and demanded that she live with him forever. If she does not go willingly, she will be violently attacked and carried away. Orfeo gathers his knights, but the queen disappears from their midst.

Telling his men that they must choose a new king, the distraught Orfeo takes his harp and begins to wander in the wilderness. He lives on the heath for ten years, in stark contrast to his former life. He often sees the king of fairies and his retinue, hunting and dancing. On one occasion he sees Herodis, but the fairies take her away before the pair can speak. Orfeo follows them through a cave and into a beautiful landscape with a bejewelled castle. Claiming to be a minstrel, he gains access to the castle, where he sees all the people taken by the fairies, including his wife. He enters the hall and plays his harp for the fairy king, who is so charmed by his music that he offers him a reward of his choice. Orfeo requests Herodis and, although the king objects, Orfeo holds him to his promise.

The couple return to Winchester, still in disguise. Orfeo approaches his steward, who welcomes the harpist in honour of his former king. When he plays, the steward recognises the harp, but Orfeo tells him that he found it beside a dead man. The steward shows his loyalty by weeping, so Orfeo reveals his identity and makes his steward his heir. The court rejoice and re-crown their king, while the harpers of Britain write a lay in his honour, and call it 'Orfeo'.

Edition used for plot summary: Laskaya and Salisbury, The Middle English Breton Lays (1995).

Manuscripts

Manuscript	Date	Folio
Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS Advocates 19.2.1 (Auchinleck)	1330-40	299-303r	Contents
London, British Library, MS Harley 3810	Second half of the fifteenth century	1r-10r	Contents
Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 61	End of the fifteenth to the beginning of the sixteenth century	151r-156r	Contents

Modern editions

J. Ritson, ed., Ancient English Metrical Romances, 3 vols (London, 1802).

Vol. 2. Pp. 248-270. Uses Harley MS as base text.

Oscar Zielke, ed., Sir Orfeo: Ein englisches Feenmärchen aus dem Mittelalter (Breslau: Koebner, 1880).

Uses Auchinleck with twenty-four line prologue derived from Harley.

A. S. Cook, ed., A Literary Middle English Reader (Boston: Ginn, 1915; rpt. Boston: Ginn, 1943).

Pp. 88-107. Uses Auchinleck as base text.

Boris Ford, ed., The Age of Chaucer, The Pelican Guide to English Literature I (Baltimore: Penguin, 1955).

Pp. 271-88. Base text not specified.

Walter Hoyt French and Charles Brockway Hale, eds., The Middle English Metrical Romances, 2 vols (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1930).

Vol. I. Pp. 321-41. Uses Auchinleck as base text, with twenty-four line prologue from Zielke.

Thomas C. Rumble, ed., Breton Lays in Middle English (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1965).

Pp. 207-26. Uses Ashmole 61 as base text.

A. C. Gibbs, ed., Middle English Romances, York Medieval Texts (London: Edward Arnold; Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966).

Pp. 84-103. Uses Auchinleck as base text.

A. J. Bliss, ed., Sir Orfeo (London: Oxford University Press, 1954; 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966).

Prints all three MSS.

Ann S. Haskell, ed., A Middle English Anthology (Garden City: Anchor, 1969).

Pp. 247-62. Uses Auchinleck as base text.

Celia and Kenneth Sisam, eds., The Oxford Book of Medieval English Verse (London: Oxford University Press, 1970).

Pp. 76-98. Uses Auchinleck as base text.

Charles W. Dunn and Edward T. Byrnes, eds., Middle English Literature (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973).

Pp. 216-30. Uses Auchinleck as base text.

Kenneth Sisam, ed., Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921; rpt. with corrections, 1975).

Pp. 13-31. Uses Auchinleck as base text.

John A. Burrow, ed., English Verse 1300-1500, Longman Annotated Anthologies of English Verse (London: Longman, 1977).

Pp. 4-27. Uses Auchinleck as base text.

A. V. C. Schmidt and Nicolas Jacobs, eds., Medieval English Romances, 2 vols (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1980).

Vol. I. Pp. 151-71. Uses Auchinleck as base text.

Thomas J. Garbáty, ed., Medieval English Literature (Lexington, Mass: Heath, 1984).

Pp. 349-64. Uses Auchinleck as base text.

Lesley Johnson and Elizabeth Williams, eds., Sir Orfeo and Sir Launfal (Leeds: University of Leeds Press, 1984).

Uses Auchinleck as base text.

D. B. Sands, ed., Middle English Verse Romances (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1986).

Pp. 185-200. Uses Auchinleck as base text.

Diane Speed, ed., Medieval English Romances, 3rd edn, Durham Medieval Texts 8 (Durham: University of Durham, 1993).

Vol. 1. Pp. 122-148. Uses Auchinleck as base text.

Anne Laskaya and Eve Salisbury, eds., The Middle English Breton Lays (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1995).

Pp. 15-59. Uses Auchinleck as base text.

Stephen H. A. Shepherd, ed., Middle English Romances (New York: Norton, 1995).

Pp. 174-190. Uses Auchinleck as base text.

D. Burnley and A. Wiggins, ed, The Auchinleck Manuscript Project (2003).

George Shuffelton, ed., Codex Ashmole 61: A Compilation of Popular Middle English Verse (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2008).

Pp. 386-399. Edited from Ashmole 61.