John Skelton, detractor, libellous, discourse, rhetorical, notorious, reputation
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his ability to refute his assailant and repay him effectively if only his identity were known:
But if that I knewe what his name hight,
For clatering of me I would him sone quight;
For his false lying, of that I spake neuer,
I could make him shortly repent him for euer.
(‘De more vulpino, gannientes ad aurem, fictas fabellas fabricant, li. ille. Inauspicatum, male ominatum, infortunatum se fateatur habuisse horoscopum, quicunque maledixerit vati Pierio, S[keltonidi] L[aureato], & c.’)
Skelton claims to have been accused unjustly of using sophistry in order to mislead his betters, or to “Controlle the cognisaunce of noble men/ Either by language or with my pen” (‘Hic notat purpuraria arte intextas literas Romanas in amictibus post ambulonum ante et retro’). He counters these allegations about his misuse of rhetorical persuasion by appealing to the notorious reputation of libellers for upsetting the social order:
Such tunges vnhappy hath made great diuision
In realmes, in cities, by suche fals abusion;
Of fals fickil tunges suche cloked collusion
Hath brought nobil princes to extreme confusion.
(‘Quid peregrinis egemus exemplis? ad domestica recurramus & c. li. ille.’)
Skelton suggests that the attack upon him constitutes a threat to the king’s authority and to the whole social fabric, and does so in order to better absorb the impact of his detractor’s accusations. Both sides claim to be speaking on behalf of the state, and to be exposing the threat that their adversary poses to the establishment. Their rhetorical stance is that they act not out of personal interest but for the public good. Skelton’s response echoes the persistent anxiety of the government that even personal libels might have damaging consequences that reach beyond the reputation of the individual libelled and that they therefore needed to be suppressed no less rigourously than antigovernment literature.
Like much later verse answering Skelton’s language here is comparable to that found in royal proclamations against subversive literature, which characteristically condemn libellous discourse for its proclivity to incite civil disobedience. In fact, verse answers to libel are sometimes related closely to proclamations. On a very basic level proclamations,
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