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| Image retrieved from www.amazon.com |
Bibliography:
Schlitz, Laura A., and Robert Byrd. Good Master! Sweet Ladies!: Voices from a Medieval Village. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press, 2007. ISBN 9780763615789
Review and Critical Analysis:
Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! is a collection of plays, written in poetic form, to tell the human story of survival during the Middle Ages. Following the “Contents” page, listing the titles of the 17 poems contained in the book, Laura Amy Schlitz included a Foreword explaining how the book came to be. At the school where she worked as a librarian, a group of students were studying the Middle Ages, and they were “going at it hammer and tongs.” They were doing projects, writing music, and creating manuscripts. Schlitz wanted to give them something to perform where each student had a big part - no small parts. Instead of writing one play for all of them to perform, she wrote 17 short plays, or monologues, to be performed. This book is a collection of those 17 short plays.
Following the Foreword is an illustrated two-page spread showing the setting for the plays - a medieval manor in England in 1255. Robert Byrd’s drawing of a medieval manor gives the reader a great sense of what life would have been like on a manor in England in 1255. He even labels each character to show where they would have been found on the manor. This illustration is an excellent guide during reading. Readers can refer back to it for each poem to get a visual idea of where the characters would be found. The book concludes with a lengthy bibliography, showing that Schlitz most definitely did her homework about life in the Middle Ages.
The poems in this book are beautifully written in a variety of styles. Some of them include a rhyme scheme, while others are written in free verse and come across much more like a story than a poem. Either way, the poems have an appeal to young people because they are written in the voice of young people. No Old English here. Readers will have no problem understanding what the characters are saying because they sound just like them. Schlitz creates a detailed profile for each character. Readers will be so interested in the character that they won’t realize how much factual information they are taking in at the same time. Schlitz does an excellent job of combining factual information with the real lives of these characters. Not only are the poems full of facts, but Schlitz also includes six two-page spreads of “A Little Background” for poems that need a bit more explanation. These include background information for the three-field system, the Crusades, and falconry - all subjects that young people may not know anything about.
The poems in this collection are also relatable to young people because the characters act much like they would. One of my favorite poems in the collection is “Barbary, The Mud Slinger.” Barbary is a young girl whose stepmother forces her to take her twin siblings with her to buy fish. The reader gets an immediate sense of the difficulty of Barbary’s life - a very young girl with so much responsibility. One her way to buy fish, Barbary sees Isobel, the lord’s daughter, beautifully dressed with her hair combed and her veil snow white and a servant to carry her basket. Barbary acts much like any adolescent in her difficult circumstances. She says, “I let go of the twin, / picked up a handful of / dung, filth, God-knows-what / and let fly. / Bull’s-eye.” Our of her envy, she throws a handful of mud at the lord’s daughter. Who wouldn’t enjoy the humor of Barbary’s story?
Robert Byrd’s drawings of each character give readers a visual glimpse into their life. At the beginning of each poem, the characters are shows doing what they are known for, whether it’s tending sheep or fighting a wild boar. Each page with “A Little Background” includes an illustration portraying its subject. Byrd’s illustrations definitely add to the imagery of the stories and characters portrayed in this book.
Poem Used to Support Critical Analysis:
Giles, The Beggar
Good masters, sweet ladies!
I am Giles the beggar,
the best of my trade!
Behold my crushed foot!
The sight of the wound
would sicken your stomach, and soften your heart.
A penny? A farthing?
I grovel for mercy -
sometimes I manage real tears.
(It’s an art.)
No takers? No givers?
Not even a morsel?
Ah! They are stone to my pitiful cries.
And so I am left to my wits, which in fact
are prodigiously keen and surpassingly wise:
I enter a town, with my crutch and my cry:
“Food for the famished! Alms for the poor!”
I stagger, collapse in the dust of the road!
I swoon - too exhausted to go one step more -
and here comes my father! (But I do not know him.)
I lie by the roadside, starting to wail.
My father, the peddler, the dealer in relics:
“Ten pence for a thread from Saint Margaret’s veil!
Who covets the thumbnail of Martin of Tours?
Or this - better still - even this can be yours!
A flask of the healing holy water -
stand back, now - don’t push, don’t jostle -
flask of the sacred holy water
used on the feet of Saint James, Apostle!”
Sometimes they pay. More often they don’t
so he throws up his hands and he sighs - like that.
“Oh, ye of no faith! Before you, I swear
I will cure, here and now, this unfortunate brat!”
That’s my cue. So I whimper.
He opens the flask,
anoints me, while I seem to faint,
with the authentic holy water
used on the feet of the holy saint.
I swoon in his arms. Look upward! Cry out!
(Now see how the peasants step forward and gawk.)
“Angels! Apostles! I see them before me!”
I throw down my crutch, clasp my hands, and I walk!
(My father and I
rehearsed this for hours -
miracles have to look perfectly natural.)
“He walks! Praise God and His saints! He walks!”
If I do it just right,
the crowd gasps aloud -
they genuflect, weep,
stretch their hands out, and touch.
And while they are paying
for drops of that water,
I gather my bandages,
pick up my crutch.
My pantomime’s done
once the money is paid.
I creep out of town.
I feel guilt -
but not much.
Later my father
follows the highroad.
We meet, and he gives me
my supper, my pay:
bread or an apple,
cabbages, turnips -
sometimes there’s sausages
on a good day.
We sup by the road,
ask Our Lord to look after us:
“Send us more fools
for our food and our keep.
Forgive us our trespasses,
pardon our lies;
look after your foxes
as well as your sheep.”
I would introduce the poems in this book as part of a unit on the Middle Ages and medieval England. Students would already have gained background knowledge about medieval England and life on a medieval manor.
To introduce this poem, I would discuss the theme of adversity with students. We would discuss adversity in the Middle Ages - what kinds of adversity they encountered daily. I would read “Giles, The Beggar” out loud and then have them reread it on their own. I would ask them how the theme of adversity is shown in this poem. Together, we would make a list of the adversity Giles encounters, as well as evidence from the poem to support it.
Then, I would place students in groups and have them focus on an idea we have studied during our unit and create a character to portray it. Students will give their character a name, an occupation (or at least something they are known for on the manor), and create a brief description of him or her. Students would be welcome to write a poem for their character, but this would not be required.
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