Revel and Youth in The Cook’s Tale and The Tale of Gamelyn

The Tale of Gamelyn is notoriously violent. Several studies have considered the historical realism of the violent action it relates, noting that its descriptions of physical injury, of attacks carried out with whatever weapons are at hand, reflect incidents documented in the historical records of England in the early to mid-fourteenth century. The poem’s first physical conflict involves Gamelyn taking on the men whom his treacherous older brother has ordered to attack him. His brother’s men are armed with staves, and Gamelyn, looking for any blunt object he can find, seizes a pestle, with which he fights fiercely and effectively: “Gamelyn with his pestel made hem al agast.”

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