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The Tale of Gamelyn
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The Tale of Gamelyn

English romance
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Article History

The Tale of Gamelyn, anonymous English metrical romance of some 900 lines, written c. 1350 in the East Midland dialect of Middle English, in rhymed couplets. Based on English folklore, it tells of Gamelyn, son of Sir John de Boundys, who is deprived of his inheritance by his brother and becomes an outlaw in the forest. Eventually he is able to regain his estates, and the sheriff who had helped his brother is hanged.

The Tale of Gamelyn is of special interest for its connections with the English ballads of the legendary outlaw Robin Hood. It was a source of Thomas Lodge’s prose romance Rosalynde (1590), on which William Shakespeare based his As You Like It. It was almost certainly intended by Geoffrey Chaucer to form the basis of his (unfinished) “Cook’s Tale” in The Canterbury Tales.

This article was most recently revised and updated by J.E. Luebering.