Perrow—The Last Will and Testament in Literature. 731 
his wealth, his woes, and his jovs “commixt with care;” to 
Satan he leaves his sins, to the earth his body, and to Jesus, his 
soul. 
In the Woodstock entertainment for Queen Elizabeth (1575) 
there is a Testament of Loricus. In this a knight, presumably 
Sir Henry Lee, bequeaths to the queen “the whole mannor of 
loue.” 1 < 
Belonging also to the sixteenth century is a. poem called Wyl 
Bucke, His Testament , by John Lacy (London). 2 The writer 
tells how he brought a wounded buck to bay and how the buck 
asked permission to make his testament. The permission hav¬ 
ing been granted, the animal proceeded: 
I bequeth mi body to the colde seler; 
I wold that a lady take the save of me; 
And I bequethe mi skin to your bowe-berer; 
The rewarde of mi throte to your houndes, perde; 
The right shoulder is the persones quantitie; 
The left shoulder to the perker that is fal in age; 
Mi suet to the faire ladyis visage. 
The poem is continued for seven stanzas, and when all the 
parts of the body have been bestowed, Robin Redbreast is made 
executor. The whole is written in a serious vein and is pre¬ 
fixed to a treatise on how to prepare venison. The poem has 
little or no merit as a literary production, but it serves to show 
that the tradition of the animal testament was still alive in 
England during the sixteenth century. 3 
So popular a form of expression as the testament could 
hardly fail to find its way into the work of Shakespeare. In 
the Rape of Lucre ce, written about 1594, Lucrece is made to 
make a testament which occupies some thirty-five lines. 4 Again 
in Richard II (1594), Richard contemplates making his will 
but is deterred by the thought that he has nothing to bequeath. 5 
i J. W. Cunliffe, The Queenes Majesties Entertainment, Pub. of the 
Mod. Lang. Assn, of America, XXVI, 1. 
2J. O. Halliwell, Literature of the XVI and XVII Centuries , 1851', 
p. 51. 
3 This testament is closely related to that class of literature written 
for instruction in the arts of hunting. Compare the deer passages in 
Tristan and Iseult and in Gawain and the Green Knight. 
4 Lines 1181-1211. 
s III, ii, 148. 
