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"… In the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme,
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights."
SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet cvi.
In the long line of Arthurian chroniclers Geoffrey of Monmouthdeservedly occupies the first place. The most gifted and the mostoriginal of their number, by his skilful treatment of the Arthurianstory in his Historia Regum Britanniae, he succeeded in unitingscattered legends attached to Arthur's name, and in definitelyestablishing their place in chronicle history in a form that persistedthroughout the later British historical annals. His theme and hismanner of presenting it were both peculiarly adapted to win the favourof his public, and his work attained a popularity that was almostunprecedented in an age that knew no printed books. Not only was itaccepted as an authority by British historians, but French chroniclersalso used it for their own purposes.
About the year 1150, five years before the death of Geoffrey, anAnglo-Norman, Geoffrey Gaimar, wrote the first French metrical chronicle.It consisted of two parts, the Estorie des Bretons and the Estorie desEngles, of which only the latter is extant, but the former is known tohave been a rhymed translation of the Historia of Geoffrey of Monmouth.Gaimar's work might possibly have had a longer life if it had not beencast into the shade by another chronicle in verse, the Roman de Brut,by a Norman poet, Wace, which fills an important and interesting placeamong our Arthurian sources, not merely because of the author's qualitiesas a poet and his treatment of the Arthurian story, but also because ofthe type of composition that he produced. For the metrical chronicleoccupies an intermediate position between the prose chronicle, one of thefavourite forms of mediaeval monastic production throughout Europe, andthe metrical romance, which budded and blossomed most richly in France,where, during the last half of the twelfth century, it received itsgreatest impulse from Crestien de Troies, the most distinguished of thetrouvères. The metrical romances were written for court circles, andwere used as a vehicle for recounting adventures of love and chivalry,and for setting forth the code of behaviour which governed the courtlylife of France at that period. Wace's poem, though based upon chroniclehistory, is addressed to a public whose taste was turning toward chivalricnarrative, and it foreshadows those qualities that characterised the verseromances, for which no more fitting themes could be found than thosesupplied by the stories of Arthurian heroes, whose prowess teaches us thatwe should be valiant and courteous. Wace saw the greater part of thetwelfth century. We cannot be certain of the exact year of his birth orof his death, but we know that he lived approximately from 1100 to 1175.Practically all our information about his life is what he himself tellsus in his Roman de Rou:—
"If anybody asks who said this, who put this history into the Romancelanguage, I say and I will say to him that I am Wace of the isle ofJersey, which lies in the sea, toward the west, and is a part of thefief of Normandy. In the isle of Jersey I was born, and to Caen Iwas taken as a little lad; there I was put at the study of letters;afterward