HAWES, STEPHEN (fl. 1502-1521), English poet, was born, if his own statement of his age may be trusted, about He was educated at Oxford, and travelled in England, Scotland and France. He became groom of the chamber to Henry VII. as early as 1502. Hawes could repeat by heart the works of most of the English poets, especially the poems of John Lydgate, whom he called his master. He was still living in 1521. His capital work is The Passetyme of Pleasure, or the History of Graunde Amour and la Bel Pucel, conteining the knowledge of the Seven Sciences and the Course of Man's Life in this W orlde, printed by Wynkyn de Worde, 1509, but finished three years earlier. The poem is a long allegory in seven-lined stanzas of man's life in this world. It is divided into sections after the manner of the Morte Arthur and borrows the machinery of romance. Its main motive is the educa tion of the knight, Graunde Amour, based, according to W. J. Courthope (Hist. of Eng. Poetry, vol. i. 382), on the Marriage of Mercury and Philology, by Martianus Capella, and the details of the description prove Hawes to have been well acquainted with mediaeval systems of philosophy. This long poem, dull as it is, was widely read and esteemed, and certainly exercised an influence on the genius of Spenser.
The Pastime of Pleasure was edited by T. Wright for the Percy Society in 1845. The remaining works of Hawes are all of them bibliographical rarities. The Conversyon of Swerers (15o9) and A Joyfull Medytacyon to all Englonde, a coronation poem (15o9), was edited by David Laing for the Abbotsford Club (1865) . A Com pendyous Story . . . called the Example of Vertu (pr. 1512) and the Comfort of Lovers (not dated) complete the list of his extant work. See also G. Saintsbury, The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory (i89 7) ; the same writer's Hist. of English Prosody (vol. i., 1906) ; and an article by W. Murison in the Cambridge History of English Literature (vol. ii., 1908).