ABSTRACT
All that is known with certainty of Robert Henryson (ca. 1425–ca. 1505) is that his literary career flourished in the last three decades of the fifteenth century and that he lived in Dunfermline. He was probably a master at the Benedictine Abbey grammar school there, but was not necessarily a cleric. Nothing is known for certain of his literary career apart from the surviving works identified with him: Moral Fables, Orpheus and Eurydice, Robene and Makyne, The Testament of Cresseid, and a number of other shorter pieces. Like many of his contemporaries, including King James I of Scotland, who wrote The Kingis Quair, Henryson was an ardent admirer of Chaucer. The Testament of Cresseid particularly expresses this admiration, and the poem soon found its way into the early printed editions of Chaucer as a fitting supplement to Troilus and Criseyde.
