Note 11 — Chapter I · A Review.

Olivier de Castille et Artus d’Algarbe, a French prose romance composed before 1472, according to Foulché-Delbosc (Revue hispanique, ix. 592). The first and second editions were printed at Geneva, the first in 1482, the second before 1492.11 There exist at least three manuscripts of the work from the fifteenth century: MS. Bibl. nat. fran. 12574 (which attributes the romance to a David Aubert, according to Gröber, Grundriss der rom. Phil. ii. 1, 1145); MS. Brussels 3861; and Univ. of Ghent, MS. 470. The designs of the last have been reproduced, together with a summary of the text, by Heins and Bergmans, Olivier de Castille, 1896. An English translation was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1518. A translation from the second French edition into Castilian was made by Philippe Camus, which was printed thirteen times between 1499 and 1845.12 The edition of 1499 has lately been reproduced in facsimile by A. M. Huntington, La historia de los nobles caualleros Oliueros de castilla y artus dalgarbe, 1902. A German translation from the French was made by Wilhelm Ziely in 1521, and this was translated into English by Leighton and Barrett, The History of Oliver and Arthur, 1903. From the German prose Hans Sachs took the material for his comedy on the theme (publ. 1556). A summary of Ziely’s work is given by Frölicher, Thüring von Ringoltingen’s “Melusine,” Wilhelm Ziely’s “Olivier und Artus” und “Valentin und Orsus,” 1889, pp. 65 f., which is used by Wilhelmi, pp. 55, 56, in his comparison of the romance with Richars and Lion de Bourges. An Italian translation, presumably from the French, was printed three or four times from 1552 to 1622.13 A summary of the story is given in Mélanges tirés d’une grande bibliothèque, by E. V. 1780, pp. 78 ff., with an incorrect note about the romance, reproduced by Hippe, pp. 155 f., with an analysis from the same source of the part of the tale belonging to our cycle. Robert Laneham in his list of ballads and romances, made in 1575, mentions Olyuer of the Castl. See Furnivall, Captain Cox, his Ballads and Books, Ballad Soc. 1871, vii. xxxvii and 30.