‘Mirror for Magistrates’ has points of resemblance to Skelton's ‘Bowge of Court,’ and Skelton's early poem on the death of Edward IV was often included in editions of the ‘Mirror for Magistrates,’ of the whole of which it might be regarded as the pattern. Spenser not only developed in his ‘Faerie Queene’ allegory which Skelton may well have suggested, but borrowed from him his title of ‘Colin Clout’ to bestow on the hero of his pastoral poetry.
Of the long list of works in his ‘Garlande of Laurell,’ which Skelton claimed to have composed (ed. Dyce, i. 408–21), very few are extant. Of three morality-plays there mentioned—‘Interlude of Virtue,’ the ‘Comedy Achademiss,’ and ‘Magnificence’—the last alone survives. It ranks with Sir David Lindsay's ‘Satire of the Three Estates’ as one of the two most typical morality-plays in existence. Warton described in detail a fourth morality-play by Skelton, which he says that he found in the possession of the poet William Collins at Chichester. Its title ran, according to Warton, ‘The Nigramansir, a morall Enterlude and a pithie written by Maister Skelton, laureate, and plaid before the King and other estatys at Woodstoke on Palme Sunday.’ It was printed, Warton avers, by Wynkyn de Worde in a thin quarto in 1504. No copy is now known, and no such work is assigned to Skelton by any other writer than Warton. Ritson described as ‘utterly incredible’ Warton's statement that ‘The Nigramansir’ ever existed, but Bliss defended Warton from the insinuation of having invented both the name of the piece and the contents, which he described in detail. In the absence of corroboration, Warton's statement is open to suspicion.
Besides the extant and lost works already described, Skelton's list includes such lost poems as ‘The Tratyse of Triumphs of the Red Rose,’ ‘The balade of the Mustard Tarte,’ an epitaph on himself, ‘Epitomis of the myller and his ioly wake.’
Skelton's works came in separate pamphlets from the presses of Wynkyn de Worde, Richard Pynson, Richard Kele, and other early printers in London. The original editions of almost all are lost, and such early issues as survive are undated. The ‘Bowge of Court’ was printed more than once by Wynkyn de Worde (Cambr. Univ. Libr.); ‘dyuers ballettis and dyties’ (five short occasional poems, with portrait of the author), by Pynson; ‘Agaynste a Comely Coystrowne,’ by Pynson; a ‘replycacion,’ by Pynson; the ‘Garlande of Laurell,’ by Rycharde Faukes in 1523 (Brit. Mus. unique, with portrait); ‘Magnyfycence,’ probably by John Rastell, 1533 (Brit. Mus. and Cambr. Univ. Libr.; reprinted for Roxburghe Club in 1821, and again for the Early English Text Soc., fully edited by Robert Lee Ramsay, Ph.D., in 1908); ‘Phylyp Sparowe,’ by Rychard Kele before 1550 (Huth Libr.), Antony Kytson (Brit. Mus.), Robert Toy, Abraham Veale, John Walley, and John Wyght about 1560 (Brit. Mus.); ‘Colyn Cloute,’ by Thomas Godfrey (Woburn Abbey and Britwell), by Kele before 1550 (Huth Libr.), by Kitson about 1565 (Brit. Mus.), by Veale about 1560 (ib.), by Wyght about 1560 (ib.), and by Walley (Jolley's Cat.); ‘Why come ye not to Courte?’ by Kele about 1530 (with portrait, Brit. Mus. and Huth Libr.), by Kitson, by Veale, by Walley, Robert Toy, and Wyght (Heber's Cat.).
In ‘A Balade of the Scotyshe Kynge,’ apparently printed by Richard Faukes in 1513, Skelton exults over the defeat of the Scots and the death of James IV at Flodden Field. A unique exemplar was discovered in 1878 in a farmhouse at Whaddon, Dorset, in the wooden covers of a copy of the French romance, ‘Huon of Bordeaux’ (Paris, Michel Le Noir, 1513); it is now in the British Museum, and was reprinted in facsimile, with an elaborate introduction by Mr. John Ashton, in 1882. The ballad is one of the earliest extant in English. A more ambitious poem by Skelton on the theme, in varied metres—‘Skelton Laureate against the Scottes’—was included in his ‘Certaine Bokes.’
A separate edition of the ‘Tunnynge’ appeared in 1624 (Huth and Bodl. Libr.), and is reprinted in the ‘Harleian Miscellany’ (ed. Park, vol. i.). As a tract it figured in 1575 in the library of Captain Cox [q. v.] of Coventry, but no separate edition earlier than 1624 is extant (cf. Sir John Oldcastle, pt. i. 1600, 4to, act iv. sc. 4).
Of the poems doubtfully ascribed to Skelton, the epitaph on Jasper, duke of Bedford, was printed by Pynson; a unique copy is in the Pepysian library at Magdalene College, Cambridge. Of the elegy on Henry VII, a unique copy, printed as a broadside (imperfect), is in the Bodleian Library.
An imperfect collected edition of Skelton's works, ‘Certaine Bokes co[m]pyled by Maister Skelton, Poet Laureate,’ was published about 1520 by Richard Lant for Henry Tab. This volume included ‘Speake Parrot,’ ‘The Death of Edward IV,’ ‘A treatyse of the Scottes,’ ‘Ware the Hawke,’ and the ‘Tunnynge’ (Brit. Mus.) It was reprinted by John Kynge and Thomas Marche about 1560, and by John Day, with a few additional verses, about 1570. Warton notes a reissue, by W. Bonham, in 1547. Nothing is now known of a volume, described by Wood as
