c.1618 portrait of King Richard III of England. Richard is alleged to have required William Hastings to make a short shrift before his execution because Richard was hungry and wanted to get home for dinner. Oil on oak panel. A portrait of a man with a prominent chin wearing royal robes.
4 November 2021
What is a shrift? And why is it short?
Shrift, and the verb to shrive, stem from Old English words for penance and, a bit later, confession. It comes from a common North and West Germanic root relating to writing, presumably relating to forms of penance that were formally prescribed in writing. It is thought that the Germanic languages borrowed the root from the Latin verb scribere (to write). The root is unattested in Gothic, i.e., East Germanic, and that may be because the extant Gothic corpus is so small, or perhaps because Gothic simply did not borrow it from Latin. Only English and the Scandinavian languages have the sense of penance and confession; the other Germanic languages use the root only for senses relating to writing and graphic art.
The Old English noun scrift and the verb scrifan can be found in a penitential handbook from the late eighth century, known as the Pœnitentiale Pseudo-Ecberti. The book was ascribed to Archbishop Ecgberht of York, but is now thought to be by someone else:
Gif hwylc wifman gehadod bið gemænes hades, & heo syððan forhogie ðæne brydguman þe heo ær beweddod wæs, þæt is crist, [&] to woruldlicre idelnesse gecyrð & hiwrædene underfehð, & ðencð þæt heo mid hire æhton & woruldspedon þa æbylignesse gebete þe heo gode abylhð, [nis þæt naht]. Ac ne mæg heo nan þara ðinga gedon þe gode licwyrð[e] beo, ne hire nan preost scrifan ne mot ær heo þæne synscipe forlæte & to criste gecyrre, & syððan hire lif libbe swa hire scrift [hire] tæce.
(If an ordained woman is of a lower holy order, and she afterward neglects the bridegroom to whom she is wedded, that is Christ, and turns to worldly vanity and enters into marriage, and thinks that she, with her wealth and worldly prosperity, can relieve the anger that offends her God, this is an evil thing. But she may not do those things that are pleasing to God, neither can a priest shrive her, nor can she abandon marriage and turn to Christ and afterward live her life as her shrift directs.)
The noun also appears in Cnut’s second code of laws, authored by Wulfstan, archbishop of York between 1020–23:
Forþam a man sceal þam unstrangan men for Godes lufe and ege liþelicor deman and scrifon þonne þam strangan. Forþam ðe ne mæg se unmaga þam magan, we witon full georne, gelice byrðene ahebban, ne se unhala þam halan gelice. And þy we sceolan medmian and gesceadlice todælan ylde and geogoþe, welan and wædle, freot and þeowet, hæle and unhæle. And ægþer man sceal ge on godcundan scriftan ge on woruldcundan doman þas þingc tosceadan.
(For the sake of love and fear of God, one must show greater mercy in imposing judgment and shrift for the weak than for the strong. Because we know full well the weak cannot bear the same burden as the strong, nor the sick as the well. And thus, we must measure and rationally distinguish between the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the free and the slave, the well and the sick. And one must separate these circumstances both in imposing spiritual shrift and worldly judgment.)
This is all very straightforward, but things start to get interesting with the introduction of short shrift in the late sixteenth century. The phrase makes its appearance, with the literal meaning of a quick confession and absolution, in Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles. Holinshed uses short shrift in the context of the execution of William Hastings, First Baron Hastings, who opposed Richard III’s accession to the throne following the death of Edward V, who was one of the two “princes in the Tower” who were murdered at Richard’s command. Richard, then the Duke of Gloucester, had been named Lord Protector after the death of his brother, Edward IV, because Edward V was too young to rule. According to Holinshed, Hastings’s shrift was short, because Richard was hungry and wanted to get home to dinner:
It booted him not to aske why, but heauily tooke a priest at auenture, and made a short shrift for a longer would not be suffered, the Protector made so much hast to dinner, which hee myghte not goe to, till this were done, for sauing of hys othe. So was hee brought forth into the greene beside the Chappell within the Tower, and hys heade layd downe vpon a long logge of tymber, and there stryken off, and afterwarde his bodie with the heade enterred at Windsore besyde the bodie of king Edwarde, whose both soules oure Lorde pardon.
In writing his history plays, Shakespeare relied heavily on Holinshed as a source, and he immortalized short shrift in his Richard III. The play is believed to have been written in 1592, but the first published version, the first quarto, dates to 1597. In his play, Shakespeare gives the phrase to the character of William Catesby, one of Richard’s henchmen:
Dispatch my Lo: the Duke would be at dinner:
Make a short shrift, he longs to see your head.
Short shrift also appears in an anonymous play about Richard III that was published in 1594. The publication date is before Shakespeare’s but after we believe Shakespeare’s play was written and first performed. We don’t know when the anonymous play was written, so either: 1) the anonymous playwright was influenced by Shakespeare; 2) Shakespeare was influenced by the anonymous playwright; or 3) both independently got the phrase from Holinshed. The phrase’s context is the same in the anonymous play, only it is Richard speaking:
If villain, feedest thou me with Ifs & ands, go fetch me a Priest, make a short shrift, and dispatch him quickly For by the blessed Saint Paule I sweare, I will not dine till I see the trayt[e]rs head, away sir Thomas, suffer him not to speak, see him executed straight, & let his copartner the Lord Stanley be carried to prison also, tis not his broke head I haue giuen him, shall exscues him.
So far, the phrase was being used literally, a short confession of sins immediately before one’s death. But in the early nineteenth century the more general sense of a task quickly and easily performed began to appear. And it is another very popular writer, Walter Scott, who promulgates this sense. He uses it in his 1815 poem The Lord of the Isles:
The valiant Clifford is no more;
On Ronald’s broadsword streamed his gore;
But better hap had he of Lorn,
Who, by the foeman backward borne,
Yet gain’d with slender train the port,
Where lay his bark beneath the fort,
And cut the cable loose.
Short were his shrift in that debate,
That hour of fury and of fate,
If Lorn encounter’d Bruce!
And eight years later it again appeared in Scott’s 1823 romance Quentin Durward, but here Scott used it in the literal sense of a short confession before a hanging:
“Now, by our Lady of Embrun!” said the King, “so gross are these accusations, and so free of consciousness am I of aught that approaches them, that, by the honour of a King, I laugh, rather than am wroth at them. My Provost-guard put to death, as is their duty, thieves and vagabonds; and my crown is to be slandered with whatsoever these thieves and vagabonds may have said to our hot cousin of Burgundy and his wise counsellors! I pray you tell my kind cousin, if he loves such companions, he had best keep them in his own estates; for here they are like to meet short shrift and a tight cord.”
But since then, the figurative sense of short shrift has passed into non-literary usage, boosted by its use by two of English literature’s most-read writers.
Sources:
Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, 2009.
Holinshed, Raphael. The Firste Volume of the Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande. London: John Hunne, 1577, 1373. Early English Books Online.
Libermann, Felix. Die Gesetze Der Angelsachsen, vol. 1 of 3. Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1903. 2 Cnut § 68.1, 354. London, British Library, Cotton MS Nero A.i, fols. l6r–41r.
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. shrift, n.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v., shrift, n., shrive, v.
“Pœnitentiale Ecberti” (pseudo). Ancient Laws and Institutes of England, vol. 2 of 2. London: Commissioners of the Public Records, 1840, 187–90. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Laud Misc 482, fols. 7v–8r.
Raith, Josef. Die Altenglische Version des HalitGar’schen Bussbuches (Sog. Pœnitentiale Pseudo-Ecgberti). Bibliothek der Angelsächsischen Prosa 13. Hamburg: Henri Grand, 1933, 24–25. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Laud Misc 482, fols. 7v–8r.
Scott, Walter. The Lord of the Isles. A Poem. Philadelphia: Moses Thomas, 1815, 5.32, 137. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
———. Quentin Durward; a Romance, vol. 1 of 2. Philadelphia: H.C. Carey and I. Lea, 1823, 133. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of King Richard the Third (Quarto 1), 3.4. London: Valentine Sims for Andrew Wise, 1597. London, British Library, Huth MS 47.
The True Tragedie of Richard the Third. London: Thomas Creede, 1594. Early English Books Online.
Wulfstan. 2 Cnut § 68.1. Old English Legal Writings: Wulfstan. Andrew Rabin, ed. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 66. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2020, 288–89. London, British Library, Harley MS 55, fols. 7v–13v and Cotton MS Nero A.i, fols. l6r–41r, and Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 383, 47–72.
Image credit: unknown artist, c.1618. Dulwich Picture Gallery. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a work of art created before 1926.