Marcoat was a minor Gascon

Gascony

Gascony is an area of southwest France that was part of the "Province of Guyenne and Gascony" prior to the French Revolution. The region is vaguely defined and the distinction between Guyenne and Gascony is unclear; sometimes they are considered to overlap, and sometimes Gascony is considered a...

 troubadour

Troubadour

A troubadour was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages . Since the word "troubadour" is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz....

 and joglar who flourished in the mid twelfth century. He is often cited in connexion with Eleanor of Aquitaine

Eleanor of Aquitaine

Eleanor of Aquitaine was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Western Europe during the High Middle Ages. As well as being Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right, she was queen consort of France and of England...

 and is placed in a hypothetical "school" of poetry which includes Bernart de Ventadorn

Bernart de Ventadorn

Bernart de Ventadorn , also known as Bernard de Ventadour or Bernat del Ventadorn, was a prominent troubador of the classical age of troubadour poetry. Now thought of as "the Master Singer" he developed the cançons into a more formalized style which allowed for sudden turns...

, Marcabru

Marcabru

Marcabru is one of the earliest troubadours whose poems are known. There is no certain information about him; the two vidas attached to his poems tell different stories, and both are evidently built on hints in the poems, not on independent information.According to the brief life in MS...

, Cercamon

Cercamon

Cercamon , whose real name, as well as any actual biographical data, is unknown, was one of the earliest troubadours. He was apparently a jester of sorts, born in Gascony, who spent most of his career in the courts of William X of Aquitaine and perhaps of Eble III of Ventadorn...

, Jaufre Rudel

Jaufré Rudel

Jaufre Rudel was the Prince of Blaye and a troubadour of the early–mid 12th century, who probably died during the Second Crusade, in or after 1147...

, Peire Rogier

Peire Rogier

Peire Rogier or Rotgiers was a twelfth-century Auvergnat troubadour and cathedral canon from Clermont. He left his cathedral to become a travelling minstrel before settling down for a time in Narbonne at the court of the Viscountess Ermengard...

, and Peire de Valeria among others. Of all his works, only two sirventes

Sirventes

The sirventes or serventes is a genre of Occitan lyric poetry used by the troubadours. In early Catalan it became a sirventesch and was imported into that language in the fourteenth century, where it developed into a unique didactic/moralistic type...

 survive: Mentre m'obri eis huisel and Una re.us dirai, en Serra.

Marcoat was an innovator building off the work of the contemporary Gascon Marcabru, whose death he recalls in one of his works c. 1150. Nonetheless his works are very simple, the stanzas being comppsed of three heptasyllables rhyming in the form AAB. It was he who first used the term sirventes to describe his poems; the word appears in both of his surviving works, twice in one:

Mentre m'obri eis huisel,

un sirventes escubel

en giteira inz s'arena

. . .

Mon serventes no val plus,

que faitz es de bos moz clus

apren lo, Domeing Sarena.

The meaning of these verses is obscure, as he was an early practitioner of the trobar clus

Trobar clus

Trobar clus , or closed form, was a complex and obscure style of poetry used by troubadours for their more discerning audiences, and it was only truly appreciated by an elite few. It was developed extensively by Marcabru, but by 1200 its inaccessibility led to its disappearance...

 style. According to himself, he wrote vers contradizentz (contradictory verses). He was a model for the later troubadour Raimbaut d'Aurenga.