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Oftef  a 


•" 


irorlopunt 


ark 


BY 


JOHN   S.  P.  TATLOCK,  PH.D. 

ASSISTANT    PROFESSOR    OF    ENGLISH     IN    THE 
UNIVERSITY   OF    MICHIGAN. 


PUBLISHT  FOR  THE  CHAUCER  SOCIETY 

BY  KEGAN  PAUL,  TRENCH,  TRUBKER  &  CO.,  LIMITED 
DRYDEN  HOUSE,  43,  GERRARD  STREET,  SOHO,  W. 

1907. 


R? 

if  Of 


s,  37. 


PIC-HARD  CLAY  &  sows,  LIMITED,  LONDON  AND  BDNOAY. 


PREFACE. 


THIS  book  was  begun  as  an  examination  into  the  received  chronology 
of  all  Chaucer's  works,  with  a  view  to  ascertaining  how  much  of  it  is 
sound.  There  appeared  on  examination  so  many  unworked  corners,  so 
much  unused  evidence,  and  so  many  of  what  seemed  to  the  writer 
"  vulgar  and  common  errors,"  that  weighing  and  expounding  of  old 
material  had  to  give  large  place  to  destruction  and  construction.  The 
work  expanded  so  much  that  it  became  necessary  to  disregard  most  of 
the  minor  poems,  and  to  discuss  only  those  works  a  decision  as  to  which 
was  necessary  to  other  decisions,  and  those  on  which  the  prevalent 
opinion  seemed  most  erroneous  or  on  which  the  most  new  light  could 
be  thrown.  So  the  book  does  not  profess  to  be  exhaustive,  or  to  afford 
anything  except  the  essential  elements  of  a  general  scheme.  But  neither 
has  its  purpose  been  merely  to  give  the  results  of  wholly  original 
research  ;  rather  by  all  means  available,  and  to  the  extent  of  the  writer's 
ability,  to  ascertain,  advance,  and  present  the  status  quo  of  our  reliable 
knowledge  as  to  when  and  how  Chaucer's  principal  works"  came  to  be 
written.  This  statement  is  made  in  order  to  anticipate  the  possible 
criticism  that  some  sections  contain  little  or  nothing  that  is  new.  Some 
times  the  purpose  of  the  book  has  required  long  investigation  and 
restatement  of  earlier  opinion,  with  the  result  simply  of  confirming  it  ; 
yet  this  does  not  seem  labour  and  space  thrown  away,  for  thorough  con 
firmation  of  earlier  guesses  or  brief  statements  is  of  the  nature  of  an 
addition  to  knowledge. 

It  may  be  proper  to  state  here  that  the  writer  has  nearly  ready  for 
publication  another  volume,  on  the  evolution  of  the  Canterbury  Tales, 
and  is  only  awaiting  complete  information  as  to  the  arrangement,  and 
some  readings,  of  the  numerous  manuscripts  in  private  hands  in  various 
parts  of  Great  Britain.  In  this  second  book  he  hopes  to  throw  some 
new  light  on  the  supposed  nine  groups  of  tales,  on  the  arrangement  of 
the  poem,  and  on  the  questions  whether  and  how  far  Chaucer  revised 
it,  whether  and  how  far  he  published  it  during  his  lifetime,  and  finally 
how  it  came  into  the  shape  in  which  we  find  it  in  the  manuscripts.  In 
particular  he  has  made  a  thorough  collation  of  MS.  Harleian  7334  with 
ten  of  the  most  important  others,  with  a  view  to  discovering  whether 
its  peculiarities  are  due  to  corrections  made  by  the  poet  himself. 

In  conclusion,  the  writer  is  glad  to  express  a  strong  sense  of  obligation 
to  others.  First  of  all,  to  the  two  most  distinguished  living  Chaucer 
scholars,  the  Rev.  Professor  Skeat  and  Dr.  Frederick  J.  Furnivall. 
Without  the  great  edition  produced  by  the  former,  with  its  invaluable 
commentary,  any  sound  work  on  Chaucer  must  be  far  more  difficult  and 

v 


VI  PREFACE. 

less  extensive  ;  without  Dr.  Furnivall's  prolonged  and  self-sacrificing 
labours  on  the  manuscripts  it  must  be  impossible.  All  accurate 
philological  and  historical,  which  implies  also  all  sound  literary,  study 
of  Chaucer  had  its  new  birth,  after  Tyrwhitt,  in  two  events,  the 
publication  in  1862  of  Professor  Child's  Observations  on  the  Language 
of  Chaucer,  and  Dr.  Furnivall's  launching  of  the  Chaucer  Society  in  1863. 
To  him,  as  representing  it,  I  am  bound  again  for  its  liberal  dealing  with 
this  book.  We  may  hope,  after  the  recent  second  renascence  of  fruitful 
study  of  Chaucer,  that  oftener  than  ever  the  society  dedicated  to  him  will 
perform  its  trentals  in  his  memory.  With  the  passing  away  of  the  older 
generation  of  German  Chaucerians,  such  as  ten  Brink  and  Zupitza, 
Anglo-Saxons  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  are  showing  more  interest 
in  the  father  of  their  poetry. 

But  I  have  other  and  still  more  personal  obligations.  The  material 
on  which  is  based  my  treatment  of  the  two  versions  of  the  Troilus  and 
Criseyde  is  mainly  the  unpublished  work  of  Professor  W.  S.  McCormick, 
of  Edinburgh  ;  which,  since  it  was  done  for  the  Chaucer  Society,  I  have 
had  Dr.  Furnivall's  authorization  to  use.  To  Professor  George  Hempl, 
of  Leland  Stanford  University,  I  return  thanks  for  handing  over  to  me 
unpublished  work  of  his  own  on  the  same  subject.  I  have  often  been 
indebted  to  Dr.  George  L.  Hamilton,  of  the  University  of  Michigan,  and 
to  his  wide  knowledge  of  mediaeval  literature.  To  Professor  George  L. 
Kittredge,  under  whose  supervision  in  Harvard  University  much  of  this 
work  was  done,  my  obligations  are  not  easy  to  express ;  in  particular, 
whatever  merit  there  may  be  in  my  manner  of  treating  the  two  versions 
of  the  Troilus  is  due  to  him.  I  have  been  bound  to  him  for  proposing 
and  making  the  way  plain  for  an  undertaking  which  seemed  at  first  a 
trifle  audacious  ;  for  his  keen  insight  and  his  inexhaustible  liberality, 
with  which  all  his  pupils  are  so  familiar ;  and  above  all  for  what  I  can 
only  call  the  education  of  my  point  of  view. 


INTRODUCTION. 


THE  early  history  of  Chaucer  criticism  illustrates  the  pseudo-classical 
indifference  to  everything  except  literary  right  and  wrong,  and  later  the 
curiosity  about  the  past  which  came  in  with  romanticism  and  the  serious 
attempt  to  understand  it  which  came  with  the  beginnings  of  the  modern 
scientific  spirit.  Till  the  last  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century  there 
was  scarcely  any  non-aesthetic  Chaucer  criticism,  and  since  the  reign  of 
Elizabeth  there  had  been  a  tendency  not  to  take  him  very  seriously  under 
any  aspect.  Some  of  the  early  editors  showed  more  discernment  than 
others  as  to  the  works  which  they  accepted  as  canonical,  and  that  was  all. 
Even  Warton's  treatment  of  the  poet  (1778),  which  marks  the  transition, 
was  mainly  descriptive  and  appreciative  ;  he  did  a  large  amount  of  re 
search  on  the  sources,  but  nothing  on  the  chronology  and  development 
of  Chaucer's  literary  work,  and  he  wholly  disregards  them  in  his 
account  of  the  poet.  A  worthy  and  thorough  Chaucer  criticism  began 
with  Thomas  Tyrwhitt's  edition  of  the  Canterbury  Tales  (1775-8). 
Although  his  work  was  chiefly  on  them,  and  although  he  did  little 
on  the  subject  of  chronology,  his  other  results  have  frequently  so 
important  a  bearing  on  it,  and  his  taste  and  judgment  were  so 
admirable,  that  he  deserves  to  head  the  list  of  critics.  But  he  needs 
no  praise  of  mine  ;  every  later  editor  and  critic  who  deserves  the  name 
has  been  glad  to  honour  him. 

For  further  noteworthy  advances  we  have  to  wait  nearly  a  century. 
But  during  the  last  forty  years,  to  say  nothing  of  numberless  mono 
graphs  and  articles,  mentioned  in  their  proper  places  in  the  present 
work,  some  dozen  books  have  treated  Chaucer's  literary  evolution  and 
chronology  with  system  and  more  or  less  independence,  or  have  made 
other  wide  and  general  contributions  to  an  understanding  of  the  subject- 
Passing  over  the  work  of  Henry  Bradshaw,1  former  librarian  of  Cam 
bridge  University,  important  in  other  directions  than  that  of  chron 
ology,  we  come  to  the  most  influential  book  ever  written  on  the  subject, 
Bernhard  ten  Brink's  Chaucer  Studien,2  the  starting-point  of  systematic 
work  on  Chaucer's  development.  To  it  are  due  the  division  of  his  literary 
life  into  periods  and  a  good  part  of  the  dates  usually  accepted.  It  never 
reached  the  subject  of  the  Canterbury  Tales,  and  many  of  its  results 
are  unreliable ;  but  its  value  is  permanent.  Ten  Brink's  second  book 

1  See  Memoir  of  Henry  Bradshaw,  by  G.  W.  Prothero  (London,  1888),  pp. 
212-25,  346-59,  etc.  ;   and  Collected  Papers  of  Henry  Bradshaw  (Cambridge, 
1889),  pp.  102-48. 

2  Chaucer.  Studien  zur  Geschichte  seiner  Entwicklung  und  zur  Chronoloyie  seiner 
Schtiften,  von  Bernhard  ten  Brink :   erster  Theil  (Miinster,  1870) ;  the   second 
part  never  appeared. 

vii 


Vlll  INTRODUCTION. 

which  bears  on  the  subject  is  his  Geschichte  der  Englischen  Litteratur,1 
where  he  deals  fully  with  Chaucer,  and  (guardedly)  with  his  chronology. 

The  work  of  Dr.  Frederick  J.  Furnivall  on  Chaucer-chronology  is  less 
important  than  his  work  in  other  directions.  The  Temporary  Preface 
to  the  Six-Text  Edition  of  Chaucer's  Canterbury  Tales2  deals  chiefly  with 
the  construction,  interpretation,  and  manuscripts  of  the  poem.  The 
Trial  Forewords  to  My  "Parallel-Text  Edition  of  CJiaucer's  Minwr 
Poems  "  3  deals  at  some  length  with  the  dates  of  a  few  poems,  and  more 
summarily  with  those  of  all ;  but  Dr.  Furnivall  offered  little  new  and 
reliable  evidence. 

Mr.  F.  G.  Fleay,  in  his  small  Guide  to  Chaucer  and  Spenser,*  discusses 
chronology  and  the  like.  His  manner  is  primitive  and  amateurish,  but 
sometimes  not  a  little  suggestive.  In  particular  he  has  some  premature 
but  laudable  conjectures  as  to  the  development  and  arrangement  of  the 
Canterbury  Tales,  and  also  on  the  order  in  which  they  were  written. 

The  next  book  to  be  mentioned  is  Dr.  John  Koch's  Chronology  of 
Chaucer's  Writings.5  His  most  important  contribution  to  Chaucer 
chronology  is  the  date  1381-2  for  the  Parliament  of  Fowls,  which 
he  had  announced  many  years  before.6  The  Chronology,  though  a 
convenient  resume  of  earlier  views,  was  less  illuminating  and  judicious 
than  might  have  been  desired. 

In  1892,  in  his  Studies  in  Chaucer?  Professor  Thomas  R.  Lounsbury 
waged  vivacious  war  against  prevalent  misapprehensions,  endeavoured 
to  put  the  poet  in  his  proper  relation  to  literary  history,  and  incidentally 
collected  a  large  amount  of  known  facts  and  added  not  a  few  new  ones. 
The  value  of  the  work,  great  though  it  is,  cannot  always  be  called 
proportionate  to  its  bulk,  and  at  times  it  shows  a  tendency  to  represent 
Chaucer  as  a  modern  exiled  among  barbarous  ancients.  It  rarely  deals 
with  chronology  directly,  but  it  is  indispensable  to  any  student  of 
Chaucer's  literary  evolution. 

Mr.  A,  W.  Pollard,  in  1893,  contributed  to  a  series  of  Literature 
Primers8  one  on  Chaucer;  in  1903  he  republished  it,  with  slight 
changes.  This  is  another,  and  especially  convenient,  summary  of 
earlier  work,  treated  with  justifiable  conservatism,  but  with  many 
modifications  and  additions. 

Professor  W.  W.  Skeat,  in  the  great  Oxford  Chaucer,9  deals  with  the 

1  Berlin,    1877;    second  edition,   edited  by  Alois  Brandl,   Strasburg,   1893 
English  translations  (respectively)  1883  and  1896. 

2  Chaucer  Society  ;  London,  1868. 

3  Ibid.,  1871. 

4  London  and  Glasgow,  1877. 

5  Chaucer  Society  ;  dated  1890,  but  evidently  not  published  till  1892,  since  he 
refers  to  ten  Brink's  death. 

6  In  Enylische  Studien,  I.  288 ;  reprinted  in  the  Chaucer  Society  Essays,  pp. 
400-9. 

7  Harper  and  Bros.,  New  York ;  3  volumes. 

8  Published  by  Macmillan  and  Company. 

9  The   Complete    Works  of  Geoffrey  Chaucer,  Oxford,  1894;  6  vols.,  with  a 
supplementary  one  (1897). 


INTRODUCTION.  IX 

chronology  of  all  Chaucer's  works.  He  accepts  nearly  all  the  results 
of  ten  Brink,  Koch,  and  other  writers,  and  in  many  cases  simply 
repeats  (without  needed  revisions)  what  he  had  himself  published  in 
his  earlier  editions  of  parts  of  Chaucer's  writings.  He  is  not  always 
careful  of  consistency,  and  frequently  draws  conclusions  without  full 
examination  of  the  evidence.  The  greatest  value  of  his  edition  lies  in 
its  notes  and  indices.  In  his  Chaucer  Canon 1  he  gives  a  conjectural 
chronological  table. 

Dr.  F.  J.  Mather,  in  a  school-edition  of  The  Prologue,  the  Knight's 
Tale,  and  the  Nun's  Priest's  Tale,  from  Chaucer's  Canterbury  Talest2  has 
given  us  an  interesting  and  valuable  study  of  Chaucer's  literary 
development.  Since  he  embodies  the  latest  results,  some  of  them  his 
own,  and  has  gone  at  the  whole  matter  afresh  in  a  critical  spirit,  his 
book  has  more  significance  than  its  unpretending  form  would  suggest. 

The  editors  of  the  excellent  Globe  Chaucer 3  have  generally  expressed 
themselves  on  the  subject  of  chronology.  They  are  always  judicious 
and  sometimes  original.  The  most  important  work  is  that  by  Mr. 
Pollard  and  Professor  McCormick. 

Among  recent  work  most  important  of  all,  Professor  J.  L.  Lowes 
has  thrown  much  new  light  on  the  chronology  of  Chaucer's  middle 
period  in  two  long  articles  in  the  Publications  of  the  Modern  Language 
Association  of  America.4'  I  am  able  to  accept  by  no  means  all  his 
conclusions,  which  depart  widely  from  earlier  views,  but  his  new  facts, 
the  product  of  careful  and  penetrating  investigation,  are  an  addition  to 
Chaucer  knowledge  of  high  and  permanent  value. 

Finally,  Professor  R.  K.  Root  has  just  published,  after  most  of  the 
present  work  was  in  type,  the  best  handbook  on  Chaucer  yet  written.5 
It  is  an  excellent  guide  to  understanding  and  appreciation,  and  a  good, 
though  rather  conservative,  rationale  of  chronology  and  the  like. 

It  may  be  convenient  if  I  give  a  condensed  summary  of  previous 
opinion  as  to  the  dates  of  Chaucer's  principal  works.  It  may  strike  a 
reader  that  later  in  this  book  some  changes  are  suggested  where  hitherto 
there  has  been  notable  unanimity  of  opinion.  But  this  unanimity 
sometimes  ceases  to  be  impressive  when  one  sees  on  what  slight  grounds 
of  evidence  it  has  been  based. 

1  Oxford,  1900;  see  pp.  154-5. 

2  Boston,  1899. 

3  The  Works  of  Geoffrey  Chaucer,  edited  by  Alfred  W.  Pollard,  H.  Frank  Heath, 
Mark  H.  Liddell,  and  Wi  S.  McCormick  ;  London,  1901. 

4  Vol.  xix.  pp.  593-683;  vol.  xx.  749-864.     His  conclusions  are  summarized 
on  pp.  860-4  of  the  second  article. 

6  The  Poetry  of  Chaucer,  Boston,  1906. 


INTRODUCTION. 


Romance  of  the  Rose. 

Extant  text  not  genuine ;  Chaucer's 

translation  about  1377-80  (ten 

Brink). 
Extant  translation  not  genuine  ; 

Chaucer's  translation  1366-7  (?) 

(Koch). 
Not  genuine,  "with  the  possible 

exception     of "     Fragment     A 

(Kittredge).1 
Doubtful  if  any  of  the  extant  text 

is  genuine ;    Chaucer's  version 

"early  in  life  "(Mather). 
Fragment  A  (only)  genuine  ;  very 

early  (Skeat).2 
Fragment  A  may  be  genuine,  B 

not,  C  possibly  (Liddell).3 
Extant  text  probably  not  genuine  ; 

Chaucer's  version  early  (Pollard). 
Fragment  A   genuine,  B  not,   C 

perhaps  ;  done  in  youth  (Root). 

ABC. 

(1)1 367.  (Furni  vail). 
About  1373  (ten  Brink). 
(?)  1368  (Koch). 
Before  1373  (Mather). 
Very  early  (Skeat  and  Eoot). 
1369  or  a  little  later  (Heath). 
Before  1380  (Pollard). 

Complaint  to  Pity. 

(?)  1367-8  (Furnivall). 

Probably  1370-2  (ten  Brink). 

(?)  1373-4  (Koch). 

Before  1373  (Mather). 

1372-3  or  later  (Skeat). 

1369-71  (Heath). 

Before   1380,  perhaps  after   1372 

(Pollard). 
Very  early  (Root). 

Book  of  the  Duchess. 

1369  (Furnivall,  Mather,  Skeat). 
1369-70  (ten  Brink,  Koch, Pollard, 

Root). 
Soon  after  1369  (Heath). 


Complaint  of  Mars. 

(?)  1375  (Furnivall). 
1379  (Koch). 
1387-1400  (Mather). 
(?)  1379  (Skeat). 
After  1378-9  (Heath). 
"Probably     towards     1380" 
(Pollard). 

Boethius. 

(?)  1376  (Furnivall). 
About   1381  (ten  Brink). 
(?)  1377  (Koch). 
1373-8  (Mather). 
1377-81  (Skeat). 
Rather  early  (Liddell). 
1380-3  (Pollard). 
About  1382-3  (Lowes). 
About  1380  (Root). 

Troilus  and  Criseyde. 
(?)  1382  (Furnivall). 
1380-81  (Koch). 
1378-81  (Mather). 
1379-83  (Skeat). 
1380-3  (Pollard). 
Perhaps  1383-5  (Lowes). 
Not  far  from  1380  (Root). 

House  of  Fame. 
(?)  1384  (Furnivall). 
1384  (ten  Brink,  Mather). 
1383-4  (Koch,  Skeat,  Pollard). 
Begun   some  years  before    1383  ; 
finished  after  the  Troilus  (Heath). 
About  1379  (Lowes). 
1378-85  (Root). 

Parliament  of  Fowls. 

(?)  1374  (Furnivall). 

1382   (ten   Brink,  Koch,  Mather, 

Skeat,   Heath,  Pollard,  Lowes, 

Root). 
About  1375  (Hales).4 

Anelida  and  Arcite. 

(?)  1375-6  (Furnivall). 

Not  long  after  1390  (ten  Brink). 


1  Harvard  Studies  and  Notes,  I.  65. 

2  I  ordinarily  quote  Skeat  from  his  Chaucer  Canon,  and  others  from  their  latest 
expression  of  opinion. 

3  The  views  of  Professors  Liddell   and  Heath  are  quoted  from  the   Globe 
Chaucer. 

4  Diet.  Nat.  Biogr.,  x.  164. 


INTRODUCTION. 


XI 


(?)  1383-4  (Koch). 

1378-81,  after  Troilus  (Mather). 

1372-7  (Skeat). 

About  1380  (Pollard). 

Before  1382  (Lowes). 

Soon  after  1380  (Root). 

Palamon  and  Arcite. 
After  1374  (ten  Brink). 
(?)  1375-6  (Koch). 
About  1381  (Mather). 
Shortly  before  1385  (Pollard). 
About  1382  (Lowes). 
About  1380-2  (Root). 

Legend  of  Good  Women. 
(1)   1385,   the  Prologue;  the  rest 

probably      at     various     times 

(Furnivall). 
1385;  G-Prologue  ''hardly  before 

1393  "  (ten  Brink).1 
1384-5,  the  Prologue  and  some  of 

the  Legends ;  2 ad  Prologue,  1385 

(Koch). 
1385  (Mather). 
1385-6  (Skeat). 
1384-5  (Pollard). 
F -Prologue,  1386  ;  Legends  about 

1379  and  later ;  G-Prologue,  1394 

(Lowes). 
1385-6  (Root). 

Canterbury  Tales  begun. 

(?)  1386  (Furnivall). 
About  1390  (ten  Brink). 

1385  (Koch). 
Probably  1387  (Mather). 

1386  (Skeat). 
After  1385  (Pollard). 

1387  (Root). 

General  Prologue. 

(?)  1388  (Furnivall). 
(?)  1385  (Koch). 
1387  or  later  (Mather). 
1386  or  later  (Skeat). 
After  1385  (Pollard). 


Man  of  Law's  Tale. 

1390  or  soon  after  (ten  Brink). 

(?)  1386-7  (Koch). 

1385-1400 ;    possibly    earlier 

(Mather). 
1373-7  (Skeat). 
1370-80  (Pollard). 
Before  1390  (Root). 

Melibeus. 

1386-7  (Koch). 

1373-8  (Mather). 

1372-7,  revised  later  (Skeat). 

After  1385  (Pollard). 

Monk's  Tale. 

(?)  1386-7  (Koch). 
1373-8  (Mather). 
1369-73  (Skeat). 
1373-80  (Pollard). 
Early  (Root). 

Physician's  Tale. 

About  1388  (ten  Brink). 
(?)  1386-7  (Koch). 
After  1382-5  (Skeat). 
After  1385  (Pollard). 
Before  1387  (Root). 

Clerk's  Tale. 

About  1388  (ten  Brink). 
(?)  1386-7  (Koch). 
1385-1400  (Mather). 
About  1372-3  (Skeat). 
1373-80  (Pollard). 

Second  Nun's  Tale  ("  Life  of 
St.  Cecelia"). 

(?)  1373  (Furnivall). 
About  1373  (ten  Brink). 
(?)  1373-4  (Koch). 
Shortly  after  1373  (Mather). 
1369-73  (Skeat). 
1370-4  (Pollard). 
1373-4  (Root). 


Enyl.  Stud.,  xvii.  20. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

PREFACE          v 

INTRODUCTION vii 

CHAPTER 

v  I.  THE  TROILUS  AND  GRISEYDE 

§  1.  The  Two  Versions      .                                  ...  1 

§  2.  The  Date  (1377)       .......  15 

•¥  II.  CERTAIN  MINOR  POEMS 

§  1.  The  House  of  Fame  (about  1379)         ....  34 

§  2.  The  Parliament  of  Fowls  (1381)     .  41 

III.  POEMS  DEPENDENT  ON  THE  TESEIDE 

§  1.  The  Palamon  and  Arcite :  Its  Original  Metre             .  45 

§  2.  The  Knight's  Tale :  How  Far  Altered      ...  66 

§  3.  The  Knight's  Tale:  The  Date  (1384-6)       ...  70 

§  4.  The  Andida  and  Arcite  (about  1383-4) ...  83 

IV.  THE  LEGEND  OF  GOOD  WOMEN 

§  1.  The  Two  Prologues:  The  Question  of  Priority  -       .  86 

§  2.  Its  Connection  with  the  Queen         ....  102 
§  3.  The  Legends  and  the  Date  (1386-7)     .        .         .        .121 

V.  THE  CANTERBURY  TALES 

§  1.  The  Canterbury  Tales  as  a  Whole  (1387-1400)    .         .  131 

§  2.  The  General  Prologue  (1387) 142 

§  3.  The  Physician's  Tale  (1388) 150 

§  4.  The  Clerk's  Tale  (after  1387) 156 

§  5.  The  Monk's  Tale  (after  1387) 164 

§  6.  The  Man  of  Law's  Tale  (1390-4)     ....  172 

§  7.  The  Tale  of  Melibeus  (1388-94)           ....  188 
§  8.  The  Wife  of  Bath's  Prologue  (1388-94)  and  Tale,  the 
Shipman's    Tale    (1388-93),   the   Merchant's    Tale 

(before  1395) 198 

APPENDICES  : — 

A.  The  Date  of  Gower's  Mirour  de  VOmme  (1375-81)         .  220 

B.  The  Knight's  Tale  and  the  Teseide  :  Tables         .         .226 

C.  Chaucer's  Treatment  of  the  Teseide         ...  .231 

xiii 


Center 


NOTICE. 

DURING  the  years  1903-6,  the  Society's  Editors  did  not 
enable  it  to  issue  any  Text  except  the  short  No.  36,  the  Four- 
Days  Journey  from  London  to  Canterbury  and  back  of  the 
Aragonese  Ambassadors  in  1415.  But  several  Subscribers 
generously  continued  to  pay  their  Subscriptions,  so  that  the 
Society  has  now  rather  more  than  £800  in  hand  to  pay  for  its 
issues  of  1903,  1904,  1905,  1906  and  1907,  five  years.  These 
issues  will  be  dated  1907  or  1908,  &c.,  the  year  in  which 
they  are  sent  out,  but  about  £200  worth  of  work  will  be 
assigned  to  each  of  the  back  years  in  which  no  Text  was  issued. 
The  present  volume,  Prof.  Tatlock's  Development  and  Chronology 
of  Chaucer  s  Works,  will  be  taken  as  the  second  Text  for  1903. 
It  is  hoped  that  Prof.  McCormick  will  soon  issue  two  vols.  for 
1904,  and  Miss  Spurgeon  and  Miss  Fox  one — the  Chaucer 
Allusions,  1360-1900,  Pt.  I— for  1905,  with  Prof.  Syphard's 
work  on  The  Hous  of  Fame,  which  has  been  for  some  months 
in  the  printers'  hands.  So  far  as  is  possible,  the  money  paid 
in  for  every  year  will  be  spent  on  Texts  for  that  year;  and 
these  Texts  will  be  sent  to  the  payers  of  the  money. 


The  Announcements  as  to  the  issues  for  1907  on  the  cover 
of  Prof.  Tatlock's  volume  will  be  alterd,  in  future  Texts,  so  as 
to  correspond  with  the  Notice  above. 

F.   J.   FURNIVALL. 

June  14,  1907. 


Jmlopupit  mid 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  TEOILUS  AND  CRISEYDE. 
§  1.     The  Two  Versions. 

THE  first  suggestion  that  there  are  two  genuine  versions  of 
Chaucer's  Troilus  and  Criseyde  was  made  by  Dr.  Furnivall, 
who  in  the  Chaucer  Society's  Parallel-Text  Print  of  Chaucer's 
Troilus  and  Criseyde  (London,  1881,  p.  195)  indicates  that  a 
certain  difference  among  the  MSS.  as  to  arrangement  may  be  due 
to  the  poet  himself.  Professor  W.  S.  McCormick,  in  a  paper  read 
before  the  London  Philological  Society,  Dec.  6,  1895,  and  briefly 
reported  in  the  Academy,  Dec.  21  (no.  1233,  p.  552),  supported 
the  idea  with  greater  definiteness,  and  illustrated  it  by  eleven 
printed  pages  containing  five  or  six  hundred  various  readings  from 
the  sixteen  MSS.  and  Caxton's  and  Thynne's  editions.1  When  he 
wrote  his  introduction  to  the  Troilus  in  the  Globe  Cliaucer  (London, 
1901,  pp.  xli-xliii),  he  had  come  to  believe  in  three  versions,  each 
represented  by  one  of  the  three  families  into  which  he  regards  the 
MSS.  as  falling;  the  second  containing  "more. than  one  partial 
revision,"  and  the  third  being  "a  later  copy,  either  carelessly 
corrected  by  the  author,  or  collated  by  some  hand  after  Chaucer's 
death."  His  introduction  to  the  Troilus  MSS.,  announced  by  the 
Chaucer  Society  in  1894  as  at  press,  in  which  he  may  be  expected 
to  deal  with  the  whole  subject  more  authoritatively  than  any  one 
else  can  do,  has  never  appeared,  and  he  has  nowhere  in  print 
defended  or  even  expressed  his  views  in  any  detail.2 

1  He  indicates  cases  where  one  reading  is  nearer  than  another  to  the  Italian 
or  Latin  original. 

2  The  probability  of  a  revision  is  recognized  also  by  Dr.  F.  J.  Mather 
(Furnivall  Miscellany,  p.  309;    Chaucer's  Prologue,  etc.,  Boston,  1899,  p. 
xix) ;   by  Dr.  G.  L.  Hamilton  ( The  Indebtedness  of  Chaucer  to  Guido,  New 
York,  1903,  p.  149);  as  well  as  by  Dr.  John  Koch  in  his  review  of  the  Globe 
Chaucer,  Engl.  Stud,  xxvii.  12  (cf.  Chronology,  p.  36), 

PEV.  CH.  B 


2  THE    TROILUS   AND   CRISEYDE.  [CH.  I,  §  1 

That  Chaucer  should  at  some  time  or  other  have  revised  the 
Troilus  is  far  from  being  improbable  a  priori,  even  though  revision 
was  not  his  custom.1  Of  his  longer  poems  it  is  the  most  carefully 
studied  and  the  only  completed  one,  a  work  on  which  he  must  have 
spent  some  of  his  closest  meditation,  so  mature  that  he  could  never 
have  grown  beyond  it,  as  he  grew  beyond  some  of  his  other  works. 
He  shows  solicitude  about  the  purity  of  its  text  (as  we  say  now) 
in  book  V.  1793-8,  and  in  the  lines  to  Adam.  It  seems  highly 
natural  that  when  it  befell  his  scrivener  to  write  Troilus  anew, 
Chaucer  should  not  always  have  allowed  him  quite  to  reproduce  the 
old  copy. 

The  question  cannot  be  wholly  settled  till  the  relations  of  the 
MSS.  are  clearer  than  they  are  now,  but  a  strong  probability  can  be 
established  by  the  use  of  Professor  McCormick's  table  of  variants 
already  mentioned,  and  of  the  seven  MSS.  published  by  the 
Chaucer  Society.  I  have  been  fortunate  also  in  being  able  to  refer 
to  certain  unpublished  researches  of  Professor  Kittredge's  on  the 
relations  among  the  MSS. 

It  is  necessary  first  to  discuss  the  principal  MSS.  concerned.  It 
is  impossible  to  construct  a  genealogy  for  them,  but  their  relations 
have  been  sufficiently  determined  to  insure  fairly  reliable  results. 
These  MSS.  are  the  following  : 

Ph— Phillipps  8252  Jo— St.  John's  Coll.,  Cambridge  4 

H4— Harleian  2392  Cp— Corpus  Christi  Coll.,  Camb.4 

Gg— Cambridge,  Gs:,  4.  27  2  Hj— Harleian  2280  2 

H2— Harleian^3943  3  Cl— Campsall 2 

Ph  is  a  late  MS.,  and  (according  to  Skeat)  not  of  much  value ;  5 
J&4  is  a  late,  not  very  correct,  paper  MS.  ;  H2  does  not  seem  to  be 
very  good.  Jo  is  called  by  Skeat  "a  fair  MS.,  perhaps  earlier 
than  1450";  Cl,  written  on  vellum  before  1 41 3  for  Henry  V.  while 
Prince  of  Wales,  he  pronounces  one  of  the  best,  derived  from 
a  still  better;  Cp  is  also  an  excellent  MS.,  fairly  early,  and  prob 
ably  once  in  the  possession  of  John  of  Gaunt's  granddaughter, 
Anne  Neville,  Duchess  of  Buckingham ;  H:  Skeat  considers  third 

1  The  revision  of  the  Prologue  to  the  Legend  of  Good   Women  I  shall  try 
to  show  later  was  due  to  a  peculiar  reason. 

2  In  A  Parallel-Text  Print  of  Chaucer's  T.  and  C.  (Ch.  Soc.,  1881). 

3  In  W.  M.  Rossetti's  parallel-text  edition  of  the  T.  C.  and  the  Filostrato 
(Ch.  Soc.,  1873). 

4  In  Three  More  Parallel- Texts  of  C.'s  T.  and  0.  (Ch.  Soc.,  1894). 

5  See  his  Chaucer,  II.  Ixvii.  ff.  ;  and  his  Piers  Plowman,  II.  Ixx. 


CH.  I,  §  1]  THE    TWO    VERSIONS.  3 

best.  The  first  four  MSS.  in  the  table  Professor  Kittredge  says  are 
proved  to  belong  at  least  in  part  to  the  same  family  of  MSS.  by 
common  corruptions  which  unite  them  by  twos  and  threes.  But 
the  relations  of  all  the  MSS.  are  very  complicated,  and  were 
frequently  disturbed  by  contamination.1  The  only  sure  footing  in 
this  quagmire,  but  a  very  satisfactory  reliance,  is  the  almost  com 
plete  agreement  of  the  three  last  excellent  MSS.,  two  of  which  seem 
to  have  been,  once  in  the  possession  of  members  of  the  royal  family. 
This  group  I  shall  call  (2);  the  other  five,  though,  singly  or  several 
at  once,  they  often  agree  with  (2),  may  be  grouped  as  (1).  It 
should  be  added  that  Ph  is  McCormick's  main  reliance  for  his  first 
version;  the  next  four  he  .assigns-  partly  to  the  first  and  partly  to 
the  second  redaction ;  and  the  last  three  wholly  to  the  third.2 

The  most  important  various  readings  are  those  where  one 
alternative  is  distinctly  nearer  than  the  other  to  the  Italian  original, 
of  which  I  give  some  ten  from  McCormick's  lists : 

I.  111.          With  chere  and  vois  ful  pitous,  and  wepinge,'    Ph,  H2 
E  con  voce  e  con  vista  assai  pietosa 

With  pitous  vois,  and  tendrely  wepinge,       Gg,  Jo,  (2) 

IF.  734-5.    Men  loven  women  al  this  toun  aboute  ;        Ph,  H2,  Gg 
Be  they  the  wers  1  why,  nay,  withouten  doute. 
lo  non  conosco  in  questa  terra  ancora 
Vcruna  senza  amante,  e  la  pih  yente 

s'innamora     .     ,     .     ; 

E  come  gli  altrifar  non  e  peccato. 

Men  loven  wommen  al  biside  hir  leve, 

And  whan  hem  lyst  namore  lat  hem  leve.     H4,  Jo,  (2) 

IV.  57-9.     To  Priamus  was  yeye  at  gret  requeste         Ph,  II2,  (2) 3 
A  tyme  of  trewe,  and  tho  they  gonrien  trete 
Hir  prisoneres  to  chaungen,  moste  and  leste. 

Chiese  Priamo  triegua,  efugli  data  ; 

E  cominciossi  a  trattare  infra  loro 

Di  permutar  prigioni  quella  fiata. 

1  As  is  abundantly  proved  by  McCormick's  tables  ;  and  cf.  Globe  Chaitcsr, 
p.  xli.     The  contamination,  it  seems  to  me,  may  sometimes  have  taken  place 
as  follows :  a  scribe  with  a  good  verbal  memory,  having  already  copied  the 
poem  once  or  more  from  one  redaction,  when  he  came  to  copy  it  again  from 
another,  might  easily  at  times  insert  the  older  reading  which  he  chanced  to 
have  in  mind.     In  various  Chaucer  MSS.  there  is  good  evidence  that  the 
scribes  did  become  familiar  with  Chaucer's  poetry  at  large.     But  this  sort  of 
contamination  would  be  quite  impossible  to  trace. 

2  For  full  information  on  the  MSS.  see  Skeat  II.  Ixvii.  ff.  and  Globe,  xli.  f. 
:{  This  is  the  only  case  where  (2)  has  what  looks  like  an  earlier  reading.  See 

p.  11  below. 


4  THE   TROILUS   AND   CRISEYDE.  [CH.  I,  §  1 

But  natheles  a  trewe  was  ther  take 

At  gret  requeste,  and  tho  they  gonnen  trete 

Of  prisoners  a  chaunge  for  to  make.  H4,  Jo 

IV.  246-8.  His  eyen  two,  for  piete  of  herte, 

So  wepen  that  they  semen  welles  tweye ;  Ph,  Gg 

The  heighe  sobbes     ....  H2,  Jo,  (2) 

I  miseri  occhi  per  pieta  del  core 

Forte  piangeano,  e  parean  due  fontane     . 
Gli  alti  singhiozzi    .     .     . 

His  eyen  two,  for  pitee  of  his  herte, 

Outstremeden  as  swifte  welles  tweye ;  H2,  Jo,  (2) 

Therwith  the  sobbes     ...  Gg  * 

IV.  258.       That  wel  unnethe  the  body  may  suffyse  Ph,  Gg 

Che' I  capo  e  7  petto  appena  gli  bastava 

That  wonder  is  the  body  may  suffyse  H2,  Jo,  (2) 

IV.  736-763.  Lines  750-6  immediately  after  735,  and  750  reads: 
''The  salte  teres  from  hir  yen  tweyne,"  with  other  important 
variants  in  747,  752,  757,  762-3,— Ph,  Gg,  Jo.  Order  and  readings 
as  in  Skeat — H2,  (2).  (The  first  order  is  Boccaccio's,  but  the  second 
agrees  better  with  735.) 

IV.  882.       As  he  that  shortly  shapeth  him  to  deye.  (1) 

II  qual  del  tutto  in  duol  ne  vuol  morire 

For  verray  wo  his  wit  is  al  aweye.  (2) 2 

IV.  1214.     And  he  answerde,  "  Herte  myn,  Criseyde,"  Ph,  Gg,  Jo 
A  cui  il  disse :  "  Dolce  mio  disiro" 

And  he  answerde,  "  Lady  myn,  Criseyde,"  II2,  H4,  (2) 3 

IV.  1218.     And  he  bigan  conforte  hir  as  he  mighte.       Ph,  Gg,  Jo 

Gomepotea    .     .     .     La  confortb. 

And  he  bigan  to  glade  hir  as  he  mighte.  H2,  (2) 4 

V,  923-4.     I  wil  be  he  to  serve  yow  myselve,  H2,  Gg,  Jo 

Ye,  lever  than  be  king  of  Greces  twelve. 

.  .  .  assai  degno  amadore  .  ,  .  io  sarei  desso, 
Piu  volentier  che  re  de*  Greci  adesso. 

1  The  other  reading  is  probably  the  only  genuine  one,  for  this  seems  to  occur 
in  but  one  MS.  ;  Ph  has  "  the  sobbes,"  which  may  be  the  middle  term  between 
the  two  readings. 

2  This  line  may  be  inferior  in  itself,  but  it  greatly  improves  the  gram 
matical  construction.     Cf.  the  curious  punctuation  which  McCormick,  who 
keeps  the  first  reading,  finds  necessary  in  the  Globe  edition. 

'  "Herte  myn"  occurs  in  1216  ;  hence  the  change. 

4  "  Hir  to  glade  "  occurs  in  1220,  so  the  variant  may  possibly  be  a  scribe's 
blunder. 


CH.  I,  §  1]  THE   TWO   VERSIONS.  5 

I  wol  be  he  to  serven  yow  myselve 

Ye,  lever  than  be  lord  of  Greces  twelve.  (2) 

These  cases  are  only  about  half  of  those  given  by  McCormick, 
though  they  are  the  most  striking.  It  can  hardly  be  doubted  that 
at  any  rate  most  of  these  variations  are  due  to  Chaucer ;  and  there 
fore  that  the  second  set  of  readings,  in  which  he  departs  from  his 
original,  are  the  later. 

A  number  of  cases  may  be  noted  where  a  change  seems  to 
have  been  made  in  the  interest  of  ancient  and  especially  pagan 
colouring : 

III.  188-9.  Withouten  honde,  me  semeth  that  in  toune, 

For  this  miracle,  I  here  eche  belle  soune.1    II2,  Gg,  Jo 

For  this  merveille     ...  (2) 

III.  705,  712.   Seynt  Venus  in  one  line  or  the  other  in  every 
MS.  of  (1).     Blisful  Venus  in  both  lines  in  (2). 

IV.  2  9  9-301.  Ne  never  wil  I  seen  it  shyne  or  reyne,  Ph,  Gg 

Ne  hevenes  light ;  and  thus  I  in  derknesse 
My  woful  lyf  wil  enden  for  distresse. 

But  ende  I  wil,  as  Edippe,2  in  derknesse 

My  sorwful  lyf,  and  dyen  in  distresse.        1I2,  Jo,  (2) 

IV.  644.       But  any  aungel  tolde  it  in  thyn  ere.  Ph,  Gg,  Jo 

But-if  that  Jove  tolde  it  in  thyn  ere.  H2,  (2) 

These  last  two  changes  are  certainly  Chaucer's  own,  and  if  ver 
sion  (2)  is  later  than  (1),  so  -are  the  others,  for  the  change  from 
mediaeval  to  ancient  colouring  could  hardly  be  due  to  a  scribe.3 

In  a  large  number ;  of  cases  some  stylistic  reason  is  evident  for 
the  change  from  (1)  to  (2). 

I.  640.          NQ  no  man  wot  what  gladnesse  is,  I  trowe,  (1) 

Ne  no  man  may  be  inly  glad,  I  trowe,  (2) 

(Four  other  words  in  -esse  occur  just  before  and  after.) 

1  This  is  the  earliest  occurrence,  so  far  as  I  can  find,  of  an  impressive  cir 
cumstance  common  later  in  ballads  and  folklore.     Trobably  Chaucer  derived 
it  from  some  ballad  or  popular  romance  now  lost.    Cf.  the  ballad  of  Sir  Hugh 
of  Lincoln,  Child's  Ballads,  III.  244 ;  and  ibid.,  I.  173,  231  ;  III.  235,  519. 

2  Troilns  is  speaking ;  but  we  may  notice  that  one  of  Criseyde's  favourite 
books  was  the  Siege  of  Thebes  (TI.  84). 

3  There  is  just  one  case  of  the  opposite  kind.     In  II.  115  (1),  except  Jo, 
reads  "Ye  maken  me  by  Joves  sore  adrad";  (2)  and  Jo  read  "By  god,  ye 
maken  me  right  sore  adrad."    The  change  would  be  a  strange  one  for  Chaucer 
to  make  ;  and  since  ' '  god  "  occurs  twice  in  the  two  preceding  lines,  it  may  be 
due  to  the  scribe. 


£  THE    TRQILUS   AND-  CRISEYDE.  [CH.  I,  §  1 

II.  1210.      Now  for  the  love  of  god,  my  nece  dere,  Gg,  Jo 

Now  for  the -love  of  me,  my  nece  dere,  H2,  (2) 

(The  second  is  more  Pandaresque;    not  likely  to  be  due  to  a 
scribe.     Cl  II.  290.)  ' 

III.  256.      Thou  wost  thyselven  what  I  Avolde  mene.  (1) 

Al  seye  I  noght,  thou  wost  wel  what  I  mene.  (2) 

II  I.  269.      For  never  was  ther  wight' .  .  .  That  ever  wiste  H4,  Gg,  Jo 
For  that  man  is  unbore  ...  Ph,H2,(2) 

;  '  i 

III.  672.      Than  is  it  tyme  for  to  gon  to  reste.  H4,  Jo 

So  go  we  slepe,  I  trowe  it  be  the  beste.        H2,  Gg,  (2) 

III.  677.      And  alwey  in  this- mene  whyle  it  ron.  H4,  Jo 

And  evere  mo  so  sterneliche  it  ron.        ,      H.2,  Gg,  (2) 

IV.  638.       Pandafe  answerde— "  Of  that  be  as  be  may."  Ph,  Gg,  Jo 

"Why,  so  mene  I,"  quod  Pandare,  "al  this  day."  H2,(2) 

IV.  1097.     Canst  thou  not  theuken  thus  in  thy  disese?  Ph,  Gg,  Jo 
Lat  be,  and  thenk  right  thus  in  thy  disese.         H2,  (2) 
(No  less  than  seven  rhetorical  questions  have  Come  just  before.) 

IV.  1138-9.  So  bittre  tores  weep,  not  thurgh  the  rinde    Ph,  Gg,  Jo 
The- woful  Myrra,  written  as  I  finde, 

So  bittre  teres  weep  not,  as  I  finde, 

The  woful  Myrra  thurgh  the  bark  and  rinde.    H.,,  (2) 

Cf.  also  the  following  passages,  which  inake  in  the  same  direc 
tion:  II.  1399,  IV.  165-6,  IV.  560  (cf.  567,  570),  IV/581  (cf. 
580),  IV.  696-8. 

In  other  cases,  though  the  motive  for  the  change  is  less  obvious, 
it  is  difficult  not  to  attribute  it  to  Chaucer. 

,    II E.  501-3.  Som  epistle  .  .  .  That  wolde  .  .  .  wel  contene       H4,  Jo 
An  hundred  vers  .  .  . 

Keigh  half  this  book  ...  H2,  Gg,  (2) 

III.  568.      And  she  on  game  gaii  him  for  to  rowne  H4,  Jo 

,     Sone  after  this  to  him  she  gan  to  roune        H2,  Gg,  (2) 

III.  1436-42. 

Thou  dost,  alias  !  to  shortly  thyn  offyce,  H4,  Jo 

Thou  rakel  night,  ther  god,  maker  of  kynde, 


OIL  I,  §  1]  THE   TWO   VERSIONS  7 

For  tliou  dounward  thee  hastest  of  malyce, 

[Thee  for  thyn  haste  and  thyn  unkindc  vyce]   H2  Gg,  (2) 

Thee  curse  and  to  our  hemi-spere  bynde, 

[So  faste  ay  to  our  hemi-spere  bynde]  H2,  Gg,  (2) 

That  never-more  under  the  ground  thou  wynde  ! 

For  thurgh  thy  rakel  hying  out  of  Troye 

[For  now,  for  thou  so  hyest  out  of  Troye,]        H2,  Gg,  (2) 

Have  I  forgon  thus  hastily  my  joye.  H4,  Jo 

IV.  789-90.  .  .  .  the  feld  of  pitee  .  .  .  Ther  Pluto  regneth  Gg,  Jo 
„       „     „      „  That  bight  Elysos  H2,  (2) 

IV.  828-9.  Myn  eem  Pandare  of  Joyes  mo  than  two  Ph,  Jo 

Was  cause  causing  first  to  me  Criseyde. 
Pandare  first  of  Joyes  mo  than  two 
Was  cause  causing  unto  me  Criseyde.  H.2,  (2) 

Cf.  also  III.  543,  668;  IV.  1093,  1113. 

There  are  three  important  passages,  the  omission  of  which  in 
some  MSS.  is  strong  additional  evidence  for  more  than  one  redac 
tion.  The  first  is  Troilus'  hymn  to  love  at  the  end  of  book  III. 
(1744-1771),  from  Boethius.  The  second  is  Troilus'  long  soliloquy 
(IV.  953-1085)  on  free-will,  also  mostly  drawn  from  Boethius. 
The  third  is  the  account  of  the  ascent  of  Troilus'  soul  to  heaven 
(V.  1807-1827),  drawn  from  the  Teseide  of  Boccaccio.  A  particu 
larly  significant  fact  is  that  they  were  all  three  omitted  in  MS.  Ph, 
and  in  somewhat  the  same  list  of  other  MSS. 

Troilus'  hymn  to  love  is  absent  from  MS.  Harl.  3943,  and 
inserted  later  (which  means  the  same  thing)  in  MS.  Ph ;  in  all 
other  MSS.  and  early  editions  it  seems  to  have  been  present  from 
the  first.  Boccaccio  at  this  point  (III.,  st.  74-89)  puts  a  very  long 
hymn  to  love  into  Troilus'  mouth,  the  first  six  stanzas  of  which 
Chaucer  used  to  form  the  greater  part  of  the  proem  to  this  book  of 
the  Troilus.  Troilus'  hymn  to  love  in  Chaucer,  therefore,  is  not 
from  Boccaccio,  but  is  a  versification,  with  a  slight  rearrangement, 
of  Boethius,  II.,  metre  8.  The  song  is  not  at  all  likely  to  have 
been  cut  out  by  the  scribe,  and  cannot  possibly  have  been  omitted 
accidentally.  Its  absence  is  a  clear  sign  of  incompleteness,  for  the 
context  runs  (in  MS.  HI.  3943,1  III.,  11.  1743,  1772-3) : 

And  pan  he  wold  syng  in  )>is  manere. 

In  al  ])&  nedis  for  pe  tounys  werre 
ho  was  &  ay  pe  f erst  in  armys  dight. 

1  See  W.  M.  Rossetti,  parallel-text  edition,  167-8. 


8  THE    TROILUS  AND   CRISEYDE.  [OH.  I,  §  1 

The  first  of  these  lines  translates  the  end  of  the  stanza  just  pre 
ceding  the  song  in  Boccaccio,  and  the  second  translates  the  first 
of  the  stanza  just  following  it.  It  is  clear,  therefore,  that  Chaucer 
omitted  Boccaccio's  song  for  the  obvious  reason  that  he  had  just 
used  the  first  part  of  it ;  and  that  he  allowed  some  MSS.  of  the 
Troilus  to  go  into  circulation  before  he  added  the  substitute. 
Such  carelessness  on  his  part  is  not  unparalleled  in  the  Canterbury 
Tales.'1 

The  second  of  the  three  passages,  IV.  953-1085,  is  wholly 
omitted  in  MSS.  Harl.  2392  (H4)  and  Harl.  1239,2  omitted  all 
but  the  last  stanza3  in  Gg,  which  hereabouts  agrees  with  (1),  and 
added  later  in  Ph;  it  is  present  in  Harl.  3943  (H2),  Johns  and  (2). 
In  the  first  place,  it  is  important  to  notice  that  the  passage  forms 
a  complete  unit;  every  stanza  in  it  (except  the  last)  is  Boethian  and 
scholastic,  and  its  length  and  subtlety  form  a  strange  break  in 
Troilus'  passionate  despair.4  It  is  hardly  likely  that  so  long  and  so 
unified  a  passage  would  have  been  omitted  by  a  scribe.  Secondly, 
the  continuity  of  the  context  is  better  without  it.  In  line  947 
Pandarus  finds  Troilus  alone  in  the  temple,  yet  seems  to  be  stand- 

1  It  may  be  asked  whether  the  present  proem,  or  such  part  of  it  as  is  from 
Boccaccio,  may  not  have  originally  stood  as  Troilus'  song.     Internal  evidence 
is  much  against  such  a  view.    The  first  three  lines  of  stanza  6  are  fairly  closely 
translated  from  the  Italian,  yet  the  last  four  lines  are  spoken  by  the  author  in 
his  proper  person,  and  cannot  possibly  have  been  in  Troilus'  mouth  ;  so  also 
stanza  7,  which  is  not,  however,  from  the  Italian.     At  first  sight  MS.  Rawl. 
Poet.  163  ("not  a  very  good  copy,"  according  to  Skeat,  II.  Ixxiv.)  seems  to 
suggest  that  the  proem  was  lacking  in  Chaucer's  first  copy,  for  this  MS.  (only) 
omits  the  proems  to  books  II. -IV.  (see  W.  S.  McCormick,  pp.  296-300  of  An 
English  Miscellany  Presented  to  Dr.  Farnivall,  &c.,  Oxford,  1901).     But  this 
argument  is  quashed  by  two  considerations.     In  the  first  place,  this  MS.  has, 
in  its  proper  place,  Troilus'  hymn  from  Boethius,  so  the  absence  of  the  proem 
is  certainly  not  due  to  its  use  elsewhere.     Secondly,  the  proem  to  book  IV. 
we  can  hardly  doubt  was  written  continuously  with  books  III.  and  IV.,  for 
all  three  correspond  to  consecutive  parts  of  the  Italian ;  stanza  93  of  Boc 
caccio's  third  book  is  rendered  at  the  end  of  T.  C.  III.,  the  proem  to  IV. 
includes  most  of  the  94th  and  last  stanza,  and  book  IV.  of  Chaucer  begins 
with  Boccaccio's  next  stanza  (IV.  1).     If  the  absence  of  the  proem  to  IV. 
from  MS.  Rawl.  cannot  be  due  to  its  absence  from  Chaucer's  first  version 
neither  can  it  well  be  argued  that  its  omission  of  those  to  books  II.  and  III. 
is.     The  absence  of  these  proems,  therefore,  is  a  sign  of  lateness,  not  of  earli- 
ness  ;  so  much  so,  in  fact,  that  it  seems  to  me  probably  due  to  the  scribe, 
not  to  Chaucer.     But  on  this  matter,  as  on  so  many  others,  we  must  defer  to 
Professor  McCormick's  views,  when  they  shall  be  expressed. 

2  Printed  in   Three  More  Parallel- Texts.      In  this  part  of  the   poem  it 
generally  agrees  with  (1). 

3  This  clearly  belongs  with  what   precedes,  for  1080  ("wost  of  al  this 
thing  the  sothfastnesse  ")  refers  to  the  philosophical  disquisition,  not  to  the 
amorous  lament  in  950-2  :  so  also  does  1084  ("  Disputing  with  himself  in  this 
matere  "). 

4  Cf.  Lounsbury,  Studies,  III.  374-5. 


CH.  I,  §  1]  THE    TWO    VERSIONS.  9 

ing  at  the  door  during  the  whole  of  this  discourse,  for  he  does  not 
come  in  till  1085  ;  these  two  lines  almost  contradict  each  other.1 
Another  piece  of  evidence  that  the  rest  of  the  poem  underwent 
revision,  and  that  during  it  this  passage  was  added,  is  that  the 
only  variants  in  it  noted  by  McCormick  are  four  trivial  ones 
clearly  due  to  the  scribes  (957,  958,  989,  1064) ;  this  makes  1 
variant  to  33  lines,  but  elsewhere  in  book  IY.  according  to  McCor- 
mick's  tables  there  are  about  1  to  11  lines,  including  some  very 
significant  changes.2 

A  wholly  different  consideration  which  distinguishes  this  passage 
from  the  context  is  the  rhyme-usage,  as  to  which,  by  the  kindness 
of  Professor  George  Hempl,  I  am  able  to  present  some  information 
gained  by  him.  Excluding  this  passage,  the  impure  o  :  y  3  rhyme 
occurs,  to  1000  lines,  3  times  in  book  I.,  2  in  book  II.,  J  in  book 
III.,  and  not  at  all  in  books  IV.  and  V. ;  but  in  these  133  lines  it 
occurs  twice  (1035-6,  1072-4).  He  also  points  out  that  the  cheap 
rhyme-words  in  accented  -inge  (or  -ing,  participle  or  verbal  noun) 
occur,  to  1000  lines,  18  times  in  book  I.,  11  in  II. ,  and  4  in  III.— 
V.4  ;  but  in  this  passage  they  occur  no  less  than  11  times  (986-7, 
989-91-2,  1014-15,1016-18,  1075-6)— more  than  twenty  times  as 
often  as  they  should  according  to  what  is  usual  in  book  IV.  The 
force  of  this  last  argument  is  somewhat  weakened,  to  be  sure,  by 
the  fact;  that  such  a  discourse  as  that  of  Troilus  naturally  contains 
an  unusual  number  of  abstract  nouns  in  -inge.  But  the  two  points 
together  certainly  distinguish  the  passage  sharply  from  its  sur 
roundings.5 

1  Pandarus  is  named  in  both  1085  and  1086.    If  the  lines  had  been  written 
consecutively  the  repetition  would  probably  have  been  avoided. 

2  To  this  bit  of  evidence  cf.  a  parallel  in  L.  G.  W.,  p.  119  below. 

3  Cf.  ten  Brink,  Chaiwers  Sprache  und  Verskunst  (Leipzig,  1899),  p.  191  ; 
but  cf.  p.  23. 

4  I.e.  only  4  times  to  every  1000  lines  in  book  IV.,  excluding  'this  passage. 

^ 5  Since  all  this  evidence  shows  that  Chaucer  became  more  fastidious  as  to 
his  rhymes  during  the  composition  of  T.C.,  it  may  suggest  to  some  that  this 
passage  must  have  been  written  before  the  greater  part  of  the  poem  ;  it  may 
seem  as  if  we  had  here  another  example  of  Chaucer's  "  economy  "  (to  use 
Professor  Koeppel's  word)  in  putting  pieces  of  old  cloth  into  a  new  garment. 
But  this  is  more  than  doubtful.  The  first  two  and  the  last  stanzas  were 
certainly  written  for  T.  C. ,  and  the  others,  with  their  plentiful  use  of  the  pronoun 
/,  have  the  appearance  of  being.  I  doubt  very  much  if  any  thoroughly 
consistent  uniformity  or  development  in  rhyme-usage  or  metrical-usage  can 
be  made  out  in  Chaucer's  poetry ;  and  there  does  not  seem  to  be  any 
a  priori  reason  why  it  should  be.  I  am  not  ignorant  that  others  take  a 
vehemently  opposite  view,  and  that  Shakspere's  practice  has  been  pleaded 
as  a  parallel ;  but  Shakspere's  metrical  development  was  part  of  a  wide 
spread,  traceable  and  easily  explicable  national  evolution  in  versification. 
On  all  this  cf.  Lowes  in  Public.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.,  xx.  811-12. 


10  THE    TROILUS   AND   CRISEYDE.  [CH.  I,  §  1 

It  can  hardly  be  doubted,  therefore,  that  Chaucer  added  this 
passage  when  the  poem  had  been  some  time  in  circulation.  Most 
readers  will  agree  that  it  was  no  great  improvement.  At  times  it  is 
impressive  and  beautiful,  and  recalls  part  of  the  Complaint  of  Mars 
and  Palamon's  fine  lament  in  the  Kniglrfs  Tale,  but  enough  has 
already  been  said  of  its  unsuitability  to  the  "  lewed  "  Troilus  in  a 
mood  of  despair.  This  is  not  the  only  case  where  Chaucer  appears 
as  a  careless  or  injudicious  reviser.  It  should  be  added  that  there 
is  nothing  surprising  in  the  inclusion  of  this  passage  in  one  or  two 
MSS.,  such  as  the  Johns,  which  otherwise  in  this  book  follow 
the  first  redaction ;  for  the  passage  was  one  sure  to  interest  the 
serious-minded  reader,  and  therefore  to  be  copied  in  where  it  did 
not  belong  (as  we  can  see  happened  in  MS.  Phillipps).  In  a  case 
like  this,  omission  is  more  significant  than  insertion. 

The  passage  from  the  Teseide  (V.  1807-1827)  is  absent  from 
MSS.  Harl.  3943  (H3)  and  2392  (H4),  and  added  later  in  Phillipps  ;* 
MS.  Gg,  which  in  this  book  generally  agrees  with  Ph,  breaks  oft 
before  this  point.  The  passage  is  present  in  Johns  and  (2).  It  can 
hardly  be  doubted  that  this,  too,  is  a  later  insertion.  The  passage 
contains  unsympathetic  erudite  conceits,  brought  from  afar,  and 
forces  apart  two  lines  (1806,  1828)  which  are  consecutive  in  the 
Filostrato  ;  we  may  wonder  a  little  that  Chaucer  should  put  it  in  at 
any  time,  but  his  doing  so  is  more  intelligible  when  the  poem  had 
grown  somewhat  cold  to  him.2  It  is  true  that  other  passages  at  the 
end  indicate  some  sort  of  revulsion  of  feeling  on  Chaucer's  part ; 
but  a  Christian  transcending  of  a  worldly  poem,  a  sense  of  the 
futility  of  earthly  happiness,  which  a  mediaeval  man  might  easily 
draw  from  the  Troilus,  is  not  the  same  thing  as  a  rather  meretricious 
piece  of  that  paganism  which  Chaucer  expressly  disclaims  a  little 
later  (1849-55),  In  the  other  cases  the  Middle  Ages  were  simply 
calling  back  one  of  their  children  who  was  escaping  from  them. 
Without  this  passage  the  course  of  thought  is  decidedly  better ;  as 
things  are,  "  Swich  fyn  hath,  lo,  this  Troilus"  (1828),  "  in  this 

1  It  is  highly  interesting  to  note  that  the  later  insertion  of  these  three  pas 
sages  in  MS.  Ph  show  that  it  belonged  to  a  really  scholarly  admirer  of  the 
poet.  We  have  here  an  example  of  something  like  collation  in  the  fifteenth 
century. 

2 'Koch  thought  (EngL  Stud.,  I.  271)  it  was  put  in  on  first  writing  because 
Chaucer  considered  Boccaccio's  account  of  Troilus'  death  too  brief ;  later,  he 
thought  it  first  appeared  in  a  second  version  (Chronology,  p.  36).  Cf.  also 
A.  W.  Pollard,  Chaucer:  The  Knight's  Tale  (London,  1903),  p.  116.  Lowes 
takes  a  more  favourable  view  of  the  addition  (Publ.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.,  xx. 
847). 


CH.  I,  §  1]  •     THE    TWO    VERSIONS.  11 

wyse  he  cloy  tie'"  (1834),  -have  to  go  back  twenty  or  thirty  lines  for 
their  explanation,  and  after  his  cheerful  flight  and  scorn  of  those 
who  wept  for  him  it  is  a  little  .odd  to  return  to  the  pathos  of  his 
death.1  Considering,  then,  that  the  passage  is  a  nnit,  of  different 
source  from  that  of  its  context,  that  it  is  lacking  in  at  least  three 
related  MSS. ,  some  of  which  also  lack  the  Boethius  passages,  and 
that  such  a  passage  is  less  likely  to  have  been  omitted  by  a  scribe 
where  it  once  was  than  to  have  been  inserted  where  it  was  not",— 
'this  passage,  too,  is  a  strong  argument  for  revision. 

It  may  be  taken  as  proved,  I  think,  that  we  have  at  least  two 
versions  of  the  Troilus.2  And  almost  all  the  evidence  that  bears 
on  the  question  of  priority  has  indicated  that  the  version  con 
tained  in  (2),  MSS.  Corpus,  Campsall,  and  Harleian  2280,  is  the 
-later;  it  is  the  farther  from  the  Italian,  and  the  better.  Disregard 
ing  the  fact  that  this  version  omits  I.  890-6  and  IV.  "708-14, 
Admirable  and  even  essential  stanzas  which  must  have  been  qniitted 
by  oversight,3  I  find  just  one  case  worth  mentioning  where  the 
reading  of  (2)  looks  like  the  earlier,  the  striking  one  recorded  above 
on  pp.  3,  4.4  A  few  cases  like  this  and  those  in  the  note  may  be 

1  Similarly  ten  Brink  (Chaucer  Studien,  pp.  60-1)  ;  I  agree  with  Koch  that 
some  of  his  other  arguments  are  not  so  good  (Eng.  Stud.,  I.  270).    I  defer  till 
later  a  discussion  of  the  idea  that  this  passage  is  part  of  the  debris  of  a 
stanzaic  Palamon  and  Arcite  (see  pp.  49-51). 

2  It  is  suggestive  to  compare  the  clearly  genuine  character  of  these  revisions 
with  the  insignificant  various  readings  on  which  Prof.  R.  K.  Koot  bases  his  con 
jecture  that  Chaucer  revised  the  Parl.  of  Fowls  (see  Journ.  of  Germ.  PhiloL, 
V.  189-193),  and  Prof.  J.  B.  Bilderbeck  that  he  revised  the  first  six  Legends  of 
Good    Women  (Chaucer's  L.  G.    W.,  London,  1902;  pp.  34-42)  ;  or  to,  com 
pare  them  even  with  the  peculiarities  of  MS.  Harl.  7334  of  the  C.  T.,  which 
I  believe  are  not  due  to  Chaucer.     Cf.  my  preface,  p.  v.     The  genuineness  of 
the  revisions  is  further  suggested  by  the  fact  that,  nearly  all  that  I.  have, 
recorded  (many  of  McCormick's  variants  may  be  scribal)  are  in  books  III. 
and  IV.    Evidently  Chaucer  took  most  interest  in  the  more  intense  parts  of 
the  story. 

3  The  former  passage  is  known  only  in  three  MSS.,  all  belonging  to  the  first 
version  (McCormick,  in  the  Furnivall  Miscellany,  p.  300). 

4  There  are  three  other  possible  cases.  .  "Or  that  the  god  ought  spak  "  (Ph, 
Ho,  Gg  ;  III.  543)  introduces  more  variety  than  "  Er  that  Apollo  spak  "  (Jo, 
(2)  ;  cf.  541,  546).     In  V.  436,  MSS.  H2,'  Gg,  Jo,  and  HI  123&  have  it  that 
Sarpedon  was ."  ful  of  heigh  largesse"  ;  (2)  says  he  was  "ful  of  heigh  prow- 
esse"  ;  the  Italian  has  "d'alto  cuore,"  while  the  stanza  dwells  on  his  hospi 
tality.     But  the  first  reading  is  doubtful  English,  and  is  very  likely  a  scribe's 
blunder.    In  V.  1502-4,  where  the  reference  is  to  the  Thebaid  of  Statius,  IX. 

'  497-539,  867-907,  the  reading  of  Gg  and  Jo  is  slightly  more  faithful  to  the 
Latin  (though  it  shows  less  familiarity  with  it),  than  that  of  Ph,  H2,  and 
(2).  [Note  here  an  important  case  where  Ph  agrees  with  (2)  against  others  of 
(1).  See  below.]  But  when  the  reference  is  to  another  work  than  the  general 
source  of  the  poem  accuracy  is  ambiguous  in  its  testimony,  and  the  second 
reading  is  better  in  other  ways.  Obviously  nothing  can  be  based  on  these 


12  THE    TROILUS  AND   CRISEYDE.  [CH.  I,  §  1 

accounted  for  in  so  many  ways  that  they  do  not  weaken  perceptibly 
the  conclusion  that  the  version  consistently  represented  by  the 
second  group  of  MSS.  is  the  later. 

Professor  McCormick,1  as  has  been  said  above,  believes  that  the 
versions  which  we  have  been  discussing  are  the  second  and  third  in 
point  of  time,  and  that  from  the  second  may  be  extracted  a  first. 
This  opinion  is  much  more  difficult  to  deal  with  by  evidence,  so  it 
is  important  to  realize  that  the  burden  of  proof  is  heavy  upon  one 
who  holds  it.2  The  evidence  accessible  at  present  seems  to  me  to 
be  anything  but  favourable  to  the  idea  of  a  third  version.  In  the 
first  place,  though  it  is  quite  true  that  we  should  not  expect  many 
cases  of  three  genuine  readings  for  one  passage,  it  would  be  natural 
that  in  some  cases  Chaucer  should  not  have  satisfied  himself  even 
in  his  second  version.  Now  there  are  no  cases  where  a  third  read 
ing  carries  conviction  of  its  genuineness;  and  only  twice  can  a  third 
reading  which  occurs  in  more  than  one  MS.  possibly  be  considered. 

II.  737-8.  ...  he  able  is  for  to  have  .  .  .  the  thriftieste 

That  womman  is,  so  she  hir  honour  save.     Ph,  H2,  Gg 

As  ferforth  as  she  may  hir  honour  save.  H4,  Jo 

To  ben  his  love,  so  she  hir  honour  save.  (2) 

III.  458-9.  Lest  any  wight  divynen  or  devyse 

Wolde  in  this  speche  ...  Ph,  H2,  Gg 

Wolde  on  this  thing  .  .  .  H4,  Jo 

Wolde  of  hem  two  ...  (2) 

In  the  first  passage  the  second  reading  is  probably  corrupt,  and  in 
the  second  the  first.  In  neither  is  there  any  evidence  for  a  third 
edition. 

The  only  other  satisfactory  evidence  would  be  a  MS.  which 
should  Consistently  embody  it,  as  group  (2)  constantly  represents  a 
version  different  from  that  best  represented  (according  to  McCor 
mick)  by  MS.  Camb.  Gg;  which  should  be  nearest  of  all  to  the 
Italian,  and  which  should  sometimes  agree  with  the  second  version 
and  not  with  the  third,  and  sometimes  differ  from  both,  and  should 
never  follow  the  third  only.  These  demands  are  exacting,  of 
course,  but  an  approximation  to  them  would  be  necessary  in  order 
to  carry  conviction.  Some  such  MS.  McCormick  appears  to  think 

1  Globe  Chaucer,  p.  xli. 

2  Many  little  slips  in  the  C.  T.  and  elsewhere  show  that  Chaucer  was  not 
much  in  the  habit  of  even  reading  his  own  poetry. 


CH.  I,  §  1]  THE   TWO   VERSIONS.  13 

we  have  in  Phillipps,  and  at  the  very  beginning  of  his  table  we 
seem  to  find  confirmation  of  his  opinion.  It  can  hardly  be  doubted, 
as  we  have  seen  already,  that 

"  With  chere  and  vois  fill  pitous,  and  wepinge  "   (I.  Ill) 
was  Chaucer's  original  translation  of 

"  E  con  voce  e  con  vista  assai  pietosa," 
and  that  he  made  a  later  improvement  in 

"  With  pitous  vois  and  tendrely  wepinge  " ; 

now  the  first  reading  occurs  only  in  Ph  and  H2,  which  agree 
closely  throughout  this  book,  and  the  other  MSS.  of  (1)  agree  with 
(2).  But  this,  so  far  as  I  can  discover,  is  absolutely  the  last  evi 
dence  of  the  sort ;  there  is  no  other  significant  case  in  which  Ph  is 
closer  to  the  Italian  than  our  last  version,  where  the  Gg  MS.  is  not 
just  as  close.1  Moreover,  the  Ph  MS.  seems,  on  the  testimony  of 
Professor  Skeat2  and  Professor  Kittredge,  unlikely  to  deserve 
the  importance  which  Professor  McCormick  attaches  to  it ;  it  is 
late  and  very  corrupt,  and  appears  to  be  at  the  end  of  a  long  descent ; 
it  would  be  not  a  little  strange  if  this  MS.  alone  should  preserve 
the  first  version  intact.  But  the  most  ruinous  charge  against  MS. 
Ph  is  that  several  times  during  book  III.  and  elsewhere  (among 
others,  in  some  of  the  passages  quoted  above)  it  switches  over  and 
agrees  with  (2),  the  Corpus-Campsall  group,  which  throughout, 
McCormick  says,  represents  the  third  version,  while  his  second  group 
(Johns,  etc.)  differs  from  both.  This  on  his  theory  is  absolutely 
inexplicable3;  it  can  indicate  just  one  thing — that  in  book  III.,  at 
least,  Ph  is  derived  or  corrected  from  some  MS.  of  group  (2).  But 
if  in  practically  all  significant  variations,  Ph  follows  MSS.  now  of 
my  group  (1),  now  of  (2),  what  becomes  of  its  independence,  of  its 
testimony  for  a  version  different  from  both  1 4 

1  The  omissions  or  later  insertions  in  Ph  (already  treated)  are  not  peculiar 
to  it. 

2  See  his  Piers  Plowman,  II.  Ixx. 

3  The  possible  suggestion  that  Chaucer  might  have  taken  an  uncorrected 
copy  of  the  first  version  as  a  basis  for  the  third,  which  would  therefore  at  times 
follow  the  first  and  not  the  second,    is  negatived  by   the  extraordinary 
solicitude  which  he  shows  for  the  text  of  the  poem. 

4  A  further  argument  against  the  primatial  position  which  McCormick 
assigns  to  MS.  Ph  is  to  be  found  in  the  peculiarities  of  MS,  Rawl.  Poet.  163, 
which  he  has  thoroughly  collated,  and  which  his  tables  show  to  agree  usually 
with  (1),  though  it  sometimes  switches  over  to  (2).   In  his  article  in  the  Furni- 
rall  Miscellany  (pp.  296-300)  he  shows  that  it  contains  at  the  very  end  of  book 
II.,  between  1750  and  1751,  a  genuine  stanza  found  nowhere  else.     Professor 
McCormick  believes  that  it  is  misplaced  ;  but  it  seems  to  me  that  its  insistence 


14  THE    TROILUS   AND   CR1SEYDE.  [CH.  I,  §  1 

The  whole  subject  is  immensely  complicated;  to  say  that  the 
poem  underwent  one  thorough  revision  all  at  one  time  may  possibly 
be  too  simple  an  explanation.  All  that  I  have  said  must  be. 
regarded  as  submissive  to  Professor  McCormick's  further  communi 
cations.  But  meanwhile  it  seems  certain  that  Chaucer  produced 
two  versions,  and  fairly  certain  that  he  produced  only  two.1 

As  to  the  date  of  the  revision,  it  is  impossible  to  be  very  de 
finite  and  certain,  but  it  seems  natural  that  some  years  should  have 
elapsed  between.  There  is  onQ  small,  but  perhaps  respectable  and 
certainly  curious,  piece  of  evidence  in  the  two  versions  as  to  the  date 
'of  the  second.  In  book  IV.,  596-7, MSS.  Ph,.Gg,  Jo,  Harl.  1239  and 
Harl.  4912  (all  belonging,  /apparently,  to  version  I.)  make  Pandarus 
say  to  Troilus,  while  urging  forcible  detention  of  Criseyde  jn  Troy, 

"  It  is  no  rape  in  my  dom  ne  no  vice, 
Hir  to  withholden  that  ye  loven  most,"  2 


that  Criseyde  shall  be  merciful  affords  a  perfectly  logical  connection  with  what 
precedes,  and  connects  as  well  with  what  follows  as  1750  does.  It  seems 
much  less  likely  to  have  been  added  in  this  MS.  than  to  have  been  omitted 
in  the  others,  probably  by  a  very  early  scribe.  The  MS.  omits  I.  890-6,  no 
doubt  by  accident,  and  (as  we  have  seen)  the  entire  proems  to  books  II.,  III. 
and  IV.  The  presence  of  the  unique  stanza,  and  perhaps  one  or  two  of  its 
other  peculiarities,  would  put  Rawl.,  and  not  Ph,  in  a  peculiar  position  ;  of 
which,  again,  it  will  be  deprived  by  the  fact  that  it  agrees  with  three- quarters  of' 
the  authorities  in  omitting  the  admirable  (and  indeed  indispensable)  lines  I. 
890-6,  and  in  containing  the  song  of  love  from  Boethius.  So  we  are  farther 
than  ever  from  having  a  MS.  which  consistently  embodies  Chaucer's  first 
version.  Is  not  the  cruelly  kind  answer  to  the  puzzle  that  which  McCormick 
elsewhere  shows  must  so  often  put  the  textual  critic  out  of  his  misery  : 
namely,  contamination  ?  The  more  one  studies  the  MSS.  the  clearer  it 
becomes  that  Chaucer  was  not  the  only  person  who  cared  about  the  purity  of 
his  text.  In  the  fifteenth  century  there  were  more  fastidious  and  critical 
readers  than  we  always  realize.  In  a  graphic  passage  of  the  preface  to  the 
second  edition  of  the  C.  T.  (quoted  by  McCormick  elsewhere)  Caxtou  tells 
how  one  of  his  customers  protested  against  the  incorrectness  of  the  first,  and 
supplied  him  with  a  better  copy. 

1  The  next  thing  we  may  hope  for  is  a  parallel-text  edition  of  the  two 
versions,  which  perhaps  could  be  produced  with  a  fair  amount  of  accuracy, 

2  It  is  worth  noting  that  here  is  a  clear  case  where  rape  means  forcible  de 
tention  or  removal.     It  is  high  time  that  the  more  disagreeable  interpretation 
of  the  incident  to  be  mentioned  were  dismissed  for  good  to  the  Limbo  of 
Vanities.     Chaucer's  own  father  was  abducted — "rapuerunt    et  abduxerunt  " 
(Life  Records,  1900,  p.  ix.) ;  and  in  1387  the  thief  was  set  to  catch  a  thief- 
Chaucer  was  on  a  commission  to  inquire  into  the  abduction  of  an  heiress,  of 
which  exactly  the  same  verbs  are  used  (ibid.,  p.  270).     On  the  frequency  at 
the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century  of  this  sort  of  abduction  and  forced  marriage, 
see  S.  Armitage-Smith,  John  of  (Jaunt,  pp.  350-1.     If  the  worse  interpretation 
were  the  true  one,  is  it  conceivable  that  Chaucer  would  have  adopted  such  a 
beginning  to  the  Wife  of  Bath's  Tale  (D,  888),  a  beginning  confined  to  his 
version  of  the  story  ?     Cf.  also  Furnivall's  Trial  Forewords  (Ch.  Soc.,  1881), 
pp.  136-44,  for  the  law  bearing  on  the  subject. 


CH.  I,  §  2]  THE    DATE.  15 

for  which  the  other  and  later  authorities,  (2)  and  Harl.  3943,  read, 
"  It  is  no  shame  unto  you  ne  no  vice"     .     .     ., 

certainly  weaker  and  less  appropriate.  We  ought  to  be  able  to 
discover  some  reason  for  the  change.  Now  it  will  be  remembered 
that  on  May  1,  1380,  one  Cecelia  Chaumpaigne  executed  an 
instrument  of  release  to  Chaucer,  "  de  raptu  rneo." J  It  may 
be  not  quite  fanciful  to  suggest  that  when  in  the  course  of 
revision  Chaucer  came  to  this  passage,  a  recent  disagreeable  in 
cident  sprang  before  his  mind,  and  even  at  the  cost  of  substitut 
ing  an  inferior  phrase  he  seized  the  opportunity  of  removing 
the  reminder  from  his  own  and  his  friends'  sight.  He  can 
hardly  have  been  proud  of  the  episode,  and  had  probably  suffered 
in  his  pocket.2  If  this  suggestion  is  allowed  some  weight,  it  indi 
cates  1380,  or  somewhat  later,  as  the  date  of  revision,  which  fits 
admirably  (as  will  be  seen  later)  with  the  evidence  as  to  the  date  of 
first  composition.3 

§  2.     TJie  Date. 

.  The  date  of  the  original  writing  of  the  Troilus  and  Criseyde  has 
always  been  a  good  deal  of  a  problem,  and  it  cannot  be  said  to  be 
settled  yet.  In  1903  I  showed 4  reason  to  believe  that  the  poem 
was  mentioned  by  Gower  in  his  Mir  our  de  I'Omme,  in  a  passage 
(5245-56)  which  it  seemed  then  could  hardly  have  been  written 
later  than  1376,  but  which  may  probably  date  from  about  1377.^ 
This  early  date  has  recently  been  argued  against  briefly  by  Professor 
John  Koch,6  and  more  at  large  by  Professor  J.  L.  Lowes.7 

1  See  Life  Records  of  Chaucer  (Ch,  Soc.,  1900),  pp.  225-7. 

2  The  force  of  this  conjecture  is  not  destroyed  by  the  fact  that  he  allowed 
the  verb  ravisshe  to  stand  in  IV.  530,  637  and  643,  and  in  V.  895,  and  the 
noun  ravisshynge  in  I.  62  and  IV.  548  ;  for  the  two  forms  of  the  word  are  so 
different  in  appearance  and  connotation  that  they  would  not  necessarily  be 
closely  associated  ;  rape  inevitably  suggests  the  raptus,  not  so  ravisshe.  [Cf. 
such  a  use  of  the  verb  as  in  T.  C.,  IV.  1474  and  N.  P.  T.,  4514  ("So  was  he 
ravisshed  with  his  flaterye  ").]     Moreover,  Chaucer  may  not  have  been  earnest 
enough  in  his  antipathy  to  undertake  so  many  further  changes. 

3  I  shall  show  later  that  the  insertion  of  the  Teseide  stanzas  can  hardly  have 
been  done  later  than  the  writing  of  the  Knight's  Tale  (which  I  hold  to  be 
practically  identical  with  the  Palamon).     The  revision,  therefore,  must  have 
considerably  antedated  the  Prologue  of  the  Legend,  1386.    See  pp.  74-5  below. 

4  In  Modern  Philology,  I.  317-324.     I  need  hardly  repeat  the  criticism  of 
previous  conjecture  there  given. 

5  For  a  full  discussion  of  the  date  of  the  Mirour  I  must  refer  to  Appendix 
A,  pp.  220-5. 

6  Engl.  Stud.,  xxxvi.  140-41. 

7  Publications  of  the  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.  of  America,  xx.  823-33. 


16  THE    TROILUS  AND   CRISEYDE.  [OH.   I,  §  2 

The  objections  of  the  former  seem  to  me  not  difficult  to  meet. 
He  thinks  the  period  from  1373^0  1376  too  crowded  by  the 
St.  Cecelia,  the  Palamon  and  the  Boethius.  But  there  is  not  the 
least  necessity  for  putting  the  first  and  last  here,2  and  the  best 
possible  reason,  as  we  shall  see  later,  for  not  putting  the  Palamon 
here  and  for  not  believing 'that  any  part  of  the  Troilus  was  derived 
from  that  poem.  The  idea  that  the  word  comedie  in  Troilus,  V. 
1788,  implies  prevision  of  the  House  of  Fame  or  the  Parliament  of 
Fowls  I  tried  to  show  in  this  very  article  is  groundless  ;  as  also  the 
gratuitousness  of  the  idea  that  the  epithet  "  moral "  applied  to 
Gower  in  V.  1856  must  refer  to  any  of  his  longer  poems.  "We 
may  reasonably  suppose  that  he  was  born  about  the  year  1330 
or  possibly  somewhat  later ;  "  3  are  we  to  suppose  that  at  the  age 
of  forty-five  he  had  written  nothing  or  shown  no  traits  of  character 
that  would  have  earned  him  such  an  epithet  from  a  personal 
associate  as  well  then  as  ten  years  later  ?  Happily  we  are  coming 
to  realize  Chaucer  less  as  a  literary  phenomenon  and  more  as  a  man  ; 
were  not  his  relations  with  Gower  rather  personal  than  literary  1 
Nor  can  I  see  that  four  or  five  years  is  too  short  a  time  for  such 
modifications  in  the  Troilus  of  Boccaccio's  conception  as  Dr.  Koch 
mentions.  Altogether,  therefore,  he  does  little  but  reiterate,  with 
out  developing,  the  arguments  which  I  tried  to  refute  at  the  begin 
ning  of  my  article.  He  suggests  that  Chaucer  was  writing  the 
Troilus  but  had  not  yet  finished  it  in  1376.  But  he  does  grant 
that  Gower's  reference  is  to  Chaucer's  poem. 

Lowes'  discussion  demands  more  extended  treatment.  His  argu 
ments  against  my  interpretation  of  the  passage  in  Gower  it  will  be 
more  convenient  to  treat  later ;  first  I  shall  consider  his  arguments 
in  favour  of  a  late  date,  that  which  he  suggests  being  1383-5.4  One 
matter  which  bears  on  the  date  of  the  Troilus  is  its  relation  with 
the  Legend  of  Good  Women.  Lowes  adopts  5  and  develops  ten 
Brink's  view  of  a  close  chronological  relation  between  them.  The 
matter  can  be  discussed  here  only  by  anticipating  some  points  in  my 
discussion  of  the  later  poem.  He  declares  (p.  821)  that  "the 
immediate  occasion  of  the  Prologue  was  manifestly  the  stir  caused 

1  May,  not  November  (as  Koch  says,  ignoring  Mather's  rediscovery  of  the 
date)  ;  see  my  article,  p.  319. 

2  On  the  Boethius,  see  p.  34  below. 

3  G.  C.  Macaulay's  Gower,  IV.  xxix. 

4  Public,  of  the  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc,.  xx.  861, 

5  Ibid.,  pp,  819-23, 


CH.  I,  §  2]  THE    DATE.  17 

by  the  publication  of  the  Troilus"  but  I  believe  a  very  good  case 
can  be  made  out  for  a  different  view.  The  God  of  Love  reproaches 
the  poet  (322-35) x  with  enmity  to  him  and  his  servants,  with  hin 
dering  them  by  his  "  translacioun,"  and  with  having  "  translated  the 
Romaunce  of  the  Rose,"  and  having  said  as  he  "  liste  "  of  Criseyde. 
The  Romance  of  the  Hose,  the  translation  par  excellence,  is  at 
least  as  prominent  in  this  passage  as  the  Troilus,  and  so  also  in 
Alcestis'  defence  (362-72,  441).  Therefore  there  is  nothing  in 
these  references  to  make  one  suppose  that  the  Troilus  had  just  been 
published,  any  more  than  that  the  Romance  of  the  Rose  had  just 
been.  But  what  is  more  important,  I  hope  to  show  later  strong 
reasons  for  believing,  as  Lowes  does  not,  the  orthodox  view  that 
not  only  is  the  E-Prologue  an  elaborate  compliment  to  the  queen, 
but  that  the  whole  Legend  may  have  been  written  at  her  request. 
She  landed  in  England  in  December,  1381,  a  girl  of  fifteen,  who 
almost  certainly  knew  no  English,  and  it  would  be  some  years 
before  she  would  be  familiar  with  Chaucer's  poetry.  It  seems  to 
me  that  the  language  of  the  Prologue  is  at  least  as  consistent  with 
the  view  that  she  had  just  become  familiar  with  his  poetry  and 
urged  him  to  a  more  gallant  manner  towards  women,  as  with  the  ^ 
view  that  it  is  the  product  of  a  supposed  general  sensation  produced 
by  the  first  publication  of  the  Troilus? 

Of  Lowes'  arguments  for  a  late  date  for  the  Troilus,  there  remain 
two — the  fact  (pp.  820-821)  that  the  end  of  it  seems  to  suggest 
prevision  of  the  Legend  of  Good  Women,  and  its  excellence  and 
maturity  (833-840).  As  to  the  second,  I  have  nothing  to  say 
against  his  fine  analysis  of  some  of  the  virtues  of  the  poem ; 
assuredly,  he  says  none  too  much  of  its  vigour  of  characterization, 
its  artistic  mastery  and  its  skill  in  dialogue  and  in  episode.  But  I 
do  deny  his  conclusion.  In  the  first  place,  to  an  extent  which  is 
seldom  realized,  and  which  deserves  much  fuller  treatment  than 
this,  the  merits  of  the  Troilus  are  due  to  the  Filostrato.  To  my  V 
mind  the  latter  is  quite  as  good  a  poem ;  it  is  better  proportioned,  and 
its  characterization,  if  less  complex  and  attractive,  is  most  natural. 
Again,  I  see  no  difficulty  in  believing  that  the  powers  evinced  by  the 

1  I  shall  here  assume  that  version  F  ("  B  ")  of  the  Prologue  is  the  earlier,  a 
view  which  Lowes  has  done  so  much  to  establish.    If  G  ( "  A  ")  were  the  earlier, 
it  would  not  matter  in  this  connection. 

2  The  use  in  L.  G.  W.  of  three  stanzas  from  the  opening  of  the  Filostrato 
(discovered  earlier  by  Lowes  ;  cf.  his  article,  pp.  822-3)  of  course  is  not  sur 
prising,  since  Chaucer  owned  a  MS.  of  that  poem,  and  implies  no  necessary 
chronological  connection  of  T.  0.  with  L.  G.  W. 

DEV.  CH.  n 


18  THE    TROILVS   AND   CRISEYDE.  [CH.  I,  §  2 

Troilus  were  developed  within  a  few  years  of  Chaucer's  introduction 
to  Italian  literature.     It  is  possible  to  misunderstand  the  Italian 
influence  on  Chaucer ;  what  it  did  for  him,  it  seems  to  me,  was  to 
open   the   sluice  rather  than  to  fill  the  reservoir.     He   had   long 
been  a  mature  man,  and,  what  we  do  not  always  remember,  familiar 
with  the  greatest  poets  of  the  Eomans.     Till  he  went  to  Italy,  what 
he  lacked  was  a  poetic  form,  and  the   ability   to   assimilate    the 
influence  of  the  ancients ;  he  had  had  hitherto  only  the  trouvere 
manner  of  the  French.     The  Trecentisti  were  in   part  an  inter 
mediary  between  him  and  the  ancient  and  higher  ideal  of  poetic 
style,  they  performed  (if  so  humble  a  metaphor  may  be  allowed) 
the  function  of  the  plant  between  the  mineral  arid  the  animal.     I 
see  no  reason  why  under  a  keen  stimulus  the  poet  should  not 
have  rapidly  overtaken  the  man,  why  Chaucer  could  not  do  at 
thirty-five   what   he   could   do   at   forty-three.      Any   number  of 
other  poetic  biographies  will  bear  ine  out.1     As  to  the  particular 
qualities  which  Lowes  dwells  on,  it  seems  to  me  they  would  be 
almost  as  sudden  in  appearing  at  the  latter  age  as  the  former, 
for  I  cannot  possibly  believe  that  the  Palamon  and  Arcite  and 
the   Legends  preceded  the  Troilus.      Again  and  again   a  priori 
arguments  of  this  kind  have  burst  before  a  piece  of  evidence. 
May  I  say  that  I  have  become  gradually  but  firmly  convinced  that 
Chaucer's  literary  manner  after  1372  depended  far  less  on  the  time 
of  life  when  he  was  writing  than  on  the  character  of  his  subject?) 
This  is  a  highly  important  point,  to  which  I  shall  have  to  re  turn  I 
repeatedly  in  treating  the  Canterbury  Tales.     It  will  account  for 
the  inferiority  of  the  House  of  Fame  and  the  Parliament  of  Fowls 
to  the  Troilus.     Therefore  I  cannot  feel  that  the  excellence  of  the 
Troilus  is  an  argument  against  an  early  date. 

The  most  striking  point  which  Lowes  makes,  it  seems  to  me,  is 
the  foreshadowing  of  the  Legend  in  Troilus,  V.  1772-85  ;  Chaucer 
wishes  he  might  write  of  Penelope  and  Alcestis,  and  warns  women 
against  false  men.2  There  is  nothing  surprising  in  the  occurrence  of 
this  passage  in  the  Troilus;  even  without  the  Legend  it  would  not 

1  Lowes  at  times   well   illustrates   Chaucer's    procedure  by    Tennyson's. 
May  not  the  rapidity  with  which  Chaucer  responded  to  the  Italian  stimulus 
be   paralleled   by  Coleridge's  sudden  poetic  growth  under  the  influence  of 
"Wordsworth  ?     Both  he  and  Chaucer  were  impressionable  poets,  and  it  seems 
to  me  that  their  rapid  growth  was  exquisitely  natural. 

2  Lowes,  pp.  820-1.     As  to  the  comedie  in  line  1788,   Lowes  and  I  both 
show  thoroughly  that  it  cannot  be  made  to  imply  any  particular  plan 
(P.  M.  L.  A.,  xx.  855  ;  Mod.  Philol.,  i.  318). 


CH.  I,  §  2]  THE    DATE.  19 

"have  seriously  puzzled  any  one  for  a  moment"  (to  borrow  Lowes' 
own  language  from  where  it  is  less  in  place,  p.  828,  note) ;  and  there 
is  nothing  unlikely  in  Chaucer's  having  vaguely  foreseen  the  Legend 
years  before  he  wrote  it.  If  it  was  written  at  the  queen's  sug 
gestion,  this  passage  at  the  end  of  the  Troilus  may  have  been  what 
made  her  think  of  such  a  reparation  for  "  the  Rose  and  eek  Criseyde." 
At  any  rate,  I  cannot  think  for  an  instant  that  this  passage  can  be 
weighed  against  the  evidence  for  an  early  date ;  to  which  we  may 
now  turn. 

Two  considerations  point  to  a  fairly  early  date  for  the  Troilus, 
earlier  certainly  than  1385,  the  date  which  Lowes  assigns  it.  To 
begin  with,  it  is  well  known  that  Chaucer  is  very  fond  of  his  own 
words,  and  constantly  repeats  favourite  or  convenient  phrases  or 
lines,  I  shall  later  have  to  point  out  very  many  cases  of  this. 
Now  the  present  Knight's  Tale  is  connected  with  the  Troilus  on 
the  one  hand,  and  the  Legend  of  Good  Women  on  the  other,  by 
a  large  number  of  such  repetitions,  as  I  shall  show  later,  which  I 
seem  to  indicate  for  the  original  Pcdamon  and  Arcite  a  position 
between  the  two.1  The  absence  of  such  parallels  between  the 
Troilus  and  the  Legend  is  very  striking,  considering  their  frequent 
parallels  to  other  poems.  Except  for  the  passage  in  the  Troilus 
which  foreshadows  the  Legend,  and  for  one  or  two  expressions 
which  are  paralleled  in  the  Knight's  Tale  as  well  (which  therefore 
was  probably  the  transmitter),  I  find  only  two  common  to  the 
Troilus  and  the  Legend.  T.  (7.,  IV.  15,  is  almost  the  same  as 
L.  G.  W.,  Prologue  G,  265  : 

"  For  how  (How  that)  Criseyde  Troilus  forsook." 

But  here,  it  will  be  seen,  the  parallel  is  in  the  prologue  which  we 
shall  see  is  surely  the  later,  dating  from  about  1394.  T.  C.,  III. 
733-4,  is  parallel  to  L.  G.  W.,  2629-30  : 

"  0  fatal  sustren,  which,  er  any  clooth 
Me  shapen  was,  my  destene  me  sponne ;" 

"  Sin  first  that  day  that  shapen  was  my  sherte, 
Or  by  the  fatal  sustren  had  my  dom." 

But  most  of  this  is  paralleled  in  the  Knight's  Tale.2     Considering, 

1  See  pp.  76-8  below,  in  my  chapter  011  the  Teseide  poems.     The  value  of 
this  evidence  is  recognized  by  Skeat,  though  it  makes  against  his  chronology 
(iii.  394),  and  by  Mather  (Fumivatt  Miscellany,  p.  308). 

2  "That  shapen  was  my  deeth  erst  than  my  sherte  "  (1566).      For  the 
rest,  T.  C.,  111.  1282  =  Kn.  T.,  3089  =  L.  G.  W.t  Prol.  F,  162.    In  the  passage 


20  THE    TROILUS   AND   CR1SEYDE.  [CH.  I,  §  2 

then,  the  closeness  of  the  Knight's  Tale  in  phraseology  to  -the 
Troilus  and  to  the  whole  Legend  of  Good  Women,  it  is  very  strik 
ing  that  there  should  be  almost  no  parallels  between  the  two  latter. 
It  certainly  makes  against  the  view1  that  the  Troilus  was  written 
close  to  and  between  most  or  all  the  individual  legends  and  the 
Prologue  of  the  Legend  of  Good  Women;  that  the  legends  were 
written  about  1380,  the  Palamon  about  1382,  Troilus  1383-5,  and 
the  Prologue  of  the  Legend  in  1386.2  So  far  as  this  evidence  has 
value,  it  seems  to  indicate  an  order  of  things  like  that  which  I 
arrive  at  by  other  methods  :  Troilus  (revised  later),3  Palamon, 
Legend  of  Good  Women. 

But  there  is  one  more  piece  of  evidence  against  Lowes'  date  for 
Troilus,  and  somewhat  in  favour  of  mine.  Skeat  points  out  that  it 
is  mentioned  and  frequently  quoted  in  the  Testament  of  Love ,4  once 
attributed  to  Chaucer,  but  really  by  Thomas  Usk.5  I  need  not 
repeat  all  the  instances  of  borrowing  which  Skeat  mentions  in  his 
notes;0  the  important  passage  is  where  Usk  openly  refers  to 
Chaucer  and  the  Troilus.  The  discourse  between  the  author  and 
Love  (in  close  imitation  of  that  between  Boethius  and  Philosophy) 
has  been  on  divine  foreknowledge  and  human  free-will. 

"  '  I  wolde  now  (quod  I)  a  litel  understande,  sithen  that  [god]  al 
thing  thus  beforn  wot,  whether  thilke  wetinge  be  of  tho  thinges, 
or  els  thilke  thinges  ben  to  ben  of  goddes  weting,  and  so  of  god 
nothing  is  ;  and  if  every  thing  be  thorow  goddes  weting,  and  therof 
take  his  being,  than  shulde  god  be  maker  and  auctour  of  badde 
werkes,  and  so  he  shulde  not  rightfully  punisshe  yvel  doinges  of 
mankynde.' — Quod  Love,  '  I  shal  telle  thee,  this  lesson  to  lerne. 

which  foreshadows  L.  G.  W.t  T.  C.,  V.  1780-1  =  L.  G.  W.,  Prol.  F,  486  (G, 
476)  ;  1782  =  2546  ;  1785-2387. 

1  Lowes,  P.  M.  L.  A.,  xx   860-62. 

2  This  date  we  may  gladly  accept. 

3  I  may  also  recall  the  date,  1380  or  shortly  after,  which  I  have  suggested 
for  the  revision,  which  will  throw  the  original  writing  far  back ;  the  earlier 
we  put  the  latter,  the  more  natural  is  the  thorough  revision.     It  must  be 
recollected  that  revision  was  far  from  being  Chaucer's  custom.     The  only 
other  known  case,  that  of  the  Prologue  of  L.  G.  W. ,  was  due  to  a  very  special 
cause,  as  I  believe  we  shall  see  ;  as  we  shall  also  see  that  P.  A.  was  probably 
altered  only  at  the  beginning  and  the  end. 

4  See  the  Supplement  to  Skeat's  Chaucer,  vii.  1-145.     Practically  all  the 
knowledge  we  have  of  this  work  is  due  to  Skeat,  to  whom  my  treatment  of  it 
is  indebted  at  every  step. 

5  On  the  authorship,  see  Skeat,  VII.  xx.     It  may  be  remembered  that  the 
attribution  of  the  T.  L.  to  Chaucer,  and  a  misinterpretation  of  it,  were  re- 


see 
p.  23,  note. 


CH.  I,  §  2]  THE   DATE.  21 

Myne  owne  trewe  servaunt,  the  noble  philosophical  poete  in  Eng- 
lissh  ...  he  (quod  she),  in  a  tretis  that  he  made  of  my  servant 
Troilus,  hath  this  mater  touched,  and  at  the  ful  this  question 
assoyled.  Certaynly,  his  noble  sayinges  can  I  not  amende;  in 
goodnes  of  gentil  manliche  speche,  without  any  maner  of  nycete  of 
storiers  imaginacion,  in  witte  and  in  good  reson  of  sentence  he 
passeth  al  other  makers.  In  the  boke  of  Troilus,  the  answere  to 
thy  question  mayst  thou  lerne.' "  l 

As  Skeat  points  out  (with  less  conviction  than  seems  to  me  in 
place),  the  reference  is  to  Troilus,  IV.  953-1085,  the  passage 
already  discussed  at  large,  where  Troilus  soliloquizes  on  the  ques 
tion  whether  God's  foreknowledge  interferes  or  not  with  man's 
free-will.  Now  the  interesting  thing  is  that,  as  we  have,  seen, 
this  passage  came  in  on  the  revision.  Therefore  Chaucer's  revised 
version  of  the  Troilus  was  known  to  Thomas  Usk. 

The  question  as  to  the  date  of  the  Testament  of  Love  may  be 
answered  with  certainty  and  exactness.2  Usk  refers  to  events  of 
1384  in  London  in  a  manner  much  more  certain  and  detailed  even 
than  Skeat  points  out.  According  to  Malverne,3  John  Northamp 
ton,  who  in  1383  had  been  mayor  for  two  years,  was  very  severe 
toward  the  fishmongers,  who  had  charged  excessive  prices,  and 
thereby  for  a  time  he  won  popular  applause  ;  but  by  extending  the 
same  austerity  toward  other  trades  he  awoke  discord  and  alienated 
his  former  friends,  insomuch  that,  when  he  came  up  for  re-election, 
after  a  stormy  campaign  Nicholas  Brembre  was  put  in  his  place. 
But  the  two  factions  so  failed  to  agree,  and  the  validity  of  Brembre' s 
election  was  so  doubtful,  that  the  royal  authority  seems  to  have 
been  necessary  to  secure  the  office  to  him.  He  at  once  undid  the 
work  of  his  stern  predecessor,  and  restored  their  liberties  to  the 
fishmongers.  Shortly  after  this  Northampton  caused  disturbances 
in  London,  was  accused  of  provoking  sedition,  and  was  arrested 
and  imprisoned  by  the  King  in  Corfe  Castle.  Brembre,  however, 
laboured  to  calm  the  tumults  against  Northampton,  and  to  promote 
peace.  Usk  was  arrested  about  July  20,  1384,  and  induced  to 
betray  Northampton's  secrets  and  bring  accusations  against  him ; 
these  Northampton  denied,  declared  Usk  a  false  ribald,  and  defied 
him  to  single  combat.  Subsequently  other  leading  citizens  were 

1  III.,  eh.  4,  11.  241-9,  253-9. 

2  Here  I  am  simply  enlarging  on  and  confirming  what  Skeat  has  done.  See 
VII.,  xxii.  ff. 

a  Pp.    29-31,  45-51  (Malvevne's  continuation  of  Higden's  Potycbronicon, 
Kolls  Series,  vol,  jx.)t 


22  THE    TRQILU8   AND   CRISEYDE.  [CH,  I,  §  2 

arrested  and  accused ;  of  all  this,  Malverne  says,  the  incensed  fish 
mongers  were  the  cause.  In  October,  1384,  when  Brembre  came 
up  for  re-election,  great  precautions  were  taken  to  avoid  a  recurrence 
of  such  disturbances  as  those  of  his  first  election. 

Usk's  account,  the  vaguely  expressed  version  of  a  personal  enemy 
of  .Northampton,  perfectly  agrees  with  this.1  After  dwelling  on  how 
much  he  has  desired  the  peace  of  the  city,  he  says  he  had  been  enticed 
into  a  faction  which  attempted  to  abate  the  evils  of  extortion,  but 
really  meant  to  make  things  disagreeable  for  leading  citizens  who 
disapproved  of  the  present  misgovernment.  This  faction  and  its 
"  governour,"  after  he  had  been  put  out  in  a  "  free  eleccion,"  pre 
tended  that  the  latter  had  been  invalid,  and  raised  a  great  disturb 
ance.  Usk  himself  was  imprisoned  until  he  should  reveal  what  he 
knew  for  the  benefit  of  the  commonweal,  even  if  it  involved 
betraying  his  "owne  fere."  He  justifies  himself  for  this  action, 
but  later  he  was  accused  of  bearing  false  witness  against  his 
master,2  and  offered  to  substantiate  his  statements  by  single  com 
bat.3  The  neatness  with  which  Usk's  •  slightly  cryptic  account 
corresponds  to  the  facts  proves  that  it  cannot  have  been  written 
before  1384. 

But  we  may  go  farther,  and  say  that  it  must  have  been  written 
later  yet,  after  Chaucer's  Legend  of  Good  Women,  with  which  it 
certainly  shows  familiarity.  The  following  parallels,  especially  the 
first,  seem  conclusive.4 

"  Certes,  I  wot  wel,  ther  shal  be  mad  more  scorne  and  jape  of 
me,  that  I,  so  unworthily  clothed  al-togider  in  the  cloudy  cloude 
of  unconninge,  wil  putten  me  in  prees  to  speke  of  love,  or  els  of 
the  causes  in  that  matter,  sithen  al  the  grettest  clerkes  ban  had 
y-nough  to  don,  and  (as  who  sayth)  5  gadered  up  clene  toforn  hem, 
and  with  their  sharpe  sythes  of  conning  al  moweri,  and  mad 
therof  grete  rekes  and  noble,  ful  of  al  plentees,  to  fede  me  and  many 
another.  .  .  .  And  al-tliough  these  noble  repers,  as  good  workmen 
and  worthy  their  hyre,  han  al  drawe  and  bounde  up  in  the  sheves, 
and  mad  many  shockes,  yet  have  I  ensample  to  gadere  the  smale 
crommes.  .  .  .  Yet  also  have  I  leve  of  the  noble  husbande  Boe'ce, 
al-though  I  be  a  straunger  of  conninge,  to  come  after  his  doctrine, 

1  Testament  of  Love,  bk.  I.,  ch.  6,  especially   11.  53-6,  76-89,  93-107, 
117,  130-50,  188-91. 

2  He  had  been  confidential  secretary  to  Northampton. 

3  I.  7,  10;  II.  4,  116. 

4  T.  ofL.,  I.,  Prol.,  11.  94-114.    Most  of  these  parallels  are  pointed  out  by 
Skoat. 

5  This  phrase  shows  that  the  passage  is  a  conscious  reminiscence  ;  it  will  be 
seen  how  he  plays  with  the  idea  (and  mixes  the  metaphor). 


OH.  I,  §  2]  THE   BATE.  23 

and  these  grete  workmen,  and  glene  my  handfuls  of  the  shedinge 
after  their  handes  ;  and,  if  me  faile  ought  of  my  ful,  to  encrese  my 
porcion  with  that  I  shal  drawe  by  privitces  out  of  the  shocke.".l 

"  Alias  !  that  I  ne  had  English,  ryme  or  prose, 
Suffisant  tliis  flour  to  preyse  aright ! 
But  helpeth,  ye  that  han  conning  and  might, 
Ye  lovers,  that  can  make  of  sentement ; 
In  this  cas  oghte  ye  be  diligent 
To  forthren  mesomwhat  in  my  labour, 
Whether  ye  ben  with  the  leef  or  with  the  flour. 
For  wel  I  wot,  that  ye  han  her-biforn 
.    .     Of  making  ropen,  and  lad  awey  the  corn  ; 
And  I  come  after,  glening  here  and  there, 
And  am  ful  glad  if  I  may  finde  an  ere 
Of  any  goodly  word  that  ye  han  left "  (F,  66-77). 

"  Hast  thou  not  rad  how  kinde  I  was  to  Paris,  Priamus  sone  of 
Troy?  How  Jason  me  falsed,  foral  his  false  behest?"  (T.  £.,  I.  2, 
91-3  ;  Love  is  speaking  to  the  writer). 

u  Thou  rote  of  false  lovers,  duk  Jasoun  !  .  .  . 
Ther  other  falsen  oon,  thou  falsest  two  !  "    (1368,  1377). 

Jason  swore  to  Medea  that  he 

"  Ne  sholde  her  never  falsen,  night  ne  da}'."  1 

'  *  And  nere  it  for  comfort  of  your  presence,  right  here  wolde  I 
sterve  "  (I,  3,  119-120;  he  is  addressing  Love).  2 

"For,  nadde  comfort  been  of  hir  presence, 
I  had  been  deed,  withouten  any  defence"  (F,  278-9). 

We  shall  later  see  reason  to  agree  with  Professor  Lowes  that  the 
Prologue  of  the  Legend  can  hardly  have  been  written  before  1386, 
and  to  believe  that  the  poem  can  hardly  have  been  published  till 
1387.  Hence  the  Testament  of  Love  cannot  have  been  written 
before  that  date. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  cannot  have  been  written  later  than  the 
early  part  of  1388,  for  the  very  good  reason  that  in  March  of  that 
year  Usk  was  executed.3  The  previous  year  seems  to  be  indicated 

1  Line  1640.     These  seem  to  be  the  only  cases  where  falsen  is  usqd  -in 
L.  G.  W. 

2  Cf.  also  K.  T.,  1398.     Test,  of  Love,  III.  7,  36-9,  affords  a  parallel  to 
L.  G.  W.,  735-6  ;  but  it  is  more  closely  paralleled  in  T.  0.,  11.  538-9. 

3  Pointed  out  by  Skeat,  VII.  xxiii.     He  was  sentenced  March  4  ;  Mal- 
verne,  p.  169.    Yet  Skeat  "suspects "  (p.  473)  that  Usk  copies  from  Chaucer's 
Astrolabe,  which  Skeat  himself  (and  everybody  else)  dates  1391  (cf.  Chaucer, 
III.  352)  ;  and  assures  us  (p.  458  ;  cf.  p.  xxvii.)  that  Usk  quotes  the  C-text 
of  Piers  Ploivman,  which  Skeat  dates  1393.    In  neither  case  can  I  see  the  least 
internal  probability  of  copying. 


24  THE    TROILUfi   AND   CRISEYDE.  [CH.  I,  §  2 

by  the  complete  silence  of  the  work  as  to  Usk's  final  imprisonment 
and  peril.  At  the  end  of  1387  the  Duke  of  Gloucester  and  his 
party  succeeded  in  turning  the  tables  on  Richard  and  his  supporters, 
among  whom  were  Sir  Nicholas  Brembre  and  Usk,  now  sub-sheriff 
of  Middlesex.1  Though  we  hear  nothing  of  Usk  till  February,  some 
of  his  party  were  accused  as  early  as  November  14,  1387.  Now 
Usk  has  his  own  affairs  much  on  his  mind ;  in  his  Prologue  he 
says,  "  this  book  shal  be  of  love  "  (81-2),  yet  he  has  a  great  deal 
to  say  of  the  bygones  of  1384,  and  seems  greatly  concerned  as  to 
what  people  think  of  his  conduct  in  the  Northampton  affair,  and 
very  anxious  to  vindicate  his  reputation  from  the  charge  of  false 
hood  and  treachery.  Is  it  credible  that  he  should  utterly  ignore 
this  new  great  danger  ?  2  Working  backwards,  therefore,  as  well 
as  forwards,  we  arrive  at  1387  as  the  date  of  the  Testament  of 
Love. 

We  find,  then,  that  Chaucer's  revised  version  of  the  Troilus 
was  known  to  Usk  in  1387.3  If,  as  Lowes  thinks,  the  first  version 
was  not  finished  till  1385,  is  not  this  rather  quick  work?  So 

1  Malverne's  continuation  of  Higden,  IX.,  106-8, 115-16,  118,  134,  150-1, 
169;   cf.  also  "Walsingham's   Historia,  II.  173.      The  former  of  course  was 
the  ex-mayor,  and  Chaucer's  former  colleague  at  the  custom-house.     On  his 
execution,  cf.  also  Gower,  Cron.  Tripert.,  I.  (Macaulay,  IV.  318). 

2  Skeat  thinks  (p.  xxii.)  that  he  was  in  prison  while  he  was  writing  the 
latter  part  of  the  work,  because  in  speaking  of  the  events  of  1384  he  mentions 
being  for  the  "  firste  tyme  enprisoned"  (II.  4,  103-5) ;  but  obviously  he  may 
have  been  in  prison  twice  in  the  first  connection,  or  once  later  for  some  un 
known  reason.     His  first  chapter  (e.  g.  11.  14-17,  36-48)  talks  much  of  prison, 
but,  as  Skeat  says,  this  is  doubtless  because  he  is  imitating  the  prisoner 
Boethius,  and  is  meant  metaphorically  ;  for  it  is  here  that  the  allegorical  fic 
tion  begins.  In  the  Prologue,  where  he  speaks  directly  in  his  own  person,  there 
is  not  a  hint  of  such  a  thing.    Nor  can  I  see  any  reason  to  believe,  with  Skeat, 
that  he  was  ever  involved  with  the  Lollards.    His  old  associates,  whom  he  has 
abandoned,  were  doubtless  the  Northampton   faction,  and  the  meaning  of 
"  Margaret "  is  too  vague  to  be  made  to  imply  a  recent  reconciliation  with  the 
Church. 

3  The  Testament  of  Love  borrows  rather  extensively  also  from  the  House  of 
Fame.  In  a  few  passages  it  suggests  Kn.  T. ,  but  that  is  not  at  all  likely  to  have 
been  seen  by  Usk,  or  to  have  been  published  before  his  death.  T.  L.,  bk.  I. 
ch.  3,  11.  13-14  suggests  Kn.  T.,  951  ;  I.  3,  120  suggests  1398  (but  cf.  also 
L.  G.  W.,  F,  278,  cited  above).  Other  parallels  to  Kn.  T.  are  paralleled  also 
in  T.  C.  or  L.  G.  W.  With  T.  L.,  I.  1,  70  (the  sentence  that  follows  shows  it  is 
meant  as  a  quotation)  and  III.  1, 137  cf.  Kn.  T.  3089,  T.  C.,  III.  1282,  L.  G.  W. 
(F)  162  ;  and  with  T.  L.,  III.  7,  50  cf.  Kn.  T.  1838  and  T.  C.,  V.  1433.  In 
a  good  many  other  passages,  some  of  which  Skeat  mentions  and  some  not, 
T.  L.  recalls  various  other  scattered  parts  of  the  C.  T.  But  after  considering 
every  one,  I  am  convinced  that  there  is  no  evidence  of  borrowing,  nothing 
like  as  much  as  there  is  in  the  case  of  L.  G.  W.,  or  even  Kn.  T.  Yet  Skeat 
sometimes  announces  the  borrowing  without  ever  considering  whether  the 
thing  is  possible,  or  whether  the  borrowing  may  not  have  been  on  Chaucer's 
part. 


CH.  I,  §  2]  ,  THE    DATE.  25 

extensive  and  minute  a  revision  of  a  poem  originally  so  finished  as 
the  Troilus,  it  seems  to  me,  implies  the  passage  of  a  number  of 
years.  But  all  this  agrees  perfectly  with  the  date  1377  for  the 
original  completion  and  1380  or  later  for  the  revision. 

A  very  early  date  for  the  Troilus  and  Gnseyde  is  indicated  by 
Lydgate's  manner  of  speaking  of  it.1  In  the  Falls  of  Princes,  in 
a  long  list  of  Chaucer's  works  which  is  roughly  but  rather  strikingly 
chronological,2  the  Troilus  stands  first  and  is  attributed  to  the  poet's 
youth  : 

"  In  youthe  he  made  a  translacion 
Of  a  boke  whiche  called  is  Trophe 
In  Lunibarde  tonge,  as  men  may  rede  and  se, 
-And  in  our  vulgar,  long  or  that  ye  [he]  deyde, 
Gave  it  the  name  of  Troylous  and  Cresseyde." 

In  the  Troy-Book  he  speaks  of  Chaucer's 

"  book  of  Troylus  and  Cryseyde 
Which  he  made  longe  or  that  he  deyde."  3 

Fifteen  years  would  not  be  so  very  long  'before  he  died,  and 
youth  in  the  fourteenth  century  certainly  did  not  extend  to  the 
middle  forties.  The  probabilities  I  think  are  distinctly  in  favour 
of  the  view  thatLydgate  knew  Chaucer  personally,  and  he  certainly 
knew  him  well  by  hearsay.4  The  list  in  the  Falls  of  Princes 
shows  very  considerable  intimacy  with  Chaucer's  literary  histor}r, 
and  I  see  no  reason  why  a  good  deal  of  weight  should  not  be  attached 
to  Lydgate's  testimony.  It  is  striking  that  he  says  nothing  about 
the  time  when  any  other  of  Chaucer's  works  was  written.  Perhaps 
the  world  had  not  even  then  got  through  marvelling  at  the  precocity 
of  such  a  work  from  an  almost  unknown  poet..  It  is  certainly  note 
worthy  that  the  evidence  derived  (as  we  shall  see)  frohi  Chaucer's 
friend  and  contemporary  Gower,  and  the  direct  testimony  of  his 
chief  admirer  and  disciple  Lydgate,  should  agree  so  perfectly  on  an 
early  date  for  the  Troilus. 

1  The  point  developed  here  was  first  made  (I  believe)  in  my  article  in 
Modern  Philology,  i.  324,  note. 

2  See  Loimsbmy,  Studies,  i.  419-422  ;    Morris'  Cliauccr  (London,  1891),  i. 
79.    The  list,  in  order,  is  T.C.,  Boethius,  Astrolabe,  "Ceixand  Alcion,"  B.  D., 
R.R.,  P.F.,  Origen  upon  the  Magdalen,   Book  of  the  Lion,  A.  A.,  Mars, 
L.  G.  W.,  C.  T.,  Melibeus,  Cl.  T.,  Monk's  T.,  small  lyrics.    The  Troilus  is  also 
first  in  the  list  of  Chaucer's  works  in  the  certainly  genuine  Retractations  at 
the  end  of  the  Pars.  T.  :   T.  0.,  H.  F.,  L.  G.  W.,  B.  D.,  P.  F.,  0.  T.,  Book  of 
the  Lion,  small  lyrics. 

3  See  Rossetti's  edition  of  the  T.  C.  and  the  Filostrato  (Ch.  Soc.),  p.  x. 

4  Of.  Schick,    Temple  of  Glas,  xci.  f.     The  Falls  of  Princes  was  written 
about  1430-8,  and  the  Troy-Book  about  1412-20  (ibid.,  cxii,). 


26  THE    TROILUS   AND   CRISEYDE.  [CH.  I,  §  2 

Up  to  this  point  it  seems  to  me  temperate  to  say  that  we  have 
found  no  reliable  evidence  in  favour  of  a  late  date  for  the  Troilus, 
especially  for  so  late  a  date  as  1385  ;  and  evidence  of  no  little  value 
in  favour  of  .  an  early,  even  a  very  early,  date.  It  will  be  all 
clinched  if  we  can  be  sure  that  the  poem  was  referred  to  as  early 
as  1377.  The  passage  in  Gower's  Mirour  de  TOmme  which  seems 
to  mention  the  Troilus  is  as  follows  (11.  5245-56) : 

"  Au  Sompnolent  trop  fait  moleste, 
Quant  matin  doit  en  haulte  feste 
Ou  a  monster  on  a  chapelle 
Venir ;  mais  ja  du  riens  s'apreste 
A  dieu  prier,  ainz  bass  la  teste 
Mettra  tout  suef  sur  1'eschamelle, 
Et  dort,  et  songe  en  sa  cervelle  ; 
Qu'il  est  au  bout  de  la  tonelle, 
U  qu'il  o'it  chanter  la  geste 
De  Troylus  et  de  la  belle 
Creseide,  et  ensi  se  concelle 
A  dieu  d'y  faire  sa  requeste." 

Koch  admits  that  the  reference  here  is  to  Chaucer's  poem.  This, 
however,  Professor  Lowes  does  not  do,  and  with  much  thoroughness 
and  ingenuity  he  tries  to  discover  many  loopholes  of  escape  from  the 
inferences  which  I  have  drawn  from  the  passage.1 

First  of  all,  he  thinks  that  the  geste  de  Troylus  et  de  la  belle 
Creseide  of  which  Sompnolent  dreams  may  have  been  the  Filo- 
strato.  But  consider  that  Gower  knew  no  Italian,  and  was  writing 
for  people  ignorant  of  both  Italian  and  Boccaccio  ;  I  do  not  ask  what 
point  there  would  have  been  in  referring  to  the  latter,  but  how 
could  it  ever  have  occurred  to  him,  even  if  he  had  heard  Chaucer 
speak  of  the  poem,  to  make  in  so  off-hand  a  manner  a  remark  so 
unintelligible  1  Is  it  impertinent  to  ask  whether  a  modern  preacher 
would  rail  at  his  parishioners  for  staying  at  home  on  Sunday  to 
read  the  last  Sherlock  Holmes  story  or  the  works  of  a  novelist  of 
Paraguay?  Obviousness  and  popularity  are  necessarily  implied  in 
Gower's  remark.  This  and  the  apparently  rather  humble  station 
of  Sompnolent  are  what  suggest  that  the  poem  is  in  English ; 
Lowes'  suggestion  that  by  the  same  token  Cato  and  other  ancients 

1  Public.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.,  xx.  823-33.  The  reason  why  Gower's 
editor,  Mr.  JVIacanlay,  did  not  recognize  the  allusion  to  Chaucer's  poem  is 
no  doubt  that  by  the  received  chronology  it  greatly  antedated  it ;  the  fact 
that  he  did  not  was  my  reason  for  ignoring  his  remark  in  my  article 
(cf.  Lowes,  p.  824).  The  priority  in  recognizing  the  allusion  rests  with 
Hamilton. 


CH.  I,  §  2]  THE    DATE.  27 

quoted  in  the  Mirour,  by  the  author,  should  be  in  English  rather 
surprisingly  ignores  the  point.  Moreover,  Lowes  does  not  seem  to 
see  the  world  of  difference  in  naturalness  between  a  poet  referring, 
for  a  particular  reason,  to  a  little-known  work  by  himself,  as 
Chaucer  and  Froissart l  do,  and  making  a  recondite  allusion  where 
a  familiar  one  is  to  be  expected.  It  seems  to  me  the  possibility 
that  the  reference  is  to  Boccaccio  ought  to  be  eliminated. 

Lowes'  next  attempt  is  to  weaken  the  presumption  that  the 
allusion  is  to  an  independent  poem  of  some  length,  rather  than  to  a 
mere  episode,  by  paralleling  it  with  Froissart's  references  in  La 
Prison  Amoureuse  to  the  "  tretties,"  or  "  livret,"  "  de  Pynoteiis  et 
Neptisphele."  2  But  there  is  no  parallel  whatever  ;  not  only  is  the 
latter  work  one  by  himself,  but  the  poet  as  a  character  in  the  Prison 
writes  the  "livret,"  and  the  later  references  to  it  are  by  him  and 
another  character  in  the  story.  The  "gest  of  Troylus  and  of  the  fair 
Creseyde,"  it  still  seems  to  me,  certainly  implies  an  independent 
work  of  some  length.3 

Lowes  argues  (p.  829)  that  Sompnolent's  meditation  should 
hardly  be  on  so  tragic  a  story  as  Chaucer's  completed  version.  This 
seems  a  little  fine-drawn,  and  at  any  rate  will  prove  to  be  an  argu 
ment  rather  in  favour  of  my  view.  No  version  of  the  story  is  known 
which  is  any  less  tragic  than  Chaucer's.  Boccaccio's  great  innovation 
and  success,4  in  which  of  course  Chaucer  follows  him,  is  the  account 
of  the  courtship  and  happiness  of  Troilus.  Benoit  and  Guido  give 
no  account  of  the  story  except  reminiscently  at  the  time  when  the 
exchange  of  Briseida  for  Antenor  is  arranged ;  in  Benoit  the 
prominent  thing  (though  not  treated  very  seriously)  is  the  grief  of 
Troilus  and  the  fickleness  of  Briseida.  Moreover,  if  there  is  any 
inappropriateness  in  Gower's  allusion,  does  not  this  suggest  that 
there  was  some  special  reason  why  he  made  it  1  And  what  more 
natural  than  that  his  friend  had  just  been  writing  the  story  1  Gower 
was  not  so  sensitive  an  artist,  and  the  allusion  is  not  so  much  dwelt 
on,  that  this  inappropriateness  was  very  likely  to  strike  him ;  but  it 
does  seem  that  the  story  was  not  likely  to  have  occurred  to  him  unless 
for  some  special  reason.  If  it  cannot  be  called  tactful  to  represent 
Chaucer's  poem  as  a  favourite  with  such  a  person  as  Sompnolent, 

1  All  that  Froissart  does  in  the  Parody s  is  to  mention,  among  a  large  num 
ber  of  heroes  and  heroines,  some  of  those  of  his  own  Mtliador  (cf.  Engl.  SLud, , 
xxvi.  330).     Lowes  refers  also  to  L.  G.  JF.,  F,  420-1. 

2  Scheler,  I.  257-78,  286-340. 

3  Cf.  Lowes,  p.  826. 

4  Cf.  Koerting,  B.'s  Leben  und  WerTcc  (Leipzig,  1880),  584-5,  587, 


28  THE    TROILUS   AND   CRISEYDE.  [CH.  I,  §  2 

this  hardly  conflicts  with  the  impression  we  get  elsewhere  of 
Gower's  personality ;  witness  his  remarks  about  Chaucer's  "  daies 
olde"  at  fifty  or  so.  Perhaps  the  moral  Gower  somewhat  dis 
approved  of  the  Troilus,  even  though  it  was  dedicated  to  him. 
The  fact  that  it  was  Boccaccio  and  Chaucer  who  made  the  story 
of  Troilus  and  his  lady-love  prominent,  and  its  insignificance  all 
over  Europe  before  or  apart  from  their  influence,  must  never  be  lost 
sight  of,  and  is  of  high  importance  in  weighing  probabilities  in  this 
case.  It  was  probably  Boccaccio's  relations  with  <£  Fiammetta " 
that  led  him  to  select  this  episode  from  the  Troy  story,  enormously 
expand  it,  and  in  a  measure  make  its  heroine  a  warning  to  his  own 
lady.1  While  Troilus  is  very  prominent  all  through  Benoit's  and 
Guide's  works  as  a  warrior,  the  mention  of  his  lady  and  his  amour 
are  at  very  little  length,  and  do  not  even  form  a  unified  episode ; 2 
yet  Lowes  seems  (p.  833)  to  entertain  the  idea  that  the  geste  which 

1  Cf.  Koerting,  B.'s  Leben  und  Werke,  p.  585  ;  W.  Hertzberg,  Jahrbuck 
der  deutschen  Shakspcrc  Gesellschaft,  vi.,  196,  199.     Cf.  also  Schofield,  Engl. 
Lit.  from  the  Conquest  to  Chaucer,  291-2. 

2  In  Benoit,  Briseicla  is  "termed  'la  pucele'  in  verse  12977 The 

loves  of  Troilus  and  Briseida  are  not  described  at  length,  nor  the  various 
vicissitudes  of  them  notified  :  but,  now  that  the  lady  is  to  leave  Troy,  Benoit 
informs  us  that  she  and  Troilus  are  deeply  enamoured.  .  .  .  Her  monologue 
[as  to  the  final  capture  of  her  heart  by  Diomed]  .  .  .  ends  at  verse  20330  ; 
and,  though  the  poem  goes  on  to  the  formidable  number  of  30108  lines,  we 
hear  henceforth  no  more  of  her,  nor  of  Diomed  as  related  to  her,  nor  (save  in 
one  instance  soon  afterwards)  of  Troilus  in  the  character  of  her  deserted  and 
incensed  lover.     It  will  thus  be  perceived  that,  in  the  Briseis  narrative  of 
Benoit,  the  more  substantial  subject-matter  is  the  Briseida-Diomed  amour,  to 
which  the  Bviseida-Troilus  amour  forms  rather  the  proem  ;  whereas,  in  the 
Chryseis  narrative  of  Boccaccio  and  Chaucer,  the  main  interest  by  far  centres* 
in  the  Cryseyde-Troilus  amour,  to  which  the  Cryseyde-Diomed  amour  forms 
but  the  sequel,  and,  even  in  that  connection,  is  but  little  developed  except 
in  so  far  as  it  wedges  the  iron  into  the  soul  of  Troilus"  (W.  M.  Rossetti, 
Troilus  and  Filostrato,  Ch.  Soc.,  p.  vi.).     In  both  Benoit  and  Guido  the 
account  of  Briseida  is  scattered  in  some  four  or  five  spots  over  the  whole  middle 
of  the  work.  —In  the  Laud  Troy-Book  (E.  E.  T.  S.,  1902-3,  ed.  Wulfing), 
which  was  probably  written  about  1400  (see  Engl.  Stud.,  xxix.  3-6,  377-8, 
396),  but   which  shows  no  knowledge  of  Chaucer's  poem  (the  only,  and  a 
very  insufficient,  ground  for  dating  it  earlier),  the  episode  is  disposed  of  in 
about  60  lines  (9060-90,   10365-6,  13437,   13543-64)   out  of  18664,  much 
more  briefly  than  in  Guido,  the  source.      In  the  "  Gest  Hystoriale"  of  the 
Destruction  of  Troy  (E.  E.  T.  S.,  1869  and  1874,  ed.  Panton  and  Donaldson), 
it  occupies  about  200  out  of  over  14,000  (7886-7905,  8026-8181,  8296-8317, 
9942-i>959  ;  of.  10306) ;   the   author  refers  (8053-4)  to  Chaucer's  poem  for 
more   particulars.     In  the    Troy-Book  the  story    is   first  mentioned  when 
Diomed  sends  Troilus'  horse  to  the  heroine,  and  in  the  Gest  when  she  is 
exchanged  for  Antenor.     In  the  fourteenth-century  Seege  of  Troye  (ed.  Wager, 
1899),  a  greatly  condensed  poem  of  1922  11.,  Troilus  is  frequently  mentioned, 
but  his  lady  and  his  amour  never.     It  is  the  Seege  and  the  Gest  that  Miss 
Kempe  refers  to  in  her  rather    vague  statement  in  Engl.    Stud.,  xxix.  3. 
There  is  not  a  single  poem  in  English  which  mentions  the  love-story,  and 
which  can  plausibly  be  dated  before  Chaucer's  Troilus.  » 


CH.  I,  §  2]  tHE    DATE.  $$ 

Sompnolent  dreams  lie  hears  sung l  may  have  been  a  few  scattered 
passages  in  Guido's  Latin  prose  ! 

Furthermore,  in  works  other  than  those  which  tell  their  story, 
though  Troilus  is  not  infrequently  mentioned  as  a  brave  warrior,  I 
find  only  one  reference  to  him  as  a  lover  (by  Froissart),  and  no 
reference  at  all  to  the  heroine,  earlier  than  Chaucer's  Troilus,  in  any 
language.2  In  the  fifteenth  century  I  find  several  references  in 
French  to  the  heroine  and  the  amour;  when  we  find  that  the 
Troilus  and  Briseida*  a  French  prose  translation  of  the  Filostrato, 
was  written  at  the  very  end  of  the  fourteenth  or  early  in  the 
fifteenth  century,4  is  not  the  inference  obvious  that  the  rise  of  the 
love-story  to  prominence  was  largely  due  to  this  2 5  And  when  we  find 

1  Of.  Chaucer's  address  to  his  poem  (V.  1797),  "red  wher-so  tbou  be,  or 
ellee  songe  "  ;  and  (II.  56)  "  As  I  shal  singe,  on  Mayes  day  the  thridde." 

2  Therefore  to    Lowes'    question  (p.   828,  note),     "Supposing  Chaucer's 
Troilus  never  to  have  existed,  would  such  a  reference  as  Gower's,  on  the  basis  of 
known  relations  of  the  other  versions  of  the  story,  have  seriously  puzzled  any 
one  for  a  moment  ?  " — to  this  question  I  answer  Yes. 

3  Or  "  Creseide  "  or  "  Brisaide." 

4  See  Moland  et  d'Hericault,  Nouvelles  Francoises,  p.  ci.     There  are  six 
MSS.  in  the  Bibliotheque  National  e  alone  (ibid.,  p.  cxxxiv. ).    Benoit's  work 
was  written  about  1165,  and  Guido's  in  1287. 

6  The  following  are  the  only  references  I  find  to  Troilus  and  Criseyde  outside 
the  works  which  tell  their  story.  I.  Troilus  as  a  warrior  is  mentioned : — 

I.  In  Partenopeus  de  Blois,  I.  p.  6  (ed.  Crapelet,  twelfth  century  ;  he  is  barely 
mentioned  among  five  Trojan  knights  ;  Hector  is  dwelt  on).     2.  In  Floriant 
ef,Florete,  p.  32  (ed.  Francisque- Michel ;  thirteenth  century ;  barely  mentioned). 

3.  In  Anse'is  de  Cartage,  1.  1653  (Stuttg.  Lit.  Vcr.,  thirteenth  century).    4.  In 
ChroniqueRimeedePh.Moittkes,  I.  289  (ed.  de  Reiffenberg  ;  A.I).  1243  ;  Troilus 
with  others  used  as  a  simile  for  bravery).     5.  In  1249  the  German  Albertus 
Stadensis  wrote  a  Latin  poem  in  distichs,  in  the  proem  of  which  he  says,  ' '  Liber 
est  Troilus  ob  Troica  bella  vocatus."     It  does  not,  however,  deal  with  Troilus 
particularly,  and  apparently  never  mentions  his  love  affair,  but  is  a  mere  para 
phrase  of  Dares  (see  G.  Koerting,  Boccaccio's  Leben  u.  JVerke,  p.  589  ;  W. 
Hertzberg,  Jahrbuch  d.  deut.   Shaks.  Gesellsch.,  vi.  181).      6.    In  Escatwr, 

II.  15698-9  (ed.  Michelant :   about  1285  ;  he  is  barely  mentioned).     7.  By 
Deschamps,  IX.  91  (Soc.  Anc.  Textes ;  about  1381  ;  barely  mentioned  among 
ancient  warriors).     8.  By    Georges    Chastellain,    VII.  424  (ed.  Kervyn   de 
Lettenhove :    C.   died  1475  ;    mentioned  among  many  others).     I  may  add 
Malory,  Morte  d1  Arthur,  XX.  17  ;  bare  mention  among  ancient  heroes,  prob 
ably  due  to  Malory  himself;   the  numerous  other  fifteenth-century  English 
references  it  is  needless  to  collect.     II.  Troilus  or  Criseyde,  or  both,  are  men 
tioned  as  lovers  by:— 1.  Froissart,  J.  29  (ed.  Scheler  :  before  1370  ;  Troilus  is 
barely  mentioned,  but  heads  a  list  of  lovers  ;  cf.  Lowes,  p.  825,  who  makes 
too  much  of  this  single  instance).    2.  Jean  le  Seneschal,  p.  203  (S.  A.  T.  F.  : 
about  1389  ;   ^  Troyluz,"  lover  of  "  Brisayda  ").     3.  Charles  d'Orleaus,  p.  307 
(ed.  Champollion-Figeac  ;  lived  1391-1465,  and  often  alludes  to  the  Troy-story ; 
three  lines  on  Troilus) ;  p.  120  (not  126,  as  Dernedde  says  ;  speaks  of  the  beauty 
of  "  Criseis,  de  Yaeud  et  Elaine"  ;  the  editor  says,  p.  427,  "lisez  Briseis"). 

4.  Alain  Chartier,  p.  734  (Paris,  1617  ;  lived  about  1392-1429  ;  Troilus  barely 
mentioned  ;  "  Briseyda,"  who  broke  faith  with  him,  appears  among  a  number 
of  faithless  ones).  -.5.  ReneqfAnjou,  III.  111-112  (ed.  Hawke  ;  born  1408  ;  T. 
is  mentioned  between  Paris  and  Diomed,  among  many  lovers  ;  loved  "  Grisade  " 


30  THE    TROILUS   AND   CRISEYDE.  [cH.  I,  §  2 

that  Gower,  after  this  first  reference  in  the  Mirour,  makes  many 
other  such,  in  the  Vox  Clamantis,  in  a  balade  and  in  the  Gonfessio 
Amantis,  never  mentions  Troilus  but  as  a  lover,  and  always  spells 
the  heroine's  name  with  a  C,  is  not  the  inference  still  more  justifiable 
that  the  prominence  of  the  story  with  Gower,  as  with  fifteenth-cen 
tury  English  writers,  Was  due  to  Chaucer  1  The  most  interesting  case 
in  Gower  is  a  reminiscence  of  the  passage  in  the  Mir  our  (C.  A., 
IV.  2794-7) ;  when  Genius  examines  the  Lover  as  to  the  sin  of 
"  Sompnolence,"  he  proves  himself  innocent  by  showing  his  constant 
readiness  to  please  his  lady  : 

"Or  elles  that  hir  list  comaunde 
To  rede  and  here  of  Troilus, 
Eiht  as  sche  wole  or  so  or  thus, 
I  am  al  redi  to  consente." 

The  reference  here,  of  course,  is  to  Chaucer's  Troilus,  which 
there  cannot  be  a  doubt  that  Gower  knew  well  when  he  wrote  the 
Confessio.  Yet  we  are  asked  to  believe  that  the  precisely  similar 
reference  in  the  Mirour  is  to  some  poem  unknown  to  Gower's 
readers  (or  else  to  us),  or  else  to  a  few  scattered  bits  lost  in  a  long 
poem,  or  (worse  yet)  in  a  Latin  prose  work.1 

I  hardly  think  it  can  be  said,  then,  that  the  argument  "  that 
Gower's  reference  is  to  Chaucer's  Troilus,  rests  in  the  last  analysis 
on  a  single  letter,  the  initial  C  of  the  heroine's  name"  (Lowes,  p.  826). 

or   "Grisayde"). Most  of  the  references  in  this  note  are  derived  from 

Robert  Dernedde's  Ueber  die  den  altfranz.  Dichtern  bekannten  epischen 
Stoffe  aus  dem  Altertum  (Erlangen,  1887),  pp.  122-3  ;  1  owe  the  reference  to 
Dr.  G.  L.  Hamilton.  No  doubt  the  list  could  be  extended,  but  after  some 
search  I  find  no  more.  Neither  T.  nor  C.  is  mentioned,  e.  g. ,  in  Petrarch's 
Trionfi  (ed.  Appel),  where  many  such  are  ;  she  is  never  mentioned  by 
Deschamps  nor  (so  far  as  I  can  find)  by  Froissart,  and  he  only  once  by  each 
(as  noted  above).  No  other  references  are  to  be  found  in  the  ninety  volumes 
of  the  Soc.  des  Anc.  Tcxtes,  or  in  Langlois'  Table  des  Noms  Propres.  I  find 
Criseyde  mentioned  in  no  manner  anywhere  else  ;  but  of  course  I  have  not 
collected  fifteenth-century  English  references. 

1  Troilus  and  Criseyde  are  frequently  mentioned  by  Gower.  The  earliest 
case  appears  to  be  that  in  M.  0.  The  next,  pointed  out  to  me  by  Dr. 
Hamilton,  is  in  Vox  Cl  (soon  after  1383),  VI.  1325-8,  where  the  faithful 
T.  and  Medea  are  paired  off  against  the  fickle  Jason  and  "  Crisaida."  In  one 
of  the  French  balades  (XX.  20  ;  probably  late)  he  speaks  of  T.  as  supplanted 
by  Diomed  in  the  love  "du  fille  au  Calcas."  In  G.  A.  (finished  1390)  among 
examples  of  sup-plantation  he  quotes  the  case  of  Agamemnon,  Achilles,  and 
"that  swete  wiht"  "  Brexeida,"  and  then  directly  "  Criseida,"  Troilus  and 
Diomed  (II.  2451-8) ;  twice  again,  similarly,  of  "Criseide"  and  the  other 
two  (V.  7597-7602  ;  VIII.  2531-5 ;  the  story  of  "Criseide  doubter  of  Crisis," 
is  told  in  V.  6433-75).  It  is  worthy  of  remark  that  there  is  no  significant 
change  in  his  manner  of  mentioning  the  lovers,  which  suggests  that  he  had 
had  no  accession  to  his  information  since  the  first  reference. 


CH.  I,  §  2]  THE    DATE.  31 

But  this  is  still  a  strong  argument.  We  must  not  assume,  it  is 
true,  that  Chaucer  was  the  innovator  in  this  spelling;  not  only 
in  one  fourteenth-  and  two  fifteenth-century  MSS.  of  Guido  does 
her  name  appear  as  Criseida  or  Griseida,1  biit  in  one  fifteenth- 
century  MS.  C  has  replaced  G  even  in  the  Filostrato.2  At 
the  same  time,  it  is  not  unlikely  that  Chaucer  did  substitute 
the  less  unfamiliar,  and  perhaps  more  agreeable,  C  for  G.  But  the 
main  point  is  that  the  form  with  G,  and  therefore  that  with  (7,  is 
due  only  to  Boccaccio;  without  him,  Troilus'  mistress  would  every 
where  have  been,  called  j5riseida,3.which  seems  to  have  been,  outside 
Chaucer's  and  Gower's  poems,  the  universal  form  in  England  in  the 
fourteenth  century.4  The  spelling  of  Gowerand  Chaucer  alike  is 
due  to  the  influence  of  Boccaccio.  Through  which  of  them  'is  it 
more  likely  to  have  entered  England  ? 5  But  it  is  not  only  the  initial 
in  Gower's  spelling  which  indicates  Chaucer's  influence.  Gower's 
form  is  French,  with  a  final  -e,  Creseide.  The  name  appears  in 
Chaucer  MSS.  under  various  French  forms,  among  which,  though 
Criseyde  is  perhaps  the  commonest,  Gower's  form  is  often  found 
I  find  the  final  -e  nowhere  else  except  in  those  who  write  under 
Chaucer's  influence  and  two  or  so  other  post-Chaucerian  writers.6 

1  See  Morf,    in   Romania,   xxi.  101,   note  1.     See  also  G.  L.  Hamilton, 
Chaucer  and  Guido,  134-5. 

2  Cryseida  is  the  form  in  a  MS.  of  the  Marquis  de  Santillane's  library  ;  see 
Bibliot/ieque  de  Vficole  des  Hautes  Etudes,  Fascicule  ,153,  p.  328  (pointed  out 
to  me  by  Dr.  Hamilton).     So  in  old  printed  editions  (Hertzberg,  Jahrb.  d. 
deut.  Sh.  Ges.,  yi.  197)';  and  cf.  Koerting,  Boccaccio,  569.     The  form  with 
a  0  is  the  commonest- in  the  French  translation  (cf.  Lowes,  p.  827) ;  otherwise 
with  a  B. 

•  3  This  is  true,  so  far  as  I  know,  of  all  the  documents.  But  the  Italian 
Armannino,  who  ignores  the  love-story,  in  speakiug  of  the  Homeric 
"  Brisseida  "  and  "  Crisseida,"  says  that,  according  to  some,  the  latter  was 
the  daughter  of  Calchas  (see  Gorra,  Testi  Inediti,  p.  555). 

4  To  balance  the  substitution  by  a  reader,  under  Chaucer's  influence,  of  C 
for  B  in  two  passages  in  the  Laud  Troy-Book  (cf.    Lowes,  828),  the    Gest 
Hystoriale,  which  directly  mentions  Chaucer's  Troilus,  preserves  only  the  form 
with  B  as  I  pointed  out  in  my  article  (p.  323,  note ;  this  will  correct  Miss 
Kempe,  E)igl.  Stud.,  xxix.  5)  ;  and  the  only  MS.  of  the  Filostrato  in  the 
British  Museum  (Addit.  21246,  early  fifteenth  century)  has  Briseyda  three 
times  at  the  beginning,  though  elsewhere  it  always  has  Griseyda. 

5  Lowes'  suggestion   (828-9)   that  the  C  may  have  been  substituted  by 
Gower's  scribe  after  the  poem  was  written  of  course  cannot  be  disproved  ;  but, 
especially  since  the  work  was  not  a  popular  and  much-copied  one,  and  this 
MS.  (as  Lowes  admits)  was  almost  certainly  ' '  written  under  the  direction  of 
the  author,"  the  suggestion  can  be  allowed  little  weight.     Lowes  refers  to  my 
"  tacit  assumption"  that  the  reading  is  Gower's,  not  the  scribe's  ;  if  we  did 
not  make  the  tacit  assumption  that  the  MSS.  represent  the  author's  words, 
where  should  we  be  in  the  study  of  mediaeval  literature  ? 

6  The  fifteenth-century,    or   post-Chaucerian    fourteenth- century,   French 
version  of  the  Filostrato  has  commonly   Creseide;  probably  influenced  by 


32  THE    TROILUS   AND   CUISEYDE.  [cH.   I,  §  2 

Iii  English,  German,  Norse,  French  and  Latin,  in  Benoit  and  Guido 
alike,  the  regular  form  is  Briseida  of  Brisaida.1  Chaucer  seerns 
to  have  been  the  first  to  use  the  -e,  of  course  for  the  sake  of  the 
rhyme.  The  combination  of  the  initial  C  with  the  final  e,  apart 
from  Chaucer  and  Gower  and  those  who  owe  it  directly  to  them, 
seems  to  be  found  only  in  some  MSS.  of  the  post-Chaucerian 
French  translation  of  the  Filostrato.  Are  we  to  look  upon  the  occur 
rence  of  one  and  the  same  very  unusual  form  in  the  works  of  two 
friends  within  a  very  few  years  as  a  coincidence  1 

So  all  the  evidence  looks  in  the  same  direction.     "We  have  seen 
that  if  the  reference  is  not  to  Chaucer's  poem  the  spelling  with 

C e  is  surprising ;  and  that  the  occurrence  of  the  reference  at 

all  is  more  than  surprising.  Lowes  must  battle  against  the  co 
incidence  of  the  two  surprises.  I  must  say  that  the  more  I  investi 
gate  Troilus  literature  the  more  I  am  struck  by  the  improbability 
that  Gower's  reference  is  to  any  work  but  Chaucer's. 

But  now  Professor  Lowes,  who  has  as  many  holes  to  start  to  as 
the  Wife  of  Bath's  mouse,  suggests  that,  even  if  Gower's  reference  is 
to  Chaucer's  poem,  it  may  not  have  been  made  as  early  as  1376  (the 
extension  of  the  limit  to  1377  will  not  matter  here).2  He  appeals 
(p.  830)  to  that  forlorn  hope,  a  possible  interpolation  in  the  Mirour. 
For  this  proposal  I  cannot  see  the  slightest  justification,  or  the 
slightest  reason  to  believe  that  there  are  interpolations  anywhere  in 
the  Mirour.  Lowes'  argument  that  the  passage  which  mentions 
the  Troilus  looks  like  an  interpolation  is  fallacious.  Gower  says 
earlier  (5179-84),  it  is  true,  that  Sompnolent  will  not  get  up  in  the 
morning,  and  leaves  the  labour  of  prayer  to  the  nun  and  the  friar ; 
yet  he  says  here  that  he  goes  to  sleep  at  the  morning  service  in 
church.  But  Gower  says  expressly  that  this  is  when  he  has  to  go, 
on  a  high  festival  (5245-8). 3  Therefore  there  is  no  means  of  escape 

this,  the  fifteenth-century  Rene  of  Aujou  has  Grisadc,  Grisayde  ;  the  Gcst 
Hystoriale,  which  appeals  to  Chaucer,  has  (rarely)  Bresaide,  Breisaide 
(usually — said) ;  a  late  fifteenth- century  MS.  of  an  Old  French  version  of 
Guido  has  brisade  (Brit.  Mus.,  Royal  16.  F.  ix. ).  1  find  no  other  cases.. 

1  With  the  variants  Breseida,  Breyseyda,   Brisayda,  Briseida,    Briseyda, 
Brixeida,  Brixeyda,  Bryseida,  Prixaida  (quaintly,  in   a  German   version), 
Breiseida,  Breiseidci,  Breisida  (these  three  in  a  Norse  version).    I  find  no  other 
forms  (except  for  Brisade  in  one  late  version,  as  noted  above)  after  a  thorough 
search  in  the  British  Museum,  including  seven  early  printed  editions,  twelve 
MSS.  and  five  MS.    translations  of  Guido,  and  one  MS.  and  two  modern 
editions  of  Benoit.   The  occasional  occurrence  of  Briseide  as  a  genitive  or  dative 
form  in  Guido's  Latin  seems  to  have  misled  Hertzberg  (p.  210).     A  MS.  of 
Guido  in  the  Harvard  Library  has  Briseida,  Briseyda. 

2  I  refer  again  to  Appendix  A,  pp.  220-5,  on  the  date  of  Gower's  Mirour. 

3  For  similar  passages  cf.  5557-68,  5617-28. 


CH.   I,  §  2]  THE    DATE.  33 

from  the  conclusion  that  the  reference  to  the  Troilus  in  the  Mirour 
must  have  been  written  not  later  than  soon  after  the  death  of 
Edward  III.  Altogether,  therefore,  Professor  Lowes'  whole  long 
and  ingenious  argument  seems  like  piling  very  numerous  feathers 
into  one  scale  to  outweigh  a  lump  of  lead  in  the  other.  It  is  seldom 
in  literary  investigations  that  we  have  stronger  evidence  than  we 
have  here  for  the  view  that  Chaucer's  Troilus  was  mentioned 
not  later  than  1377. 

After  this  exhaustive  study  of  the  evidence,  the  conclusion  I 
reach,  then,  is  that  the  Troilus  and  Criseyde  was  written  at  the  very 
beginning  of  the  period  when  Chaucer  was  under  Italian  influence. 
And  after  all,  why  not  ?  He  had  returned  from  Italy  by  May  23, 
1373,1  after  an  absence  of  six  months,  during  which  he  doubtless 
read  much  Italian,  including  very  likely  the  Filostrato  and  Teseide.2 
On  his  return,  having  once  learned  Italian,  is  it  not  natural  that  he 
should  plunge  with  zeal  into  the  study  of  Italian  literature  ?  Not 
till  over  a  year  later,  June  8,  1374,3  was  he  appointed  Comptroller 
of  Customs,  and  during  the  interim,  adorned  by  several  benefactions 
and  payments  from  the  king,  he  may  probably  have  enjoyed  much 
well-earned  leisure  at  court,4  with  his  books  and  pen.  After  his  re 
sponsible  mission  to  Italy,  he  would  surely  not  be  worked  very  hard 
as  Esquire  of  the  King's  Chamber.  In  the  office  of  Comptroller 
there  is  not  the  least  reason  to  believe  that  Chaucer  was  overworked  ; 
I  have  showed  elsewhere,  and  Koch  admits,  that  his  supposed 
lamentations  in  the  House  of  Fame  are  not  such  at  all.5  As  one 
turns  over  the  pages  of  the  Life  Records  for  this  period  he  sees 
indications  that  Chaucer's  life  was  financially  comfortable,  and 
broken  in  upon  by  no  public  commissions  until  1377  and  the 
very  end  of  1376.  With  perhaps  a  year  of  leisure,  followed  by 
two  years  and  a  half  or  so  of  routine  work,  and  another  year  only 
partly  spent  abroad,  is  there  anything  unreasonable  in  supposing 
the  Troilus  to  have  been  produced  at  this  time  1 6 

1  Life  Records,  pp.  183-4. 

2  Mr.  Karl  Young  (Mod.  Philol.,  iv.  169-77)  makes  out  a  good  case  for 
Chaucer's  showing  familiarity  also  with  Boccaccio's  Filocolo  in  the  Troilus, 
especially  book  III. 

3  Life  Records,  p.  191.  *  Cf>  Life  ^ecoras,  p.  185. 

5  Mod.  Phil.,  i.  326-7  ;  Engl.  Stud.,  xxxvi.  142. 

6  Koch  believes  the  best  conclusion  to  be  that  Chaucer  was  engaged  on 
the  T.  C.  in  1376,  but  did  not  finish  it  till  several  years  later  (Engl.  Stud., 
xxxvi.  140-1).     Grower's  reference  implies  somewhat  widespread  familiarity 
with  it.     It  is  not  quite  impossible,  perhaps,  that  familiarity   might  have 

DEV.  CH.  D 


34  CERTAIN   MINOR   POEMS.  [CH.  I,  §  2 

Chaucer  chronology  so  haiigs  together  that  I  can  hardly  avoid 
briefly  discussing  the  position  of  the  translation  of  Boethius.  For 
previous  opinion  I  may  refer  to  my  introduction.  It  is  hardly 
necessary  to  say  that  it  must  have  been  written  before  1387,  since 
it  is  constantly  used  in  Usk's  Testament  of  Love,  which  we  have 
found  reason  for  dating  in  that  year.  No  other  evidence  on  the 
date  has  ever  been  found  except  its  relation  to  Chaucer's  original 
works,  in  which  the  philosopher  is  frequently  borrowed  from,1 
especially  and  remarkably  in  Troilus.  All  the  critics  have  there 
fore  put  it  immediately  before_the  Troilus,  sometimes  overlapping,  a 
position  which,  since  they  all  assign  a  rather  late  date  to  the  latter, 
means  that  the  date  for  the  Boethius  has  ranged  from  1373  to  1383, 
or  even  later,  but  has  always  been  later  than  the  first  Italian 
journey.  When  we  find  that  from  the  date  of  the  Troilus  to  the  end 
of  Chaucer's  life  Boethius'  views  were  never  far  from  his  thoughts, 
and  influenced  all  his  speculations  and  even  his  turns  of  phrase, 
and  when  we  find  that  in  the  Book  of  the  Duchess  the  influence  is  all 
second-hand,  through  Jean  de  Meun,  we  seem  justified  in  conclud 
ing  that  (in  1369)  lie  was  not  yet  familiar  with  the  Eoman  philo 
sopher,  and  certainly  that  he  had  not  translated  his  work.  The 
extraordinary  familiarity  with  it  shown  in  the  Troilus  justifies 
the  belief  that,  when  he  wrote  that  poem,  he  had  already  studied 
and  translated  it.  But  of  course  there  is  no  reason  in  the  world 
why  this  should  not  have  been  done  before  he  went  to  Italy  ;  and 
since  the  Troilus  itself  is  enough  to  fill  the  succeeding  years,  it  very 
probably  was.  We  may  therefore  with  some  confidence  date  the 
translation  of  Boethius  about  1370-2. 


CHAPTEE   II. 

CERTAIN  MINOR  POEMS. 
§  1.   The  House  of  Fame. 

I  CAN  hardly  avoid  briefly  discussing  the  date  of  the  House  of 
Fame,  since  it  has  a  necessary  bearing  on  that  of  the  Troilus.     But 

been  gained  for  the  poem  in  certain  circles  by  author's  readings  and  the 
like,  before  it  was  wholly  finished.  But  Gower's  remark  is  infinitely  more 
naturally  interpreted  as  implying  that  when  it  was  made  the  completed  poem 
was  spreading  abroad  and  exciting  every  one's  interest.  And  the  other 
arguments  for  an  early  date  are  not  affected  by  this  bare  possibility, 
J  Skeat  very  conveniently  gives  the  cases  :  IJ.  xxviii,-xxxvi, 


CH.  H,  §  1]  THE    HOUSE   OF   FAME.  35 

I  have  little  that  is  new  or  certain  to  offer,  and  prefer  to  leave  a 
detailed  discussion  of  the  problems  connected  with  it  to  one  or  two 
other  writers  at  present  engaged  upon  it.  Three  much-debated 
points,  in  particular,  I  shall  dismiss  in  a  few  words.  All  attempts 
to  read  a  subtle  personal  or  general  allegory  into  the  poem  seem  to 
me  worse  than  futile.  Subjective  allegory  is  "  wholly  alien  from 
Chaucer's  realistic,  unspeculative  genius "  (to  quote  Professor 
Francis  T.  Palgrave).1  Renascence  allegory  is  sometimes  obscure, 
inconsistent  and  ambiguous,  because  frequently  a  side-issue  and 
used  (as  Professor  Courthorpe  says)  for  purposes  of  decoration ; 
mediaeval  allegory  is  clear  and  intellectually  consistent.  An  alle 
gory  which  does  not  fairly  well  explain  itself  I  think  had  best 
be  ignored ;  and  this  no  one  can  maintain  the  House  of  Fame 
does.  As  to  the  relations  between  the  House  of  Fame  and  the 
Divine  Comedy,  it  seems  to  me  that  while  the  relation  of  this 
poem  to  Dante  is  far  closer  than  that  of  any  other,2  it  is 
entirely  improper  to  call  it  an  imitation  of  the  Divine  Comedy, 
and  unlikely  that  Chaucer  foresaw  it  in  that  light.  Therefore 
Chaucer's  aspiration,  at  the  end  of  the  Troilus,  "  to  make  in 
som  comedie"  (V.  1788),  there  is  no  reason  to  take  as  alluding  to 
Dante's  title,  nor  any  reason  to  see  here  an  allusion  to  the  House 
of  Fame.  If  an  absolutely  sufficient  explanation  of  the  "  comedie  " 
passage  is  the  desire  for  a  cheerful  subject,3  what  right  have  we 
to  read  anything  else  into  it  ?  Therefore,  though  the  older  inter 
pretation  would  make  in  favour  of  my  view  that  the  House  of  Fame 
was  written  soon  after  the  Troilus,  all  these  points  mentioned  above 
may  be  rejected  as  chronological  arguments. 

My  chief  reason,  of  course,  for  dating  Fame  after  Troilus  is  that 
the  early  date  which  I  have  assigned  the  latter  makes  it  quite 
impossible  to  put  between  it  and  Chaucer's  first  Italian  journey  a 
poem  so  long  and  showing  such  familiarity  with  Dante  as  the 
House  of  Fame.  There  are  other  reasons  also,  and  this  order  of 
things  is  the  orthodox  one,  but  I  must  first  discuss  the  arguments 

1  Nineteenth  Century,  xxiv.  345. 

2  Besides  the  parallels  pointed  out  by  Rambeau  (Engl.  Stud.,  iii.  209-268) 
andCino  Chiarini  (Di  una  imitazione  inglese  della  D.  0.,  Bari,  1902;  reviewed 
by  F.  N.  Robinson,  Journ.  ofCompar.  Lit.,  N.  Y.,i.  292-7),  1063-81  may  be 
suggested  by  the  apparition,  in  the  Paradiso,  of  the  souls  in  the  appropriate 
celestial  spheres,  though  they  are  actually  present  in  the  Empyrean. 

3  Cf.    Lydgate's  way  of   speaking  of    Chaucer's  poems — "My   mayster 
Chaucer  with  his  fressh  commedies"  (Skeat,  III.  431) ;  cf.  also  my  article  in 
Modern  Philology,  i.  318,  which  seems  slightly  to  understate  the  matter  ;  and 
Lowes,  Publ,  Mod.  Lang.  A$soc.t  xx.  855, 


36  CERTAIN   MINOR   POEMS.  [CH.  IT,  §  1 

of  Professor  Lowes,1  the  only  writer  who  has  defended  the  contrary 
opinion.  His  view  is  required  by  the  fact  that  he  believes  the 
House  of  Fame  to  have  preceded  the  Legend  of  Ariadne,  the  latter 
to  have  preceded  the  Palamon,  and  that  to  have  preceded  the 
Troilus.  I  have  already  tried  to  refute  the  last  point,  and  shall 
later  try  to  do  the  same  for  the  second.  It  only  remains  to  mention 
his  auxiliary  arguments. 

He  quotes  the  suggestion  that  H.  F.t  1391-2  looks  as  if  it  had 
preceded  T.  (?.,  IV.  659-62.  In  attributing  "  partriches  winges" 
to  Fame,  Chaucer  clearly  mistakes  Virgil's  " pernicious  alis"  for 
"perdicibus";  while  in  the  Troilus  Fame  flies  through  Troy, 
more  properly,  with  "  preste  winges."  But  Lowes  seems  to  me 
to  deprive  the  argument  of  all  weight  by  showing  that  the  latter 
passage  closely  translates  the  Filostrato,  which  has  "  prestissim' 
ale."  If  Chaucer  thought  Virgil  wrote  ' c  perdicibus  "  or  "  perdicum," 
in  quoting  the  passage  why  should  he  think  of  "  pernicibus  "  or 
of  " prestissimo  "  or  of  "preste"?  Nor  will  it  do,  especially  in 
considering  mediaeval  literature,  to  assume  that  the  incorrect 
impression  always  precedes  the  correct  one. 

Lowes  seems  also  to  believe  that  the  fact  that  Chaucer  here  uses 
the  8-syllable  couplet  rather  points  to  a  time  before  the  Troilus^ 
though  he  fully  grants  the  skill  with  which  Chaucer  uses  it.  His 
argument  is  not  quite  clear ;  but,  aside  from  the  fact  that  he  himself 
believes  Chaucer  to  have  returned  to  the  7-line  stanza  from  the 
10-syllable  couplet,  and  that  a  somewhat  similar  return  here  is  not 
surprising,  he  himself  has  also,  with  great  justice,  dwelt  on  the 
impropriety  of  drawing  hard  and  fast  lines  as  regards  Chaucer's  use 
of  metres.  I  believe  that  many  scholars,  in  their  zeal  for  chrono 
logical  evidence,  have  been  too  much  inclined  to  make  Chaucer's 
style  vary  rather  with  epoch  than  with  subject.  For  this  humorous 
and  almost  jaunty  tour  de  force,  what  verse  could  be  more  appro 
priate  than  the  8-syllable  couplet?  Why  did  not  Chaucer  write 
Sir  Thopas  in  heroic  couplets?8 

1  Publ.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.,  xx.  819,  854-60. 

2  Professor  Heath  holds  this  view   for  the  first  part  of  tlie  poem  (Globe 
Chaucer,  xliii. ). 

3  One  other  argument  for  putting  Fame  before  Troilus  may  be  anticipated. 
The  eagle  in  630-40  oommends  Chaucer  for  his  faithfulness  to  love  : 

"ever-mo  of  love  endytest, 
In  honour  of  him  and  preysinges, 
And  in  his  folkes  furtheringes, 
And  in  hir  matere  al  devysest, 
And  noght  him  nor  his  folk  despysest. " 


CH.  II,  §  1J  tHE    HOUSE   OF  FAME.  37 

But  to  turn  now  to  arguments  in  favour  of  putting  the  House  of 
Fame  after  the  Troilus  and  Criseyde.  One  reason,  it  seems  to  me, 
as  ten  Brink  points  out,  is  the  appearance  of  "  Lollius  "  (1468) 
among  the  historians  of  the  Trojans.  It  seems  idle  to  discuss 
further  Chaucer's  reason  for  attributing  Boccaccio's  works  to  this 
shadow  of  a  name,  but  twice  in  the  Troilus  he  does  so.1  If  he 
invented  an  author  named  Lollius  as  a  mere  piece  of  mystification, 
he  surely  did  not  do  so  before  he  wrote  the  Troilus;  and  in 
any  case  it  is  certain  that  to  his  readers  the  reference  would 
be  quite  unintelligible  unless  the  Troilus  was  known  to  them. 
Another  reason  advanced  by  ten  Brink2  is  that  certain  parallel 
passages  in  the  two  poems  suggest  that  the  House  of  Fame  followed 
the  Troilus.  H.  F.  1-65  is  surely  a  reminiscence  of  T.  C.,  V- 
358-85,  rather  than  vice  versa;  Pandarus'  discourse  on  dreams 
grows  out  of  the  situation  in  the  Troilus,  and  is  partly  drawn  from 
the  Filostrato,  while  the  passage  in  the  House  of  Fame  is  a  mere 
prelude,  and  looks  greatly  like  an  expansion  of  the  other.3 

As  to  arguments  based  on  the  style  and  subject  of  the  House  of 
Fame,  they  seem  to  me  void  of  collusiveness;  but  they  certainly  do 
not  make  particularly  in  favour  of  an  early  date  for  the  poem.  Indeed, 
Lowes  does  not  believe  that  they  do,  but  rather  devotes  himself  to  dis 
proving  the  contrary.  The  House  of  Fame  may  be,  it  is  true,  a  poor 
piece  of  work,  and  show  a  lamentable  falling  off  in  design,  substance 


The  Troilus  is  represented  in  the  Legend  of  Good  Women  as  utterly  cynical 
and  anti-amorous.  Then  does  not  this  passage  sound  as  if  Chaucer  had  just 
been  writing  more  conventional  love-poetry  rather  than  such  a  poem  as  this  ? 
The  answer  to  this  possible  objection  is  that  the  language  of  the  God  of  Love 
in  L.  G.  W.  is  greatly  exaggerated  for  the  purposes  of  the  poem  ;  probably,  as 
I  shall  try  to  show  later,  because  Chaucer  had  been  reproached  for  having 
represented  the  female  sex  in  an  unfavourable  light.  If  any  one  wishes  to  see 
how  far  from  cynicism  Chaucer's  Troilus  really  is,  let  him  compare  it  with  the 
Shaksperian  treatment  of  the  same  theme.  The  faithfulness  and  sufferings  of 
its  hero  are  rather  dwelt  on  than  the  pathetic  inconstancy  of  its  heroine  ;  and 
fully  four-fifths  of  the  poem  are  as  amorous  as  possible.  One  little  point 
more :  at  first  sight  one  might  expect  a  mention  of  Troilus  and  Criseyde 
among  the  seven  faithless  couples  in  388-426  (cf.  P.  F.,  291  ;  Against 
Women  Inconstant,  16) ;  but  among  these  it  is  always  the  man  who  is 
faithless. 

1  I.  394  ;  V.  1653.     In  the  former  case,  of  course,  the  fact  that  he  really 
quotes  a  sonnet  of  Petrarch  does  not  signify  ;  unless  it  strengthens  the  view 
that  ' '  Lollius  "  is  a  hoax. 

2  Studien,  p.  121. 

3  It  is  natural  that  Pandarus  should  dwell  only  on  ill  causes  of  dreams  ; 
in  H.  F.  Chaucer  does  the  same,  though  the  dream  which  follows  is  pleasant. 
Cf.  especially  H.  F.  30  with  T.  C.  V.   360  (directly  from  Boccaccio),  15-17 
with  362  and  371,  41-2  with  365-8,  21-22  with  369-70,  25  with  370. 


38  CERTAIN    MINOR   POEMS.  [cH.  II,  §  1 

and  style  from  the  Troilus.  Yet  it  has  one  quality  which  indicates 
great  maturity,  especially  in  a  mediaeval  poet — freedom.  It  is  not 
merely  that  as  regards  source  it  is  among  the  most  independently- 
imagined  of  Chaucer's  narrative  poems.  It  shows  a  general  free 
dom  of  self-expression,  of  informal  and  roguish  humour,  combined 
with  remarkable  composure  and  poise ;  in  this  poem  he  has  left  the 
French  house  of  bondage  far  behind.  This  seems  to  me  more  sug 
gestive  of  a  late  date  than  the  want  of  symmetry  and  method  in  the 
poem  suggests  an  early  one.  It  was  in  the  Troilus^  it  seems  to  me, 
that  Chaucer  became  emancipated.  Boccaccio  both  stimulated  his 
growth  and  was  (if  I  may  say  so)  the  cocoon  that  protected  it.  The 
House  of  Fame,  followed  his  emancipation.  My  conclusion  is  that 
the  necessity  which  I  have  found  of  following  the  usual  view  in 
putting  the  House  of  Fame  after  the  Troilus  is  an  easy,  plausible, 
and  well-supported  necessity  ;  and  that  the  auxiliary  arguments  in 
favour  of  this  view  are  much  more  convincing  than  those  on  the 
opposite  side. 

On  the  exact  date  there  is  no  very  reliable  evidence.  Ten  Brink 
suggests1  that  since  it  is  Jupiter  that  sends  the  eagle  to  Chaucer,  the 
adventure  may  have  taken  place  on  a  dies  Jovis,  a  Thursday,  which, 
since  it  was  December  10  (11.  63,  111),  indicates  1383.  The 
year  1377  would  do  as  well,  by  the  way.  But  from  whom  should 
an  eagle  come  if  not  from  Jupiter,  and  who  is  more  likely  to  send 
a  dream  than  the  father  of  gods  and  men  1  And  is  not  this  a  case 
where  such  a  subtlety  would  be  lost  if  not  announced?  The 
microscopic  symbolism  of  Dante  must  not  be  attributed  to  Chaucer  j 
and  even  Dante,  where  particularly  subtle,  commonly  gives  a  hint. 

The  extreme  limits  are  June,  1374,  and  February,  1385,  as  ten 
Brink  points  out,2  the  dates  when  Chaucer  received  his  custom 
house  appointment  and  was  relieved  of  his  duties  there  by  the 
appointment  of  a  deputy ;  though  he  cannot  be  said  to  complain 
of  his  clerical  duties,  it  is  clear  that  his  life  is  one  of  routine  office- 
work  (652-60).3 

There  is  a  somewhat  striking  parallel  between  the  House  of  Fame 
\  and  Gower's  Mir  our  de  I'Omme.  Fame,  according  to  Chaucer,  is 
quite  unaccountable  in  giving  or  withholding  her  favours , 

i  Studien,  pp.  150-1.  2  Ibid,,  114. 

3  If  we  needed  any  proof  that  the  work  was  published  by  1387,  we  should 
have  it  in  the  fact  that  it  is  extensively  quoted  in  Thomas  LTsk's  Testament  of 
Love,  written  doubtless  in  that  year.  Cf.  p.  24  above,  and  Skecd,  VII.  xx., 
xxvi.  f.  and  notes.  I  add  T.  L.  I.  6,  198  =  H.  F.  2088-2109  ;  II.  3, 
111-15  =  H.F.  269-72. 


CH.  II,  §  1]  THE    HOUSE   OF  FAME.  39 

"  Right  as  hir  snster,  dame  Fortune, 
Is  wont  to  serven  in  comune"  (1547-8). 

She  sends  for  Eolus  to  be  her  trumpeter  : 

"  And  bid  him  bringe  his  clariotin, 
That  is  ful  dyvers  of  his  soun, 
And  hit  is  cleped  Clere  Laude, 
With  which  he  wont  is  to  heraude 
Hem  that  me  list  y-preised  be  : 
And  also  bid  him  how  that  he 
Bringe  his  other  clarioun, 
That  highte  Sclaundre  in  every  toun, 
With  which  he  wont  is  to  diffame 
Hem  that  me  list,  and  do  hem  shame  "  (1573-82). 

Gower,  after  discoursing  on  emperors,  Alexander  especially,  apos 
trophises  Fortune,  and  continues : 

"  Fortune,  tu  as  deux  ancelles 
Pour  toy  servir,  si  volent  celles 
Plus  q'  arondelle  vole  au  vent, 
Si  portont  de  ta  court  novelles  ; 
Mais  s'au  jour  d'uy  nous  portent  belles, 
Demein  les  changont  laidement : 
L'une  est  que  vole  au  noble  gent, 
C'est  Renomee  que  bell  et  gent 
D'onour  les  conte  les  favelles, 
Mais  1'autre  un  poy  plus  asprement 
Se  vole,  et  ad  noun  proprement 
Desfame,  plaine  de  querelles. 

Cist  duy  par  tout  u  sont  volant 
Chascune  entour  son  coll  pendant 
Porte  un  grant  corn,  dont  ton  message 
Par  les  paiis  s'en  vont  cornant. 
Mais  entrechange  nepourqant 
Sovent  faisont  de  leur  cornage, 
Car  Renome,  q'ier  vassellage 
Cornoit,  huy  change  son  langage, 
Et  d'autre  corn  s'en  vait  sufflant, 
Q'est  de  rnisere  et  de  hontage  :  - 
Sique  de  toy  puet  estre  sage 
Sur  terre  nul  qui  soit  vivant"  (22129-52). 

No  parallels  to  either  passage  have  ever  been  pointed  out,  and  the 
case  for  borrowing  between  the  two  poets  is  always  especially  strong 
because  of  their  mutual  relations.  We  know  that  Chaucer  used 
the  Mirour  in  the  Prologue  to  the  Canterbury  Tales.  As  to 
which  was  the  borrower  here,  the  probability  seems  rather  strong 


40  CERTAIN    MINOR   POEMS.  [CH.  II,  §  1 

that  it  was  Gower.  Like  Chaucer,  he  dwells  on  the  capriciousness 
of  the  trumpeters,  and  departs  from  his  original  scheme  and  re 
lapses  into  Chaucer's  by  forgetting  all  about  Desfame  and  making 
Renomee  use  both  horns ;  and  by  making  the  transaction  consist 
not  in  conferring  a  good  or  ill  lot  in  life,  but  in  proclaiming  good  or 
ill  moral  fame.  Gower's  last  six  lines  or  so  distinctly  suggest  that 
he  was  the  borrower. 

In  Appendix  A  the  date  of  the  Mirour  is  discussed.  This  passage 
I  should  date  about  1379.  Is  there  not,  then,  some  evidence 
here  that  the  last  part  of  House  of  Fame  was  somewhat  known 
by  1379?  In  that  case  it  and  the  whole  middle  part  of  the  Mirour 
were  in  hand  during  the  same  time,  and  the  House  of  Fame 
was  finished  about  two  years  after  the  Troihts,  a  highly  probable 
conclusion.  This  evidence  should  not  be  insisted  on,  but  tenta 
tively  there  is  no  objection  to  about  1379  as  the  date  when  the 
House  of  Fame  was  completed.1 

1  We  may  notice  then  that  there  is  no  objection  to  believing  it  was 
begun  directly  after  the  Troilus  was  finished,  and  (if  we  wish)  that  the  date 
1377  for  its  beginning  is  as  well  indicated  by  ten  Brink's  astrological  method 
as  1383.  H.  F.  130-9  seems  to  be  the  original  of  K.  T.,  1955-66,  which  is 
not  from  the  Teseide,  as  Skeat  erroneously  says  in  his  note  on  the  former  pas 
sage  ;  the  source  of  the  idea  he  shows  may  be  in  Albricus  Philosoplms, 
Koeppel  thinks  (Anglia,  xiv.  233-8)  that  the  Parliament  of  Fowls  shows 
signs  of  borrowing  from  Boccaccio's  Amoroso,  Vis-cone.  This  may  be  doubted, 
but  the  House  of  Fame  certainly  does,  as  is  shown  by  him  and  also  by  Pro 
fessor  C.  G.  Child  (Mod.  Lang.  Notes,  x.  379-84).  If  one  grants  the  influ 
ence  on  P.  F.)  since  these  are  the  only  poems  which  do  show  this  influence,  a 
date  not  far  from  1381  is  suggested  for  H.  F.  Professor  Heath  believes  he 
finds  evidence  that  book  III.  was  written  some  years  after  I.  and  II.  (Globe 
Chaucer,  xliii.,  f.  ;  cf.  Lowes,  P.  H.  L.  A.,  xx.  860,  n.,  who  disposes  of  his 
argument  as  to  a  change  of  tone. )  Some  of  his  arguments  seem  to  me  with 
out  value,  but  there  are  certainly  some  suggestions  of  an  important  change 
of  plan  during  the  composition  of  the  work.  In  the  invocation  at  the  begin 
ning  of  book  III.  Chaucer  seems  to  be  more  conscious  than  before,  as 
Heath  points  out,  of  the  informality  and  sketchiness  of  his  verse.  But 
besides  this,  in  the  first  part  of  the  poem,  Fame  has  the  Virgilian  sense  of 
Rumour,  and  what  Cjhaucer  is  to  learn  at  her  house  is  wholly  about  love 
(673-99,  701-6,  713-24,  782-6,  817-21,  848-52,  879-83,  1025-83).  At  the 
veiy  beginning  of  book  III.  Fame  acquires  the  mediaeval  and  modern  sense 
of  Renown  (1136-9)  ;  that  she  is  "  goddesse  of  renoun  and  of  fame"  is  ex 
pressed  in  1312-3,  1320-3,  1405-6,  and  elsewhere,  and  this  seems  to  be  the 
point  of  introducing  the  harpers,  trumpeters,  and  minstrels  (1197-1258). 
The  idea  of  Rumour  does  not  recur  till  Chaucer  has  left  the  house  of  Fame 
and  come  to  the  revolving  twig-house  (1920  ff.)  ;  here,  in  a  somewhat  ex  post 
facto  way,  Chaucer  makes  her  a  goddess  of  Fame  in  the  sense  of  Rumour 
(2110  ff.) ;  love,  which  was  to  have  been  the  subject  of  Chaucer's  news,  is 
mentioned  very  casually  in  the  house  of  Fame  (1739-62)  ;  he  does  not  seem 
to  care  very  much  about  it  (1889),  though  there  is  promise  of  some  love-tales 
when  the  poem  breaks  off  (2143).  All  this  might  be  held  to  indicate  a  lapse 
of  time  between  books  II.  and  III. — A  few  analogues  to  one  of  the  folk-lore 
elements  in  H.  F.  may  be  pointed  out — the  revolving-house.  It  is  found  in 


CH.   II,  §  2]  THE    PARLIAMENT   OF   FOWLS.  41 

§  2.   The  Parliament  of  Fowls. 

The  greatest  service  which  Dr.  John  Koch  ever  performed  for 
Chaucer  chronology  was  the  identification,  in  1877,  of  the  eagles  in 
the  Parliament  of  Fowls  with  Anne  of  Bohemia  and  her  various 
suitors.1  The  date  1381-2  at  which  he  arrived  has  been  accepted, 
I  believe,  by  every  one  who  has  written  since  that  date,  except 
Professor  Hales,2  and  has  proved  to  be  one  of  the  two  pivotal  and 
unshaken  dates  in  the  chronology  of  all  Chaucer's  poems.  It  may 
be  worth  while,  however,  to  give  a  few  more  particulars. 

As  early  as  the  spring  of  1377,  when  Eichard  was  ten  years  old, 
at  the  wish  of  Edward  III.  there  were  conferences  between  French 
and  English  commissioners,  of  whom  Chaucer  himself  was  one, 
regarding  a  marriage  between  the  heir-apparent  and  Princess 
Marie  of  France.3  After  the  death  of  his  grandfather  the  young 
king's  guardians  continued  the  matrimonial  negotiations.  Early  in 
1378  Chaucer  was  again  a  member  of  a  commission  for  the  same 
purpose.4  The  negotiations,  however,  fell  through.  Early  in 
1379,  Bernabb  Visconti,  Lord  of  Milan,  anxious  to  ally  himself 
by  marriage  with  royal  houses,  sent  to  Eichard  II.  proposing  a 
marriage  between  him  and  his  own  daughter  Caterina ; 5  and  may 
we  not  conjecture,  by  the  way,  that  this  was  not  unconnected  with 
the  visit  to  his  court  a  few  months  before,  in  1378,  of  Chaucer, 


the  O.F.  romance  of  Perceval  le  Gallois  (tr.  by  S.  Evans,  The  High  History  of 
the  Holy  Graal,  J.  M.  Dent,  1898  ;  vol.  ii.  p.  21)  ;  in  two  Welsh  works  and 
one  Latin  (John  Rhys,  Studies  in  the  Arthurian  Lcyend,  Oxford,  1891  ;  pp. 
301,  302,  326)  ;  and  in  the  eleventh-century  Voyage  do  Charlemaane  (ed. 
E.  Koschvvitz,  1880,  in  Foerster's  Altfranz.  Bill.,  vol.  ii.;  11.  354-91).  In 
at  least  three  of  these  cases,  including  the  last,  the  turning-house  is  adorned 
with  images  which  blow  real  trumpets,  just  as  the  house  of  Fame  is  in 
Chaucer  (1193  if.). 

1  See  Engl.  Stud.,  i.  287-9  ;  English  version  (enlarged)  iuEssays  on  Chaucer 
(Ch.  Soc.),  pp.  400-9. 

a  Diet.  Nat.  Biogr.,  x.  164  ;  The  Bibliographer,  i.  37-9.  Professor  Hales 
argues  that  the  poem  is  too  poor  to  be  so  late.  Few  persons,  I  think,  will 
agree  with  him  in  either  point.  He  also  argues,  but  unconvincingly,  that 
Chaucer  may  have  known  Italian  before  his  first  journey  to  Italy. 

3  Froissart,  in  Life  Records  (Ch.  Soc.),  pp.  203-4. 

J  Life  Records,  pp.  xxviii.,  219,  230. 

5  On  March  18,  1379,  Eichard  appointed  a  commission  to  treat  on  the 
subject  (Rymer's  Foedera,  London,  1709  ;  vol.  vii.,  213).  See  also  Thomas 
Walsingham,  II.  46,  and  Theodor  Lindner,  Geschichte  des  deutschen  Reiches 
unter  K.  Wenzel  (Braunschweig,  1875),  i.  117  ;  C.  Hofler,  Anna  von  Luxem 
burg,  in  Denkschriften  d.  Wiener  Akad.,  Phil.-Hist.  CL,  xx.  127-8.  The 
latter_long  and  valuable  essay  (pp.  89-240)  deals  rather  with  Richard  II., 
Wyclif  and  general  contemporary  history  than  particularly  with  Queen  Anne. 


42  CERTAIN   MINOR   POEMS.  [CH.  II,  §  2 

who  had  so  recently  been  a  matrimonial  commissioner,  though 
his  ostensible  purpose  this  time  was  military?'1  The  advances 
of  the  Visconti  were  finally  rejected.  The  first  intercourse 
between  Eichard  and  the  King  of  the  Eomans,  Wenceslas, 
was  on  May  20,  1379,  when  the  latter  took  the  initiative  in 
treating  with  the  former  as  to  the  recognition  of  Urban  VI.  as 
the  legitimate  pope.2  About  the  same  time,  according  to  Froissart,3 
there  was  much  deliberation  about  Richard's  marriage.  In  June, 

1380,  commissioners  were  appointed  to  treat  of  a  marriage  between 
Richard  and  Anne,  Wenceslas'  sister,  and  December  20  Richard 
announced  that  he  had  chosen  her.4     At  Epiphany,  1381,  pleni 
potentiaries  met  in  Flanders  to  arrange  the  conditions ;  January  23, 

1381,  Anne  in  her  own  person  appointed  ambassadors  to  treat; 
and  early  in  May  it  was  agreed  that  she  should  be  received  by 
the  English  envoys  on  Michaelmas  next.6     She  actually   landed 
at  Dover  about  December  18,  1381,  and  was  received  with  great 
enthusiasm;  the  marriage  took  place  January   14,  1382.6 

It  was  peculiarly  natural  that  poetic  notice  should  have  been 
taken  of  all  this  by  Chaucer,  who  had  so  recently  been  concerned 
in  at  least  one  of  the  earlier  matrimonial  negotiations  of  Richard. 
It  is  also  interesting  to  observe  how  he  manipulates  the  material. 
Anne's  two  tentative  childish  betrothals,  which  occurred  when  she  was 
five  and  seven  years  old,  are  brought  down  and  made  contemporary 
with  that  to  Richard,  for  literary  reasons  and  in  order  to  compliment 
him.  Chaucer's  courtiership  and  tact  go  further,  in  representing  the 
affair  as  purely  a  matter  of  love  on  the  part  of  the  suitors,  and  the 
choice  as  purely  on  the  part  of  the  formel  eagle ;  in  reality,  we  can 
hardly  doubt  that  on  the  German  side  the  choice  was  mainly  on 
the  part  of  Anne's  king-brother  and  empress-mother,  and  that  the 
chief  exercise  of  choice  was  on  the  English  side.  The  Parliament 

1  Life  Records,  p.  218. 

2  Hofler,  p.  127. 

3  Chronicles,  tr.  by  Johnes  (N.Y.,  n.d.),  p.  258  ;  vol.  ii.,  ch.  43. 

4  See  Lindner,  I.  118  ;  Hofler,  128-9.      She  was  born  May  11,  1366,  so 
was  a  few  months  older  than  Richard.     According  to  Hofler,  she  had  already 
been  twice  betrothed ;  once  to  Duke  William  of  Baiern-Holland,  in  1371  ;  and 
in  1373  to  a  son  of  the  Landgraf  Frederick  of  Thiiringen.     See  also  F.  M. 
Pelzel,    Lebensgeschichte    des    Kdnigs    Wenzeslaus,    1788,    which    is    Koch's 
authority  and  seems  to  be  Hofler's. 

5  Hofler,  131-2  ;  Lindner,  118-9  ;  Walsingham,  i.  452 ;  Rymer's  Foedera, 
vii.  290,  295,  301.   Later,  her  coming  was  deferred  (Rymer,  334  ;  October  28). 

6  Hofler,  136,  156;  Wallon,  Eichard  II.,  i.  116;  cf.  J.  L.  Lowes,  Mod. 
Lang.  Notes,  xix.  240-3. 


CH.  II,  §  2]  THE   PARLIAMENT  OF  FOWLS.  43 

of  Folds  was  certainly  an  excellent  beginning  for  friendly  relations 
between  the  middle-aged  poet  and  the  girl-queen. 

Can  we  narrow  the  date  down  any  further  than  Koch  has  done  2 
Since  the  decision  was  not  made  till  the  very  end  of  1380,  the 
early  part  of  1381  is  the  earliest  probable  date.  But  Pollard  and 
Koch1  choose  the  early  summer  of  1382.  The  former  believes  that 
"  royal  marriages  were  too  likely  to  be  broken  off  for  poets  to  hymn 
them  prematurely  " ;  but  is  this  true  of  betrothals  of  fairly  mature 
people,  which  had  advanced  as  far  as  this  had  done  by  tho  middle 
of  1381 1  The  other  argument  is  a  highly  ingenious  one.  Chaucer 
invokes  Venus  to  aid  him, 

"  As  wisly  as  I  saw  thee  north-north-west, 
When  I  began  my  sweven  for  to  wryte  "  (117-8). 

The  planet  Venus  obviously  can  never  be  in  quite  that  quarter, 
so  Koch  feels  the  need  of  emendation  to  ivest-north-icest,  though  all 
the  MSS.  read  north-north-ivest  (or  north-west) ;  the  planet  can  be 
visible  in  such  a  position  only  in  the  summer  or  late  spring,  and 
with  the  assistance  of  two  astronomers  Koch  finds  that  the  only 
otherwise  possible  years  which  fulfil  this  condition  are  1380  and 
1382.2  Since  he  believes  the  former  to  be  too  early,  he  accepts 
the  latter.  But  it  seems  to  me  that  any  argument  which  depends 
on  an  emendation  and  a  slightly  cryptic  interpretation  is  to  be  very 
doubtfully  received,  if  at  all ;  and  there  are  arguments  against  this 
date  which  seem  to  me  almost  conclusive.  The  ending  of  the 
Parliament  is  a  clever  treatment  of  a  somewhat  flat  situation :  the 
other  fowls  mate,  to  be  sure,  and  the  poem  ends  with  a  beautiful 
lyric,  but  after  all  the  main  characters  are  left  in  suspense,  "unto 
this  yeer  be  doon."  Chaucer  missed  a  chance  for  a  striking,  com 
plimentary  and  pompous  climax,  such  as  every  mediaeval  reader 
would  have  expected.  A  date  before  the  wedding  seems  to  me  so 
clearly  suggested  that,  if  regard  must  be  paid  to  this  astronomical 
evidence,  1380  would  seem  to  me  more  likely  than  the  summer  of 
1382,  when  the  pair  had  been  married  nearly  six  months.  As  to 
the  time  of  year,  the  selection  of  St.  Valentine's  Day  was  made  so 
inevitable  by  the  conditions  of  the  fable  that  there  is  no  justification 

1  Ch.  Primer,  pp.  50,  90 ;  Chronology,  p.  38. 

2  Any  mathematically-accomplished  student  who  wishes  to  attempt  the 
task  of  verifying v  these  results  will  find   the  astronomical  wherewithal  in 
Astronomical  Papers  (Washington,  1898),  vol.  vi.,  pp.  271-382. 


44  CERTAIN    MINOR   POEMS.  [CH.  II,  §  2 

for  the  assigning  the  poem  to  that  date.1  We  can  hardly  come 
nearer  the  truth,  therefore,  than  that  1381  is  the  probable 
date.2 

1  As  late  as  May  6,  1381,  Anne  was  expected  to  arrive  by  Michaelmas, 
September  29  ;  but  the  wedding  actually  occurred  just  about  a  year  from 
the  original  decision.     This  may  possibly  suggest  that  the  poem  was  written 
in  the  latter  part  of  the  year.     Mather's  opinion  agrees  pretty  well  with 
mine;  he  puts  the  poem  between  Anne's  arrival  in  England  and  the  wedding, 
i.  e.,  between  December  18  and  January  14  (Furnivall  Miscellany,  p.  305,  note). 

2  An  attempt  has  been  made  by  Dr.  R.  K.  Root  to  prove  that  Chaucer 
revised  P.  F.     Miss  E.  P.  Hammond,  in  her  valuable  paper  on    The  Text  of 
Chaucer's  ' '  Parlemcnt  of  Fowl cs"  (Decennial  Publ.  of  Univ.  of  Chicago,  1903, 
vol.  vii.,  pp.  3-25  ;  see  pp.  8-9),  gives  fifty  various  readings  by  which  the 
MSS.    are  divided  into  two  main  groups,  which  she  calls  A  and  C.     She 
points  out  "  the  marked  decrease  in  group  divergences  after  line  250,"  and 
the   fact   that   "the  text  of  the  A  archetype  was  probably  nearer  to   the 
ultimate  original  verbally."     The  latter  point  she  bases  partly  on  the  fact 
that  line  221  is  nearer  the  Italian  in  A  than  in  C.     (She  might  have  said 
the  same  of  238  ;  see  Skeat,  I.  70,  for  the  Italian.)     Now  Dr.  Root,  in  his 
review  of  Miss  Hammond's  paper  (Journ.  Germ.  Phil.,  v.  189-93),  supports 
the  view  that  these  divergences  show  deliberate  corrections  made   in   the 
ancestor  of  A,  stopping  at  250  ;    he  marks  with  asterisks  most  of  the  fifty 
various  readings,  which  seem  to  him  "reasonably  clear  examples  of  emenda 
tion."   He  asks  "who  is  this  skilful  reviser?";  and  rather  than  believe  that 
the  falling  off  at  line  250  in  the  number  of  changes  is  due  to  the  fact  that 
"  an  inventive  and  poetical"  scribe  passed  on  the  task  to  "a  sober,  accurate  " 
one,  he  would  have  it  that  Chaucer  corrected  at  leisure  this  occasional  poem 
which  had  perhaps  been  composed  in  a  hurry.     His  a,  priori  arguments  seem 
hardly  valuable.     There  is  not  the  least  evidence  of  haste  in  the  ending  of 
the  poem,  which  can  hardly  be  called  abrupt,  except  in  comparison  with  the 
dawdling  start,  and  the  character  of  which  I  have  shown  to  be  due  probably 
to  another  cause.     The  appeal  to  Chaucer's  revision  of  other  poems  is  also 
unfortunate.     I  shall  show  later  that  the  revision  of  Kn.  T.  was  probably 
slight,  and  certainly  was  not  a  "complete  reworking  "  ;  and  that  that  of  the 
prologue  to  L.  #,  W.  was  due  to  a  particular  and  unique  cause  ;  and  we  shall 
see  that  Chaucer  conspicuously  neglected  revision  in  some  of  the  Canterbury 
Tales.     I  hope  to  show  also  elsewhere  that  the  peculiarities  of  MS.  Harl. 
7334  of  C.  T.,  which  look  infinitely  more  like  author's  revisions  than  those 
here,  are  probably  due  to  a  scribe.     The  genuine  revisions  in  the  Troilus 
make  these  various  readings  in  the  Parliament  of  Fowls  look  like  the. merest 
petty  scribal  variations.     Of  the  45  various  readings  before  line  251  given  by 
Miss  Hammond  and  Dr.  Root  I  find  none  that  suggest  to  me  revision  by 
Chaucer,  few  or  none  that  suggest  anything  like  deliberate  revision  by  any 
body,  and  none  that  may  not  quite  well  be  scribal  blunders  in  C  ;   in  the 
following  19  lines  I  think  the  C  MSS.  certainly  are  corrupt,  and  their  readings 
cannot  possibly  be  due  to  Chaucer. 

3  69  135  221 

5  70  178  229 

43  72  194  234 

55  107  209  238 

64  110  215 

I  grant  cheerfully  Dr.  Root's  postulate  that  Chaucer  was  a  conscious  literary 
artist ;  that  is  why  I  do  not  think  the  C  readings  can  be  due  to  him. 


CH.  Til,  §  1]       THE   PALAMON  AND   ARCITE :    ITS    ORIGINAL    METRE.       45 

CHAPTER  III. 

POEMS  DEPENDENT  ON  THE  TESEIDE. 
§  1.  The  Palamon  and  Arcite:  its  Original  Metre. 

THE  Teseide  of  Boccaccio  is  used  in  four  of  Chaucer's  extant 
poems :  the  Knight's  Tale  in  the  Canterbury  Tales  is  a  condensed 
adaptation  of  it ;  the  Troilus  derives  from  it  (as  we  have  seen)  a 
passage  at  the  end  (V.  1807-27)  and  a  small  one  earlier  (V.  1,8-11); 
most  of  the  description  of  the  temple  of  Venus  in  the  Parliament 
of  Fowls  (183-294)  is  from  the  Teseide  ;  and  inAneUda  and  Arcite 
a  good  deal  of  the  first  seventy  lines  is  from  it.1  It  must  also  have 
formed  the  entire  basis  of  a  work  of  which  all  our  certain  know 
ledge  is  derived  from  the  mention  of  it  in  the  Legend  of  Good 
Women  (Prol.  F,  420-1 ;  G,  408-9).  Alcestis,  it  will  be  remem 
bered,  is  mentioning  those  of  Chaucer's  works  which  speak  well  of 
women  or  of  love,  with  a  view  to  moderating  the  God  of  Love's 
indignation,  and  among  these  works,  she  says,  is  one  on 

"al  the  love  of  Palamon  and  Arcyte 
Of  Thebes,  thogh  the  story  is  knowen  lyte." 

It  is  impossible  that  this  can  refer  to  the  Anelida,  a  mere  abortive 
fragment  which  never  mentions  Palamon,  and  in  which  Arcite 
appears  not  as  a  lover  but  as  a  roving  and  heartless  flirt. 

That  the  passage  cannot  refer  to  the  Knight1  s  Tale  exactly  as  it 
stands  is  equally  clear,  since  in  places  it  is  directly  adapted  to 
the  Canterbury  Tales,  which  can  hardly  have  been  fully  conceived 
when  the  passage  was  written ;  but  there  has  been  a  strong 
tendency  among  scholars  to  regard  the  Palamon  and  Arcite  as 
having  been  widely  different  from  the  Tale,  though  for  this  view 
the  evidence  has  always  been,  to  say  the  least,  very  insufficient. 
Tyrwhitt  (I.  clxxii.)  suggested  that  "it  is  not  impossible  that 
at  first  it  was  a  mere  translation  of  the  Theseida  of  Boccace." 
Other  early  Chaucer  scholars,  down  to  1870,  were  divided  in 
opinion.2  It  was  ten  Brink,  in  his  distinguished  Chaucer  Studien,3 

1  It  has  lately  been  proved  that  the  Legend  of  Ariadne  shows  the  same  in 
fluence  ;  but  it  hardly  extends  to  verbal  borrowings,  and,  I  believe,  comes 
through  Kn.   T.  rather  than  directly  (see  J.  L.   Lowes,  Publ.  Mod.   Lang. 
Assoc.,  xx.  802-18,  and  pp.  122-5,  below). 

2  On  the  views  of  Sandras,  Hertzberg,  Ebert  and  Kissner,  see  ten  Brink's 
Studien,  pp.  39-48. 

3  Munster,  1870  ;  pp.  39-69. 


46  POEMS    DEPENDENT    ON    THE    TESEIDE.  [CH.  Ill,  §  1 

who  set  up  the  highly  ingenious  theory  that  Chaucer  not  only 
largely  altered  the  Palamon  in  adapting  it  to  the  Knight,  but  that 
he  originally  wrote  it  in  the  seven-line  stanza  ;  and  that  the  longer 
of  the  Teseide  passages  in  tho  Troilus  and  those  in  the  Anelida  are 
fragments  of  this  earlier  version.  The  former  he  thinks  (p.  61) 
may  have  been  put  in  tentatively  by  Chaucer,  or  carelessly  by  his 
scribe,  and  the  survival  of  the  latter  may  be  due  to  an  attempt 
to  preserve  parts  of  the  original  poem  which  he  did  not  require 
for  the  revised  form  of  it  (p.  56).  The  Parliament  of  Fowls  he 
believes  (p.  128)  was  written  before  the  Palamon  was  finished,  and 
therefore  that  the  Teseide  passage  there  was  never  in  the  Palamon.1 
The  almost  universal  acceptance  which  this  theory  has  found 
must  be  due  largely  to  the  authority  of  the  prominent  scholar  who 
proposed  it.  Dr.  John  Koch  defended  and  developed,  it  in  an 
article  in  the  first  volume  of  the  Englische  Studien  ;  2  he  regarded 
the  Teseide  passages  in  all  three  of  the  stanzaic  poems  as  part  of  the 
debris  of  a  Palamon  and  Arcite  deliberately  broken  up  before  the 
Knight's  Tale  was  conceived.  Ten  Brink's  theory,  and  usually 
Koch's  modification  of  it,  was  accepted  by  Dr.  Eugen  Kolbing,3  by 
Mr.  A.  W.  Pollard,4  by  Professor  Skeat,5  and  by  many  others, 
and  to  this  day  may  be  called  the  orthodox  view.6  Only  three 
writers,  to  the  best  of  my  knowledge/ have  expressed  them 
selves  against  it ;  at  the  time  of  writing  his  introduction  to  the 
Canterbury  Tales  in  the  Globe  Chaucer,  Mr.  Pollard  had  changed 
his  views,  and  rejected  the  theory;7  Dr.  F.  J.  Mather  argues 
against  it ;  8  and  finally  Professor  J.  L.  Lowes  agrees  with  them  in 
rejecting  it.9 

1  Of.  also  his  Hist.  Engl.  Lit.  (London,  1893),  ii.  63-72  (German  version, 
Strassburg,  1893,  ii.  65-74). 

2  Pp.  249-93  (1877) ;  translated  in  the  Chaucer  Society's  Essays,  357-400  ; 
cf.  also  his  Chronology  (1890),  p.  30.  3  Engl.  Stud.,  ii.  528-32. 

4  Chaucer  Primer  (London,  1893),  pp.  76-7. 

5  III.  389-90  ;  cf.  his  Prioress1  Tale  (Oxford,  1893),  pp.  xvi.-xvii.     But 
in  1900  he  seems  to  have  held  it  with  less  conviction  (Chaucer  Canon,  p.  57  ; 
yet  cf.  p.  154  !). 

6  Assumed,  e.  g.,  by  Koch  (by  implication,  Engl.  Stud.,  xxxvi.   140),  Dr. 
R.  K.  Eoot,  Journ.  of  Engl.  and  Germ.  Philol.,  v.  193,  and  Professor  W.  P. 
Ker,  Essays  on  Mediaeval  Literature  (1905)  p.  96. 

7  Though  not  decisively  (pp.  xxvi.-xxvii).     He  rejects  it  with  horror  in  his 
Knight's  Tale  (1903),  p.  xviii.,  and  in  the  1903  edition  of  his  Primer. 

8  In  his  Chaucer's  Prologue  (1899),  xvii. -xviii.,  and  in  a  paper  on  The 
Date  of  the  Knighfs  Tale  in  the  Furnivall  Miscellany  (An  English  Miscellany 
Presented,  etc.,  1901),  pp.  301-13. 

9  Pull.  Mod.    Lang.  Assoc.,  xx.   809;  he  refers   to  Mather,   and  to  the 
present  discussion  (then  of  course  unpublished). 


CH.  Ill,  §  1]      THE   PALAMON  AND   ARCITE :   ITS    OKIGINAL    METRE.      47 

The  capital  errors  in  the  stanza-theory  seem  to  me  its  enormous 
a  priori  improbability,  and  its  needlessiiess.  The  evidence  for  it, 
which  might  perhaps  be  respectable  if  the  theory  in  itself  were 
either  plausible  or  serviceable,  breaks  down  at  once  if  these  mistakes 
are  recognized.  In  fact,  the  longer  one  ruminates  on  the  theory 
and  its  consequences,  and  the  more  carefully  he  examines  the 
evidence,  the  more  inconceivable  does  it  become.  At  the  risk 
of  being  intricate  and  long-winded,  it  is  worth  while  to  try  once 
and  for  all  to  destroy  it. 

Why  should  Chaucer  have  wished  to  transpose  a  poem  of  thou 
sands  of  lines  from  stanzas  into  couplets  ?  The  heroic  couplet  may 
be  on  the  whole  a  finer  and  more  useful  form  of  verse  than  the 
rhyme-royal ;  but  Chaucer  was  very  far  from  abandoning  the  latter 
even  after  he  had  begun  writing  in  the  former,  and  for  a  poem  like 
the  Knight's  Tale  the  stanza  would  have  been  perfectly  suitable. 
Such  a  proceeding  would  be  strange  in  any  one,  and  would  require 
strong  evidence  for  its  proof.  A  writer  might  well  wish  to  withdraw 
a  short  poem  in  order  to  develop  it,  but  such  destructive  treatment 
as  is  postulated  here  is  unparalleled,  so  far  as  I  know,  in  ancient  or 
modern  times.  But  Chaucer  especially  was  not  a  man  to  be  easily 
brought  to  spend  trouble  on  a  detailed  and  vexatious  task  to  gain 
no  great  advantage ;  on  the  whole,  he  took  his  poetry  with  a 
lack  of  constant  seriousness  that  is  in  part  characteristic  of  the 
Middle  Ages  and  in  part  of  himself,  and  his  willingness  to  leave 
things  unfinished  and  unrevised  (even  where  revision  would  seem 
imperative)  may  be  proved  by  a  mere  reference  to  the  Anelida,  the 
House,  of  Fame,  the  Astrolabe,  the  Legend,  and  the  Tales  of  the 
Shipman,  the  Squire,  and  the  Second  Nun.  It  is  true  that  he 
revised  the  Troilus  and  the  Prologue  of  the  Legend;  but  these 
revisions  must  have  been  largely  done  by  merely  altering  earlier 
MSS.,  and  they  left  the  metre  untouched,  which  is  the  point  at 
issue  and  makes  all  the  difference. 

The  supporters  of  the  stanza-theory  of  course  have  felt  the  need 
of  discovering  some  motive  for  Chaucer's  supposed  procedure. 
Ten  Brink's  explanation  is  very  curious — that  the  poem  was  pub 
lished  and  failed  (Studien,  p.  64).  If  the  possibility  of  such  a 
suggestion  may  ever  be  denied,  it  may  here.  It  is  difficult  to 
imagine  the  failure  of  anything  in  the  Middle  Ages,  and  as  nearly 
as  we  can  reconstruct  in  fancy  the  supposed  stanza-poem  out  of  the 
Teseide,  the  Knight's  Tale,  and  the  Troilus,  it  would  have  had  an 


48  POEMS    DEPENDENT   ON   THE    TESEIDE.  [CH.  ITT,  §  1 

interest,  a  sweetness  and  a  brilliance  which  would  have  been  likely 
to  make  it  one  of  the  most  successful  of  his  works.  Moreover,  the 
changes  which  he  would  have  made  would  have  been  far  too  subtle 
to  weigh  much  with  a  mediaeval  audience  ;  except  a  change  in  the 
direction  of  brevity,  which  in  the  Middle  Ages  was  not  deemed 
a  virtue  at  all.  Again,  those  who  have  criticized  the  theory *  have 
raised  the  pertinent  question  whether,  if  the  poem  had  circulated 
enough  to  have  failed,  it  could  have  been  withdrawn  so  completely 
that  Chaucer  would  have  cared  to  use  it  again  in  a  new  form, 
and  that  no  MS.  of  it  should  have  come  down  to  us.  This 
explanation  is  to  be  rejected  without  qualification.2 

Dr.  Koch3  gives  a  different  reason  for  the  suppression  of  the 
earlier  form  of  the  poem.  He  thinks  it  was  never  published,  and 
was  transformed  not  because  Chaucer  preferred  the  couplet  to  the 
stanza,  but  because  it  was  written  in  the  sentimental  and  pathetic 
tone  of  the  Teseide  and  was  inharmonious  with  the  maturity  of  the 
Troilus,  earlier  than  which  he  assumes  that  it  was  written.  His 
only  evidence  for  this  belief  is  not  a  little  curious — that  there  is  no 
other  discoverable  reason  why  Chaucer  should  have  rejected  the 
earlier  poem.  This  explanation  is  more  extraordinary,  if  possible, 
than  the  other.  The  Teseide  is  not  sentimental,  and  neither  are 

1  Pollard  (Globe  Ch.,  xxvi.) ;  Mather  (Miscellany,  307) ;  and  even  Koch, 
who  accepts  it ;  he  thinks  there  was  only  one  MS.,  which  was  never  published 
(Engl.  Stud.,  i.  281).     Ten  Brink  thinks  there  were  only  a  few  (p.  65). 

2  It  has  sometimes  been  thought  to  be   countenanced  by  the    fact   that 
Alcestis  says   "the  story  is  knowen  lyte."     This  is  not  the  view  of  ten 
Brink,  Koch,  or  Skeat,  but  even  Tyrwhitt  made  the  suggestion  (I.,  clxxii.). 
Another  probably  false  explanation  of  her  remark  is  offered  by  ten  Brink 
(p.  64)  and  Skeat  (III.  306),  and  approved  by  Pollard  (Kn.  T.,  xiv.  f.,  note)— 
that  Chaucer  is  alluding  to  Boccaccio's  statement  in  the  introductory  epistle 
to  Fiammetta  or  in  the  opening  of  the  poem  (I.  2),  that  it  is  an  ancient 
story  known  to  few.     But  this  was  not  true  after  Boccaccio  had  written  his 
poem,  still  less  if  Chaucer's  poem  had  been  published.     Why  should  Alcestis 
echo  Boccaccio's  language,  and  why  should  she  say  though?    The  remark 
seems  useless  and  senseless  unless  it  means  just  one  thing,  that  though  she 
wished  to   make  the  most  of  all    Chaucer's   creditable  performances,    she 
doubted  whether  the  fact  that  he  had  written  such  a  poem  had  reached  Love's 
ears  (or  those  of  Chaucer's  readers).     So  thinks  Koch  (p.   282).     The  most 
natural  reason  for  such  a  doubt  is  that  the  poem  had  not  yet  been  published. 
If  it  had  been  written  only  shortly  before,  as  we  shall  later  find  other  reasons 
to  believe  (cf.  pp.  76-80),  there  are  several  possible  reasons  for  its  still  being 
withheld,  much  the  most  probable  of  which  is  that  it  was  not  quite  finished. 
Any  apparent  strangeness  in  Alcestis'  mention  of  an  unpublished  work  is  fully 
explained  by  the  fact  that  she   is  raking   in   everything  she   can  find  to 
Chaucer's  credit.     Is  not  this  more  likely  than  that  she  should  mention  a 
work  which  Chaucer  in  vexation  had  been  rending  asunder  ?    (Cf.  Pollard, 
Globe  Ch.,  xxvi.) 

3  Engl.  Stud.,  i.  279-83. 


OH.  Ill,  §  1]       THE    PALAMON  AND    ARCITE :   ITS    ORIGINAL   METRE.       49 

the  passages  from  it  in  these  two  poems.  But  Chaucer  was  not  in 
disposed  to  sentiment  at  any  time  in  his  life,  and  the  Knight's  Tale 
itself  contains  affecting  passages  which  are  not  in  the  Teseide  (e.g., 
1281-1333). 

Then  if  we  cannot  believe  that  Chaucer  had  the  failure  or  the 
immaturity  of  the  Palamon  and  Arcite  to  induce  him  to  recast  it  in 
a  new  form,  the  plausibility  of  the  stanza-theory  is  reduced  to  the 
utmost  tenuity. 

The  stanza-theory  is  no  more  useful  than  it  is  probable.  There 
is  not  the  slightest  difficulty  in  accounting  for  the  presence  of 
stanzas  from  the  Teseide  in  the  Troilus,  the  Parliament,  and  tho 
Anelida.  When  Chaucer  had  become  familiar  with  the  poem,  and 
before  he  had  resolved  to  translate  it,  why  should  he  not  take  from 
it  a  brilliant  description  for  the  second  poem  and  an  imposing  open 
ing  for  the  third  ?  *  And  even  though  we  may  regard  the  addition  of 

1  Pollard  seems  to  feel  some  difficulty  in  the  use  of  the  same  passages  in  the 
Anelida  and  the  Kn.  T.  But  there  is  none  if  the  former  was  abandoned 
before  the  latter  was  begun. — Chaucer  had  been  more  or  less  familiar  with  the 
Teseide  since  shortly  after  his  first  journey  to  Italy.  Besides  the  more 
important  quotations  discussed  above,  I  am  not  the  first  to  point  out  the 
borrowing  of  T.  C.,  V.  1,  8-11  from  Tes.,  IX.  1  and  II.  1.  Parl.  of  F., 
176-82  maybe  another  borrowing.  One  more,  quite  as  clear,  is  more  curious. 
In  three  passages  Chaucer  shows  that  he  understood  Helicon  to  be  a  spring. 

"Ye  sustren  nyne  eek,  that  by  Elicoue 
In  hil  Parnaso  listen  for  to  abyde"  (T.  C.,  III.  1809-10). 

(Rossetti,  T.  C.  and  FiL,  p.  169,  attributes  this  to  Tes.,  I.  1,  but  he  seems  to 
be  mistaken.  He  is  clearly  unjustified  also  in  attributing  the  first  part  of  the 
stanza  to  Tes.,  I.  3.) 

' '  Be  favorable  eek,  thou  Polymnia, 
On  Parnaso  that,  with  thy  sustres  glade, 
By  Elicon,  not  fer  from  Cirrea, 
Singest  with  vois  memorial  in  the  shade  "  (Anelida,  15-18). 

(Cf.  "  Parnaso  Cirreo,"  Tes.,  VIII.  57.     In  the  passage  of  the  Teseide  which 

,  Skeat  mentions  as  the  source  of  this,  Boccaccio  refers  to  the  "monte  Elicona," 

but  the  passage  presently  to  be  quoted  must  also  have  been  in  Chaucer's  mind. ) 

' '  And  ye,  me  to  endyte  and  ryme 
Helpeth,  that  on  Parnaso  dwelle 
By  Elicon  the  clere  welle"  (H.  F.,  520-2). 

This  has  always  been  explained  as  due  to  Dante  : 

"Or  convien  ch'  Elicona  per  me  versi"  (P'tirg.,  XXIX.  40). 

(So  Skeat,  III.  254.  Scartazzini  adduces  a  somewhat  similarly  ambiguous 
line  from  Virgil  (Aen.tVII.  641).  Note  that  Chaucer  always  uses  the  Italian 
form  for  Parnassus;  even  in  FranU.  Prol.,  721,  though  that  passage  is 
supposed  to  be  imitated  from  Persius.  Cf.  p.  165  below.)  A  comparison  of 
these  passages  with  one  in  the  Teseide  will  show,  I  think,  that  Boccaccio's 
error  was  the  source  of  Chaucer's  : 

DEV.  CU.  E 


50  POEMS    DEPENDENT   ON    THE    TESEfDE.          [CH.  Ill,  §  1 

the  passage  in  the  Troilus  as  no  great  improvement,  it  is  no  easier  to 
explain  it  as  a  purple  patch  taken  from  an  old  garment.1  New  or 
old,  Chaucer  would  not  have  put  it  in  unless  he  liked  it,  and  it  is 
a  poor  compliment  to  him  and  a  very  forced  conclusion  to  say  that 
he  used  the  verses  because  he  had  them.2  To  infer  a  thousand 
stanzas  from  two  or  even  twenty  seems  very  rash.  The  theory  ex 
plains  just  one  real  difficulty.  The  Prologue  to  the  Legend  of  Good 
Women  has  usually  been  considered  as  Chaucer's  first  essay  in  the 
heroic  couplet,3  and  the  God  of  Love's  permission  to  u  make  the 
metres"4  of  the  legends  as  Chaucer  pleased  (F  562)  has  been  inter 
preted  as  the  proof  of  this  and  as  the  inauguration  of  a  new  metre, 
new  not  only  to  Chaucer  but  to  all  English  poetry.  Frankly,  this 
is  the  most  obvious  explanation  of  a  rather  odd  remark.  But 
other  explanations  are  possible.  When  Chaucer  wrote  the  Prologue5 
he  may  have  intended  to  use  various  metres  in  the  legends,  as  later 


"  Vedeasi  appresso  superar  Pitone, 
E  quindi  sotto  1'ombre  grazibse 
Sopra  Parnaso  presso  all'  Elicone 
Fonte  seder  con  le  nove  amorose 
Muse,  e  cantar  raaestrevol  canzone  "  (XI.  63). 

The  error  was,  first  and  last,  somewhat  widespread.  It  is  explicit  in  the  notes 
to  the  Dante  passage  by  Dante's  own  son  and  by  another  Florentine  of  the 
fourteenth  century  (Petri  Allegherii  .  .  .  Commentarium,  p.  503  ;  Com- 
mento  .  .  .  d'anonimo  Fiorentino,  II.  475) ;  perhaps  both  were  misled  by 
Dante.  Deschamps,  in  his  balade  to  Chaucer  (No.  285  ;  Soc.  Anc.  *  Textes,  ii. 
139),  exhorts  the  English  poet  to  give  him  an  authentic  draught  "de  ]a  fon- 
taine  Helye."  The  error  occurs  also  in  a  letter  of  Boccaccio's  (Corazzini,  Le 
Lettere  di  Boccaccio,  p.  195).  Later,  Skelton  makes  the  same  blunder  (Philip 
Sparrow,  1.  610),  and  so  does  Spenser  (Shep.  Gal.,  April,  41-2) ;  both,  no 
doubt,  were  misled  by  Chaucer.  In  spite  of  the  frequency  of  the  error, 
Boccaccio  was  probably  Chaucer's  blind  guide,  as  is  partly  shown  by  the  fact 
that  they  two  only  (except  the  Dante  commentators)  represent  Parnassus  and 
Helicon  as  being  close  together.  In  reality  they  are  some  thirty  miles  apart. 

1  Cf.  ten  Brink,  Studien,  pp.  60-2. 

2  The  idea  that  Chaucer  used  up  fragments  of  cast-off  poems  in  this  manner 
has  been  advanced  in  another  connection — to  explain  the  presence  of    bits 
translated  from  Pope  Innocent's  De  Contemptu  Mundi  in  the  Man  of  Law's 
Tale.     Ten  Brink,  who  held  this  view  in  the  case  of  the  Palamon,  in  this 
latter  case  rejected  it  with  mockery  (Engl.  Stud.,  xvii.  22).    Dr.  Emil  Koeppel 
characterizes  Chaucer's  supposed  procedure  by  the  gentle  word  "economy," 
and  pleads  ten  Brink's  own  example  for  holding  the  view  in  the  second  case 
(ibid.,    p.    197;    cf.   Herrig's   Archiv,    Ixxxiv.   410   ff.).      Skeat   holds   the 
"economy"  view  in  both  cases  (cf.  pp.  181-2  below). 

8  The  very  subversive  views  of  Professor  Lowes  on  this  matter  will  be 
discussed  later  (see  p.  125  below). 

4  MSS.  Pepys  and  Add.  9832  read  "Make  thy  mate  re  (the  maters)  of  hem 
as  the  lest  (ye  liste)." 

5  It  will  appear  subsequently  that  version  F  ("  B  ").  is  the  earlier  ;  the  line 
is  omitted  from  the  other  version. 


CH.  Ill,  §  1]      THE   PALAMON  AND    ARCITE  :   ITS   ORIGINAL   METRE.       51 

in  the  Canterbury  Tales.  Better  still,  if  the  Palamon  was  unfinished, 
and  if  it  had  not  yet  gone  abroad  among  his  readers,  so  far  as  they 
were  concerned  the  decasyllabic  couplet  was  a  new  metre,  and  it 
was  by  no  means  old  to  Chaucer.  Therefore,  though  it  is  difficult 
not  to  regard  this  line  as  an  allusion  to  a  metrical  innovation,  the 
innovation  need  not  have  been  made  in  this  poem.1 

This  exhausts  the  a  priori  considerations,  and  it  seems  temperate 
to  say  that  direct  and  weighty  evidence  would  be  required  to  over 
throw  the  strong  presumption  against  the  stanza-theory.  Such 
evidence  does  not  exist ;  on  the  contrary,  there  is  important 
evidence  on  the  other  side*  And  first  let  us  examine  the  supposed 
Palamon  passages  in  the  three  stanzaic  poems  for  indications  that 
they  were  not  originally  meant  for  their  present  positions,  indica 
tions  which  might  be  expected  to  appear  on  careful  scrutiny.  We 
may  seek  them,  but  we  shall  not  find  them.  But  suggestions  that 
the  two  longest  never  occurred  in  any  other  English  poems  we  shall 
find.  Dr.  Koch  asks2  why,  if  Chaucer  took  these  passages  directly 
from  the  Teseide,  he  did  not  more  completely  fuse  them  with  their 
present  surroundings.  As  to  the  passage  in  the  Troilus  (Vv  1807- 
27),  whatever  lack  of  harmony  there  may  be  between  it  and  its 
context  is  entirely  explained  by  the  fact  that  it  came  in  on  the 
revision.3  The  passage  in  the  Anelida  is  perfectly  fused;  if  it 
seems  to  us  partly  superfluous,  this  may  be  because  the  poem  is  frag 
mentary.  As  to  that  in  the  Parliament,  it  is  difficult  to  imagine 
any  fusion  more  perfect.  In  fact,  examination  will  show,  I  think, 
that  if  Chaucer  took  these  two  longer  passages  from  the  Palamon 
he  made  a  largely  unnecessary  revision  of  them. 

In  the  Anelida  and  Arcite  lines  1-21,  36-9,  and  50-70  are 
(partially)  from  the  Teseide,  but  ten  Brink4  regards  the  whole 
of  the  first  ten  stanzas  (lines  1-70)  as  derived  from  the  Palamon, 
with  certain  changes.  Now  the  first  stanza  contains  a  very  warlike 
invocation  of  Mars,  Bellona  and  Pallas,  though  the  Teseide  (I.  3) 
invokes  Mars,  Venus  and  Cupid.  It  is  not  at  all  likely  that  the 
more  martial  invocation  stood  in  the  Palamon,  which  if  anything 

1  So  Dr.  Mather  suggests  (Furnivall  Miscellany,  312). 
*  Engl.  Stud.,  xxvii.  3. 

3  If  the  Troilus  passage  ever  stood  in  the  Palamon,  Chaucer  must  have 
rewritten  the  first  line  .(in  the  Italian,  XL  1,  "Finite  Arcita  colei  nominando, 
La  qual  nel  inondo  piu  che  altro  araava  ") ;  no  other  change  would  have  been 
necessary,  and  there  is  no  internal  evidence  for  either  opinion. 

4  Pp.  56-8. 


52  POEMS    DEPENDENT    ON   THE    TESEIDE.          [CH.  Ill,  §  1 

must  have  been  less  warlike  than  the  Teseide  ;l  the  Anelida,  on  the 
other  hand,  begins  in  a  more  warlike  style  than  the  Knight's  Tale, 
and  since  it  breaks  off  with  Anelida's  vow  of  sacrifice  and  visit  to 
the  temple  of  Mars,  the  indications  are  that  it  was  to  continue 
in  that  style.  Therefore  the  stanza  must  have  been  revised ;  yet 
needlessly,  for  love  is  prominent  enough  in  the  Anelida  to  render 
Boccaccio's  invocation  perfectly  suitable.2  As  far  as  this  evidence 
goes,  then,  it  indicates  that  these  stanzas  were  never  in  the  Palamon. 
It  may  possibly  be  thought  that  the  fact  that  some  of  them  have  no 
obvious  connection  with  the  story  which  follows  suggests  that  they 
were  not  written  for  it ;  but  if  the  poem  had  been  continued  a 
connection  presumably  would  have  appeared,  and  we  certainly 
ought  to  abandon  the  idea  that  Chaucer  put  them  in  for  no  better 
reason  than  to  preserve  them.3 

The  description  of  the  temple  of  Yenus  in  the  Parliament  (183- 
294)  is  taken  from  a  passage  which  stands  later  in  the  Teseide  (VII. 
51-66)  than  in  the  Knight's  Tale;  the  prayer  which  Palamon  offers 
just  before  the 'tournament  becomes  personified  as  a  kind  of  nymph, 
who,  before  presenting  herself  to  the  goddess,  visits  and  inspects  the 
actual  abode  of  Venus  at  Mount  Cithaeron  ;  in  the  Teseide  the 
oratories  built  by  Theseus  are  not  described  at  all.  The  first- 
personal  verbs  in  the  Parliament  ("I  saw,"  etc.)  are  therefore 
third-personal  ("  vide,"  etc.)  in  the  Italian.  Ten  Brink  (p.  128) 
thought  this  passage  so  thoroughly  fitted' to  the  Parliament  that  it 
could  not  have  stood  in  the  Palamon.  Koch,4  however,  disagreed, 
and  his  view  is  accepted  by  Skeat  (III.  390) ;  it  may  therefore  be 

1  A8  ten  Brink  admits^p.  62).    Kn.  T.  omits  the  first  book  of  the  Teseide, 
on  the  wars  of  Theseus  with  the  Amazons.     Ten  Brink  is  not  quite  fair  in 
saying,  "wir  haben  nicht  den  geringsten  grund  zur  vermuthung,  dasz  der 
kriegsgbttin  in  Anelida  and  Arcite  em  grbszerer  spielraum  zugedacht  war  als 
in  Palamon  and  Arcite  "  (p.  57). 

2  Other  changes  which  must  have  been  made  are  in  11.  11,  21  (probably), 
48-9,  and  67-70,  as  ten  Brink  admits  (pp.  57-8)  ;  and  it  must  be  remembered 
that  changing  one  line  of  a  stanza  may  involve  changing  much  more. 

:i  Kblbing  (Engl.  Stud.,  ii.  528-32)  points  out  verbal  resemblances  between 
A.  A.  and  Kn.  T.  (to  which  I  may  add  A.  A.  182  =  Kn.  T.  2397),  where 
there  is  little  or  nothing  in  the  Teseide  to  correspond,  and  thinks  they  indicate 
that  Kn.  T.  is  done  over  from  an  earlier  stanzaic  version.  But  if  A.  A.  was 
written  and  abandoned  before  Kn.  T.  was  begun,  these  reminiscences  are 
natural  enough.  Mather  bases  on  A.  A.  an  argument  different  from  mine 
against  the  stanza-theory  (Miscellany,  p.  307).  He  points  out  that  "  it  stops 
abruptly  with  the  promise  of  a  description  of  the  temple  of  Mars,  a  description 
which,  according  to  the  theory,  lay  ready  in  Palamon.  It  is  strange  that 
Anelida  should  end  where  it  required  only  a  little  copying  to  carry  the  story 
scores  of  lines  further."  Cf.  Pollard,  Primer,  p.  80. 

4  Engl.  Stud.,  i.  249,  261-2. 


CH.  Ill,  §  1]      THE    PALAMON   AND   ARCITE  :   ITS    ORIGINAL    METRE.       53 

said  that  the  prevalent  form  of  the  stanza-theory  puts  this  passage 
in  quite  the  same  category  as  the  other  two.  Now  I  think  it  may 
be  shown  by  something  like  a  reductio  ad  absurdum  that  if  it  ever 
was  in  the  Palamon  it  must  have  been  very  much  more  extensively 
rewritten  than  Dr.  Koch  thinks,  yet  that  this  rewriting  was  largely 
needless  ;  and  therefore  that  it  never  was  in  the  Palamon. 

I  agree  with  him  that  Chaucer  is  not  at  all  likely  to  have 
adopted  in  the  Palamon  what  he  calls  "  diese  etwas  gezwungene 
und  unnatiirliche  darstellungsweise  "  (p.  261)  of  personifying  the 
prayers  and  conducting  them  to  the  actual  dwellings  of  the  deities. 
When  we  consider  what  liberties  Chaucer  takes  with  the  Filostrato 
and  the  Teseide,  how  his  treatment  of  his  sources  always  tends  to 
the  rational  and  the  simple,  and  how  his  sense  of  the  incongruous 
was  as  much  greater  than  Boccaccio's  as  his  reverence  for^ precedent 
was  less,  it  becomes  allowable  to  disbelieve  that  Chaucer  would  have 
adopted  so  frigid  a  conceit.  Moreover,  in  the  description  of  the 
temple  of  Mars  in  the  Kniyhts  Tale,  which  belongs  by  hypothesis 
in  the  same  category,  there  is  not  the  slightest  indication  that  from 
the  first  he  did  not  appropriate  Boccaccio's  description  to  the  shrine 
erected  by  Theseus  in  his  theatre ;  yet  this  passage  is  one  of  the  few 
longer  ones  which  follow  the  Teseide  closely,  with  many  lines 
almost  literally  translated,  a  fact  which  certainly  makes  against  the 
supposition  that  such  changes  were  made  as  would  be  involved 
in  getting  rid  of  the  personified  prayer.  Therefore  the  indications 
are  that  in  neither  case  was  it  personified.  Finally,  certain  phrases 
in  the  description  in  the  Parliament  are  distinctly  inconsistent  with 
the  personification.  We  should  have  to  believe  that  Chaucer  attri 
buted  to  the  young  woman  who  represents  the  prayer  strong  views 
on  the  subject  of  decorum,  or  else  pleasure  in  beholding  the  thinly- 
veiled  beauties  of  Venus : 

"  The  remenant  wel  kevered  to  my  pay 
Right  with  a  subtil  kerchef  of  Valence, 
Ther  was  no  thikker  cloth  of  no  defence"  (271-3).1 

After  describing  Venus,  the  poet  says  (departing  from  his  original), 

"  thus  I  leet  hir  lye, 
And  ferther  in  the  temple  I  gan  espye"  (279-80), 

singular  conduct  on  the  part  of  a  prayer  addressed  to  the  goddess  : 

1  "  E  faltra  parte  d'una 
Veste  tanto  sottil  si  ricopria, 
Che  quasi  nulla  appena  nascondia  "  ( Tes.  VII.  65). 


54  POEMS   DEPENDENT   ON    THE    TESEIDE.          [cH.  Ill,  §  1 

he  then  goes  on  with  a  part  of  the  description  which  in  the  Teseide 
immediately  precedes  the  description  of  the  goddess.  This  change 
of  order  has  no  apparent  motive,  and  certainly  would  not  have  been 
made  if  the  prayer  figured  in  the  account.  It  is  not  legitimate 
to  plead  that  in  fitting  the  stanzas  to  the  Parliament  Chaucer  made 
such  gratuitous  alterations  as  these  in  a  passage  that  would  have 
served  perfectly  well  unaltered.  It  seems  certain,  then,  that  the 
prayers  were  not  personified  in  the  supposed  stanzaic  Palamon. 

Yet  if  this  passage  was  taken  from  that  poem  it  is  equally  clear 
from  internal  evidence  that  the  prayers  were  personified.  Unless 
very  extensive  changes  have  been  made,  some  one  filled  a  prominent 
parb  in  the  description,  and  in  a  perfectly  impersonal  romance  who 
could  it  have  been  if  not  the  prayer?  In  the  112  lines  such 
expressions  as  "  herde  I,"  "  saw  I,"  occur  no  less  than  fourteen 
times ;  and,  what  is  still  more  striking,  five  phrases  imply  motion 
on  the  part  of  the  observer.1 

Dr.  Koch  thinks  the  former  set  of  phrases  are  entirely  paralleled 
in  such  phrases  as"ther  saw  I,"  which  occur  five  times  in  the 
84  lines  of  the  temple  of  Mars  passage  in  the  Knight's  Tale, 
and  five  times  in  the  38  lines  of  the  temple  of  Diana  passage. 
But  if  we  take  them  in  conjunction  with  the  indications  of  motion 
(entirely  absent  from  the  passages  in  the  Tale),  it  becomes  clear 
that  we  have  all  the  difference  between  a  vividness  due  to  poetic 
transport  and  a  deliberate  case  of  what  rhetoricians  sometimes  call 
description  by  means  of  narrative.  In  order  to  make  this  quite 
unmistakable  it  is  necessary  to  pause  to  account  for  these  phrases 
in  the  Tale.  Koch  thinks  that  their  absence  2  from  the  temple  of 
Venus  passage  in  the  Tale,  and  their  presence  in  the  Mars  and 
Diana  passages,  and  in  the  temple  of  Venus  passage  in  the  Parlia 
ment,  shows  that  the  latter  three  passages  are  all  derived  from  the 
Palamon.  I  think  a  perfectly  satisfactory  explanation  is  the 
following.  Having  written  an  original  3  description  of  the  temple 

1  "  Ther  I  fond"  (242),  "  as  I  wente  "  (253),  "  fond  I  "  (261),  "  thus  I  leet 
hir  lye  "  (279),  "  ferther  in  the  temple  I  gan  espye  "  (280).     All  but  the  third 
contain  rhyme-words. 

2  He  points  out,  however,  "  maystow  se"  (1918  ;  see  Koch,  260).     Mather 
(Miscellany,  304)  suggests  that  Chaucer  may  have  been  a  poor  enough  Italian 
scholar  to  mistake  vide  for  mdi.     This  explanation  will  hardly  do,  for  no  one 
could  have  failed  to  see  that  the  observer  of  the  temple  was  the  personified 
prayer.    He  also  makes  the  suggestion,  given  above,  that  the  use  of  the  first 
person  is  merely  a  licence  for  the  sake  of  vividness. 

3  For  no  other  reason  that  I  can  conceive  than  that  he  had  already  written 
P.  F.  ;  see  p.  78  below. 


CH.  Ill,  §  1]       THE    PALAMON   AND    ARCITE  :    ITS    ORIGINAL    METRE.       55 

of  Venus  for  the  Palamon  (which  I  believe  was  substantially 
identical  with  the  Knight's  Tale),  he  returned  to  the  Teseide  for 
the  temple  of  Mars,  which  in  the  Tale  comes  next.  In  reading  the 
account  in  Boccaccio  he  felt  the  vivid  effect  of  the  repeated  vide, 
and  by  a  licence  not  unusual  in  poetic  description  he  reproduced  it, 
of  course  by  verbs  of  the  first  person ;  and  then  carried  it  through 
his  original  account  of  the  temple  of  Diana,  which  follows.  It 
appears,  therefore,  that  the  conditions  in  the  Tale  and  in  the 
Parliament  are  not  parallel. 

So  we  have  accomplished  a  reductio  ad  absurdum.  If  the 
description  in  the  Parliament  of  Fowls  has  not  been  considerably 
altered  from  its  original  form,  the  prayer  at  first  must  have  been 
personified  and-  had  the  experiences  indicated.  But  both  proba 
bility  (as  Koch  admits),  and  evidence,  oppose  the  idea  that  the 
prayer  was  personified.  Therefore  if  this  passage  occurred  in  the 
Palamon  it  must  have  been  considerably  altered  before  it  was  put 
into  the  Parliament.  But  every  one  of  the  alterations  was 
unnecessary — whether  or  not  the  personified  prayer  appeared  in 
the  first  form,  the  passage  would  have  served  quite  well  unchanged 
(except  for  the  person  of  the  verbs) ;  and,  considering  the  extent 
to  which  Chaucer  must  have  been  affected  by  the  sin  of  Accidia 
while  he  was  using  up  fragments  of  this  devoted  poem,  a  sin  in 
reality  not  unknown  to  him,  it  is  very  unlikely  that  he  would 
have  made  these  alterations.  Some  of  them  would  have  involved 
more  trouble  than  recasting  couplets  into  stanzas. 

The  tfpshot  of  our  examination  of  the  supposed  Palamon  passages 
in  the  Troilus,  the  Anelida  and  the  Parliament  is  about  this  : — 
There  is  not  a  shred  of  evidence  that  a  single  line  of  them  ever 
appeared  in  an  earlier  English  poem,  and  there  is  strong  evidence 
that  the  two  longest  of  them  did  not.  If  this  conclusion  does  not 
destroy  the  stanza-theory,  at  the  very  least  it  disposes  of  the 
conjecture  that  there  may  be  any  evidence  in  these  passages  to 
favour  it.  Now  since  these  passages  are  practically  all  the 
evidence  which  the  theory  has,  and  considering  the  enormous 
burden  of  proof  which  rests  upon  its  advocates,  it  is  not  difficult 
to  see  where  we  are  coming  out. 

But  there  is  a  whole  set  of  evidence  yet  to  be  examined,  which 
is  to  be  derived  from  a  minute  comparison  of  the  Knight's  Tale 
and  the  Teseide,  with  a  view  to  discovering  if  there  is  anything  to 
show  whether  an  English  poem  in  stanzas  intervened.  It  is 


56  POEMS    DEPENDENT    ON    THE    TESEIDE.  [cH.  Ill,  $  1 

necessary  to  begin  with  three  postulates,  supposing  the  Palamou 
and  Arcite  to  have  been  written  in  stanzas.  The  first  is  that 
Chaucer  used  the  Palamon  as  the  basis  for  the  Knight's  Tale, 
and  did  not  produce  a  quite  new  poem  directly  from  the 
Italian;  probably  every  one  would  grant  this  without  cavil, 
as  Kb'lbing,1  ten  Brink,2  and  Koch3  do.  The  second  postu 
late  is  that  though  it  is  not  impossible  that  Chaucer  might  once 
in  a  while  refer  again  to  the  Teseide,  it  is  illegitimate  to  suppose 
that  he  did  do  so  often  or  in  any  particular  case,  for  once  he  had 
drawn  his  material  from  the  Teseide  and  put  his  own  interpretation 
on  it,  there  is  no  reason  why  he  should  regard  Boccaccio's  form  of 
the  story,  or  keep  it  open  before  him  during  the  revision. 
Finally  it  is  ten  Brink's  opinion4  that  in  general  "berechtigen  uns 
die  f ragmente  [des  angeblichen  stanzaischen  Palamon  und  Arcite] 
wohl  zu  der  annahme,  dasz  hinsichtlich  der  treue  der  iibersetzung 
und  des  ausseren  umfanges  derselben  zwischen  Palamon  und  Arcite 
und  der  Teseide  ein  ganz  ahnliches  Verhaltnisz  bestanden  habe  wie 
rwischen  Troylus  und  Cryseyde  und  dem  Filostrato."  If  the  stanza- 
theory  is  correct,  this  is  an  opinion  which  it  is  quite  improper  to 
deny,5  and  it  has  always  been  granted.  That  it  is  therefore 
entirely  fair  to  use  the  Troilus  as  a  test  for  some  of  the  evidence 
derived  from  comparing  the  Knight's  Tale*  and  the  Teseide  is  my 
third  postulate.  It  is  highly  important  that  these  postulates 
should  be  clearly  seen  to  be  a  necessary  consequence  of  the 
stanza- theory,  for  it  is  by  their  means  that  I  shall  attempt  to 
reduce  it  to  an  absurdity — to  show  that  if  they  are  a  necessary 
consequence  of  it,  the  theory  is  wrong. 

This  evidence  will  show  that  there  are  no  vestiges  of  stanzaic 
structure  in  the  Knight's  Tale  at  points  where,  if  the  theory  is 
correct,  it  must  necessarily  appear  on  careful  scrutiny.  The 
evidence  may  be  divided  for  convenience  into  three  classes  :  that 
which  deals  with  the  actual  number  of  lines  taken  from  the 
Teseide ;  that  which  deals  with  possible  traces  of  the  beginning 
and  end  of  the  stanza ;  and  that  with  passages  where  the  Tale 
closely  follows  the  Teseide  for  at  least  several  lines.  For  the  first 
two  classes  it  is  necessary  to  have  a  table  of  the  lines  in  the  Tale 


1  Engl  Stud.,  ii.  529-31.  2  Studien,  pp.  56,  61,  65. 

:s  Engl.  Stud.,  i.  277-8.  4  Studien,  p.  63. 

5  Except  that  we  can  hardly  suppose  the  Teseide  to  have  been  expanded  as 
much  as  the  Filostrato  was.     Ten-Brink  cannot  have  meant  that. 


CH.  Ill,  §  1]       THE    PALAMON   AND   AEC1TE  '    ITS    ORIGINAL    METRE.       57 

derived  from  the  Tetseide,  arranged  according  to  the  position  in  the 
Italian  stanza  of  the  lines  from  which  they  are  translated.  Such 
a  table  will  be  found  in  Appendix  B.1 

Much  of  my  evidence  is  based  on  the  following  considerations. 
The  last  four  lines  of  a  seven-line  stanza  without  change  form  two 
couplets,  and  a  whole  stanza  may  be  resolved  into  couplets  by  the 
omission  of  the  2nd  line,  and  perhaps  some  adaptation  of  the  1st 
and  3rd.  This  statement  may  easily  be  tested;  of  the  16  Teseide 
stanzas  in  the  Parliament  of  Fowls,  such  a  transformation  would 
be  perfectly  easy  in  about  10,  and  of  the  156  stanzas  in  book  I.  of 
the  Troilus  it  would  be  perfectly  easy  in  about  86.  I  include  here 
only  cases  where  the  2nd  line  is  easily  dispensable  in  sense  as  well 
as  form.  There  is  no  reason  to  believe  the  supposed  stanzaic 
Palamon  to  have  been  so  much  longer  than  the  Knight's  Tale  that 
Chaucer  must  have  generally  used  a  more  heroic  treatment,  and 
could  not  have  used  this  device  most  of  the  time ;  the  Teseide  is  a 
very  profuse  poem  without  vivid  psychological  interest,  and  it  is 
quite  certain  that  from  the  first  he  would  have  greatly  condensed 
it.  And  my  representation  of  Chaucer's  procedure  should  not 
be  regarded  as  crude  or  trivial.  No  poet  can  escape  the  technical 
conditions  of  his  art ;  no  poet  would  disdain  a  simple  method 
of  preserving  his  own  good  work.  Especially  would  a  sometimes 
impatient  and  easily-satisfied  poet  like  Chaucer,  who  had  a  par 
ticular  fondness  for  his  own  words,2  have  welcomed  a  device  which 
would  save  time  and  trouble,  and  ensure  the  preservation  of  bits  of 
this  unhappy  poem  for  which  he  would  still  cherish  a  certain 
tenderness.3  But  whether,  thus  at  close  quarters,  the  stanza-theory 
begins  to  look  absurd,  let  others  decide. 

First  we  will  consider  the  frequency  with  which  the  various  lines 
of  the  Italian  stanza  occur  in  the  Knight's  Tale.4  Here  the 
important  premise  must  be  made  that,  when  ottave  rime  are  trans 
lated  into  seven-line  stanzas,  in  a  general  way  an  Italian  line  passes 

1  Pp.  226-230  below.     Book  I.  of  the  Troilus,  which  contains  1092  lines, 
is  enough  for  purposes  of  comparison,  for  it  follows  the  Filostrato  closely. 

2  As  is  shown  by  the  very  large  number  of  phrases  which  appear  in  his 
works  more  than  once. 

a  There  is  a  curious  illustration  of  the  ease  with  which  the  opposite  change 
can  be  made  (from  couplets  into  stanzas)  in  the  spurious  prologue  to  the 
Franklin's  Tale,  composed  out  of  the  true  Merchant's  Epilogue  and  Squire's 
Prologue  (see  Six-Text,  Introd.,  p.  54). 

4  The  total  number  of  lines  due  to  the  Italian  is  valueless  as  evidence. 
According  to  my  count,  it  is  498  out  of  2250  (22%);  in  the  Troilus  (according 
to  Rossetti,  p.  iii.)  it  is  2583  out  of  8246  (31%). 


58  POEMS    DEPENDENT    ON    THE    TESEIDE.  [oil.  Ill,  §  I 

over  into  a  line  of  the  same  position  in  an  English  stanza ;  in  the 
Troilm,  book  I.,  f  of  the  Italian  8th  lines  translated  (35  out  of  47) 
correspond  to  English  7th  lines,  J  of  the  Italian  2nd  lines  (56  out 
of  64)  correspond  to  English  2nd  lines,  and  if-  of  the  Italian  1st 
lines  (64  out  of  69)  correspond  to  English  1st  lines.  A  cursory 
inspection  of  Mr,  Rossetti's  edition  of  the  Troilus  and  the  Filostrato 
in  parallel  columns  also  will  show  at  once  that  the  first  and  second 
parts  of  an  Italian  stanza  correspond  respectively  to  the  first  and 
second  parts  of  an  English  stanza.  Now  by  hypothesis  the  same 
conditions  should  hold  for  the  stanzaic  Palamon  and  Arcite. 

The  504  Italian  lines  which  appear  in  the  Knight's  Tale  are 
distributed  in  the  Italian  stanza  as  follows  : 

1st  lines,  98  (19%).  5th  lines,  56  (11%). 

2nd   „      80(16%).  6th     „      44(9%). 

3rd    „      69(14%).  7th     „      55(11%). 

4th    „      .47(9%).  8th     „      55(11%). 

For  the  Troilus  the  figures  are  these : 

1st  lines,  69  (16%).  5th  lines,  47  (11%). 

2nd    „      64(15%).  6th     „      45(10%). 

3rd    „      59  (14%).  7th     „      53  (12%). 

4th    „      51  (12%).  8th     „      47(11%). 

In  degree  of  frequency  the  eight  lines  stand  in  the  following 
order  : 

Knight's  Tale 1,  2,  3,  5,  7-8,  4,  6  ; 

Troilus  and  Criseijde  ....  1,  2,  3,  7,  4,  8-5,  6. 

The  closeness  with  which  these  results  agree  is  obvious ;  but  so 
far  from  favouring  the  stanza- theory,  this  fact  makes  strongly  in 
favour  of  the  view  that  the  Tale  was  made  directly  from  the 
Teseide.  Here  I  take  issue  with  Dr.  Koch.1  I  maintain  that,  if 

1  Who  says  (Engl.  Stud.,  I.  277-8) :  "Die  betreffenden  stanzen  de.r  Teseide 
sind  in  der  Knightes  Tale  gerade  so  behandelt  wie  in  den  siebenzeiligen 
strophen,  in  denen  er  Boccaccio's  gedichte  iibersetzt  hat.  Er  iibertragt 
namlich  moglichst  genau  die  ersten  zeilen  jeder  stanze — insoweit  er  sich 
iiberhaupt  an  sein  vorbild  halten  will — kann  dies  aber  (einmal  wegen  der 
schwierigkeit  des  versmasses  ;  zweitens,  weil  er  ja  8  zeilen  des  originals  in 
7  eigene  zusammenzieht)  nicht  immer  fiir  den  rest  durchfiihren,  und  lasst 
daher  haufig  die  mitte  weg,  um  dann  ofter  wieder  die  letzten  zeilen  wortlicher 
wieder  zu  geben.  Genau  diese  behandlungsweise  finden  wir  in  den  stellen 
der  Kn.  T.,  welche  mit  strophen  der  Teseide  correspondiren.  In  den  von 
mir  citirten  versen  ergibt  sich  das  verhaltniss  der  nach  art  der  siebenzeiligen 
strophen  bearbeiteten  stanzen  zu  denen,  deren  anfang  unberiicksichtigt 
geblieben  ist  etwa  4=  5  :  1  ;  ganz  so  im  Troilus,  soweit  er  von  Mr.  Kossetti 
mit  dem  Filostrato  verglicheu  ist."  Dr.  Koch  clearly  misinterprets  his  facts. 


CH.  Ill,  §  1]       THE    PALAMON   AND   ARCITE  :    ITS    ORIGINAL    METRE.       59 

Chaucer  wished  to  translate  a  whole  Italian  stanza,  it  would  make 
little  difference  whether  he  was  putting  it  into  stanzas  or  couplets, 
at  least  so  far  as  concerns  the  presence  in  the  English  version  of 
this  or  that  Italian  line.  In  either  case,  a  falling  off  in  frequency 
of  occurrence  is  most  natural  at  the  middle  of  the  stanza,  for 
that  is  where  the  diffuseness  of  the  ottava  rima  especially  shows 
itself ;  not  only  are  the  beginning  and  end  of  the  stanza  the  strategic 
points,1  but  the  freshness  of  the  rhymes  there  gives  the  poet  a 
freedom  which  he  has  not  in  the  4th,  5th,  and  6th  lines.  There 
fore  the  agreement  between  the  two  poems  does  not  favour  the 
stanza-theory. 

But  further  examination  of  these  lists  I  think  will  reveal  evidence 
which  is  absolutely  destructive  of  the  stanza-theory.  We  have  seen 
that  the  last  four  lines  of  a  7-line  stanza  are  much  easier  to  take  over 
into  a  couplet-poem  than  the  first  three,  and  also  that  in  general  the 
last  part  of  an  Italian  stanza  corresponds  to  that  of  an  English  stanza. 
If  the  stanza-theory  is  correct  we  ought  to  find  in  the  Knight's  Tale 
the  Italian  lines  5-8  as  compared  with  lines  1-4  much  better  repre 
sented  than  they  are  in  the  Troilus.  But  the  opposite  is  the  case  • 
in  the  Troilus  they  are  192  to  243  (44%),  and  in  the  Tale  210  to 
294  (only  42%). 

Most  important  of  all,  since  it  has  been  shown  how  easily  and 
how  often  a  7-line  stanza  may  be  transformed  into  couplets  by 
omitting  the  second  line,  it  would  be  very  surprising  if  this  line 
should  not  suffer  considerably  during  the  transformation ;  a  fact 
which  would  be  instantly  betrayed  in  the  Knight's  Tale  by  a  falling 
off  in  the  number  of  Italian  2nd  lines  represented,  about  f  of  which 
we  have  inferred  would  have  passed  over  into  2nd  lines  in  the 
English  stanzas.  Yet  on  consulting  the  list  we  see  not  only  that 
the  Italian  2nd  lines  are  the  most  numerous  of  all,  except  the  1st, 
but  also  that  their  percentage  of  the  whole  number  of  Italian  lines 
represented  is  higher  than  in  the  Troilus  (16%  to  15%).  Therefore 
the  very  closeness  with  which  the  figures  for  the  Knight's  Tale 
agree  with  those  for  the  Troilus  is  a  very  strong  argument  against  the 
stanza- theory.  If  our  postulates  are  sound,  I  think  it  disproves  it. 

I  come  now  to  the  lines  which  are  closely  translated,  and  there 
fore  must  have  stood  practically  the  same  in  the  Palamon  : 

1  The  Italian  final  couplet  has  a  summary,  epigrammatic  character  that 
tends  to  preserve  it ;  the  very  rhymes  are  sometimes  carried  over  into  the 
K.  T.  (1625-6,  2371-2,  2445-6).  " 


60  POEMS   DEPENDENT   ON   THE   TESEIDE.         [cH.  Ill,  §  1 


1st  lines,  26  (27%).  5th  lines,    7  (7' 

2nd     „     20(21%).  6th     „       4(4%). 

3rd     „       8(8%).  7th     „      17(18%). 

4th      „       9(9%).  8th     „       5(5%). 

The  testimony  of  these  figures  is  the  same  as  that  of  the  others. 
Though  on  the  stanza-theory  we  should  expect  lines  5-8  to  be 
much  more  numerous  than  1-4,  there  are  only  33  of  them  against 
63  (34%) ;  and  Italian  2nd  lines  are  more  fully  represented  than 
any  others  except  the  1st.1 

The  second  class  of  evidence  deals  with  possible  traces  of  the 
beginnings  and  ends  of  the  original  stanzas.  In  the  nature  of  the 
case,  as  will  appear,  it  is  less  satisfactory  and  conclusive  than  that 
which  has  just  been  presented.  But  it  bears  out  the  other,  and  I 
trust  will  make  my  refutation  of  the  stanza-theory  more  well- 
rounded.2 

One  characteristic  of  Chaucer's  treatment  of  the  couplet  is  the 
frequency  with  which  a  strong  pause,  marking  a  striking  period  in 
the  thought,  breaks  the  couplet  at  the  end  of  the  1st  line.  If  the 
stanza-theory  is  correct,  we  should  find  this  characteristic  rather 
unusual  in  the  Knight's  Tale;  since  in  a  stanzaic  poem,  as  one 
may  see  by  a  glance  at  the  Troilus,  practically  all  such  pauses 
come  at  the  ends  of  stanzas,  and  we  have  seen  reason  to  believe  that 
the  last  four  lines  of  the  stanzas  would  in  large  measure  have  been 
carried  over  into  the  Tale  unchanged.  Therefore  there  should  be 
a  very  striking  contrast  between  the  Knight's  Tale  and  Chaucer's 
other  poems  in  the  heroic  couplet  as  regards  this  break  in  the 
middle.  Below  will  be  found  a  table  in  which  the  comparison  is 

1  Another  point  connected  with  these  may  be  mentioned  here.  The  omis 
sion  of  the  2nd  line  of  an  English  stanza  would  leave  lines  1  and  3  (perhaps 
slightly  altered)  as  a  couplet ;  this  ought  in  many  cases  to  be  betrayed  by 
couplets  in  the  Knight's  Tale  formed  out  of  Italian  1st  and  3rd  lines.  This 
actually  happens  four  times  out  of  a  possible  80  or  so.  (See  1893-4,  2011-2, 
2393-4,  2831-2.  Four  other  cases  are  not  to  be  counted,  because  the  Italian 
2nd  line  is  fully  included  in  one  or  both  of  the  English  lines.)  But  not  only 
is  it  natural  enough  in  any  case  to  find  this  happening  occasionally,  but  in 
every  one  of  these  passages  a  good  reason  is  apparent ;  the  Italian  2nd  line  is 
unimportant,  it  sometimes  partly  survives  in  one  of  the  English  lines,  and 
often  the  whole  translation  is  exceedingly  distant. 

55  It  may  perhaps  be  asked  if  older  stanzas  show  at  all  by  the  presence  in 
the  Tale  of  blocks  of  6  or  8  lines ;  there  are  not  enough  such  to  be  significant. 
Another  similar  matter  may  be  mentioned.  Four  times  in  the  1092  lines  of 
T.  C.,  I.,  one  Italian  stanza  is  expanded  into  two  English  ;  in  the  Tale,  (more 
than  twice  as  long)  one  Italian  stanza  makes  11  or  12  lines  only  three  times, 
always  where  Chaucer  is  very  closely  following  his  original.  This  is  not 
offered  as  evidence,  but  merely  to  dispose  of  a  possible  conjecture. 


CH.  Ill,  §  1]       THE   PALAMON   AND   ARCITE  :   ITS    ORIGINAL    METRE. 


Gl 


made.  For  the  pauses  which  come  at  the  end  of  the  first  line,  and 
for  those  at  the  end  of  the  couplet,  I  have  borrowed  from  Shak- 
sperian  metrical  criticism  the  terms  "run-on"  and  "end-stop."  I 
have  made  two  lists,  one  of  which  includes  all  the  breaks  in 
the  sense  which  seem  really  considerable,  the  other  (in  order  to 
secure  as  much  objectivity  as  possible)  only  the  ends  of  paragraphs.1 
The  poems  selected  for  comparison  are  as  miscellaneous  as  possible 
in  character  and  probable  date.2 


ALL  BREAKS  IN  SENSE. 

PARAGRAPHS. 

' 

Run-on. 

End-stop. 

Run-on. 

End-stop. 

Squire's  Tale     ... 

•63 

•37 

•50 

•50 

Sumner's  Tale 

•58 

•42 

•56 

•44 

Legend  of  G.  W. 

•51 

•49 

•47 

•53 

L.G.W.,  Prol.  G.  (A)... 

•49 

•51 

•59 

•41 

Pard.  Prol.  and  Tale    ... 

•46 

•54 

•39 

•61 

L.  G.W.,  Prol.  F.  (B)... 

•44 

•56 

•46 

•54 

Knight's  Tale    

•40 

•60 

•30 

•70 

Physician's  Tale 

•39 

•61 

•25 

•75 

Wife  of  Bath's  Tale      ... 

•34 

•66             -31 

•69 

C.  T.  Prologue  

•31 

•69             -31 

•69 

Franklin's  Tale  ... 

•27 

•73             -17 

•83 

Wife  of  Bath's  Prol.     ... 

•26 

•74            -21             -79 

1  As  marked  in  Skeat's  small  edition;  all  his  paragraphing  is  included  in 
the  second  case,  but  a  few  cases  in  which  he  seemed  to  paragraph  wrongly 
are  disregarded  in  the  first. 

2  Some  time  after  these  tables  were  compiled,  Mr.  Pollard  expressed  the 
hope  that  some  such  study  might  be  made  (Knight's   Tale,  1903,  p.  xx.). 
But  he  will  see  that  the  prospect  is  not  very  encouraging  for  "metrical 
tests"  of  chronology.     Cf.  also  Lowes,  Publ.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.,  xx.  811-12. 
It  will  be  easily  seen  by  looking  at  these  figures  that  they  cannot  be  used,  as 
at  first  one  might  have  fancied,  as  a  test  of  dates.     Sq.  T.  and  Sumn.  T.  on 
the  one  hand,  and  W.  B.  P.  and  Frankl.   T.  on  the  other,  all  of  which  are 
certainly  late,  stand  at  opposite  ends  of  the  list,  and  the  Legend  of  Good 

Women  and  the  Prol.  of  the  C.  T.,  which  I  am  convinced  are  nearly  contem 
poraneous,  are  also  a  long  way  apart.  In  Chaucer's  case  there  is  not  the  same 
reason  as  in  Shakspere's  for  a  steady  metrical  development.  Nor  does  the 
character  of  the  poem  seem  to  determine  the  proportion.  It  seemed  at  first 
as  if  it  might,  for  in  Pard.  T.  and  C.  T.  Prol.,  when  the  actual  narrative  begins 
and  the  more  epigrammatic  descriptions  and  moralizings  stop,  the  propor 
tion  of  run-on  couplets  rises.  But  this  is  at  once  outweighed  when  we 
notice  that  W.  B.  P.,  the  most  colloquial  poem  Chaucer  ever  wrote,  is  quite 
at  the  bottom  of  the  list.  In  Romania,  xxiii.  1-35,  there  is  an  important 
article  by  Paul  Meyer  which  deals  with  this  fracture  in  the  Old  French 
couplet.  According  to  him,  Chretien  de  Troyes  was  the  first  important  poet 
to  break  up  the  couplet  in  this  way,  and  it  was  largely  due  to  his  influence 
that  this  great  improvement  in  narrative  verse  became  common. 


62  POEMS   DEPENDENT   ON   THE    TESEIDE.         [CH.  Ill,  §  1 

It  may  seem  at  first  as  if  this  table  contained  but  little  evidence 
against  the  stanza-theory  ;  but  certainly  the  position  of  the  Knight's 
Tale  is  very  far  from  being  as  peculiar  as  that  theory  requires.  In 
the  all-breaks  list  (the  more  important)  it  is  the  seventh  of  twelve, 
with  40%  of  run-on  couplets  as  against  extremes  of  63%  and  26%  ; 
in  the  paragraphs  list  it  is  ninth  of  twelve,  with  30%  as  against  59% 
and  17%.  It  is  less  than  the  average  to  the  extent  of  8%  in  the 
latter  list  and  2%  in  the  former.  When,  once  more,  we  "consider 
the  conditions  under  which  the  transformation  from  stanzas  into 
couplets  would  naturally  have  taken  place,  this  is  certainly  a 
considerable  argument  against  the  stanza-theory. 

We  may  look  at  this  matter  from  the  converse  side,  and  inquire 
whether  the  English  representatives  of  Italian  1st  and  8th  lines 
are  more  apt  than  we  should  otherwise  expect  to  follow  or 
precede  (respectively)  a  full  stop.  It  will  be  remembered  that,  to 
judge  from  the  Troilus,  if  and  f  of  these  two  lines  (respectively) 
would  have  been  the  first  and  last  in  English  stanzas.  In  the 
Troilus,  book  I.,  only  three  stanzas  do  not  end  in  a  full  stop 
(numbers  25,  104,  106).  It  would  be  rather  strange,  therefore,  if 
in  a  couplet  poem  reconstructed  from  a  stanzaic  a  very  large  majority 
of  these  lines  did  not  show  this  evidence  of  their  earlier  history. 
On  the  other  hand,  in  a  poem  taken  directly  from  one  in  the  ottava 
rima,  unless  it  were  condensed  more  and  quite  otherwise  than  the 
Knight's  Tale  is,  we  should  expect  full-stops  before  and  after  these 
lines  (respectively)  considerably  oftener  than  not,  simply  because 
the  first  and  last  lines  of  the  Italian  stanza  introduce  and  conclude 
periods  in  the  thought.  The  actual  figures  are  these :  of  the 
representatives  of  Italian  1st  lines,  53  follow  a  full  stop  and  45  do 
not ;  of  the  representatives  of  Italian  8th  lines,  30  precede  a  full 
stop  and  25  do  not.  Considering  the  ease  with  which  the  last  part 
of  the  stanza  could  have  been  transferred  unchanged,  these  latter 
figures  are  amazing  if  the  stanza-theory  is  right.  In  both  cases 
the  figures  make  distinctly  against  it. 

Just  one  more  such  test  may  be  given.  Since  the  Italian  first  and 
last  lines  would  almost  always  have  become  the  first  and  last  (respect 
ively)  in  the  English  stanza,  and  since  the  last  in  an  English  stanza 
is  the  second  in  a  couplet,  and  the  first  follows  a  complete  couplet, 
and,  therefore,  would  naturally  form  the  first  line  in  the  next  (if  the 
stanzas  were  transformed  as  we  have  supposed),  the  representatives 
in  the  Knight's  Tale  of  Italian  1st  and  8th  lines  ought  to  be  almost 


CH.  Ill,  §  1]       THE    PALAMON    AND    ARC1TE  :    ITS    ORIGINAL    METRE.       63 

always  respectively  the  first  and  second  in  their  couplets.  If  the 
stanza-theory  is  incorrect,  we  should  expect  this  to  be  so  usually, 
for  the  reasons  indicated  in  the  last  paragraph ;  but  to  nothing  like 
the  same  extent,  since  in  a  translation  into  couplets  the  Italian 
stanza  is  not  transformed  into  a  similar  unit.  A  quick  way  of  ascer 
taining  how  often  this  is  the  case  is  to  notice  when  the  numbers  of 
representatives  of  Italian  1st  lines  are  odd,  and  those  of  represent 
atives  of  Italian  8th  lines  are  even.1  For  the  first  line  the  figures  are 
33  even  to  65  odd,  and  for  the  last  14  odd  to  41  even.  These 
figures  are  pretty  much  what  we  should  expect  if  the  stanza-theory 
is  not  correct,  and  harmonize  well  with  the  results  of  the  last  test. 

So  much  for  attempts  at  finding  the  supposed  original  stanzas  in 
outline  ;  they  certainly  have  not  been  successful.  It  is  apparent 
that  in  the  nature  of  the  case  this  class  of  evidence  could  not  be  as 
striking  as  the  first,  but  it  has  added  some  little  weight  to  the 
negative  argument.2 

For  the  third  class  of  evidence  we  may  examine  passages  several 
lines  long  which  are  close  to  the  Italian  and  therefore  would  have 
occurred,  in  much  the  same  shape,  in  the  Palamon  and  Arcite. 
Here,  if  anywhere,  the  supposed  stanzaic  form  ought  not  to  escape 
careful  scrutiny  and  comparison  with  the  original.  First,  I  give  the 
one  passage  which  comes  nearest  to  harmonizing  with  the  stanza- 
theory,  and  then  two  or  three  which  most  strongly  refute  it.  In  a 
note  I  shall  refer  to  about  twenty  more  such  cases,  almost  all  of 
which  are  hostile  to  the  theory. 

And  if  ye  wol  nat  so,  my  lady  swete,         E  se  t'e  grave  cio  ch'io  ti  dimando 
Than  praye  I  thee,  to-morwe  with  a        Far,  fa'che  tu  nel  teatro  la  spada 

spere 

That  Arcita  me    thurgh  the  herte        Primaia  prendi,  ed  al  mio  cor  for- 
bere ;  ando, 

Costrigni  che  lo  spirto  fuor  ne  vada 
Con  ogni   vita  il  campo  insanguin- 

ando  ; 
Che    cotal    morte    troppo    piu    m; 

aggrada, 
Thanne  rekke  I  noght,  whan  I  have        Che  non  sarebbe  senza  lei  la  vita, 

lost  my  lyf, 

Though  that  Arcite  winne  hir  to  his        Vedendola  non  inia,  ma  si  d' Arcita 
wyf  (2254-8).  (VII.  49). 

1  If  an  Italian  line  is  rendered  by  more  than  one  English  line,  in  the  one 
case  of  course  we  should  look  at  the  first  English  line  and  in  the  other  at 
the  last. 

2  One  or  two  attempts,  hardly  worth  describing  in  detail,  to  find  vestiges  of 
the  rhyme -scheme  of  the  ottava  rima  end  in  the  same  way. 


64  POEMS    DEPENDENT   ON   THE    TESEIDE.          [CH.  Til,  §  1 

These  five  lines  form  a  unit,  and  might  easily  have  been  trans 
formed  from  a  stanza  by  the  omission  of  two  lines,  before  and 
after  the  third ;  yet  it  is  difficult  to  fancy  what  the  first  of  these 
two  lines  could  have  been.1 

The  following  three  passages  are  strongly  opposed  to  the  stanza- 
theory  : 

La   quale   in    ciascun    membro    era 

venuta 
Da'   piedi   in    su,    venendo  verso '1 

petto, 

Ed  ancor  nelle  braccia  era  perduta 
La  vital  forza  ;  sol  nello  intelletto 

E  nel  cuore  era  ancora  sostenuta 
La  poca  vita,  ma  gia  si  ristretto 

Eragli  1  tristo  cor  del  mortal  gelo, 

Che-agli  occhi  fe'  subitamente  velo 
(X.  111). 


For  from  his  feet  up  to  his  brest  was 

come 
The  cold  of  deeth,  that  had<le  him 

overcome. 

And  yet  more-over,  in  his  armes  two 
The  vital  strengthe  is  lost,  and  al 

ago. 

Only  the  intellect,  with-outen  more, 
That  dwelled  in  his  herte  syk  and 

sore, 
Gan   faillen,   when    the    herte  felte 

deeth, 
Dusked  his  eyen  two,    and  failled 

breeth  (2799-2806). 


Obviously  this  passage,  if  any,  would  have  formed  a  stanza,  but 
so  far  from  its  first  part  showing  any  signs  of  alteration,  it  is  rather 
nearer  the  original  than  the  latter  part. 


And  after  this,  Theseus  hath  y-sent 
After  a  bere,  and  it  al  over-spradde 
With  cloth  of  gold,  the  richest  that 

he  hadde. 
And  of  the  same  suyte  he   cladde 

Arcite ; 
Upon  his  hondes  hadde  he  gloves 

whyte ; 
Eek  on  his  heed  a  croune  of  laurer 

grene, 
And  in  his  hond  a  swerd  ful  bright 

and  kene. 
He  leyde  him  bare  the  visage,  on  the 

bere, 
Therwith  he  weep  that  pitee  was  to 

here  (2870-8). 

The  case  here  is  exactly  the  same.  Considering  that  there  are 
scarcely  any  other  passages  which  correspond  so  nicely  to  an  Italian 
stanza,  these  two  are  striking. 

Duk  Theseus,  with  al  his  bisy  cure, 
Caste  now  wher  that  the  sepulture 
Of  good  Arcite  may  best  y-maked  be, 
And  eek  most  honurable  in  his  de 
gree. 


El  fece  poi  un  feretro  venire 
Reale  a  se  davanti,  e  tosto  fello 
D'un  drappo  ad  or  bellissimo  fornire, 

E  similmente  ancor  fece  di  quello 
II  morto  Arcita  tutto  rivestire, 
E  poi  il  fece  a  giacer  porre  in  ello 
Incoronato  di  frondi  d'alloro, 

Con  ricco  nastro  rilegate  d'oro 
(XL  15). 


Quinci  Teseo  con  sollecita  cura 
Con  seco  cerca  per  solenne  onore 
Fare  ad  Arcita  nella  sepoltura  ; 
Ne     da    cio'l    trasse    angoscia    ne 
dolore, 


1  The  other  cases  least  inharmonious  with  the  stanza-theory  are  1999-2010 
(=  Teseide,  VII.  34),  2011-6  (=  VII.  35),  2334-8  (=  VII.  91.) 


CH.  Ill,  §  1]         THE   PALAMON   AND   ARCITE  :   ITS    ORIGINAL    METRE.    G5 

And  at  the  laste  he  took  conclusioun, 
That  ther  as  first  Arcite  and  Palamoun 
Hadden  for  love  the  bataille  hem 

bitwene, 
That  in  that  selve  grove,  swote  and        Ma  pens6  che  nel  bosco,  ove  rancura 

grene, 

Ther  as  he  hadde  his  amorous  desires,        Aver  sovente  soleva  d'amore, 
His  compleynt,  and  for  love  his  hote 

fires, 
He  wolde   make  a   fyr,    iu    which        Faria  comporre  il    rogo    dentro    al 

thoffice  quale 

Funeral  he  mighte  al  accomplice  L'  uficio  si  compiesse  funerale 

(2853-64).  (XL  13). 

For  several  reasons  this  could  hardly  have  formed  two  stanzas,  or 
been  expanded  from  one.  Other  similar  cases  I  relegate  to  a  note.1 

The  outcome  of  the  examination  of  these  passages  is  that  in  one 
or  two  of  them  there  is  nearly  as  much  appearance  of  stanzaic  form 
as  could  be  expected  or  as  there  is  against  it ;  but  that  in  almost  all 
of  them,  if  the  stanza-theory  is  correct,  Chaucer  must  have  taken 
the  most  extreme  pains  to  obliterate  vestiges  which  would  have 
been  apparent  only  on  the  minutest  search.  Whether  this  seems 
natural  for  any  poet,  especially  a  mediaeval  poet,  I  will  not  say  ;  but 
I  am  quite  certain  that  it  is  not  like  Chaucer.  The  result  here 
harmonizes  perfectly  with  those  which  have  been  gained  by  other 
methods. 

This  concludes  my  discussion  of  tbe  stanza-theory.  If  it  has 
been  no  less  convincing  than  it  has  been  tedious,  I  shall  be  satisfied. 
My  tests,  taken  together,  with  all  deference  to  the  memory  of 
ten  Brink  and  to  later  scholars,  I  think  show  that  the  stanza- 


905-15  =   II.  26. 
1048-55  =  III.  10. 
1975-80  =  VII.  31. 
1981-3  =  VII.  32,  1-3. 
2221-6  =  VII.  43,  2-8. 
2238-43  =  VII.  46. 
2244-50  =  VII.  47. 
2275-80  =  VII.  71. 
2289-96  =  VII.  74. 
2307-10  =  VII.  81,  1-4. 

2314-21  =  VII.  84. 
2322-5  =  VII.  85,  1-6. 
2349-57  =  VII.  89. 
2371-8  =  VII.  23-24. 
2410-18  =  VII.  28. 
2423-34  =  VII.  39-40. 
2561-4  =  VII.  14,  1-4. 
2843-6  =  XII.  6,  1-3, 
3017-26  =  XII.  7. 

(In  line  2411,  by  the  way,  it  looks  as  if  Chaucer  had  mistaken  compagnone  for 
compagnia  ;  Arcite  would  be  more  likely  to  dedicate  to  Mars  the  arms  of  his 
former  comrade  and  present  enemy  than  those  of  his  own  followers.)  Most  of 
these  passages  might  well  be  disregarded,  but  exhaustiveness  makes  the  proof 
more  conclusive.  Every  passage  is  given  here  or  earlier  in  which  the  Italian 
offers  guidance  and  Which  could  reasonably  be  thought  significant.  I  certainly 
have  tried  to  treat  the  stanza-theory  generously  throughout,  yet  I  have  found 
nothing  which  is  not  perfectly  natural  if  that  theory  is  incorrect.  The  evidence 
which  the  passages  in  this  note  add  to  the  main  discussion  is  : — In  favour  of  the 
theory,  nothing ;  against  it,  a  considerable  quantity  of  indications,  singly 
small,  but  in  the  mass  rather  effective. 

DEV.  CH.  F 


66  POEMS    DEPENDENT    ON    THE    TESEIDE.  [CH.  Ill,  §  2 

theory  is  as  destitute  of  evidence  in  its  favour  as  it  is  of  probability. 
Granted  (and  they  do  grant  it)  that  Chaucer  would  have  used  his 
older  version  as  the  basis  of  the  Knight's  Tale,  if  not  one  sign  of  it 
can  be  discovered  even  where  concealment  would  be  equally  difficult 
and  unnecessary,  I  think  the  stanza-theory  may  be  regarded  as 
disproved. 

§  2.   The  Knights  Tale :  How  Far  Altered. 

We  come  back,  therefore,  to  the  position  of  Tyrwhitt  and  other 
early  scholars,1  since  if  the  Palamon  was  not  written  in  stanzas 
it  must  have  been  written  in  its  present  metre.  All  we  know 
is  that  a  poem  on  the  subject  of  "  all  the  love  of  Palamon  and 
Arcite  of  Thebes  "  was  written  before  the  Legend  of  Good  Women, 
and  that  such  a  poem  exists  as  the  Knight's  Tale.  The  question 
next  arises  whether  in  its  first  form  it  was  practically  the  Knight's 
Tale  as  we  have  it,  or  whether  it  has  undergone  considerable 
revision  and  abbreviation.  That  some  slight  changes  must  have 
been  made  of  course  all  are  agreed.  A  passage  near  the  beginning, 
lines  889-892,  which  allude  to  the  pilgrims  and  the  supper,  must 
be  new,  and  probably  the  whole  paragraph  875-892.  At  the  end 
there  is  nothing  which  must  be  new  except  the  very  last  line,  a 
benediction  on  the  "  fair  company : "  yet  the  ending  is  so  brisk  and 
succinct  that  it  gives  countenance  to  my  belief  that  the  poem  was 
never  finished  in  its  original  form  and  that  the  whole  present 
ending  was  made  for  the  Canterbury  Tales.  Elsewhere  I  find  not 
the  least  indication  of  adaptation  or  alteration. 

It  will  probably  be  felt,  however,  that  there  are  some  grounds  for 
believing  that  the  poem  was  originally  much  longer  than  now.  There 
is  a  certain  force  in  the  analogy  of  the  Troilus ; 2  if  in  translating 
one  poem  of  Boccaccio's  Chaucer  made  it  half  as  long  again,  it  might 
seem  a  little  strange  that  he  should  reduce  another  to  one-fifth. 
Yet  on  examination  this  argument  loses  most  of  its  force.  In  the 
first  place,  consider  the  dissimilarity  of  the  Troilus  and  the  Knight's 
Tale.  The  one  is  a  study  of  the  human  heart,  with  only  so  much 
incident  as  is  necessary  to  keep  it  working  and  changing,  a  study  on 
which  Chaucer  poured  out  all  his  interest  and  sympathy,  and  which 

1  Cf.  Ebert  (1862),  Jahrbuch  fur  rom.  u.    engl.    Litt.,  iv.    95  ;   Kissner 
(1867),  Chaucer  in  seinen  Beziehungen  zur  ital.  Litt.,  p.  59. 

2  So  ten  Brink,  Studien,  43-4  ;  Kissner,  1.  c.,  p.  59.     Cf.  Mather  (Furnivall 
Miscellany,  p.  312,  note),  one  or  two  of  whose  arguments  against  this  objection 
agree  with  mine. 


OFT.  in,  §2]       THE  KNIGHT'S  TALE:  HOW  FAR  ALTERED.  67 

it  is  evident  that  he  regarded  as  his  great  work.  The  Teseide,  like 
the  Knight's  Tale,  is  a  brilliant  romance  of  picturesque  incident, 
with  little  and  weak  emotional  interest,  the  sort  of  thing  which 
also  appealed  to  Chaucer,  in  a  more  superficial  way,  which  he  would 
be  instantly  moved  to  condense,  and  of  which  lie  would  more 
readily  tire.  That  he  even  tired  somewhat  of  the  Troilus  I  think 
there  is  evidence  in  the  abruptness  with  which  both  Troilus  and 
Criseyde  disappear.1  What  is  more  natural  than  that,  after  working 
long  on  one  poem  of  Boccaccio's,  within  a- few  years  he  should  turn 
to  another  by  this  same  poet  whose  style  he  admired,  a  poem  which 
he  had  known  for  years  and  had  already  quoted  from ;  but  that 
from  the  start  he  should  condense  it  1  While  the  Filostrato  has 
only  about  5700  lines,  the  Teseide  has  nearly  10,000.  As  it  is,  the 
Knight's  Tale  is  by  a  good  deal  Chaucer's  longest  single  poem 
except  the  Troilus? 

The  general  similarity  in  style  between  the  Knight's  Tale  and 
most  of  the  Canterbury  Tales  may  appear  to  some  readers  a  reason 
for  thinking  it  largely  transformed  from  its  early  form.  But,  to  say 
nothing  of  what  I  believe  to  be  the  fact,  that  Chaucer's  style  after 
1373  varied  rather  with  his  subject  than  with  the  date,  we  must 
remember  that  it  is  a  question  of  only  a  few  years  in  any  case,  and 
in  general  what  a  man  can  do  at  forty-five  or  fifty  he  can  ^do  at 
forty  or  forty-five.  If  it  is  a  better  poem  than  the  Legend  of  Good 
Women,  this  is  because  Chaucer  threw  himself  into  it  with  greater 

1  It  clearly  prolonged  itself  beyond  his  expectations.     He  meant  to  finish  it 
in  the  fourth  book,  as  he  himself  announces  (IV.  26-8).      The  contrast  in  the 
ratio  between  the  earlier  and  later  parts  of  the  Troilus  and  of  the  Filostrato  is 
very  striking.     T.  C.,  I. -IV.  contain  6370  11.  ;   Fil.,  I. -IV.  (which  exactly 
correspond)  contain  3688  11.     T.  C.,  V.  has  1869  11.,  and  Fil,  V.-IX.  (which 
correspond)  have  2016  11. 

2  One  who  compares  the  Knight's  Tale  with  the  Teseide  will  frequently 
wonder  at  the  good  passages  which  Chaucer  omits  (some  of  them  are  collected 
in  Appendix  C,  pp.  231-3),  and  will  perhaps  wonder  if  their  absence  from 
the    Tale  is   not  due  to    revision.      But  if  it  has  been  shortened  this  was 
certainly  done  by  small  omissions  all  through  ;  the  longest  passage  which  he 
omits,   book  I.,  dealing  with  the  war  of  Theseus  with  the  Amazons,  is  so 
remotely  connected  with  the  rest  of  the  ]  oem  that  he  doubtless  omitted  it 
from  the  first  (as  ten  Brink  and  apparently  Koch  believe  ;  Studien,  62-3  ; 
Engl.    Stud.,    i.    282).      Chaucer  must  have  had  too   much   taste   to   cut 
out  these  good  touches  ;  why  did  he  not  reduce  as  well  (or  instead)  a  con 
siderable  number  of  needless  and  disproportionate  couplets  and  longer  passages 
which  an  attentive  reading  will  discover  in  Kn.  T.  ?    I  may  mention  the  first 
150  11.  or  so,  or  such  a  speech  as  Theseus'  at  the  end  (2987-3066),  which  is  of 
about  the  same  length  as  its  original  in  the  Teseide  ;  such  a  couplet  as  2087-8, 
or  the  passage  where  Theseus  decides  on  a  site  for  Arcite's  funeral-pyre  (2853- 
64).     There  are  some  bits  in  the  Knight's  Tale  which  are  distinctly  verbose. 


68  FORMS   DEPENDENT   ON   THE    TESEIDE.  [CH.  Ill,  §  2 

interest ;  he  really  cared  but  little  for  the  Romans  and  Greeks,1  and 
in  a  retelling  of  the  stories  of  Ovid  and  the  others,  with  their  pale 
unintelligible  background  and  the  impossibility  of  making  them 
over  to  suit  himself,  he  had  no  chance  to  do  his  best  work.  Even 
as  it  is,  not  a  trait  of  character  or  style  appears  in  the  Knight's  Tale 
that  is  not  also  in  the  Legend  of  Good  Women  ;  fresh  love  of  nature, 
occasional  levity,  humour,  satire/.his  own  "  favourite  line,""Pitee 
renneth  sone  in  gentil  herte  "  (L.  G.  W.,  F,  503  ;  K.  7'.,  1761),  and 
a  remarkable  number  of  other  correspondences  in  expression  (which 
will  be  mentioned  later).  It  can  hardly  be  supposed  that  Chaucer 
would  have  altered  the  Palamon  quite  completely;  yet  these 
characteristics  run  all  through  the  Knight's  Tale.  The  one  legiti 
mate  deduction  which  I  think  we  may  draw  from  all  these  facts 
is  that  the  poem  in  its  first  form  was  written  only  shortly  before 
the  Canterbury  Tales  and  the  Legend  ;  of  which  suggestion  more 
hereafter. 

Dr.  Koch  discovers  another  evidence  of  revision  :  "  Die  schil- 
derung  des  Marstempels  tragt  so  sehr  das  geprage  einer  uberarbei- 
tung,  dass  es  kaum  einemzweifel  unterliegen  kann,  dass  auch  dieses 
stuck  ein — wenn  auch  durch  das  verschiedene  versmass  mehrfach 
modificirter — theil  der  friiheren  redaction  des  Palamon  und  Ar- 
citas  ist."  2  Of  the  only  two  of  his  points  which  need  be  mentioned 
here,  one  (the  use  of  the  first  person  in  the  description)  has  been 
dealt  with  already  ;  the  other  is  the  fact  that  Chaucer  seems  to 
confound  the  portraiture  on  the  wall  of  Theseus'  oratory  with  the 
real  temple  of  Mars  in  Thrace.  But  Dr.  Koch  seems  to  forget  that 
the  inconsistency  is  no  greater  in  the  Knight's  Tale,  than  it 
would  have  been  in  any  form  of  the  Palamon  which  we  can 
postulate ;  for  he  himself  does  not  believe  that  Chaucer  ever  repre 
sented  the  real  temple  as  visited  by  Arcite's  personified  prayer. 
Furthermore,  is  not  such  an  inconsistency  far  more  likely  to  occur 
in  an  unrevised  poem  than  to  have  survived  revision  ?  It  is  easy 
enough  to  explain.  Wishing  to  preserve  as  much  as  possible  of 
Boccaccio's  imposing  and  terrible  description,  he  conceived  on  the 
walls  of  the  oratory  pictures  of  both  the  outside  and  the  inside  3  of 
the  Thracian  temple,  and  even  of  the  designs  with  which  it  was 

1  Of  course  the  people  in  Kn.  T.  are  Greek  only  in  name. 

2  Engl.  Stud.,  i.  258  ;  of.  258-61.     This  point  is  one  of  the  more  uninteUi- 
gible  parts  of  an  unintelligible  theory. 

3  "  Al  peynted  was  the  wal,  in  lengthe  and  brede, 
Lyk  to  the  estres  of  the  grisly  [ilace  "  (197Q-1), 


CH.  in,  §  2]       THE  KNIGHT'S  TALE  :  HOW  FAR  ALTERED.  69 

"  istoriato  "  (VII.  36).  He  even  went  so  far  in  vividness  as  to 
describe  the  storms,  the  shaking  of  the  temple  and  the  shrieking,1 
partly  perhaps  because  he  was  carried  away  himself.  This  is  not 
scientific  but  poetic  description,  and  is  simply  carrying  a  little 
further  the  sort  of  imagination  which  we  find  in  Keats'  Ode  to  a 
Grecian  Urn,  and  even  in  Chaucer's  original  description  of  the 
shrine  of  Venus,  where  broken  sleeps,  sighs  and  oaths  are  painted 
on  the  wall.2  The  passage  I  think  has  no  bearing  on  the  question 
of  revision.3 

1  1979-80,  1985-6,  2004. 

2  Kn.  T.,  1920-4.    There  is  a  much  worse  example  of  the  same  sort  of  thing 
in  the  House   of  Fame,  mentioned  earlier  ;  after  describing  the  niches  and 
statues  on  the  outside  of  the  palace,  Chaucer  goes  on : 

"  Ther  herde  I  pleyen  on  an  harpe 
That  souned  bothe  wel  and  sharpe, 
Orpheus  ful  craftely  "  (1201-3). 

3  Dr.  Koch  sees  evidence  of  a  confused  text  in  three  small  passages  in  this 
description.     "Shippes  hoppesteres"(2017)  has  been  satisfactorily  explained 
(see   Skeat,  V.  80-1).     The  connection  with  Mars  of  such  undignified  figures 
as    "the   barbour,  and  the  bocher,  and  the  smith"    is  due  to  the  usual 
mediaeval  identification  of  the  pagan  god  with  the  planet  and  its  astrological 
relations.     Finally,  Koch  objects  to  the  lines 

' c  The  sleere  of  him-self  yet  saugh  I  ther, 
His  herte-blood  hath  bathed  al  his  heer  ; 
The  nayl  y-driven  in  the  shode  a-night "  (2005-7) ; 

he  suggests  an  impossible  emendation  ("The  housbond  slain  by  his  wif ") 
which  is  modified  and  approved  by  Skeat  (V.  80).  It  would  be  extraordinary 
to  mention  the  driving  of  the  nail  after  the  flow  of  blood,  and  the  emendation 
would  destroy  the  force  of  the  allusion  in  2007,  for  Sisera  was  not  the  husband 
of  Jael.  The  passage  is  perfectly  simple  if  we  divide  it  into  two  images,  of 
which  the  first  suggested  the  second.  There  are,  however,  certain  real 
internal  inconsistencies  in  the  Kn.  T.,  all  due  to  careless  treatment  of  the 
original  (and  more  likely  to  occur  in  an  unrevised  than  in  a  revised  work).  In 
2355-7  Diana  says  to  Emily  : 

"  The  fyres  which  that  on  myn  auter  brenne 
Shul  thee  declaren,  er  that  thou  go  henne, 
Thyn  aventure  of  love," 

although  the  performances  of  the  fire  have  already  been  described  (2334-40)  ; 
here  Chaucer  has  kept  the  future  tense  of  the  Italian,  though  he  has  reversed 
the  order  (Teseide,  VII.  89,  "  vedrai"  ;  cf.  91-2).  In  2858  ff.  Theseus  cuts 
down  the  grove  and  makes  Arcite's  pyre  and  tomb  on  the  scene  of  the  sylvan 
combat,  regardless  of  the  fact  that  he  had  previously  erected  a  vast  and 
sumptuous  theatre  on  the  same  spot  (1862) ;  here  Chaucer  has  followed  the 
Italian  in  the  later  instance  and  not  in  the  earlier.  Finally,  Theseus  speaks  of 
Arcite's  "cosin  and  his  wyf  "  (3062),  though  Emily  had  not  married  Arcite  ; 
in  the  Teseide  she  had  already  done  so.  An  apparent  blunder  in  2046  is  due 
only  to  Skeat's  punctuation  ;  the  line  looks  not  forward  but  back,  and  should 
be  followed  by  a  period.  Professor  Liddell  (Chaucer's  ProL,  etc.,  N.Y.  1902, 
p.  169)  says  that  the  promise  in  line  2039,  "Suffyceth  oon  ensample  in  stories 


70  POBMS    DEPENDENT   ON   THE    TESEIDE.  [CH.  Ill,  §  2 

One  bit  of  internal  evidence  tends  to  disprove  the  idea  of  exten 
sive  revision.  After  mentioning  Theseus'  following  Pirithous  to 
hell,  Chaucer  says  (1201) : 

"  But  of  that  story  list  me  nat  to  wryte." 

Nobody  has  doubted  that  the  Second  Nun's  Tale,  mentioned  in  the 
Legend  of  Good  Women,  and  written,  by  an  "  unworthy  son  of 
Eve,"  to  be  read,  was  taken  over  unchanged  into  the  Canterbury 
Tales.  Is  not  the  case  nearly  as  good  for  the  story  of  Palamon  and 
Arcite,  also  mentioned  in  the  Legend  of  Good  Women,  also  written 
for  readers,  and  only  known  to  have  been  adapted  for  the  Canter 
bury  Tales  at  the  beginning  and  the  end  21 

But  the  strongest  argument  against  much  alteration  of  the 
Palamon  is  that  of  probability  and  Chaucer's  usual  practice.  In 
the  Second  Nun's,  Shipman's  and  Merchant's  Tales  (as  we  shall  see 
later)  Chaucer  neglected  very  necessary  revisions.  The  revision  of 
the  Prologue  to  the  Legend  I  shall  try  to  show  was  due  to  a  very 
special  cause.  It  is  a  fair  presumption  that  Chaucer  avoided  need 
less  trouble  in  adapting  the  Palamon  for  the  Knight.  There  is  no 
reason  or  evidence  for  the  belief  that  the  original  form  of  the 
poem  was  different  from  the  present,  or  that  if  it  had  been  Chaucer 
would  have  felt  called  on  to  alter  it.  The  indications  are  therefore 
very  strongly  in  favour  of  the  practical  identity  of  the  Palamon 
and  Arcite  with  the  Knight's  Tale. 


§  3.  The  Knight's  Tale:  The  Date. 
All  this  is  a  long  preamble  to  a  discussion  of  the  date  of  the 


olde,"  is  not  fulfilled  ;  but  Julius,  Nero  and  Antonius,  who  have  been  spoken 
of  a  little  way  back,  answer  very  well  to  the  "slayn  or  elles  deed  for  love," 
and  the  "  oon  ensample"  no  doubt  refers  vaguely  to  them.  Dr.  Mather 
(Furnivall  Miscellany,  303,  n.)  suggests  "error  or  negligence"  in  2914-5  ; 
but  is  not  this  a  not  very  violent  case  of  metonymy,  paralleled  only  five  lines 
below  (2919)  ?  The  peculiarity  of  the  passage  is  accounted  for  by  the  fact  that 
Chaucer  has  transferred  to  the  pyre  the  language  which  Boccaccio  uses  of  the 
grove  which  was  cut  down  to  make  it  (XI.  18, 19) ;  an  example  of  Chaucer's 
rather  lax  style  of  translation. 

1  The  point  was  first  noticed  by  Holthausen  (Anglia,  viii.  453),  who, 
however,  did  not  see  the  full  bearing  of  it, — "bei  der  umarbeitung  hat  der 
dichter  unachtsamer  weise  dies  iiberbleibsel  der  ersten  redaktion  stehen 
lassen;"  and  by  Dr.  Furnivall  (Temp.  Pref.,  "  corr.  and  add.").  It  should 
be  noted  that  in  the  prologue  to  Melibeus  (2153-4)  Chaucer  speaks  of  the 
"tretis  lyte  After  the  which  this  mery  tale  I  wryte,"  a  similar  oversight, 
which  perhaps  weakens  the  argument  a  little. 


CH.  in,  §  3]  THE  KNIGHT'S  TALE:  THE  DATE.  71 

Knight's  Tale}  but  it  is  all  essential  to  the  subject,  and  has  already 
thrown  considerable  light  on  it.  I  shall  try  to  show  that  the  tale 
was  written  between  the  Troilus  and  the  Legend.  A  position  after 
the  Troilus  has  been  assigned  it  hitherto  only  by  Pollard2  and 
Mather,3  simply  because  almost  everybody  else  has  held  the  stanza- 
theory.4  A  later  date  than  that  of  the  Troilus  can  hardly  be 
denied  if  my  date  for  the  latter  is  accepted,  since  (among  other 
reasons)  it  is  impossible  to  put  two  such  long  and  elaborate  poems 
as  the  Troilus  and  the  Knight's  Tale  between  1373  and  1377. 
The  most  important  argument  for  the  inverse  order  is  that  of  Pro 
fessor  J.  L.  Lowes,5  whose  opinion  that  the  Troilus  was  written 
just  before  the  Legend  involves  the  priority  of  the  Knight's  Tale. 
I  have  already  endeavoured  to  dispose  of  his  arguments  for  this 
position  for  the  Troilus.  It  remains  to  meet  those  for  the  priority 
of  the  Knight's  Tale. 

Lowes  first  points  out  the  curious  fact  that  it  is  on  the  3rd  of 
May  that  Pandarus6  has  a  particularly  sharp  attack  of  love,  and  that 
Palamon  escapes  from  prison  \ 7  and  very  naturally  believes  that 
one  case  must  be  due  to  the  other.  That  the  choice  of  this  date 
was  made  first  in  the  Knight's  Tale  he  thinks  is  shown  by  the  sup 
posed  facts  that  there  is  no  reason  for  it  in  the  other  case,  but  that 
here  it  is  "an  essential  part  of  the  carefully  calculated  scheme  of  days 
and  astrological  hours  on  whose  every  step  explicit  emphasis  is  laid 
in  the  poem."  Now  Lowes'  argument  may  be  made  to  refute  his 
own  view.  In  the  first  place,  the  date  in  the  Knight's  Tale  can  be 
shown  to  be  perfectly  arbitrary,  and  not  at  all  an  essential  part 
of  the  scheme.  The  essential  parts  are  the  hours,  and  the  days 
of  the  week,  which  are  wholly  independent  of  the  days  of  the 
month,  and  this  is  the  only  point  where  a  day  of  the  month  is 
mentioned.  Aside  from  the  improbability  that  Chaucer's  whole 
scheme  was  already  devised  at  this  point  in  the  poem,  where  it  first 

1  Hereafter  this  term  may  be  used  interchangeably  with  Palatnon  and 
Arcite. 

2  Apparently  ;  see  Globe  Cliaucer,  p.  xxvii. 

3  Furnivall  Miscellany,  p.  309  ;  Chaucer's  Prol.,  etc.,  p.  xvii.     He  thinks, 
for  no  very  clear  reason,  that  Chaucer  put  the  Teseide  passages  into  the  revised 
T.  C.,  and  into  P.  F.,  after  "the  plan  of  Palamon  (Knight's  Tale)  was  com 
plete  "  (Prol.,  etc.,  xix.,  note  ;  cf.  102,  n.     Cf.  also  Misc.,  309,  310,  312). 

4  Cf.,  e.g.,  Koch,  Chronology,  p.  30. 

5  Pull.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.,  xx.  841-54. 

6  Ibid.,  xx.  842-3  ;  Lowes  says  Troilus,  by  a  slip. 

7  T.  C.,  II.  56-63;  Kn.  T.,  1462-8.     The  detail  is  in  neither  original.    Cf. 
Pollard,  Knight's  Tale,  p.  89. 


72  POEMS   DEPENDENT   ON    THE    TESEIDE.  [CH.  Ill,  §  3 

begins,  there  is  absolutely  no  reason  whatever  why  he  should  have 
chosen  this  date  unless  it  came  into  his  head  for  some  outside 
reason.1  But  for  the  selection  of  this  date  in  the  Troilus  there  is  a 
reason,  though  a  homely  one.  The  passages  in  the  Tale  and  the 
Troilus  run  thus : 

"  It  fel  that  in  the  seventhe  yeer,  in  May, 
The  thridde  night"  .  .  . 

"itsobetidde 

As  I  shal  singe,  on  Mayes  day  the  thridde." 

It  should  not  be  thought  a  criticism  unworthy  of  a  great  poet  if  I 
suggest  that  Chaucer  chose  the  word  thridde  for  the  sake  of  the 
rhyme.  There  are  a  large  number  of  such  cases  in  Chaucer's 
poetry,  and  some  fairly  important  ones,  as  Lowes  himself  points 
out  only  thirteen  pages  later.2  If  Professor  Lowes  will  pardon 
me,  I  will  sum  up  my  argument  in  his  own  words ;  "if  in  one 
of  the  poems  the  employment  of  the  third  of  May  is  directly 
dependent  upon  certain  exigencies  of  the  treatment  of  the  material 
itself,  while  in  the  other  its  relation  to  the  story  is  wholly  acci 
dental,  we  may  be  practically  certain  that  the  instance  which  grows 
out  of  the  requirements  of  the  story  came  first,  and  that  it  naturally 
enough  suggested  the  other." 

Lowes  argues  (pp.  850-2)  that  the  character  of  Boccaccio's  two 
poems  would-  make  it  likely  that  Chaucer  should  translate  the 
Teseide  before  the  Filostrato.  The  former  may  well  have  been  a 
part  of  his  first  introduction  to  Italian  literature,3  but  that  he  would 
translate  it  first  does  not  at  all  follow.  Lowes'  argument  that  "  an 
earlier  attraction  to  the  Teseide  than  to  the  Filostrato  is  what  we 
should  naturally  expect,"  because  the  interest  of  the  former  is  in 
superficial  narrative  and  of  the  latter  is  in  profoundly  human  feel 
ing, — this  argument,  I  say,  seems  to  me  a  little  odd.  We  must  once 
more  remember  that  the  man  Chaucer  at  his  first  going  into  Italy 
in  1373,  at  the  age  of  thirty-three  or  so,  must  have  been  far  more 
mature  than  the  poet  Chaucer  who  had  written  the  Book  of  the 
Duchess  only  a  few  years  before.  Surely  Dr.  Lowes  would  not  say 
that  he  who  was  capable  not  more  than  at  most  ten  years  later  of 
writing  the  Troilus  must  have  been  at  first  more  attracted  to  the  lesser 

1  See  pp.  81,  82  below  for  a  fuller  treatment  of  this  scheme  and  its  value  for 
dating  K.   T. 

2  See  p.  855,  where  he  refers  to  T.  C.,  V.  1788,  1797  ;  L .  G.  W.,  F,  328. 

3  We  have  seen  that  he  shows  familiarity  with  it  even  in  the  first  version 
of  the  Troilus  ;  cf.  p.  49  above. 


CH.  in,  §  3]  THE  KNIGHT'S  TALE  :  THE  DATE.  73 

poem.  It  seems  to  me  that  to  a  man  of  his  age  and  tastes — ^consider 
that  his  two  greatest  character-creations  are  of  women,  Criseyde  and 
the  Wife  of  Bath, — the  Filostrato  would  have  appealed  especially 
and  at  once.  Moreover,  it  would  have  seemed  a  less  enormous 
task,  and  his  experience  with  the  Romance  of  the  Rose  had  prob 
ably  already  taught  him  the  uncertainties  in  beginning  on  a  poem 
of  great  length.  He  would  have  begun  to  work  on  the  Filostrato 
with  no  intention  of  expanding  (I  have  already  pointed  out  that 
he  meant  to  finish  the  Troilus  in  the  fourth"  book).  After  his 
experience  with  the  Troilus,  it  is  not  surprising  that  he  greatly 
condensed  the  Teseide  from  the  first. 

Nor  do  I  find  any  more  convincingness  in  Lowes'  argument 
(pp.  852-4)  that  the  style  and  manner  of  the  Troilus  and  Criseyde 
and  of  the  Knight7 s  Tale  would  make  the  latter  the  earlier.  I 
must  say  again  what  I  have  said  elsewhere,  that  Chaucer's  style  and 
manner,  after  his  return  from  Italy,  it  seems  to  me  depended  very 
much  more  on  the  character  of  the  poem  he  was  writing  than  upon 
the  period,1  though  the  former  often  depended  on  the  latter.  It 
seems  to  me  that  the  argument  from  style  is  a  very,  very  dan 
gerous  one.  He  treated  the  Teseide  freely  because  he  wished  to 
condense  that  excellent  but  lengthy  poem  ;  yet  he  made  less  change 
in  its  characterization  2  than  in  that  of  the  Filostrato,  because  the 
characters  are  less  important  and  naturally  interested  him  less. 
Lowes  himself  lays  great  stress  elsewhere  on  the  fact  that  the 
centre  of  gravity  in  the  Troilus  is  psychological;  why  should  a 
brilliant  romance  of  incident  be  -expected  to  compete  with  it  in 
regard  to  characterization  ?  Was  A  Winter's  Tale  written  before 
Hamlet  ?  Dr.  Lowes  thinks  we  should  hesitate  to  put  Emily  and 
Arcite  and  Palamon  and  Theseus  later  than  Criseyde  and  Pan- 
darus.  But  there  is  no  reason  why  we  should  confine  ourselves  to 
comparing  the  Troilus  with  Chaucer's  other  Boccaccian  poem. 
How  about  Dorigen  and  Aurelius  and  Arviragus  ?  How  about 
Canacee  and  Griselda  and  Constance  1 3  Lowes'  argument,  if  carried 
to  its  logical  conclusion,  would  make  the  Troilus  the  last  of 
Chaucer's  long  poems.  Lowes'  comparison  of  the  Troilus  to  the 

1  Cf.  what  ten  Brink  has  to  say  (Stu-dien,  p.  44)  in  reply  to  a  remark  of  the 
usually  judicious  Kissner  (Chaucer in  seinen  beziehungen  zur  ital.  lit.,  p.  65). 

2  But  he  did  make  a  rather  striking  change  in  the  characters  of  the  cousins  ; 
see  Appendix  C,  pp.  231-2. 

3  I  hope  to  show  later  good  reason  for  the  belief  that  the  Tales  of  the  Clerk 
and  the  Man  of  Law  are  late  poems. 


74  POEMS    DEPENDENT    ON    THE    TESEIDE.  [cH.  Ill,  §  3 

Knight's  Tale  in  regard  to  the  idea  of  fate  expressed  in  it,  and  to 
its  greater  suggestiveness,  I  think  may  be  answered  in  the  same 
way.  How  could  the  Knight's  Tale  have  been  treated  in  the  same 
manner  as  the  Troilus  and  Criseyde  ?  Which  is  more  suggestive, 
Hamlet  or  A  Winter's  Tale  ?  These  considerations  which  Pro 
fessor  Lowes  adduces,  it  seems  to  me,  have  no  argumentative  value 
whatever. 

Lowes 1  hardly  does  justice,  I  think,  to  the  argument  from  the 
presence  in  book  V.  of  the  Troilus  (11.  1807-27)  of  the  stanzas 
which  describe  the  flight  of  Troilus'  soul  to  heaven,  for  which  in 
the  Knight's  Tale  Chaucer  makes  a  rather  flippant  substitution 
(2809-15).  It  is  natural  to  see,  as  almost  all  critics  do  see,  a  parallel 
here  to  Chaucer's  insertion  in  the  Knight's  Tale  of  an  inferior  and 
original  description  of  the  temple  of  Venus,  because  he  had  already 
used  Boccaccio's  description  in  the  Parliament  of  Folds.  The  best 
explanation  of  the  peculiar  character  of  the  passage  in  the  Knight's 
Tale  about  Arcite's  soul,  in  which  Chaucer  professes  utter  ignorance 
as  to  what  became  of  it,  is  that  he  is  gently  mocking  at  Boccaccio.2 
It  is  hard  to  believe  that  he  not  only  used  but  went  out  of  his  way 
to  fit  into  a  later  poem  a  passage  which  he  had  rejected  with  some 
thing  like  contumely  from  an  earlier,  unless  there  shall  prove  to  be 
a  very  striking  contrast  in  fitness  between  the  two  cases.  This 
Lowes  seems  to  think  exists,  but  I  cannot  see  it.  The  Troilus  is  a 
much  more  thoughtful  and  skeptical  poem  than  the  Knight's  Tale; 
why  should  this  skeptical  attitude  toward  the  other  world  appear  so 
spontaneously  in  the  latter  rather  than  in  the  former '(  If  this  is 
why  Chaucer  omitted  the  passage  from  the  Tale,  it  is  doubly  odd 
that  he  put  it  into  the  Troilus  ;  but  if  he  had  already  used  it  in  the 
Troilus,  the  gently  joking  manner  of  its  analogue  in  the  Knight's 
Tale  seems  quite  intelligible.  The  striking  thing  is  that  he  should 
omit  the  whole  passage  in  the  Knight's  Tale,  though,  however 
inharmonious  some  parts  of  it  might  be  with  what  precedes  or 
follows,3  parts  of  it  would  do  perfectly  well,  and  though  before  and 
after  it  he  is  following  the  Teseide  closely.  The  Knight's  Tale  is 
much  less  realistic  and  contains  much  more  of  the  supernatural  than 
the  Troilus.  I  cannot  but  feel  that  the  stanzas  would  be  a  little 

1  Pp.  843-7. 

2  For  Lounsbury's  strange  opinion  that  Chaucer  is  here  expressing ' '  agnostic  " 
views,    see  his  Studies,  ii.   513-15.     A  still  different  interpretation  is  that 
of  Dryden  in  the  Palamon  and  Arcite. 

3  Cf.  Pollard,  Knights  Tale  (Macmillan),  p.  116. 


CH.  in,  §  3]  THE  KNIGHT'S  TALE  :  THE  DATE.  75 

out  of  place  in  either  poem ;  if  he  had  once  weighed  them  and 
found  them  wholly  wanting,  it  is  passing  strange  that  he  used 
them  later.  Therefore  the  indications  are  that  the  Troilus  was 
not  only  written,  but  also  revised  before  the  Knight's  Tale  was 
written.1 

A  more  forcible  argument  for  the  priority  of  the  Troilus  seems  to 
me  to  be  that  from  metre.  If  Chaucer  had  been  familiar  with  the 
possibilities  of  the  couplet,  it  seems  to  me  hard  to  believe  that 
he  would  have  written  such  a  poem  as  the  Troilus  in  the  melodious, 
but  difficult,  wordy  and  languid  stanza.2  Lowes  thinks  otherwise.3 
But  it  is  one  thing  that  Chaucer  should  return  later  to  this  sweet, 
romantic  and  half-lyric  form  of  verse  for  such  poems  as  the  Tales  of 
the  Prioress,  the  Clerk,  arid  the  Man  of  Law,  and  quite  another  to 
imagine  his  returning  to  it  for  one  of  his  great  realistic  and  dramatic 
creations,  for  which  the  simplest  and  most  flexible  of  mediums 
would  be  the  most  suitable,  for  which  he  might  well  have  used 
blank  verse  if  he  had  known  it;  as  well  revive  the  seven-line 
stanza  in  the  Wife  of  Bath's  Prologue.  Far  be  it  from  me  to 
underestimate  the  skill  with  which  he  uses  it  in  the  Troilus,  but  I 
am  sure  that  Chaucer  would  have  felt  at  once  that  the  other  form 
would  have  been  more  suitable ;  just  as  Shakspere  and  Dryden, 
though  they  may  have  been  sensible  that  they  could  write 
good  dramatic  dialogue  in  the  ten-syllable  couplet,  came  to  prefer 
the  simpler  and  freer  blank-verse.  When  Lowes  argues  that 
though  Chaucer  had  already  written  the  Knight's  Tale  in  couplets, 
he  had  not  shown  its  potentialities  for  presenting  dialogue  and 
shifting  moods,  and  that  therefore  for  the  arduous  task  of  the 
Troilus  he  returned  to  the  more  familiar  instrument,  I  believe  he 
is  misled  by  a  metaphor.  We  have  already  seen  that  it  is 
merely  the  presence  of  the  second  line  which  distinguishes  the 
stanza  from  three  couplets.  This  line  completely  alters  the  effect  of 
the  stanza  and  adds  very  considerably  to  its  difficulty  ;  but  hardly 
makes  it  a  different  instrument.  An  accomplished  pianist  might 
well  hesitate  to  perform  in  public  on  the  organ,  but  why  should 

1  Cf.  p.  15  above. 

2  Koch  (Engl.  Stud. ,  xxvii.  3-4)  uses  the  metrical  form  and  free  treatment 
of  the  Tale  as  an  argument  against  putting  it  early  in  its  present  shape.     Of 
course  his  conclusion  is  that  the  original  form  was  very  different ;  if  this  is  not 
so,  he  gives  unintentional  support  to  the  view  expressed  above.    (He  is  unjust 
to   Pollard  in  implying  that  he  puts   it  before   T.  C.  ;   cf.    Globe  Chanter, 
p.  xxvii.) 

3  Pp.  847-50. 


76  POEMS   DEPENDENT   ON    THE    TESEIDE.  [cH.  Ill,  §  3 

a  poet  who  felt  himself  thoroughly  at  home  in  the  stanza  distrust 
his  own  ability  to  manipulate  it  with  the  second  line  gone  1  This 
seems  to  me  to  attribute  extraordinary  diffidence  to  Chaucer,  especi 
ally  if  he  had  already  written  over  a  thousand  admirable  couplets 
in  the  Knight's  Tale.  Even  supposing  he  had  written  none,  and 
supposing  it  might  take  him  longer  to  produce  a  satisfactory  passage 
in  a  new  form  of  verse  than  in  the  old,  with  the  same  exacting 
taste  and  judgment  the  final  result  should  be  as  satisfactory  in  the 
one  as  the  other.  But,  more  important  yet,  Lowes  makes  a  rather 
curious  oversight ;  he  tells  us  that  when  Chaucer  began  the  Troilus 
the  stanza  was  an  instrument  "  whose  stops  he  knew  from  its  lowest 
note  to  the  top  of  its  compass,"  while  the  couplet  was  a  "  less  tried 
medium."  Yet,  even  if  we  accept  Lowes'  very  late  date  for  the 
Troilus,  1 383-5, J  the  only  poems,  so  far  as  we  know,  which 
Chaucer  had  then  written  in  the  stanza  were  the  Parliament, 
the  Second  Nun's  Tale,  the  Complaint  to  Pity,  a  part  of  the  Com 
plaint  of  Mars  (perhaps),  the  Anelida,  and  a  few  short  poems — 
at  most  perhaps  1800  lines;  yet  the  Knight's  Tale,  as  it  stands, 
contains  2250  lines,  and  surely  nobody  can  deny  that  it  shows  far 
more  mastery  than  these  stanza-poems  do,  especially  in  the  sort 
of  manner  required  in  the  Troilus.  Yet  Dr.  Lowes  would  have  us 
believe  that  Chaucer  felt  very  much  more  at  home  and  self- 
confident  in  the  more  difficult  and  less-used2  form  of  verse. 

To  the  best  of  my  belief  this  disposes  of  all  the  evidence  which 
Professor  Lowes  adduces.  It  seems  to  me,  therefore,  even  apart 
from  the  very  early  date  for  the  Troilus  which  I  have  defended, 
that  the  probabilities  are  strong  that  the  Knight's  Tale  followed  the 
Troilus.  We  may  now  consider  certain  other  arguments  on  the 
date  of  the  Knight's  Tale. 

A  clear  indication  that  the  Knight's  Tale  comes  between  the 
Troilus  and  the  Legend  may  be  found  in  the  very  large  number 
of  similar  or  identical  phrases  and  lines  in  the  Tale  and  one  or  the 
other  of  these  two  poems.3  It  is  well  known  that  in  almost  every  one 
of  Chaucer's  poems  there  are  reminiscences  of  the  phraseology  of 
others ;  it  is  clear  that  he  had  a  vivid  verbal  memory,  and  had  not 

1  Pp.  860-1 ;  a  date  later  than  that  proposed  by  any  other  writer. 

2  If  we  accept  Lowes'  opinion  that  most  of  the'Legends  were  written  before 
the  Kn.  T.,  the  disparity  is  far  greater.     And  even  if  we  then  should  add  the 
Clerk's  and  Man  of  Law's  Tales  to  the  opposite  scale,  the  disparity  is  still 
almost  exactly  the  same  as  at  first. 

3  Cf.  Pollard,  Kn.  T.  (1903),  p.  xii. 


CH.  in,  §  3]  THE  KNIGHT'S  TALE:  THE  DATE.  77 

the  least  objection  to  using  a  good  thing  twice.  In  each  of  these 
poems  there  are  such  links  to  a  number  of  Chaucer's  other  works, 
but  those  between  the  Knight's  Tale  and  the  other  two  are  so  much 
more  numerous  that  it  is  fair  to  allow  them  considerable  significance. 
It  has  been  made  plain,  I  trust,  that  they  cannot  be  explained  as 
having  come  in  when  the  poem  was  being  adapted  to  the  Canterbury 
Tales.  Since  the  passages  are  too  numerous  to  quote  in  full,  I  merely 
give  the  references,  first  of  those  mentioned  by  Skeat,1  then  of  some 
which  I  add.  Those  in  parentheses  are  the  less  important ;  those 
marked  with  a  t  are  due  to  originals  which  are  in  the  Teseide  or  the 
Filostrato  but  are  not  close  enough  to  have  suggested  the  English 
expression ;  a  |  indicates  that  the  Italian  is  very  close. 

Kn.  T.  and  T.  Q.  Kn.  T.  and  L.  G.  W. 

(925  =  4,  2)J  (1035-6  =  2425-6) 

flOlO  =  4,  627  (1196  =  2282) 

(1047  =  2,  112)  (1302  =  866) 

1101  =  1,  425-6J  1502  =  1204 

2  1133  =  1,  674  1566  =  2629 

(1155  =  5,  332)t  1761  =  503  (F),  491  (G) 

3  1167-8  =  4,  618f  (2235  =  2132) 

(1401  =  4,  865)f  f2602-20  =  637-53 

(1500  =  2,  112) 
1509  =  2,  920 
1566  =  3,  733-4 
1838  =  5,  1433 
2449  =  4,  1456 
£(3042  =  4,  1586) 

873-4  =  1210-1 
1057  =  937 
1462-3  =  2,  56  4  f!060  =  1962 

(1809  =  4,  1567)  1164-6  =  1186-7 

1(2203  =  2,  503)  (1333  =  2604) 

£2406  =  1,  21$  5  f!403-6  =  2046-7 

f2529  =  4,  1086  (also  1079)    1423-4  =  1070-1 
2991-3  =  3,  1762-4  (1531  =  1167) 

3089  =  3,  1282  +2506  =  1208 

2565  =  635 
3089  =  162  (F) 

1  III.  394,  and  in  the  notes  on  the  passages.     Cf.  Notes  and  Queries,   4th 
Series,  IV.  292.     Only  Kn.  T.  1566  and  3089  are  paralleled  in  both  the  other 
poems. 

2  For  a  little  note  on  this  line,  see  Henry  Hinckley  in  Mod.  Lang.  Notes, 
xiii.  461-2. 

3  Skeat  says  1163  (wrongly  ;  III.  394). 

4  See  p.  72  above. 

5  The  line  in  the  Teseide  is  :  "  lo  il  diletto,  e  tu  n'  abbi  1'  onore  "  (VII.  27)  ; 
in  the  Filostrato:    "  Tuo  sia  1' onore,  e  mio  si  sia  1'affanno"  (I.  5).     The 
latter  looks  like  the  original  of  both  Chaucer's  lines.     It  is  worthy  of  remark 
that  in  the  more  striking  cases  above  where  the  Italian  has  suggested  a  line  in 
K.  T.  or  T.   C.,  it  is  in  the  Filostrato — an  argument  for  the  priority  of  the 
Troilus, 


78  POEMS   DEPENDENT   ON   THE    TESEIDE.  [oil.  Ill,  §  3 

Some  of  these  parallels  are  small,  a  few  are  due  to  Boccaccio  or 
Le  Roman  de  la  Hose,  or  are  proverbial,  and  one  or  two  are 
(rather  rare)  idioms.  But  the  important  thing  is  their  number,1 
which  is  far  greater  than  that  of  parallels  between  any  others 
of  Chaucer's  poems.  Another  striking  fact  is  that  there  are  hardly 
any  such  parallels  between  the  Troilus  and  the  Legend  ;  of  the  few 
which  exist,  two  are  in  the  Tale  as  well.2  It  seems  fair  to  say  that 
these  parallels  suggest  for  the  Knight's  Tale  a  position  between 
the  Troilus  and  the  Legend.3 

A  date  after  the  Troilus  will  also  be  necessarily  involved  by  the 
early  date  which  I  have  assigned  the  latter ;  we  can  hardly  crowd 
anything  long  between  Chaucer's  first  return  from  Italy  and  the 
commencement  of  the  Troilus.  This  gives  1377  as  the  earliest 
possible  date  for  Chaucer's  working  on  the  Knight's  Tale.  But  on 
other  grounds  it  will  be  necessary  to  put  it  much  later  than  this. 

In  the  first  place,  it  must  come  after  the  Parliament  of  Fowls, 
since  there  is  no  longer  any  possible  reason  for  thinking  that  the 
Teseide  passage  there  ever  stood  in  the  Palamon.  However  it 
may  be  with  the  passage  about  Arcite's  death,  it  is  quite  inconceiv 
able  that  in  the  Palamon  Chaucer  should  have  substituted  an 
original  description  of  the  temple  of  Venus  for  the  far  superior 
imagery  of  Boccaccio,  unless  he  had  used  that  in  an  earlier  poem.4 
Hence  we  derive  1381  as  the  earliest  possible  date  for  the  Knight's 
Tale. 

For  this  there  is  some  confirmation  in  the  style  of  the  poem, 

1  It  should   be  remarked  also  that  two-thirds  of  them   are  in  contexts 
which  are  fairly  close  to  the  Teseide;  this  in  further  answer  to  the  possible 
conjecture  that  they  came  in  on  revision,  which  I  have  shown  other  reasons 
for  disbelieving. 

2  See  pp.  19,  24  above. 

3  Skeat,  who  of  course  holds  the  stanza-theory,  sees  the  force  of  some  of 
these  parallels  between  the  Troilus  and  the  Tale,  and  makes  the  rather  curious 
comment:    "This  tends  to  shew  that  the  Knightes  Tale  (rather  than  the 
original  Palamon  and  Arcite)  was  written  not  very  long  after  Troilus  ;  rather 
in  1386  or  1387  than  in  1388  "  (III.  394).     Of.  Notes  and  Queries,  4th  Series, 
iv.  292,  for  his  earlier  view.     Dr.  Mather  also  (Furnivall  Miscellany,  p.  308) 
says:   "Somewhere  near  Troilus  it  must  surely  go,  for  the  two  poems  agree 
notably  in  thought  and  in  expression."    But  neither  of  these  two  writers  pays 
any  attention  to  the  correspondences  between  the  Knight's  Tale  and  the  Legend 
of  Good  Women,  which  seem  entitled  to  equal  consideration. 

4  On  this  point  I  must  strongly  disagree  with  Dr.  Mather  (Furnivall  Miscel 
lany,  p.  310).     It  is  striking  that  for  this  new  description  he  turned  in  part  to 
a  passage  in  an  earlier  poem  of  his  own,  the  House  of  Fame  ;  the  description 
of  Venus  (1955-66)  is  expanded,  but  otherwise  almost  word  for  word,  from 
H.  F.,  132-9.     In  his  note  to  the  latter,  Skeat  erroneously  speaks  of  the 
former  as  from  Boccaccio. 


CH.  in,  §  3]  THE  KNIGHT'S  TALE  :  THE  DATE.  79 

which  instantly  links  it  to  the  Legend  of  Good  Women  and 
especially  the  Canterbury  Tales,  rather  than  to  Chaucer's  earlier 
works;  the  good  judgment,  the  keenness,  the  aptness,  the  rapid 
alternation  of  humour  and  pathos,  the  general  certainty  of  touch. 
The  poem  contrasts  even  with  the  Troilus,  and  resembles  most  of 
the  Canterbury  Tales,  in  its  condensation  and  vigour  and  speed. 
Though  the  Troilus  is  a  greater  poem,  to  me  at  least  it  seems  less 
artistic  and  finished,  and  less  marked  by  most  of  the  qualities  just 
mentioned  than  the  Knight's  Tale}-  There  are  also  certain  favourite 
phrases  in  the  Tale  which  occur  again  and  again  in  Chaucer's  later 
poems,  and  seldom  or  never  in  the  earlier.  The  phrase  "gentil 
herte  "  (Kn.  T.,  1043,  1761,  1772)  does  occur  in  the  Troilus  (IV. 
1674);  but  it  is  much  commoner  later.2  Chaucer's  "favourite 
line," 

"  Pitee  renneth  sone  in  gentil  herte," 

occurs  only  in  Knight's  Tale,  1761;  Legend,  F,  503  (G,  491); 
Merchant's  Tale,  1986 ;  Squire's  Tale,  479 ;  and  in  a  close  variant 
in  Man  of  Law's  Tale,  660.3  Again,  no  locution  is  more  charac 
teristic  of  Chaucer's  later  style  than  such  elaborate  phrases  as  "by 
aventure  or  sort  or  cas,"  which  I  have  elsewhere  shown  to  be 
probably  due  to  reminiscences  of  Dante.4  They  occur  only  in  the 
Canterbury  Tales,  and  of  the  six  cases  which  I  have  noted,  two  are 
in  the  Knight's  Tale. 

A  similar  date  is  indicated  by  two  probable  contemporary  refer 
ences  in  the  Knight's  Tale.     Saturn,  among  the  results  of  his  male- 

1  For  a  different  view  cf.  Kissner,  Chaucer  in  seinen  beziehungen  zur  ital. 
literatur,  p.  65  :  and  cf.  ten  Brink,  Studien,  p.  44. 

2  L.  G.  W.,  503  (F),  491  (G)  ;  M.  L.  T.,  660 ;  Melib.,  2832 (the  Latin  has 
"ingenui  animi,"  the    French  "gentil   cuer "),  Merck.   T.,  1986;    So.   T., 
452,  479,  483. 

3  Professor  Liddell  (Chaucer's  Prol.,  etc.,  p.    167)  says:  "This  seems  to 
have  been  a  proverbial  expression  ";  but  it  seems  more  likely  to  be  a  favourite 
invention  of  Chaucer's  own.     Mr.  Paget  Toynbee  (Journ.   Compar.  Lit.,  i. 
351)  announces  the  line  as  a  translation  of  Dante's  "Amor  che  a  cor  gentil 
ratto  s'  apprende  "  (Inf.,  V.  100).     But  the  only  phrase  which  the  two  lines 
both  have  is  very  common,  in  Italian,  in  French  and  (as  we  have  just  seen) 
in  Chaucer.    Professor  Francis  Palgrave  had  already  announced  this  supposed 
borrowing  in  1888  (Nineteenth  Century,  xxiv.,  349).    [In  Mr.  Toynbee's  article 
just  quoted,  in  which  he  conveniently  collects  most  of  Chaucer's  borrowings 
from  Dante,  he  attributes  (as  Cary  had  done)  L.  G.  W.,  2638  to  Inf.,  VII. 
64  ;  but  he  exaggerates  the  similarity  by  reading  gold  for  gode,  the  only  read 
ing  in  the  nine  printed  MSS.     On  this  line  cf.   W.  B.  T.,  1064-5.] 

4  See  Modern  Philology,  iii.  372.     Such  cases  asJV.  P.  T.,  4291,  Kn.  T.\ 
1242,   1506,   1516  (not  mentioned  there),  less  striking  and  Dantesque,   are 
certainly  commoner  in  C.  T.  than  elsewhere. 


80  POEMS    DEPENDENT   ON   THE    TESEIDE.  [CH.  Ill,  §  3 

ficent  influence,  mentions  "  the  cherles  rebelling  "  (2459) ;  we  can 
hardly  avoid  seeing  a  .reference  to  the  peasant  revolt  of  June,  1381,1 
since  the  introduction  of  the  item  (founded  on  nothing  in  the 
Italian)  before  that  date  would  be  difficult  to  account  for.  Professor 
Lowes,  in  a  thorough  and  judicious  article,2  throws  light  on 
both  the  date  and  a  puzzling  line  in  the  poem.  "  The  tempest  at  " 
Hippolyta's  "  home-coming  "  (884)  has  never  hitherto  been  at  all 
satisfactorily  explained.  Lowes  shows  that  it  is  probably  an 
allusion  to  a  strange  and  destructive  upheaval  of  the  sea  just 
after  Anne  of  Bohemia  had  landed,  on  her  arrival  in  England  in 
December,  138 1.3  This  indicates  1382  as  the  earliest  possible 
date. 

Finally,  an  indication  that  the  KnigMs  Tale  was  written  only 
shortly  before  the  Legend  of  Good  Women  is  the  often-quoted 
couplet  which  has  caused  all  our  pains  : 

"  And  al  the  love  of  Palamon  and  Arcyte 
Of  Thebes,  thogh  the  story  is  knowen  lyte." 

We  can  no  longer  explain  the  last  clause  and  the  utter  disappear 
ance  of  the  supposed  older  form  of  the  Palamon  on  the  ground  that 
it  had  been  published  and  failed ;  we  can  explain  both  on  no 
ground  so  reasonably  as  that  Chaucer  had  never  published  it  at  all. 
This  will  explain  why  he  seems  to  imply  that  the  Legend  was 
written  in  a  new  kind  of  metre,  though  he  had  been  using  the 
same  in  the  Palamon.  When  we  consider  Chaucer's  position,  and 
how  simple  a  matter  publication  was  in  his  day,  it  is  hard  to 
imagine  any  reason  for  withholding  the  poem,  except  that  it  was 
not  yet  finished.4  We  shall  see  later  that  the  form  of  prologue  in 
which  the  couplet  occurs  dates  almost  certainly  from  1386.  The 
above  argument  seems  to  me  so  cogent  that  I  have  little  hesita 
tion  in  adopting  the  date  about  1385  for  the  writing  of  the 
greater  part  of  the  Knight's  Tale. 

In  this  late  date  I  differ  from  the  only  two  writers  who  have  as 

1  Also  alluded  to  in  N.  P.  T.,  4584-6.     Of.  Skeat,  I.  Ivi.,  and  Walsing- 
ham,  Historic/,  Anglicana,  i.  458,  462. 

2  Mod.  Lang.  Notes,  xix.  240-3. 

3  Of.  the  Monk  of  Evesham,  Hist.  Vitse  et  Regni  Ric.  II.,  p.  129,  for  an 
odd  coincidence  when  Richard  brought  home  his  second  bride. 

4  The  Palamon  was  scarcely  a  poem  to  be  voluntarily  neglected.     I  shall 
show  later  good  reason  for  the  belief  that  L.  G.  W.  was  written  in  some  sense 
at  the  command  of  the  queen.     The  conjecture  seems  plausible  that  Chaucer 
broke  off  his  work  on  P.  A.  in  order  to  write  L.  G.  W. 


CH.  in,  §  3]  THE  KNIGHT'S  TALE  :  THE  DATE.  81 

yet  abandoned  the  stanza-theory  and  discussed  the  date  at  length, 
Mather  and  Lowes,  who  suggest  1381-2.  But  it  will  be  seen, 
I  think,  that  their  possible  objections  to  my  date  can  easily  be  met. 
The  former1  puts  it  very  near  the  Troilus  because  of  the  verbal 
similarities  already  spoken  of.  But  if  the  latter  was  finished  in 
1377  or  so,  and  the  Knight's  Tale  refers  to  events  of  1381,  it 
is  impossible  to  put  them  close  together.  I  have  already  shown 
that  Chaucer's  revision  of  the  Troilus,  perhaps  in  1380  or  later, 
will  help  to  account  for  the  two  having  been  together  in  his  mind ; 
and  his  permanent  and  intimate  familiarity  with  the  Troilus  is 
accounted  for  by  the  fact  that  he  had  written  it  more  carefully  and 
valued  it  more  highly  than  any  other  of  his  works.  Mather's  belief 
that  the  Teseide  stanzas  inserted  in  the  Troilus  during  the  revision 
were  so  inserted  while  Chaucer  was  writing  the  Knight's  Tale  I  have 
tried  to  show  is  highly  improbable.  I  must  relegate  to  a  foot-note 
what  seems  to  me  proof  positive  that  Skeat's  calendar  method  of 
dating  the  Knight's  Tale,  of  which  Mather  and  Lowes  approve, 
cannot  possibly  work.  Mather  argues  further  that  if  we  put  the 
Knight's  Tale  in  1381-2,  where  we  know  the  Parliament  of  Fowls 
belongs,  "the  whole  preoccupation  with  the  Teseide  would  have 
extended  over  only  a  year  or  so,  and  certainly  this  supposition 
is  better  than  that  of  its  gradual  dismemberment."  To  say  nothing 
of  the  inappropriateness  of  this  last  phrase,  we  know  that  Chaucer 
made  some  small  use  of  the  Teseide  years  before  in  the  first  version 
of  the  Troilus,  so  in  spite  of  us  his  use  of  the  Teseide  extended 
over  at  least  six  years  or  so.  This  answers,  I  think,  all  of  Mather's 
arguments.  Lowes2  has  no  arguments  not  already  dealt  with 
except  the  reference  to  the  "  tempest " ;  this  obviously  implies 
a  date  after  1381,  but  not  necessarily  just  after.  The  incident 
may  well  have  sprung  vividly  to  mind  two  or  three  years  later.3 

1  Furnivall  Miscellany,  pp.  308-10. 

2  Publ.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.,  xx.  841,  ff. 

3  Professor  Skeat  has  made  an  ingenious  attempt  to  find  the  date  of  what  he 
considers,  the  revised  Knight's  Tale  (Notes  ancl  Queries.  4th  series,  ii.  243-4  ; 
reprinted  with  alterations  in  his  Chaucer,  V.  75-6).     Falamon  escapes  from 
prison  early  in   the    morning  of  the  4th  May  (1462-7),  and  the  woodland 
combat  therefore  occurs  the  5th  May  (1610)  ;  that  the  first  of  these  days  was 
Friday,  Skeat  thinks  is  suggested  by  the  fact  (according  to  him,  but  Chaucer 
does  not  say  so)  that  Arcite  goes  a-Mayirig  in  the  first  hour,  which  on  Friday 
is  dedicated  to  Venus,  and  by  the  fact  that  Chaucer  uses  Friday  as  a  symbol 
for  the  moods  of  lovers  ;  and  that  the  second  day  was  a  Saturday,  presided 
over  by  the  unlucky  planet  Saturn,  by  the  fact  that  the  duel  is  interrupted. 
( But  is  not  all  this  reasoning  rather  too  much  as  if  it  were  history ;  would 
Chaucer  have  thought  of  all  this  ?)     The  assembly  before  the  tournament  is  to 

DEV.  CH.  G 


82  POEMS   DEPENDENT   ON    THE    TESEIDE.  [CH.  Ill,  §  3 

The  best  conclusions  as  to  the  date  of  the  first  writing  of  the 
Knight's  Tale  seem  to  be  these.  It  is  later  than  the  Troilus,  and 
even  than  the  revision  of  it — hence  much  later  than  1377;  later 
than  the  Parliament  of  Fowls — hence  later  than  1381,  as  is  further 
indicated  by  two  probable  historical  allusions.  The  manner  in 
which  it  is  mentioned  in  the  Prologue  of  the  Legend  of  Good 
Women  points  plainly  to  its  having  been  written  very  recently. 
Everything  seems  to  harmonize  with  the  date  1384-6. 

As  to  its  completion  and  adaptation  to  the  Canterbury  Tales,  this 
probably  took  place  not  many  years  afterwards.  It  is  well  known, 
or  we  shall  see  later,  that  in  the  Tales  of  "the  Second  Nun,  the  Parson, 
the  Shipman,  and  the  Merchant  Chaucer  neglected  to  make  even 
such  revisions  as  appropriateness  strongly  demanded.  Now  at  the 
beginning  of  the  Knight? s  Tale  Chaucer  made  such  changes  as  were 
certainly  not  in  the  least  necessary.  This  points  to  a  time  when  the 
Canterbury  Tales  were  fresh  to  him.  It  is  also  suggestive  that  the 
Knight's  Tale  stands  first  in  the  series,  and  that  the  Prologue  directly 


be  that  day  fifty  weeks  (1850-3) ;  no  doubt,  as  Skeat  says,  a  year  (though  it 
is  odd  that  Theseus  says,  "fifty  wykes,  fer  ne  ner"),  for  Boccaccio  has  "un 
anno  intero,"  and  it  actually  occurs  not  in  April  but  in  May  (2484).  Sunday 
(2188),  the  5th  May  if  it  is  a  year  from  the  first  fight,  the  knights  assemble 
for  the  tournament ;  Monday  they  amuse  themselves  (2486) ;  and  the  tourna 
ment  occurs  the  following  day  (2491),  Tuesday,  the  7th.  Skeat  thinks  it  not 
unnatural  to  suppose  that  Chaucer  took  the  scheme  of  the  year  in  which  he  was 
writing  ;  and  finding  (correctly)  that  the  second  set  of  dates  fits  1387,  concludes 
that  this  may  have  been  the  year  of  revision.  The  question  for  us  of  course 
is  not  the  year  of  revision — that  Chaucer  should  have  made  such  an  elaborate 
adaptation  of  course  is  not  to  be  thought  of— but  the  year  of  first  writing ; 
although,  risky  as  the  scheme  is  and  as  Skeat  admits  it  to  be,  it  might  have 
some  value  if  it  fitted  in  with  the  other  evidence,  ten  Brink  rejects  it  as  too 
conjectural  (Studien,  189),  and  I  fear  we  must  reject  it  on  other  grounds  as 
well.  The  striking  fact  that  Chaucer  chooses  such  an  unobvious  date  as  3rd 
May  for  Palamon's  escape  I  have  shown  to  be  explained  probably  by  a 
reminiscence  from  the  Troilus.  There  are  really  no  striking  coincidences  to 
indicate  that  Chaucer  had  in  mind  from  the  start  an  elaborate  scheme  cover 
ing  a  year,  and  Pollard  shows  that  he  was  quite  indifferent  to  the  larger  time- 
scheme  of  the  poem  (Knight's  Tale,  1903,  pp.  81-2).  The  most  striking 
defect  in  Skeat's  scheme  is  that  it  is  the  second  of  the  years  in  the  poem  which 
he  identifies  with  a  current  year  ;  if  the  scheme  is  as  elaborate  as  he  whom  I 
fear  we  must  call  its  author  believes,  it  would  be  strange  that  Chaucer  should 
not  have  made  the  first  year  fit  the  current  one.  This  would  give  1380  or 
1386.  The  former  of  course  is  impossible,  and  the  latter  would  inadmissibly 
crowd  the  Legend  of  Good  Women  and  the  Canterbury  Tales.  Therefore 
Skeat's  clever  scheme  cannot  be  accepted.  This  is  only  one  of  several  cases  in 
which  more  recent  scholarship  has  come  to  see  that  in  the  past  we  have 
attributed  to  Chaucer  more  care  and  accuracy  in  insignificant  matters  than  he 
really  observed.  Many  of  these  tempting  methods  of  dating  poems  must  be 
abandoned.  In  regard  to  minute  accuracy,  Chaucer  goes  with  Shakspere,  not 
with  Dante. 


CH.   Ill,  §  4]  THE    ANELIDA    AND    ARC1TE.  83 

introduces  it.  We  shall  see  later  that  Chaucer  was  probably  busied 
with  the  Prologue  about  1387,  and  that  it  was  perhaps  the  very  first 
written  part  of  the  whole  work.  There  is  much  in  favour  of  the 
view  that  the  Knight's  Tale  was  the  first  Canterbury  Tale  to  be 
meant  for  such,  and  that  it  was  put  into  its  present  position  soon 
after  the  writing  of  the  Prologue,  about  1388-90.1 

§  4.  The  Anelida  and  Arcite. 

As  to  the  date  and  interpretation  of  that  perplexing  poem  the 
Anelida  and  Arcite  we  have  been  left  to  rather  vague  conjecture. 
Dr.  Furnivall2  dates  it  between  1374  and  1384.  Dr.  Koch3 
suggests  1383,  between  the  demolition  of  the  supposed  stanzaic 
Palamon  qnd  its  reconstruction  in  the  Knight's  Tale.  Ten  Brink  4 
thinks  it  may  have  been  begun  before  the  recasting  of  the  Palamon 
was  finished ;  he  is  quite  certain  that  the  opening  was  derived  from 
the  first  form  of  that  poem.  Mr.  A.  W.  Pollard,  in  1893,5  put  it 
about  1380,  and  suggested  "that  it  represents  Chaucer's  first  study 
of  the  Teseide  before  he  turned  to  the  Filostrato."  Dr.  Skeat 
merely  puts  it  after  1373,  and  after  the  Palamon,  from  which  he 
believes  the  opening  to  be  taken ;  with  the  added  suggestion  that 
"  Chaucer's  thoughts  may  have  been  turned  towards  Armenia  by 
the  curious  fact  that,  in  1384,  the  King  of  Armenia  came  to 
England."6  Dr.  Lowes  dates  the  poem  about  1380-2.7  The 
best  treatment  of  its  genesis  is  that  by  Dr.  Mather,8  who  denies 
that  the  opening  was  derived  from  the  Palamon,  and  (rather 
extremely)  regards  the  Anelida  as  "the  necessary  middle -stage 
between "  the  Troilus  and  the  original  form  of  the  Knight's  Tale 
(p.  310,  note) ;  it  must  therefore  have  been  begun  before  the 
Knight's  Tale.  He  also  suggests  "  that  Chaucer  having  completed 

1  Another  of  the  earliest- written  tales  is  probably  the  Physician's;   see 
pp.  155-6  below.     There  is  evidence  that  Kn.  T.  was  known  to  the  world 
before  1392.    Two  lines  of  it  (1785-6)  are  quoted  in  the  Book  of  Cupid  (Skeat, 
VII.  Ivii.  ff.,  347  ff.),  which  Professor  Kittredge  shows  some  reason  to  believe 
was  written  before  that  date  (Mod.  Philol.,  i.  13-15).     This  and  one  or  two 
other  things  go  to  show  that  Chaucer  allowed  some  parts  of  the  C.   T.  to 
become  known  while  he  was  still  working  on  others. 

2  Trial  Forewords,  p.  16.  3  Chronology,  pp.  46-8. 

4  Gcschichte,  ii.  196-8  ;  cf.  Studien,  pp.  53-6. 

5  Primer,  p.  81  ;  cf.  his  Knight's  Tale  (1903),  p.  xi. 

6  Vol.  i.,  p.  77.     Skeat  is  mistaken  as  to  the  date,  which  was  Christmas, 
1385  (Walsingham,  ii.  142,  and  cf.  p.  151).     This  would  put  the  poem  at 
a  time  already  crowded. 

7  Publ.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.,  xx.  861-2. 

8  Furnivall  Miscellany,  pp.  307,  309-10  (note),  311. 


84  POEMS    DEPENDENT    ON    THE    TESEIDE.  [OH.  Ill,  §  4 

Troilus  began  Anelida  as  a  pendant  to  it"  (p.  311),  since  the 
plots  of  the  two  "are  identical,  only  the  main  roles  being 
reversed." 

Professor  Bilderbeck,  in  Notes  and  Queries?  suggests  that  the 
poem  is  an  allegory  on  a  contemporary  incident.  He  quotes  Thomas 
Walsingham's  Historia  Anglicana  to  show  that  in  1387  Robert  de 
Vere,  Earl  of  Oxford  and  Duke  of  Ireland,  repudiated  his  wife 
Philippa,  cousin  of  the  king,  and  married  a  Bohemian  lady,  who 
had  come  to  England  in  the  train  of  Queen  Anne.  Obviously 
de  Vere  would  be  represented  by  the  faithless  Arcite,  and  the 
forsaken  grand-daughter  of  Edward  III.  by  Anelida,  Queen  of 
Armenia.  He  finds  some  confirmation  for  his  conjecture  in  the 
King  of  Armenia's  visit  to  England,  which  may  have  suggested  the 
nationality  attributed  to  Anelida.  Prof.  Bilderbeck's  conjecture  is 
rather  attractive,  but  cannot  possibly  be  accepted.  I  have  shown 
elsewhere2  that  only  two  years  before  the  divorce  episode,  and 
a  year  before  the  date  to  which  Bilderbeck  assigns  this  expres 
sion  of  reprehension,  Chaucer  fell  under  very  considerable  obligation 
to  the  Earl  of  Oxford ;  the  presumption  is  strong,  therefore,  that 
he  would  not  have  undertaken  publicly  to  attack  him. 

But  there  is  another  and  a  much  more  conclusive  argument 
against  this  date.  Most  of  the  light  which  we  can  expect  on  the 
date  of  the  Anelida  must  be  derived  from  its  relations  with  the 
Troilus  and  the  Knight's  Tale.  It  must  quite  certainly  have  been 
written  before  the  latter ;  it  was  only  the  stanza-theory  that  required 
the  reverse  order.3 

The   first   argument   is   the   presence   in    it   of    passages   from 


1  Eighth  Series,  ix.  301-2.     He  might  also  have  referred  to  the  Evesliam 
Hist.  Vita  et  Regni  Ric.  II.  (ed.    Hearne,    Oxford,    1729),   p.    84  ;  and  to 
C.  Hofler,  in  the  Denkschriften  of  the  Vienna  Academy,  xx.  188-91. 

2  Mod.  Philol.,  i.  328.     It  was  de  Vere  that  got  Chaucer  his  deputy  at  the 
Custom-house. 

a  Ten  Brink's  other  arguments  are  nugatory.  If  it  was  written  early  lie 
thinks  it  inexplicable  that  Chaucer  should  have  permanently  abandoned  "  ein 
mit  so  groszem  pomp  eingeleitetes,  mit  so  vielem  aufwand  dichterischer 
mittel  begonnenes  werk "  ;  and  still  more  inexplicable  that  it  should  be 
preserved  (Studien,  p.  54).  But  why  may  not  a  poem  lie  in  a  chest  twenty 
years  as  well  as  ten  ?  Its  eventual  publication  is  natural ;  at  his  death 
Chaucer  must  have  occupied  much  the  same  pre-eminent  position  as  Dante 
at  his,  and  somewhat  as  the  last  cantos  of  the  Paradise,  according  to  Boccaccio's 
story,  were  sought  and  published,  why  not  any  interesting  fragments  of 
Chaucer's  poetry  that  were  found  among  his  papers  ?  Nor  is  there  any  signifi 
cance  in  the  fact  that  Lydgate  mentions  the  Anelida  and  not  the  House 
of  Fame. 


CH.  Ill,  §  4]  THE   ANELIDA   AND   ARCITE.  85 

the  Teseide  some  of  which  were  used  also  in  the  other  poem. 
It  is  natural  to  use  parts  of  a  poem  and  then  decide  to  adapt 
the  whole,  and  unnatural  to  use  where  they  do  not  belong  stanzas 
which  had  already  been  used  where  they  do.  Another  consider 
ation  is  that  Chaucer  is  unlikely  to  have  given  to  the  heartless 
betrayer  of  Anelida  the  name  and  antecedents  l  of  the  chief  hero  of 
so  important  a  poem  as  the  Palamon  and  Arcite,  if  he  had  already 
written  it.  Moral  indignation,  to  be  sure,  is  not  Chaucer's  usual 
attitude,  and  he  shows  a  certain  tolerance  for  the  faithless  males  of 
the  Legend  ;  but  the  human  emotion  of  his  poems  he  took  seriously, 
and  the  other  Arcite  embodies  a  high  ideal.2  Such  treatment  of  one 
of  his  own  best  poems  would  show  an  almost  flippant  lack  of  feeling. 
He  would  have  been  more  likely  to  choose  Palamon,  whom  he  puts 
in  a  much  worse  light.  Finally,  Mather  points  out  (p.  307)  that 
the  poem  stops  with  a  suggestion  that  Chaucer  was  about  to  describe 
a  temple  of  Mars.  Now,  considering  the  intimate  connection  of  this 
poem  with  the  Teseide,  and  the  imposing  description  in  the  latter, 
which  so  impressed  Chaucer  that  he  alludes  to  it  in  the  invocation 
which  heads  the  Anelida,  if  certainly  looks  as  if  a  version  of  this 
were  to  follow ;  otherwise,  how  could  he  have  walked  straight  into 
such  a  no-thoroughfare?  The  feeling  is  hard  to  resist  that  the 
break  in  the  Anelida  just  here  is  somehow  connected  with  the 
presence  of  the  description  in  the  Knight's  Tale.  If  the  break  can 
hardly  come  here  because  he  had  used  the  description,  nothing 
remains  except  that  he  meant  to  use  it. 

It  may  be  allowable  to  attempt  a  conjectural  restoration  of 
Chaucer's  procedure.  In  the  Parliament  of  Folds  he  had  closely 
imitated  Boccaccio's  description  of  the  temple  of  Venus,  which 
almost  immediately  follows  that  of  the  temple  of  Mars.  This  use 
of  the  Teseide  must  have  refreshed  his  memory  of  the  poem,  and  he 
may  then  have  undertaken  to  use  larger  portions  of  it,  including 
this  second  fine  description.  It  may  also  have  occurred  to  him  to 
sketch  a  poem  in  contrast  to  the  Troilus,  which  he  had  probably 
been  revising  not  long  before  ;  a  poem  in  which  the  tables  should 
be  completely  turned  on  Arcite's  sex.3  Whence  he  got  the  names 

1  It  is  not  quite  accurate  to  say  that  this  Arcite  has  only  the  name  in 
common  with  the  other  ;  cf.  A.  A.  85. 

2  That  Chaucer  sketched  him  with  strong  liking  is  suggested  by  the  changes 
he   makes  in   Boccaccio's  portraiture   of    the    cousins.      See    Appendix   C, 
pp.  231-2. 

3  Cf.  Troilus,  V.  1779-85. 


86  THE   LEGEND   OF   GOOD    WOMEN.  [CH.  IV,  §  1 

and  material  for  the  poem  we  do  not  know  yet.1  But  it  did  not 
proceed  well,  and  the  path  ahead  does  not  look  very  straight.  At 
this  point  Chaucer  brought  up  before  the  temple  of  Mars.  He  may 
have  felt  then  that  a  much  worthier  use  for  that  description  and 
the  admirable  poem  of  which  it  is  only  one  ornament  would  be  a 
free  but  complete  adaptation.  Here  therefore  he  permanently 
abandoned  the  Anelida. 

As  to  the  exact  date,  we  cannot  be  sure.  The  above  conjecture 
would  put  it  about  1383-4,  to  which  there  are  no  objections.  We 
cannot  doubt  that  it  comes  between  the  Troilus,  on  the  one  hand, 
and  the  Legend2  and  the  Palamon,  on  the  other,  which  gives 
the  limits  1377  and  1385. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE   LEGEND   OF  GOOD    WOMEN. 

§  1 .  The  Two  Prologues ;  The  Question  of  Priority. 

THE  Prologue  to  the  Legend  of  Good  Women  is  extant,  as  is  well 
known,  in  two  versions,  the  shorter  of  which  is  found  in  only  one 
MS.,  and  is  usually  deemed  the  earlier.  -This  I  shall  call  G,  and 
the  other  F.3  The  existence  of  version  G  was  not  generally  known 

1  For  Co  well's  suggestion  that  Anelida  was  originally  a  Persian  goddess,  see 
Ch.  Soc.  Essays,  617-21  ;  cf.  also  Samuel  Dill,  Roman  Society  from- Nero  to 
Marcus  Aurdius  (London,  1904),  p.  556.     But  there  seems  little  doubt,  as 
Professor  J.  Schick  shows,  that  an  Anelida  was  a  character  in  the  Matter 
of  Britain,  and  the  explanation  of  the  Anelida  and  Arcite  may  lie  in  some 
voluminous  Arthurian  romance.     In  the  old  Italian  Intelligenza  (ed.  by  Gell- 
rich,  Breslau,    1883,  st.   75,    1.   2  ;    cf.    Schick,   Temple  of  Glas,   E.E.T.S., 
p.  cxx. )  she  appears  with  Yvain  among  several  pairs  of  lovers  : 

"  La  bella  Analida  e  lo  bono  Ivano." 

Froissart  has  the  same  couple  (Dit  dou  bleu  chevalier,  301  ;  ed.  Scheler,   i. 
357  ;  cf.  ten  Brink,  Studien,  213) : 

' '  Je  prenc  Tristan  pour  Yseut  le  premier, 

Et  en  apres 
Yewain  le  preu  pour  la  belle  Alydes. " 

Just  as   she   is  here  bella  and  belle,  so  Chaucer  frequently  calls  her  "  faire 
Anelida. " 

2  It  is  not  mentioned  in  it,  but  Chaucer  would  hardly  speak  of  an  abortive 
fragment,  which  he  had  quite  given  over.     Koch  makes  too  much,  I  think,  of 
what  is  no  real  difficulty  (Chronology,  pp.  46-7). 

3  Prologue  G  is  usually  called  A,  and  F  is  called  B,  designations  which  I 
reject  because  they  imply  what  I  believe  to  be  a  false  view  as  to  order  ;  this 
is   also  implied  by  the  order  in  which  they  are  printed  by  Skeat  in  all  his 


CH.  IV,  §  1]     THE   TWO    PROLOGUES!    THE    QUESTION    OP    PRIORITY.     87 

of1  till  it  was  printed  by  the  Chaucer  Society  about  187 1.2  At 
first  it  was  usually  argued  or  assumed  to  be  the  earlier  and  rejected 
version,3  and  it  was  not  until  1892  that  a  voice  was  heard  on  the  other 
side.  Since  then  the  matter  has  been  much  debated,  especially  in 
Germany  and  lately  in  America,  though  something  has  come  also 
from  both  sides  of  the  English  Channel ;  and  even  now,  in  the  view 
of  some,  the  conclusive  word  has  not  been  spoken,  in  spite  of  the  fact 
that  perhaps  never  has  a  scholarly  question  been  settled  so  many 
times  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  settlers.  In  1892,  by  a  keen  article 
in  Englische  Studien*  ten  Brink  supported  the  view  that  version 
G  is  the  later,  on  the  ground  mainly  of  its  relation  to  Chaucer's 
life  and  later  works.  His  opinion  was  promptly  accepted  by  Dr. 
Emil  Koeppel,5  by  Dr.  Max  Kaluza,6  and  by  Dr.  F.  J.  Mather ; 7 
attacked  by  Dr.  John  Koch  in  an  appendix  to  his  Chronology  oj 
Chaucer's  Writings ; 8  defended  again  by  Koeppel  in  a  review  of 
Koch's  book ; 9  and  attacked  (on  more  purely  aesthetic  grounds,  yet 
with  a  singularly  cocksure  manner)  by  M.  Emile  Legouis.10  This  last 
paper  was  reviewed  unfavourably  in  a  valuable  article  by  Gustaf 
Binz,11  and  favourably  by  Koch.12  In  England,  up  to  this  point,  the 
whole  controversy  was  ignored,  and  the  older  opinion  supported  by 
Skeat 13  and  Pollard.14  But  in  1902  Professor  J.  B.  Bilderbeck 


editions  and  by  Pollard  in  the  Globe  Chaucer.  I  follow  several  other  writers 
in  calling  the  shorter  G,  after  the  unique  MS.  in  which  it  is  found,  Camb. 
Gg.  4.  27,  and  the  other  F,  after  its  best  MS.,  the  Fairfax,  out  of  the  eight 
or  so  which. contain  the  Prologue. 

1  Ten  Brink  states  (Engl.  Stud.,  xvii.  13)  that  in  1870  he  had  seen  a  tran 
script  of  it,  and  then  became  convinced  that  it  is  the  later  version.     It  had 
been  discovered  by  Mr.  Henry  Bradshaw  and  privately  printed  as  early  as 
1864  (Trial  Forewords,  p.  104). 

2  Odd    Texts    of   Chaucer's  Minor    Poems,    edited  by  F.    J.    Furnivall, 
1868-1880. 

3  As  by  Furnivall  in  1871  (Athenaeum,   Oct.  21,  p.  528  ;  Trial  Forewords, 
106);  by  Skeat  (Leg.  of  G.    W.,  Oxford,  1889,  p.  xiii.);  by  Dr.   Siegfried 
Kunz,  Das  Verhdltnis  d.  HSS.  v.  Chaucers  L.   G.  W.  (Breslau  dissertation, 
published  in  Berlin,  n.  d.),  p.  12. 

4  Vol.  xvii.  13-23. 

5  Engl.  Stud.,  xvii.,  pp.  195-200.  6  Ibid.,  xxii.  281. 

7  Chaucer's  Prologue,  etc.  (Boston,  1899),  p.  xxiii.,  note. 

8  Published  by  the  Chaucer  Society  and  strangely  dated   1890  ;   see  pp. 
81-7  of  the  book. 

9  Literaturllatt  f.  germ.  u.  rom.  Philol.  (1893),  vol.  xiv.  51-3. 

10  Quelfut  le  premier  compost  par  Chaucer  des  deux  Prologues  de  la  Lfyende 
des  femmes    exemplaires  ?      In    the    Revue  de  I'enseignement    des   langues 
vivantes,  Paris,  April,  1900  ;  pp.  58-71. 

11  Anglia  Beiblatt,  xi.  231-7  (1900). 

12  Engl.  Stud.,  xxx.  456-8  (1902). 

13  III.,  xxi.-xxv.  (1894).  H  Qtobe  Chaucer,  xlv.  f.  (1901). 


88  THE   LEGEND   OF  GOOD    WOMEN.  [CH.  TV,  §  1 

published  a  careful  study  of  the  Legend,  in  which  he  defended  the 
older  view  on  aesthetic  and  other  grounds.1  In  1904  the  most  im 
portant  contribution  to  the  subject  ever  made  came  from  the  pen  of 
an  American,  Professor  J.  L.  Lowes,  who  showed  that  version  F 
contains  borrowings  from  foreign  poetry  which  prove  its  priority.2 
In  1905  Dr.  J.  C.  French  supported  the  older  view  and  attacked 
Lowes'  position  on  aesthetic  grounds ; 3  his  book  was  reviewed,  un 
favourably  to  French's  opinions,  by  the  present  writer,4  and  was 
criticized  by  Lowes  incidentally  to  a  fuller  discussion  of  the 
Legend.5  Lowes'  principal  conclusions  were  accepted  by  Mr. 
A.  W.  Pollard.6  The  fact  that  they  are  rejected  in  so  good  a  book 
as  Dr.  B,.  K.  Root's  recent  Poetry  of  Chaucer  will  excuse  my  keeping 
the  subject  open. 

Although  the  succession  of  able  articles  by  ten  Brink,  Koeppel 
and  Binz,  together  with  other  evidence,  had  already  thoroughly 
convinced  me  of  the  priority  of  F,  the  new  evidence  introduced 
by  Lowes  is  particularly  important  and  conclusive.  The  great 
service  performed  by  him 7  was  the  pointing  out  that  Chaucer 
borrowed  from  a  considerable  number  of  French  poems;  by 
Machault,  Deschamps  and  Froissart ;  besides  the  verbal  parallels  in 

1  Chaucer's  Legend  of  Good  Women,  London,  1902  (114  pp.). 

2  Pull,  of  the  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.  of  America,  xix.  593-683. 

3  The  Problem  of  the  Two  Prologues,  etc.,  a  Johns  Hopkins  dissertation, 
Baltimore  ;  100  pp. 

4  Mod.  Lang.  Notes,  xxi.  58-62. 

5  Pull.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.,  xx.  749-864  (on  French,  see  pp.  749-51,  note). 

6  Academy,  no.  1759,  p.  62  (1906). 

7  In  his  first  article,  Pull.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc. ,  xix.  611-5S.    In  my  review 
of  French  I  pointed  out  one  or  two  other  verbal  parallels  (see  Mod.  Lang. 
Notes,  xxi.  59-60,  notes  7  and  12).    On  the  manner  of  introducing  the  Balade, 
cf.  the  following : 

"So  womanly,  so  benigne,  and  so  meke,   .  .  . 
Half  hir  beautee  shulde  men  nat  finde  .  .  . 
And  therfor  may  I  seyn,  as  thinketh  me, 
This  song,  in  preysing  of  this  lady  fre  "  (F,  243-8). 

"  Son  bel  maintien,  sa  douce  vois,  .  .  . 
Me  semont  fort  a  ceste  fois 
QUB  une  balade  je  die 

En  1'ounour  ma  dame  jolie  "  (Froissart's  Le  joli  mois  de  May, 
11.  313-9  ;  ed.  Scheler,  ii.,  204). 

While  in  G  (89)  May  is  almost  past,  in  F  (108) 

"this  was  now  the  firste  morwe  of  May  ;  " 

so  in  Deschamps'  Lay  de  franchise,  which  Chaucer  used  so  much  (Soc.  desanc. 
textesfran?.,  ii.  204,  line  14) : 

' '  Jje  premier  jour  de  ce  mois  cle  plaisance. " 


CH.  IV,  §  1]     THE   TWO    PROLOGUES  :   THE   QUESTION    OF   PRIORITY.     89 

F  40-65,  he  shows  similarities  of  plan  also  to  the  Lay  de  fran 
chise  and  the  Paradys  cV amours,  by  the  two  last  (respectively).     Not 
only  is  this  highly  interesting  in  itself;  its  chronological  signifi 
cance  lies  in  the  fact  that  though  parallels  exist  in  both  F  and  G, 
there  are  far  more  in  F.     "  The  inevitable  conclusion  must  be,"  to 
quote  earlier-published  words  of  my  own,  "that  Chaucer  read  his 
French  predecessors  just  before  writing  F.     Now  since  their  influ 
ence  on  G  is  also  unmistakable,  a  defender  of  the  priority  of  G  must 
ask   us   to  believe  that   he  went   over  these  poems  before  eaoh 
writing,  and  in  F  added  to  his  mosaic  with  almost  inconceivable  \ 
care  and  ingenuity  ;  and,  besides  this,  that  he  abandoned  independ 
ence  in  points  where  such  a  procedure  was  equally  injurious  and     / 
unmotived.  " l     The  priority  of  F,  it  seems  to  me,  has  been  shown  / 
by  Lowes  in  a  very  demonstrative  way. 

But  the  question  is  a  highly  intricate  and  ambiguous  one, 
more  so,  it  seems  to  me,  than  Lowes  altogether  shows.  The 
puzzle  is  that  F,  which  he  proves  to  be  the  displaced  version, 
seems  to  most  readers  the  better  and  pleasanter.  Legouis 
believes  the  aesthetic  evidence  speaks  in  favour  of  version  F 
(p.  59).  Even  Koeppel  characterizes  the  spirit  of  G  as"ein  ganz 
anderer,  kraftigerer,  aber  auch  etwas  niichternerer  Geist,"  with  the 
personal  feeling  banished  and  the  May  scene  relegated  to  the  dream 
— he  thinks  G  seldom  improves  over  F,  and  more  often  shows  signs 
of  hasty  revision.2  Lowes  too  is  of  much  the  same  mind  :  "  that 
the  B  [F]  version  has  the  note  of  freshness,  of  spontaneity,  of 
composition  con  amore  to  a  greater  degree  than  A — that  it  is  even 
the  more  delightful  version  of  the  two — all  will  perhaps  agree."  3 
There  are  three  more  or  less  general  and  striking  differences" 
between  F  and  G  which  will  be  thought  at  first  to  mark  F  as  the 
better.  These  are  its  more  genial  and  personal  tone ;  the  pleasing 
suspense  as  to  the  identity  of  the  lady  of  the  Balade  and  the  lady 
who  enters  with  the  God  of  Love,  which  is  wholly  given  up  in  G  ; 
and  the  fact  that  after  she  has  been  repeatedly  named  in  his  presence 

1  M.  L.  N.,  p.  60.     Lowes'  fuller  and  more  authoritative  discussion  of  this 
evidence  will  be  found  on  his  pp.  658    ff.      French's   unfair   treatment  of 
Lowes'  arguments  I  pointed  out  in  my  review  (see  his  pp.  32,  35-8,  65-6). 

2  Liter uturblatt,  vol.   xiv.   (1893),  col.  52.     He  attributes  the  change  in 
spirit  to  the  attempt  to  adapt  part  of  the  Legend  for  use  as  a  Canterbury  Tale. 
It  is  impossible  to  regard  this  suggestion  with  favour. 

3  PubL  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.,  xix.  683,  note  ;  "but  these,"  he  continues,  "are 
the  very  marks  of  a  work  written  currcnte  calanio,  as  against  the  firmer  touch, 
the  surer  craftsmanship,  the  more  compact  unity  of  A  "  [G].     Why  the  latter 
merits  should  expel  the  former  he  does  not  tell  us. 


90  THE   LEGEND   OF  GOOD    WOMEN.  [CH.  IV,  §  1 

Chaucer  in  G  affects  not  to  know  who  she  is,  a  blunder  almost 
wholly  absent  from  F.  The  first  is  particularly  important,  for  it 
will  be  found  that  most  of  the  detailed  points  of  superiority  in 
F  are  bound  up  with  it.  These  matters  nobody  has  adequately 
explained,  especially  no  advocate  of  the  priority  of  F.  Lowes' 
attempt  at  some  of  them  seems  very  slight  and  unconvincing,1  and 
his  entire  argument  therefore  lacking  in  finality.  A  perfectly 
satisfactory  and  rather  illuminating  explanation  I  believe  is  possible  ; 
but  must  be  deferred  till  the  question  of  priority  has  been  discussed 
on  other  grounds.  Except  for  these  three  points  I  believe  all  of  the 
important  aesthetic  considerations  will  indicate  that  G  is  the  revised 
version. 

All  the  thorough  discussions  of  the  aesthetic  evidence,  those  of 
Legouis,  Bilderbeck,  and  French,  have  been  by  the  supporters  of  the 
priority  of  G,2  so  it  may  be  well  to  show  that  even  on  purely 
aesthetic  grounds  a  good  case  can  be  made  out  for  G  as  the  revised 
version.  These  three  writers  have  almost  confined  themselves  to 
aesthetic  arguments.  But  obviously,  if  others  disagree  with  them  as 
to  the  value  of  their  arguments,  and  if  Chaucer  can  be  shown  to 
have  had  a  non-aesthetic  motive  for  revision,  which  accounts  for 
occasional  inferiority  in  the  later  version,  they  have  no  case, 
mis'  argument  seems  much  the  best  >  but  it  is  not  surprising 
that  the  accomplished  critic  of  Wordsworth  comes  to  Chaucer  without 
the  knowledge  of  the  poet  and  his  age  requisite  to  a  just  estimate, 
and  most  of  Legouis'  points  either  prove  to  be  connected  with  the 
omission  of  the  personal  feeling,  which  subject  we  are  holding 
in  reserve,  or  seem  ambiguous  or  trivial.  The  other  two  writers,  as 
I  tried  to  show  at  more  length,  in  the  case  of  French,  in  my  review, 
seem  still  more  to  select  ambiguous  or  trivial  details  ;  their  standards 
are  singularly  arbitrary,3  and  they  never  seem  to  see  that  many  of 
their  cases  could  be  used  as  contrary  arguments  equally  well.  The 
fact  that  G  exists  in  only  one,  and  that  a  somewhat  corrupt,  MS. 

1  Publ.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.,  xix.  676,  681. 

2  On  the  other  side,  of  course,  aesthetic  considerations  have  not  been  wholly 
neglected.    Lowes  treats  them  more  or  less  on  pp.  661,  663,  665,  678-80  of  his 
first  article. 

3  Notably  as  to  alliteration  and  grammatical  and  logical  structure.     Nor  do 
they  seem  to   recognize  how  much  of  the  broad  and  even  careless  style  of 
mediaeval  oral  poetry  still  clung  to  Chaucer.    The  use  which  Bilderbeck  makes 
of  small  peculiarities  in  G  is  particularly  curious  because  he  admits  that  it ' '  has 
to  some  small  extent  been  edited  "  by  another  than  Chaucer  (p.  47  ;  cf.  71) ; 
and  cf.  French,  p.  70. 


CH.  IV,  §  1]    THE   TWO    PROLOGUES  I    THE    QUESTION    OF    PRIORITY.     91 

vitiates  minute  points  of  evidence ;  in  particular,  the  small  variations 
between  F  and  G  from  F  426  to  495  are  most  probably  due  to 
a  scribe.  Besides  this,  the  more  important  changes  mentioned  in 
the  last  paragraph  may  at  times  involve  lesser  changes  which  are  not 
for  the  better.  I  am  fully  conscious  of  the  difficulties  and  dangers  of 
this  kind  of  argument,  and  mean  to  notice  every  one  of  their  argu 
ments  which  does  not  fall  under  one  of  the  condemnations  which  I 
have  mentioned  ;  and  mean  to  propose  none  myself  which  has  not  a 
large  objective  element.  It  might  seem  a  priori  that  a  thorough 
examination  of  the  minuter  differences  of  the  two  versions  should 
clearly  indicate  which  is  the  revised  version.  I  can  only  state  that 
after  a  very  careful  consideration  of  the  two  poems  and  of  the 
attempts  of  the  three  writers  just  mentioned,  I  am  convinced  that  it 
does  not,  partly,  no  doubt,  because  of  the  unsatisfactory  MS.  tradition. 
I  am  equally  convinced  that  Koeppel,  defender  though  he  is  of  G  as 
the  revised  version,  does  injustice  to  the  merits  of  G;  and  that 
apart  from  the  three  points  held  in  reserve  the  more  important  and 
unambiguous  aesthetic  differences  will  speak  in  its  favour.1  There  is 
also  evidence  of  a  different  character,  which  associates  G  with 

F  a  later  period  in  Chaucer's  life  than  F. 

—^  We  come  now  to  the  points  in  which  G  is  the  better.  In  the 
first  place,  it  is  more  reasonably^  arranged — more  methodical,  though 
without  stiffness.  This  is  notably  so  in  the  proem  and  what  leads 

1  Two  apparent  important  signs  of  the  priority  of  G  must  be  remarked  on. 
The  following  couplet  of  F,  143-4,  on  the  birds,  is  absent  from  G  : 

' '  Upon  the  braunches  ful  of  blosmes  softe, 
In  hir  delyt,  they  turned  hem  ful  ofte." 

That  these  admirable  lines  were  deliberately  omitted  it  is  difficult  to  believe. 
But  not  only  is  there  very  considerable  chance  of  accidental  omission  in 
a  unique  MS.,  which  has  suffered  serious  damage  immediately  before  arid  after 
the  place  where  this  couplet  should  be  (as  Binz  points  out,  p.  236  ;  and  French 
admits,  p.  70  ;  Legouis  does  not  see  it,  p.  67) ;  but  also,  as  even  the  hostile 
Bilderbeck  shows  (p.  45),  some  such  couplet  as  this  is  needed  to  make  gram 
matical  connection  between  lines  130  and  131  of  G.  ,  So  we  may  conclude  that 
this  omission  was  accidental.  Secondly,  in  F  551  and  G  541  Love  declares 
tffat'he  shall  "charge  "  Chaucer  no  more  ;  in  G  the  Prologue  ends  in  four  more 
lines,  but  in  F  not  for  twenty-eight,  which  contain  several  instructions.  At  first 
sight  it  looks  as  if  in  F  Chaucer  had  inserted  a  passage  which  makes  551  of 
none  effect,  as  Koch  thinks  (Engl.  Stud.,  xxx.  458).  But  the  force  of  this 
argument  is  destroyed  when  we  observe  that  in  F  the  instructions  do  not  follow 
immediately  on  line  551  ;  while  inG,  541  is  directly  folio  wed  by  the  command 
to  begin  "  at  Cleopatre. "  It  seems  quite  as  likely  that  G  is  the  result  of 
condensation  as  that  F  is  of  addition.  To  the  best  of  my  belief  and  judgment, 
no  other  signs  of  the  priority  of  G  can  be  mentioned  without  including  the 
trivial  and  the  still  more  debatable,  and  also  multiplying  instances  on 
the  other  side. 


92 


THE   LEGEND   OF  GOOD    WOMEN. 


[OH.  IV,  §  1 


up  to  the  dream  and  the  entry  of  the  God  of  Love,  as  may  be  made 
clear  by  a  brief  and  bald  analysis  of  F  40-213,  and  G  40-145. 

G 

His  love  of  the  daisy.  He 
would  fain  praise  it  worthily, 
but  "folk"  have  already  done 
so  better.  Hopes  he  shall  incur 
no  ill-will  for  repeating  their 
words,  since  he  does  all  in  hon 
our  of  those  who  serve  either 
leaf  or  flower.  But  he  is  no 
partisan  of  either.  We  should 
trust  authorities.  Means  to  de 
clare  old  stories.  After  he  has 
roamed  the  meadow,  goes  home 
to  sleep.  Dreams.  Description 
of  the  meadow.  The  birds' 
mirth.  A  lark  announces  the 
God.  He  enters. 


His  love  of  the  daisy.  He  visits 
it  in  the  morning.  None  ever 
loved  hotter  than  he  loves  the 
daisy.  At  evening  he  runs  to  see 
it  close.  It  opens  in  the  morn 
ing.  He  would  fain  praise  it 
worthily,  and  invokes  lovers' 
aid,  but  they  have  already  done 
so  better.  Hopes  he  shall  incur 
no  ill-will  for  repeating  their 
words,  since  he  does  all  in  hon 
our  of  love  and  in  service  of 
the  flower.  Again  declares  his 
love  and  reverence.  Will  tell 
later  why  he  says  that  we  should 
trust  authorities.  Love  made 
him  rise  early  to  see  the  daisy ; 
he  knelt  to  watch  it  unclose. 
Description  of  the  meadow ;  the 
birds'  mirth.  Allegorical  digres 
sion  on  the  birds.  Sank  down 
to  watch  the  flower  all  day. 
Praises  it  again.  But  he  is  no 
partisan  of  either  flower  or  leaf. 
Toward  night  he  goes  home, 
meaning  to  rise  early  to  see  the 
daisy  again.  Dreams  he  is  back 
in  the  meadow.  Entrance  of 
Love. 

I  do  not  mean,  of  course,  that  here  or  anywhere  G  is  pleasanter 
than  F  on  a  casual  reading ;  rather  the  contrary,  since  it  omits  the 
passionate  devotion  of  the  other.  But  in  a  number  of  points 
here  it  is  more  reasonable  and  pleasing  on  examination,  and  closer 

I  /  to  Chaucer's  later  work.  A  few  of  these  points  may  be  indicated. 
While  in  G  he  defends  himself  from  the  charge  of  partisanship 

'  immediately  on  mentioning  the  flower  and  the  leaf  (70),  in  F, 
though  his  devotion  to  the  daisy  is  far  more  marked,  he  does  not 

\^do  so  till  over  a  hundred  lines  later  (72,  188  ff.).  If  G  is  the 
earlier,  there  is  no  discoverable  reason  why  he  should  have  made 
such  a  postponement  in  revising.  Secondly,  the  analysis  makes 
very  clear  the  extraordinary  skipping  about  in  F  between  morning 


CH.  IV,  §  1]    THE    TWO   PROLOGUES  :    THE   QUESTION    OP    PRIORITY.      93 

and  evening ;  without  motive  Chaucer  would  hardly  have  made 
order  into  chaos.  Thirdly,  after  asking  in  F  why  men  should  trust 
authorities,  Chaucer  says  (101)  "  That  shal  I  seyn,  whan  that  I  see 
my  tyme,"  and  then  returns  to  dilate  on  his  passion  for  the  daisy, 
and  never  fulfils  his  promise.  In  G  (81-8)  he  explains  his  attach 
ing  such  importance  to  belief  in  authorities  by  the  fact  that  he  is 
about  to  relate  tales  drawn  from  them.1  The  passage  in  F  is  a 
good  example  of  the  free-and-easy  inconsequence  of  that  version ; 
that  in  G,  of  its  soberer  forethought.  Which  of  these  characteristics 
may  most  naturally  be  attributed  to  a  first  version,  and  which  to  a 
second,  is  obvious  enough.  Next,  the  relation  between  the  dream 
and  the  preparation  for  it  seems  better  in  G ; 2  after  the  essential 
introduction,  his  habitual  affection  for  daisies,  and  the  afternoon  in 
the  meadow  which  was  the  starting-point  of  the  dream,  he  goes 
home  and  falls  asleep,  and  the  description  of  the  meadow  and  the 
birds  is  a  part  of  the  dream.3  One  advantage  of  the  method  of  G 
is  that  it  makes  the  entrance  of  the  God  less  abrupt ;  in  F  Chaucer 
begins  to  dream  in  line  210  and  in  212  the  God  appears,  when  the 
poet  has  barely  got  his  eyes  shut.  But  for  every  reason  I  do  not 
see  how  it  can  be  denied  that  this  shortening  and  clear-marking  of 
the  introduction,  and  this  centring  of  the  interest  on  the  dream 
scenes- and  incidents  is  an  improvement.  Nor,  if  G  preceded  F,  is 
it  likely  that  Chaucer  would  have  made  the  contrary  change,  which 
would  not  have  been  in  the  least  involved  by  the  introduction  of 
the  personal  feeling. 

But  more  than  this,  version  F  in  this  point  resembles  Chaucer's 
earlier  poetry,  and  G  his  later.  In  the  Book  of  the  Duchess  there 
is  a  preliminary  ramble  which  forms  nearly  a  quarter  of  the  whole 
poem,  and  is  not  closely  enough  connected  with  the  main  trans 
action  to  justify  half  that  length  ;  in  the  Parliament  of  Fowls  the 
introduction  forms  a  sixth  of  the  whole,  and  by  no  means  justifies 
its  length.  In  both  he  gives  quite  otiose  accounts  of  what  he  had 
been  doing.  In  the  House  of  Fame  the  proem  and  invocation, 

1  G  81-4  will.be  seen  to  be  not  quite  grammatical,  a  natural  consequence  of 
a  not  very  careful  change  in  the  form  of  the  sentence.     An  almost  grotesque 
example  of  the  rambling  style  of  F  will  be  found  in  the  House-that-Jack-built 
sentence  in  11.  103-114. 

2  So  Binz,  p.  235.     Skeat  also  points  out  (III.  xxiii.)  that  the  proem  is 
more  distinctly  marked  in  G  (1-88). 

3  Legouis'  reasons  (see  p.  62)  for  preferring  the  method  of  F  are  hardly 
intelligible,  for  the  dream  is  quite  sufficiently  accounted  for  in  G.     Unfor 
tunately  the  mediaeval  court-poet  needed  little  excuse  for  dreaming. 


94  THE    LEGEND   OF  GOOD    WOMEN.  [cH.  IV,  §  1 

110  lines  long,  followed  by  hundreds  of  lines  based  on  the  Aeneid, 
make  very  little  contribution  to  what  follows.  It  is  clear,  there 
fore,  that  in  his  earlier  dream-narratives  Chaucer,  unlike  his  model 
Guillaume  de  Lorris,  was  in  the  habit  of  lingering  in  the  world  of 
actuality,  even  to  the  point  of  scattering,  if  not  annihilating,  the 
interest.  But  compare  the  fine  rapidity  with  which  he  breaks  into 
the  main  narrative  in  every  one  of  the  Canterbury  Tales.1  Does 
not  this  comparison  suggest  that  G  was  written  not  only  after  F, 
but  long  after  ? 

One  of  the  most  striking  points  of  superiority  in  G  is  in  the 
entrance  of  the  procession  and  the  presentation  of  the  Balade.  In 
F,  after  the  God  and  the  lady  have  entered  together  and  been 
described  at  great  length,  Chaucer  introduces  the  Balade  with  the 
words : 

"And  therfor  may  I  seyn,  as  thinketh  me, 
This  song,  in  preysing  of  this  lady  fre  "  (247-8). 

After  it  he  continues  : 

"  This  balade  may  ful  wel  y-songen  be, 
As  I  have  seyd  erst,  by  my  lady  free  "  (270-1) ; 

he  praises  her  again,  and  finally  (70  lines  after  the  first  two)  intro 
duces  the  rest  of  the  procession,  the  nineteen  ladies,  followed  by  a 
great  multitude,  who  kneel  in  honour  of  the  daisy  and  sing  a  few 
lines  to  her.  In  G  the  God  is  announced  by  a  lark  : 

"  Til  at  the  laste  a  larke  song  above  : 
'  I  see,'  quod  she,  '  the  mighty  god  of  love  ! 
Lo  !  yond  he  cometh,  I  see  his  winges  sprede  ! '"  (141-3). 

After  the  God  and  the  queen  have  been  described,  the  rest  of 
the  procession  enters,  and  the  Balade  is  sung  by  the  ladies.  As 
to  the  lark,  Dr.  Skeat  says  (III.,  xxiv.)  it  "is  left  out,  as  being 
unnecessary.  This  is  a  clear  improvement."2  I  can  only  say  that 
the  lark  seems  to  me  just  as  necessary,  and  in  the  same  sense,  as  the 
whole  poem  is.  Again,  the  pause  during  the  entrance  of  the  pro 
cession  is  only  about  half  as  long  in  G  as  in  F,  where  the  Balade 
intervenes.  But  the  most  striking  point  of  superiority  in  G  is  the 
way  in  which  the  Balade  is  presented.  In  F  it  has  no  function  in 

1  Except  the   Pardoner's  and   Canon's    Yeoman's,   where  the   ramble    is 
deliberate. 

2  Similarly    French,  p.   50  ;    cf.  my  review,  Mod.  Lang.  Notes,  xxi.   61. 
Legouis  (p.  62),  however,  says  Chaucer  had  to  sacrifice  this  pretty  detail  ; 
why? 


CH.  IV,  §  1]    THE   TWO   PROLOGUES  :    THE   QUESTION    OF    PRIORITY     95 

the  narrative,1  and  even  the  ladies  have  little.  I  have  shown  else-  F 
where  that  the  artistically  unintelligible  manner  in  which  it  is 
introduced  is  clearly  one  of  the  points  in  which  at  first  Chaucer 
followed  his  French  exemplars.2  A  further  disadvantage  of  tKg 
state  of  things  in  F  is  that  it  makes  Love  refer  (539  ff.)  to  a  poem 
which  he  has  not  heard.3  Is  there  any  comparison  between  the 
two  methods  as  to  art  and  grace  1  Could  Chaucer  have  changed 
the  conditions  in  G  to  those  in  F 1 4 

Among  many  small  points  in  which  on  examination  G  appears 
superior  to  F,  three  may  be  especially  mentioned.  In  F  one  of 
Chaucer's  crimes  is  recorded  thus : 

"  For  in  pleyn  text,  with-outen  nede  of  glose, 
Thou  hast  translated  the  Komaunce  of  the  Kose  "  (328-9) ; 

in  G  thus,  of  course  with  the  same  meaning : 

"  For  in  pleyn  text,  hit  nedeth  nat  to  glose  "  (254) 

The  ambiguity  of  the  F-reading  is  such  that  it  misled  Dr.  Koch,  who 
says  of  the  Romance  of  the  Rose  that  this  line  "  implies,  though  not 
directly  meant  in  that  way,  that  his  rendering  was  a  literal  one."5 
Certainly  there  was  no  reason  for  change  from  the  G  to  the  F 
reading.  Another  change  in  the  interest  of  lucidity  occurs  in 
G  343-6  f 

"  And  takth  non  heed  of  what  matere  he  take ; 
Therfor  he  wroot  the  Eose  and  eek  Crisseyde 
Of  innocence,  and  niste  what  he  seyde  ; 
Or  him  was  boden  make  thilke  tweye  "  ; 

in  F  the  passage  is  practically  the  same  with  the  omission  of  the 
two  middle  lines.  The  naming  of  the  two  poems  is  necessary,  for 
even  in  F  thilke  must  go  back  for  its  antecedent  past  thirty-four 

1  So  ten  Brink  (Engl.  Stud.,  xvii.  16-17)  ;  Binz  (Angl.  Beibl.,  xi.  235)  ; 
cf.  also,  on  all  this,  Lowes  in  Publ.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc. ,  xix.  655-7. 

2  See  Mod.  Lang.  Notes,  xxi.  59,  and  p.  88  above.     Lowes  did  not  remark 
on  this  point,  which  seems  to  me  important. 

3  It  is  curious  also  that  in  F  Love  reproaches  Chaucer  for  not  having  put 
Alcestis  into  the  Balade  partly  on  the  ground  that  lie  is  "so  gretly  in  hir 
dette  "  for  the  protection  which  she  has  only  just  given  him.     On  the  Balade 
ten  Brink  lias  some  rather  over-subtle  criticisms  (1.  c.,  p.  16-17). 

4  The  one  point  of  superiority  in  this  part  of  F,  the  anonymity  of  the  lady, 
I  have  asked  to  have  held  in  suspense  till  later. 

5  Chronology,  p.  13.     The  first  line  obviously  has  the  same  meaning  as  the 
fourth  line  of  the  Wife  of  Bath's  spurious  "head-link "  in  the Lansdowne  MS., 
' '  I  will  noulit  glose,  bot  saye  the  text. "     On  this  couplet,  see  also  Lowes  in 
PubL  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc. ,  xx.  855. 


96  ,THE    LEGEND    OF   GOOD    WOMEN.  [CH.  IV,  §  1 

lines  occupied  with  other  matters.1  The  third  point  is  the  ending  ; 
after  the  God's  final  admonition, 

"  with  that  word  my  bokes  gan  I  take, 
And  right  thus  on  my  Legend  gan  I  make  "  (578-9), 

for  which  G  has  (544), 

"  With  that  word  of  sleep  I  gan  a-awake  "  [sic]. 

That  is,  iii  F  Chaucer  passes  from  his  dream-adventures  in  the 
meadow  to  working  in  his  own  library,  without  awaking.2  These 
instances  of  the  superiority  of  G  to  F  are  by  no  means  all ;  there 
are  many  more  in  which  most  tastes  would  probably  recognize 
improvement.  In  every  case  there  is  a  clear  motive  for  the  change 
if  G  is  the  later ;  in  every  case  there  is  none  if  it  is  not. 

We  now  come  to  the  cases  which  show  other  than  aesthetic 
evidence  that  G  is  the  later  version.  The  "old  fool  "  passages  are 
the  first.3  In  G  (258-62)  Love  remarks  that  Chaucer's  wit  is 
full  cool,  and  adds, 

"  Wei  wot  I  ther-by  thou  beginnest  dote 
As  olde  foles,  whan  hir  spirit  fayleth  "  ; 

and  later  that  (314-5) 

"  thou  reneyed  hast  my  lay, 
As  othere  olde  foles  many  a  day," 

for  which  F  has  "  other  wrecches  "  (337). 4  Now,  so  far  as  I  have 
been  able  to  find,  Chaucer's  only  other  references  to  his  own  elderly 
years  are  in  the  Complaint  of  Venus  (76-8),  where  he  says  that  age 

1  Legouis  thinks  the  greater  clearness  of  G  a  mark  of  priority,  and  the 
obscurity  of  F  a  result  of  condensation  (p.  64,  note  ;  Koch  agrees  with  him, 
Engl.  Stud.,  xxx.  457-8  ;  cf.  his.Chronol.,  83,  and  Biriz,  p.  236).     But  there 
is  no  indication  in  either  prologue  that  Chaucer  was  trying  to  condense — 
certainly  not  at  the  expense  of  clearness.     The  notion  that  he  was  .rests  only 
on  the  supposition  that  Love  is  Richard  II.,  and  that  F  570-7  is  an  expression 
of  the  royal  desire  for  brevity.     It  is  unnecessary  to  dwell  on  this,  especially 
since,  instead  of  being  shorter  than  G,  F  is  34  lines  longer.  \ 

2  Legouis  curiously  ignores  this  consideration,  and  thinks  F  578  superior 
because  it  returns  to  the  books  mentioned  at  the  beginning  of  the  Prologue 
(p.  65).     I  may  compare  a  similar  change  in  the  Confessio  Amantis.     Though, 
in  both  of  Gower's  versions  of  the  end,  the  departure  of  Venus  is  mentioned, 
that  of  Genius  is  ignored  except  in  the  revised  version  (Macaulay,  vol.  iii., 
p.  467). 

3  The  point  was  first  made  by  ten  Brink  (Engl.  Stud.,  xvii.  14  ;  and  see 
Lowes,  xx.  782-7). 

4  Cf.  G  400-1  (nothing  corresponding  in  F) : 


.     ^  J.J.VSl/.llJU.ltl     Wl  Jl^OlJV7JJ.U.i.JJ.^    J.1A    •*-    /    • 

"  Whyl  he  was  yong,  he  kepte  your  estat, 
I  not  wher  he  be  now  a  renegat. " 


CH.  IV,  §  1]     THE    TWO   PROLOGUES  :    THE    QUESTION    OF    PRIORITY.     97 

lias  dulled  him  and  taken  away  his  subtlety ;  and  in  the  Envoy  to 
Scogan(27,  31-5,  36-42). l  These  two  poems  there  are  good  reasons 
for  dating  between  1390  and  1400.2  Legouis  (pp.  63-4)  finds 
ground  for  change  from  the  G-form  in  the  fact  that  here  Love  falls 
below  the  dignity  of  a  god ;  but  I  think  this  reason  would  hardly 
have  appealed  to  Chaucer,  who  enjoys  nothing  better  than  putting 
down  the  mighty  from  their  seats  as  witness  the  colloquial  dis 
course  of  the  eagle  in  the  House  of  Fame,  or  of  Pluto  and  Pro 
serpina  in  the  Merchant's  Tale.  Legouis  also  assumes  with  Skeat 
(III.  xxii.)  that  the  revision  occurred  very  shortly  after  the  first 
draft,  an  assumption  which  is  made  very  unlikely  by  the  extent  of 
the  alterations.3  Ten  Brink  points  out  that  when  Chaucer  wrote 
the  first  version  (whichever  that  is)  he  was  not  old  enough  to  use 
such  language  even  in  joke.4  Of  course  the  remarks  are  jocose ; 
but  since  the  only  conceivable  reason  for  omitting  such  good  and 
characteristic  lines — sensitiveness — is  negatived  by  all  that  we  know 
of  Chaucer's  character  and  practice,  the  most  reasonable  inference 
is  that  G  was  written  long  enough  after  F  for  Chaucer  to  have  come 
to  make  fun  of  his  own  advancing  years. 

F  537-40  and  G  525-7  form  a  case  where  the  superiority  of  F 
actually  suggests  that  G  is  the  later.     F  reads  : 

"  Than  seyde  Love,  '  a  ful  gret  negligence 
Was  hit  to  thee,  that  ilke  tyme  thou  mad 
"  Hyd,  Absolon,  thy  tresses,"  in  balade, 
That  thou  forgete  hir  in  thy  song  to  sette 

for  which  G  has  : 

"  '  a  ful  gret  negligence 
Was  hit  to  thee,  to  write  unstedfastnesse 
Of  women,  sith  thou  knowest  hir  goodnesse.'  " 

Negligence  is  as  distinctly  the  right  word  in  F  as  it  is  the  wrong  one 
in  G.  The  line  in  which  it  occurs  is  the  last  of  a  long  passage 
in  which  probably  only  one  of  the  differences  between  the  versions 
is  due  to  Chaucer ;  to  alter  the  word  would  have  required  recasting 

1  The  remark  in  the  House  of  Fame  (995)  need  hardly  be  considered. 

2  On    Venus,  see  Skeat  I.    86  ;  on   Scogan,   Skeat   I.  556-7,    and  G.  L. 
Kittredge,  Harvard  Studies  and  Notes,  i.  116-7  ;  on  both  in  connection  with 
the  year  of  Chaucer's  birth,  Lounsbury's  Studies,  i.  36-42.     In  partial  answer 
to  Lounsbury,  I  may  point  out  that  January  in  the  Merchant's  Tale  is  regarded 
as  an  old  man  at  sixty. 

3  See  p.  122  below. 

*  EngL  Stud.,  xvii.  10  ;  cf.  Koeppel,  Literaturllatt,  1893,  p.  51  ;  and  Koch, 
Chronology,  p.  82. 

PEV.  CH.  H 


98  THE   LEGEND   OF  GOOD   WOMEN.  [CH.  IV,  §  1 

of  the  whole  couplet  of  which  it  is  one  of  the  rhymes.  If  Chaucer 
wrote  G  first,  it  is  strange  indeed  that  the  change  he  made  in  the 
later  lines  exactly  fitted  the  proper  meaning  of  this  word,  while  if  F 
is  the  earlier  it  is  not  surprising  that  he  failed  to  alter  it.1 

In  F,  among  the  parting  injunctions  of  Love,  is  the  line  (562) : 

"  Make  the  metres  of  hem  as  the  leste." 

Is  not  this  assuredly  an  allusion  to  the  fact  that  Chaucer  is  using  a 
metre  new  to  English  poetry  1 2  I  have  already  shown  that  this 
cannot  be  the  first  poem  in  which  Chaucer  used  the  decasyllabic 
couplet,  but  no  doubt  it  was  the  first  one  published.  Such  an 
allusion  is  certainly  less  surprising  in  a  first  version  than  in  a  second  ; 
if  a  long  interval  elapsed  between,  this  line  almost  proves  F  the 
earlier. 

There  are  several  passages  which  suggest  that  F  is  the  earlier  and 
G  the  later  by  certain  points  of  connection  with  earlier  or  later  works 
of  Chaucer's.  This  has  already  been  pointed  out  in  the  case  of  the 
introductory  portion  of  the  Prologue.  But  the  most  important 
cases  of  parallels  to  earlier  and  later  works  are  the  only  two  long 
passages  that  are  confined  each  to  one  version. 

In  F  153-187,  the  digression  on  the  birds,  the  first  part  is 
;  strongly  in  the  style  of  the  Romance  of  the  Rose  and  the  Parliament 
of  Fowls ,3  with  its  (quite  superfluous)  characterization  of  an  indi 
vidual  bird,  its  vows  of  constancy,  and  its  allegory  ;  it  is  a  digression 
from  a  digression,  with  an  impertinent  quotation  from  Aristotle.  The 
passage  is  so  irrelevant  that  Mr.  Bilderbeck  4  has  found  it  necessary 
to  fill  it  with  political  allegory.  It  alone  would  suggest  that  the 
version  which  omits  it  is  the  later, — it  is  surely  not  very  likely  to 
have  been  added  on  revision,  especially  if  the  revision  was  made 
a  considerable  time  after  the  first  writing,  and  most  especially  if  in  the 
Canterbury-period.  But  it  is  less  significant  than  the  second  pas 
sage,5  G  267-312,  where  Love  asks  Chaucer  why  he  has  not  written 
of  good  women,  and  declares  that  he  might  have  found  many  such 

1  Cf.  Lowes,  in  Pull.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.,  xx.  799. 

2  Cf.    Lowes,  p.    814,    whose   alternative   suggestion  seems  to  me   hardly 
possible. 

3  Cf.  Skeat's  notes,  III.  295-6. 

4  Pp.  101-3.    His  interpretation  seems  to  me  very  unlikely  ;  it  is  vague,  and 
touches  the  passage  at  only  a  few  points.    It  is  so  easy  to  construct  ex  post  facto 
allegories  (as  witness  the  procedure  of  the  Shakspere-Bacon  fanatics,  and,  in  the 
sixteenth  century,  of  Tasso  and  of  the  admirers  of  Ariosto)  that  it  seems  to 
me  they  should  be  submitted  to  a  very  austere  criticism. 

5  This  argument  is  developed  from  ten  Brink's,  in  Engl.  Stud.,  xvii.  15-16. 


CH.  IV,  §  1]   THE   TWO    PROLOGUES  :    THE   QUESTION    OF   PRIORITY.      99 

in  Valerius,  Tijtfs,  Claudian,  Jerome,  Ojrffl,  and  Vincent.  Only  one 
reason  worth  mentioning  why  Chaucer  should  have  omitted  this 
passage  is  suggested  by  those  who  think  F  the  later  version  ; 
Legouis  (p.  63)  thinks  this  passage  a  verbose  pedantic  sermon.1 
We  may  like  the  passage  or  we  may  not, — in  itself  it  is  not  much 
better  than  the  verses  on  the  birds  which  G  lacks ;  but  it  forms  an 
integral  part  of  the  poem,  which  the  other  does  not,  by  adding 
force  to  Love's  rebuke.  As  to  the  charge  of  pedantry,  tEe^Middle 
Ages  took  a  view  different  from  ours  of  appeals  to  authority,  even  of 
a  display  of  learning,  and  no  criticism  can  do  mediaeval  literature 
justice  which  disregards  this  fact ;  the  greatest  of  all  mediaeval 
poets  is  full  of  direct  citation  of  Aristotle  and  the  theologians. 
Ghaucer  uses  the  practice  with  humorous  effect  in  the  Nun's 
Priest's  Tale,  but  that  he  was  far  from  meaning  to  ridicule  it 
is  shown  by  the  discourse  on  ancient  chaste  heroines  with  which 
Dorigen  assuages  her  grief.2  With  this  latter  passage  the  one 
in  question  has  much  in  common,  in  source,  tone,  and  content — 
enough  to  link  it  rather  to  Chaucer's  later  work  than  to  his  earlier  ; 
and  it  is  certainly  more  in  place. 

But  it  is  also  important  to  observe  the  authors  whom  Chaucer 
names  here.  We  may  at  once  disregard  Ovid,  with  whom  he  shows 
familiarity  throughout  his  literary  career ;  Claudian,  to  whom  he 
refers  in  the  House  of  Fame ;  and  Titus,  no  doubt  Livy,  with 
whom  he  had  long  been  familiar  through  Le  Roman  de  la  Rose, 
and  whom  he  quotes,  not  necessarily  at  first  hand,  in  the  Legend  of 
Lucretia  and  in  the  Book  of  the  Duchess.  Vincent  of  Beauvais,3 
it  has  been  supposed,  or  else  Jerome  against  Jovinian,  is  quoted  on 
the  use  of  a  hyasna's  gall  to  cure  blindness  in  Fortune,  35-6,  a 
poem  of  wholly  uncertain  date ;  but  it  is  impossible  to  be  sure 
o£  the  source  of  an  idea  like  this,  and  moreover  this  poem  may  be  a 
translation.4  Chaucer  possibly  quotes  Vincent  in  the  Nun's  Priest's 
Tale,  4354,  and  probably  in  the  Wife  of  Bath's,  1195.  So  far  as 
evidence  goes,  then,  Vincent  is  associated  with  the  period  of  the 

1  See  also  Koch,  Chronology,  p.  83  ;  Bilderbeck,  p.  83. 

2  Frankl.    T.t  1364-456.     A   similar  list  and  discourse,  under  not  dis 
similar  circumstances,  is  to  be   found   in   Boccaccio's  Fiammetta   (Moutier, 
Florence,   1829  ;    vol.    vl,    pp.    181-99).      The    whole    eighth    chapter    is 
occupied   by  a  soliloquy,  in  which  Fiammetta  cites  and  dwells  on  two  or 
three  dozen  antique  heroines,  in  order  to  console  herself  for  her  disappointed 
love. 

:i  See  Lounsbury's  Studies,  ii.  379-80. 
4  Ibid., -p.  296. 


100  THE   LEGEND   OF   GOOD   WOMEN.  [CH.  IV,  §  1 

'Canterbury  Tales.  As  to  Valerius,  it  is  not  quite  certain  who 
is  meant,  for  Chaucer  mentions  three  of  the  name.  It  is  certainly 
not  Valerius  Flaceus,  the  author  of  the  Argonauticon.1  Skeat 
thinks  it  is  Walter  Map's  Dissuasio  Valerii  ad  Rufinum,2  which  he 
mentions  or  quotes  in  the  Wife  of  Bath's  Prologue  and  the 
Merchant's  Tale.3  Koeppel  and  Lounsbury  4  think  it  is  Valerius 
Maximus,  who  elsewhere  is  quoted  only  in  tha  Wife's  Tale  and 
Prologue,  and  perhaps  in  the  Nun's  Priest's  Tale  and  the  Monk's 
Tale.*  Though  the  last  has  sometimes  been  thought  earlier  than 
the  Legend,  this  has  certainly  not  been  proved,  and  later  I  hope  to 
go  very  far  toward  disproving  it.6  Certainly  it  is  fair  to  say  that 
Valerius  Maximus7  is  distinctly  associated  with  a  subsequent 
period.  With  the  work  of  Map  the  case  is  still  stronger. 
Jerome  against  Jovinian  Chaucer  uses  or  mentions  only  here 
and  in  the  Canterbury  Tales,  so  far  as  present  information  goes, 
and  except  for  one  or  two  possible  cases.  The  first  is  the  almost 
nugatory  one  mentioned  already,  in  which  in  Fortune  he  may  quote 
either  this  work  or  Vincent  of  Beauvais  ;  the  second  is  a  quotation 
from  either  Jerome  or  John  of  Salisbury  8  in  The  Former  Age  (33), 

1  Of.  L.  G.  W.,  1457-8 ;  T.  and  C.t  V.  8. 

2  In  Map's  De  Nugis  Curialium  (Camden  Society,  1850),  pp.  142-52. 
l!  See  Louusbury,  ii.  367-70  ;  Koeppel,  Anglia,  xiii.  181-3. 

4  Anglia,  xiii.  182  ;  Studies,  ii.  276. 

5  Lounsbury,    Studies,    ii.  273-6.     Miss   K.    0.    Petersen   (Sources  of  the 
N.  P.  T.,  Bosten,  1898  ;   pp.  110, 117)  shows  that  the  two  exempla  in  N.  P.  T. 
4174-4294  may  be  from  neither  Cicero  nor  Valerius  directly,  but  may  come  from 
the  latter  through  Robert  Holkot's  Super  Libros  Sapientice.    Professor  Bright 
(Mod.  Lang.  Notes,  ix.  241)  has  attempted  to  show  that  this  Valerius  is  quoted  in 
H.  F.  516.     The  Eleanor  to  whom  a  marvellous  dream  is  attributed  he  thinks 
is  Hamilcar,  whose  dream  as  to  the  taking  of  Syracuse  is  narrated  in  a  few 
lines  by  Valerius  in  book  I.  7,  8.      But  such  a  monstrous  corruption  as  this 
seems  hardly  probable  in  late  written  tradition.     I  fear  that  we  must  agree 
that  this  reference  is  still  unexplained.     The  conjecture  that  there  might  be 
something  to  explain  it  in  the  romance  of  Escanor  is  negatived  by  an  examin 
ation  of  that  poem  kindly  undertaken  by  Dr.  G.  L.  Hamilton. 

6  See  pp.  164-172  below. 

7  I  agree  with  Koeppel  and  Lounsbury  that  Chaucer  probably  refers  to  him. 
In  Valerii   Maximi  factorum    dictor  unique   memorabilium  libri  ix.  (Curiae 
Regnit,  1799),  iii.  2,  "De  fortitudine  "  praises  Portia,  wife  of  Brutus  ;  iv.  6, 
"  De  amore  conjugali"  again  praises  her,  and  also  Julia,  daughter  of  Caesar, 
and  others  ;  vi.  1,  "  De  pudicitia"  praises  Lucretia  and  others,  mainly  severe- 
minded    men;    vi.   7,    "De   fide  uxoruni   erga  maritos"   praises  the  wives 
of  Scipio  Africanus,  Q.  Lucretius  and  Lentulus.     Cf.  French,  p.  57,  whose 
treatment  of  the  subject  of  these  authors,  however,  is  very  unsatisfactory.    The 
work  of  Map  praises,  to  be  sure,  Lucretia,  Penelope,  and  the  Sabine  women  ; 
but  immediately  adds,  "  Amice,  nulla  est  Lueretia,   nulla  Penelope,   nulla 
Sabina  ;  omnes  time  "  (p.  145).     An  allusion  to  this  book  by  the  God  of  Love 
could  be  explained  only  as  a  mauvaise  plaisanterie. 

8  The  Rev.  W.  W.  Woollcombe  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  proved  Chaucer 
not  to  have  known  the  Polycratwus  (Ch,  Soc.  Essays,  295-8). 


CH.  IV,  §  1]    THE    TWO    PROLOGUES  :    THE   QUESTION    OF  PRIORITY.    lOl 

a  poem  of  unknown  date,  which  cannot  be  assumed  to  be  contem 
poraneous  with  the  Boetliius.  What  has  usually  been  deemed  a 
third  use  of  Jerome  occurs  in  both  forms  of  this  very  prologue — 
the  mention  of  "  Marcia  Catoun "  as  a  "  Good  Woman "  in  the 
Balade.  But  I  have  tried  to  show  elsewhere  that  such  is  very 
unlikely  to  have  been  her  source,  and  that  she  is  most  likely  derived 
from  the  Divine  Comedy,  where  the  poets  meet  Marcia  the  wife 
of  Cato  in  Limbo,  and  in  Purgatory  appeal  to  the  husband  in  her 
name.1  There  is  no  evidence,  therefore,  that  Chaucer  was  familiar 
with  any  of  St.  Jerome's  works  before  the  time  of  the  Canterbury 
Tales?  But  then  he  quotes  from  Jerome  against  Jovinian  fre 
quently  and  extensively ;  twice  in  the  Pardoner's  Tale  (505,  527), 
once  in  the  Manciple's  Tale  (148),  largely  in  the  Franldiris  Tale 
(1367-456),  and  (as  Koeppel  shows)  in  the  Wife  of  Bath's  Prologue, 
the  Simmer's  Tale,  and  the  Merchant's  Tale, passim.3  Now  in  the  G 
prologue  Chaucer  betrays  great  intimacy  with  the  work ;  otherwise  it 
is  the  last  thing  which  he  would  think  of  making  Love  quote,  and 
while  the  other  authors  are  barely  mentioned  he  has  twenty-four 
lines  on  Jerome's  work.  Does  not  this  fact  point  to  a  period  when 
he  was  especially  familiar  with  it  1  Therefore  of  the  six  authors 
mentioned  we  have  found  three  to  be  more  or  less  distinctly  and 
emphatically  aSociated  with  the  Canterbury-period.4 

The  only  two  long  passages,  therefore,  which  are  each  found  in 
only  one  version  are  unambiguous  in  their  testimony.  That  in  F  is 
likely  to  have  been  written  relatively  early  in  Chaucer's  poetic  career, 
because  it  resembles  in  tone  several  of  his  earlier  works  ;  and  might 
well  be  omitted  on  revision  because  it  is  a  digression.  That  in  G, 
on  the  other  hand,  performs  a  function  in  the  narrative,  and  by  its 
character  and  by  the  authors  to  whom  it  refers  associates  itself  with 
Chaucer's  later  work. 

A  somewhat  similar  argument  may  be  based  on  the  mention  in  G 
only,  among  Chaucer's  own  works,  of  the  book, 

1  Inf.,  IV.  128  ;  Purg.,  I.  78-81.     See  Mod.  Philol,  iii.  368-70. 

2  He  quotes  him  several  times  in  the  Pars.  T.,  which  may  antedate  most  of 
the  C.  T.  ;  but  it  is  certainly  a  translation. 

3  See  Skeat's  index  of  authors  ;  Lounsbury's  Studies,  ii.  292-7  ;  Koeppel, 
Anglia,  xiii.  174-81.     One  cannot  help  fancying  that  Chaucer  first  became 
familiar  with  this  work  when  he  was  planning  and  writing  W.  B.  P.     See 
also  pp.  202,  209,  212  below. 

4  Of  course  this  is  no  proof  that  he  did  not  know  some  of  them  earlier, 
but   the   inference  is    justifiable    that    he    was    not    familiar  with    all  of 
them. 


102  THE   LEGEND   OF  GOOD    WOMEN.  [CH.  IV,  §  2. 

"  '  Of  the  Wreched  Engendring  of  Mankinde,' 
As  man  may  in  pope  Innocent  y-finde."  l 

Professor  Lowes 2  is  no  more  assuredly  right  in  rejecting  the 
biographical  reasons  for  dating  this  work  in  the  late  eighties  than 
in  deducing  a  late  date  from  the  use  of  it  in  the  Man  of  Law's 
Prologue  and  Tale,3  and  the  Pardoner's  Tale,  and  also  in  dwelling 
on  the  improbability  of  Chaucer's  mentioning  it  here  unless  he  had 
just  produced  it. 

This  finishes  the  evidence  on  the  question  of  priority,  save 
for  the  three  matters  which  I  have  been  holding  in  solution. 
Aside  from  them,  points  of  superiority  in  F  are  negligible.  The 
indications  that  G  is  the  later,  on  the  other  hand,  are  many  and 
various,  and  by  no  possibility  which  I  can  conceive,  even  granted 
that  individually  they  are  sometimes  small,  can  they  be  explained 
away.  Considerations  of  merit  and  of  literary  relations  both  lend 
strong  support  to  the  crucial  evidence  supplied  by  Lowes'  demon 
stration  of  the  closer  connection  of  F  with  certain  French  models. 
It  remains  for  me  to  attempt  the  rehabilitation  and  extension  of  the 
old  and  orthodox  theory  of  a  personal  compliment  to  the  queen 
paid  through  Prologue  F,  and  removed  from  G  ;  which  I  believe 
will  account  for  all  the  respects  in  which  the  latter  seems  inferior 
to  the  former. 


§  2.  Its  Connection  with  the  Queen. 

The  theory  which  I  propose  as  to  a  connection  between  the 
Legend  of  Good  Women  and  the  queen  is  largely  the  old  one ;  but 
I  can  offer  new  evidence  for  it,  and  make  a  new  application  of  it. 

i  I  believe  :— That  Chaucer  uses  the  daisy  and  Alcestis  expressly  as 
vehicles  for  his  personal  tribute  to  Queen  Anne ;  that  accordingly 

;  the  personal  devotion  expressed  in  F  was  meant  and  understood  as 
a  compliment  to  her ;  that  the  writing  of  the  whole  Legend  was  a 

1  It  also  seems  odd  that  if  F  is  the  later,  Chaucer  should  at  once  omit  this 
work  and  substitute  holynesse  for  besinesse  just  before.     Legouis  takes  an 
opposite  view  (p.  68). 

2  Pull.  Mod.  Lang.   Assoc.,  xx.  790-4.     The  force  of  the  argument  was 
admitted  by  even  Koch  (ChronoL,  86),  but  later  he  changed  his  mind  (Engl. 
Stud.,  xxx.  457).     And  cf.  Legouis,  65. 

3  Cf.  pp.  181-2  below.     I  show  on  p.  214  that  the  passage  in   W.  B.  P.  is 
perhaps  due  to  Gower's  Mirour.     Another  connection  between  G  and  M.  L.  T. 
(pointed  out  by  Koeppel,  Herrig's  Archil),  Ixxxiv.  411)  is  that  G  312,  529 
parallel  M.  L.  T.  701-2. 


CH.  IV,  §  2]  ITS    CONNECTION    WITH    THE    QUEEN.  103 

task  imposed,  in  a  light  vein,  by  her ; x  that  the  revision  of  the 
Prologue  was  made  after  her  death ;  and  that  all  the  passages  in  it 
which  definitely  recalled  the  earlier  connection  with  her  were 
carefully  excised,  probably  out  of  consideration  to  her  husband's 
feelings.  -  Put  thus  baldly,  this  may  well  sound  rash  and  gratui 
tous  ;  but  I  believe  there  is  excellent  evidence  for  all  of  it,  and 
that  thus  alone  can  the  facts  be  explained. 

Tyrwhitt  first  showed  the  connection  with  Queen  Anne  made  by 
the  couplet  (F,  496-7)  in  which  Alcestis  instructs  the  poet  to 
present  the  finished  work  to  the  queen,  "at  Eltham,  or  at  Shene."2 
Ten  Brink  in  1870  suggested3  that  the  queen  was  celebrated  by 
means  of  the  daisy  and  Alcestis,  and  that  the  whole  was  a  tribute 
of  gratitude  to  her  for  having  secured  for  Chaucer  in  February, 
1385,  permission  to  discharge  his  custom-house  duties  through  a 
deputy.  Till  1903  this  view  was  accepted  by  everybody  (I  believe) 
who  expressed  himself  in  print  on  the  subject ;  by  Dr.  Furnivall 
(doubtfully)  in  187 1,4  by  Professor  Skeat  in  1894  and  earlier,5  by 
Dr.  Koch  in  1890,6  by  Mr.  A.  W.  Pollard  in  1901,7  and  by 
Professor  Bilderbeck  in  1902.8  In  one  of  the  last  articles  he 
ever  wrote,9  ten  Brink  kept  this  date  for  the  first  version  of  the 
Prologue  and  for  the  legends,  and  therefore  evidently  held  to  the 
theories  on  which  the  date  rested.  But  in  1903  1  showed10  tjiat, 
since  the  petition  that  Chaucer  might  be  allowed  a  deputy  was^ 
signed  by  Eobert  de  Vere,  Earl  of  Oxford,  it  was  he  and  not  the 
queen  who  was  Chaucer's  sponsor  in  this  matter,  and  that  therefore 
there  is  no  such  external  reason  for  connecting  the  Legend  with 
the  date  1385,  or  with  the  queen.  My  conclusions  have  been 
almost  universally  accepted.11  But  Professor  Lowes,12  acting  in  part 

1  In  this  point  I  slightly  modify  iny  earlier  article  on  L.  G.  W.  (Mod. 
PhiloL,  i.  326). 

2  C.  T.  (1830),  I.  clxi.     He  pointed  out  that  we  must  therefore  date  the 
poem  not  earlier  than  1382,  when  Richard  II.  married. 

3  Studien,  pp.  147  ff.     A  list  of  those  who  have  accepted  the  identification 
of  Alcestis  and  Anne  is  given  by  Lowes,  Publ.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.,  xix.  666  ; 
but  add  Legouis,  p.  69.     The  daisy  was  always  believed  to  mean  some  living 
woman  ;  Speght  in  1602  (p.  b.  vi.  bis)  stated  that  it  typified  Princess  Margaret. 

4  Trial  Forewords,  pp.  25,  106.  5  III.  xix. 

6  Chronology,  44-5. 

7  Globe  Chaucer,  xlv.  ;  cf.  Chaucer  Primer,  95-6. 

8  Bilderbeck,  Chaucer's  L.  G.   W.,  p.  88,  note. 

9  Engl.  Stud.,  xvii.  19.    Cf.  also  his  History  of  English  Literature  (1893), 
ii.  110-13.  10  Mod.  PhiloL,  i.  324-9. 

11  By  Lowes,  Publ.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.,  xix.  670  ;  (apparently)  by  French, 
The  Problem  of  the  Two  Prologues  (Baltimore,  1905),  p.  21  ;  by  Koch,  Engl. 
Stud.,  xxxvi.  141-2.  Root  rejects  them  (p.  141).  12  L.  c.,  669-76. 


104  THE   LEGEND   OF  GOOD    WOMEN.  [cH.  IV,  §  2 

on  my  evidence,  goes  so  far  as  to  reject  all  connection  between  the 
queen  and  the  apparent  symbolism  of  Prologue  F.  Herein  I 
believe  he  goes  too  far,  and  that  his  and  my  opinion  that  F  is  the 
earlier  version  is  greatly  strengthened  by  the  orthodox  view  as  to 
the  queen  and  the  Prologue. 

Let  us  first  consider  the  surface  appearance  of  the  two  versions. 
That  some  living  woman  is  symbolized  by  the  daisy  and  by 
Alcestis  in  F,  and  not  in  G,  seems  a  plausible  and  almost  inevitable 
conjecture.  In  their  treatment  of  the  daisy,  the  contrast,  as  to 
personal  devotion,  between  the  two  versions  can  hardly  be 
exaggerated.  In  G  this  devotion  finds  distinct  expression  only  in 
lines  40-8,  55-60,  92,  511-12;  in  F,  however,  in  40-8,  50-9, 
60-72,  82-96,  103-111,  115-17,  180-7,  201-2,  211,  523-4. 
Again,  it  is  expressed  in  F  with  a  warmth  to  which  there  is  no 
parallel  in  the  other  version.  Consider,  among  others,  the  follow 
ing  lines  peculiar  to  F  : 

"  Ther  loved  no  wight  hotter  in  his  lyve"  (59) ; 

"  The  herte  in-with  my  sorowful  brest  yow  dredeth, 
And  loveth  so  sore,  that  ye  ben  verrayly 
The  maistresse  of  my  wit,  and  nothing  I  "  (86-8) ; 

"  My  besy  gost  .... 
Constreyned  me  with  so  gledy  desyr, 
That  in  my  herte  I  fele  yit  the  fyr  "  (103-6). 

All  this  language,  it  must  be  remarked,  is  used  toward  the  daisy. 
In  lines  69-83  he  appeals  to  lovers  to  help'^him  praise  the  flower, 
and  apologizes  to  them,  instead  of  to  the  indefinite  "  folk  "  of  G, 
for  repeating  their  words.  Three  small  points  may  be  especially 
noted  :  in  F  he  writes 

"  in  the  honour 

Of  love,  and  eek  in  service  of  the  flour  "  (81-2), 
in  G 

"  in  forthering  and  honour 
Of  hem  that  either  serven  leef  or  flour  "  (69-70) ; 

he  is  kneeling  by  the  daisy  in  F  (308)  when  the  procession  enters 
and  surrounds  him — "faste  by  under  a  bente"  in  G  (234);  and 
only  in  the  former  does  the  God  of  Love  call  the  daisy  his  flower 
(316,  318),  or  his  relic  (321).  Finally,  there  is  no  mistaking  in 
F  the  human  symbolism  of  the  daisy.  This  appears  first  in  the 
pronouns  used  in  speaking  of  it.  In  G,  hit  is  used  in  49,  52-3, 


CH    IV,  §  2]  ITS    CONNECTION    WITH   THE    QUEEN.  105 

and  she  only  in  95  (which  reads  practically  the  same  in  F) ;  in  F 
hit  is  used  in  49,  52,  56,  62,  65,  111,  117,  183,  but  she  (hir)  in 
53,  63,  64,  84,  186-7,  and  yow  (ye,  your)  in  86-7,  89,  92,  93,  94, 
95.  Although  the  change  to  the  second  person  is  due  to  the  fact 
that  Chaucer  is  translating  here  from  the  Filostrato,1  while 
Boccaccio  uses  the  singular  tu,  Chaucer  changes  to  the  more 
reverent  plural.2  The  personal  symbolism  shows  markedly  in  the 
use  of  such  expressions  toward  the  daisy  as  maistresse  (88),  lady 
sovereyne  (94  ;  cf.  271-5,  where  similar  language  is  used  of 
Alcestis,  in  F  only),  erthly  god3  (95;  cf.  the  whole  passage,  83- 
96),  this  flour  so  yong,4  so  fresh  of  hewe  (104), — all  of  which 
are  unparalleled  in  G.  In  contrast  to  this  reiteration,  intensity 
and  unquestionable  inner  meaning,  we  have  in  G  only  the 
minimum  of  devotion  necessary  to  justify  the  introduction  of  the 
daisy  at  all.5  As  to  Alcestis,  she  is  explicitly  identified  with  the 
daisy  in  both  versions  (G  499-500,  506-7;  F  511-12,  518-19), 
and  in  gratitude  for  her  protection  is  highly  extolled  for  her  beauty 
and  goodness  ;  but  in  F  Chaucer's  devotion  to  her  is  slightly 
pronounced  (cf.  270-5,  not  in  G).6  There  can  be  no  doubt  tat  X 
all  these  differences  were  deliberate;  either  Chaucer  introduced  i  ) 
human  symbolism  and  an  appearance  of  warm  feeling  into  a  poem  V 
originally  without  a  sign  of  either,7  or  else  he  cut  them  out  of  a 
poem  that  had  had  both. 

It  has  seemed  worth  while  to  sift  out  the  reasons  for  the  impres 
sion  of  personal  feeling  which  F  gives  as  opposed  to  G,  because  it 
brings  the  issue  to  a  head.  But  now  how  is  it  all  to  be  interpreted  ? 
Lowes  says  this  feeling  is  all  literary  convention,  and  directed  to 
Chaucer's i  ideal-  mistress  Alcestis 7  "all  these  assumed  allusions  of 
CKaucer  to  the  Queen  are  nothing  whatever  but  translations. of  such 

1  See  Lowes,  Publ.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.,  xix.  619. 

2  Evidently  he  would  not  thou  his  queen. 

3  Skeat  (III.  xxiii)  glosses  this  phrase  by  line  387,  where  Alcestis  says 
that  lords  (Skeat  errs  in  saying  Icings)  are  "half-goddes  in  this  world  here." 

4  The  queen  was  twenty  at  the  probable  date  of  the  F  prologue. 

5  Chaucer  expresses  love  for  the  daisy  only  once  (42-4),  and  in  the  plural 
(these  floures). 

6  In  F  Alcestis  seems  to  be  the  vehicle  for  Chaucer's  veneration  toward  the 
queen,  and  the  daisy  for  his  "courtly  love." 

7  So  Furnivall  (Trial  Forewords,  p.  106).     Skeat  (III.  xxii.)  thinks  that 
even  in  G  the  queen  was  symbolized,  but  so  inadequately  that  Chaucer  at 
once  rewrote  it.     Not  only  is  such  a  procedure  highly  improbable,  and  not 
only  does  it  represent  Chaucer  as  singularly  helpless  and  inept,  but  if  we 
had  only  version  G  we  should  be  unable  to  detect  more  symbolism  than  the 
relation  between  the  daisy  and  Alcestis. 


106  THE    LEGEND   OF  GOOD    WOMEN.  [CH.  IV,  §  2 

conventional  expressions  as  form  the  very  warp  and  woof  of  the 
French  poems  he  was  imitating;"1  all  the  personal  language, 
including  the  lady  sovereyne,  he  regards  as  "  commonplaces  taken 
over  bodily  from  the  originals  "  in  French  and  Italian,  and  the  use 
of  she  or  her  for  the  daisy  is  "  simply  the  adoption  of  the  convention 
of  the  type."  As  to  this  last  point,  Lowes  disregards  the  obvious 
fact  that  while  elle  is  required  in  French  by  the  grammatical  gender 
of  flour  and  margherite,  she  in  English  is  wholly  personal.  He  is 
quite  justified  in  saying  that  Chaucer's  other  personal  and  emotional 
language,  and  his  celebration  of  the  daisy,  are  paralleled  in  French 
poetry ;  and  he  has  made  an  important  contribution  to  the  subject 
by  showing  that  this  alone  cannot  prove  a  connection  with 
the  queen.  But  an  examination  of  all  the  French  poems  in 
question  will  show  that  Chaucer  altogether  outdoes  his  French 
exemplars.  These  poems  may  be  divided  into  two  classes.  Of 
long  narratives  there  are  two,  Deschamps'  Lay  de  Franchise,  and 
Froissart's  Paradys  dj  Amours,  to  which  Lowes  has  shown  that 
Chaucer  is  deeply  indebted  for  his  plan.  The  lyric  poems  comprise 
Machault's  Dit  de  la  Marguerite,  Froissart's  Dittie  de  la  flour  de 
la  Margherite,  Le  joli  mois  de  May,  the  1 7th  Pastourelle  and  the 
end  of  the  Plaidoirie,  and  a  dozen  or  so  of  Deschamps'  balades. 
Most  of  these  poems  fall  far  behind  Chaucer's  in  intensity  and 
insistency  of  feeling.  Of  all  of  them  the  warmest  devotion  and 
love  is  to  be  found  in  the  first  two  of  the  lyrics ;  elsewhere  courtly 
compliment  is  paid  to  the  flower,  and  devotion  to  the  poet's  lady, 
but  the  two  are  rarely  combined,  as  in  Chaucer.  What  Chaucer 
has  really  done  is  to  combine  the  lyric  warmth  of  Machault's  Dit 
and  Froissart's  Dittie  with  the  narrative  schemes  of  Froissart 
and  Deschamps,  introducing  also  an  intensely  personal  passage 
from  Boccaccio's  Filostrato  ;  so  that  he  may  indeed  be  said  to  have 
outdone  his  models  in  strength  and  personalness  of  feeling.  These 
French  and  Italian  poems  are  known  to  have  been  addressed 
to  real  ladies,  and  their  strong  language  therefore  had  point; 
must  we  believe  that  Chaucer  even  went  bejond  them,  yet  had 
'. — nobody  in  view  nearer  than  a  mythical  Greek  lady?  With  the 
conditions  in  the  later  version  Lowes'  view  would  perfectly  agree ; 
but  it  attributes  to  F,  it  seems  to  me,  tasteless  and  pointless  extrava 
gance.  We  may  well  agree  with  the  God  of  Love  that  Chaucer's  wit 
is  full  cool ;  his  manner  here  would  seem  very  much  out  of  character. 
1  Publ.  M.  L.  A.,  xix.  670-1 :  cf.  620-1. 


CH.  IV,  §  2]  ITS    CONNECTION    WITH    THE    QUEEN.  107 

But  Lowes  believes1  that  some  of  this  language  would  hardly  fit 
the  queen  either ;  that  an  identification  of  the  daisy  and  Alcestis 
with  the  queen  involves  offences  against  taste  and  reason.  The 
question  is,  of  course,  what  we  mean  by  identification ;  it  seems  to 
me,  though  this  is  a  charge  that  can  rarely  be  brought  against 
Professor  Lowes'  views,  that  his  conception  of  it  is  rather  bare  and 
bald.  I  conceive  that  Chaucer  wished  to  pay  a  gallant  and 
delicate  tribute  to  his  queen ;  that  he  adopted  a  well-recognized 
form,  poetic  praise  of  the  daisy,  which  at  once  set  people  asking 
who  was  really  meant ;  his  overt  answer  in  the  poem  is — Alcestis  ; 
an  answer  which,  considering  contemporary  custom  and  the  strength 
of  his  language,  was  hardly  quite  satisfying,  yet  took  the  crude 
edge  off  the  identification  with  the  queen ;  the  more  subtle  answer 
is  indicated  when  Alcestis  herself  says  at  the  end  that  the  whole 
completed  poem  is  to  be  laid  as  a  tribute  at  the  feet  of  Anne.  He 
that  had  ears  to  hear,  let  him  hear.  A  lady  is  ardently  celebrated 
in  the  poem,  which  announces  its  own  dedication  and  presentation 
to  a  lady  ;  must  they  not  in  some  way  be  identified  ?  Supposing 
Chaucer  had  wished  to  celebrate  the  queen  in  the  Legend  of  Good 
Women,  how  could  he  have  done  it  better  1  Obviously  the  daisy 
could  not  be  made  to  speak,  nor  could  he  bring  Queen  Anne  in 
person  into  the  poem.  I  shall  suggest  presently  that  the  poem  wad 
probably  destined  to  be  read  at  court ;  what  could  be  more  tasteful 
and  clever  than  Chaucer's  method?  There  had  to  be  a  human 
understudy  and  intermediary,  and  what  more  suitable  one  could 
be  chosen  than  Alcestis,  the  model  queen  and  devoted  wife, 
who  had  had  for  years  such  a  charm  for  the  poet?2  This  tacit 
understanding  secured  delicacy,  and  gave  him  freedom ;  he  might 
express  as  much  latria  for  the  daisy  as  he  pleased,  and  by 
the  time  it  had  passed  through  the  hands  of  Alcestis  to  those 
of  the  queen  it  had  become  nothing  more  than  a  proper  dulia. 
I  do  not  think  this  is  over-subtle,  though  of  course  what  it 
makes  explicit  was  in  Chaucer's  mind  in  part  only  implicit ;  and 
it  makes  innocuous  the  warmth  of  the  affection  which  Chaucer 
expresses.  Considering  that  for  years  poets  had  applied  similar 
language  to  ladies  whom  they  had  not  always  a  right  to  address  so, 

1  Pp.  671-2,  note. 

2  Chaucer  had  already  several  times,  while  following  a  more  or  less  common 
late  mediaeval  literary  custom,  foreshadowed  his  collection  of  the  martyrs  of 
love  and  his  celebration  of  Alcestis.     See  B.  D.,  62-220,  330-1,  726-41, 
1080-7  ;  T.  (7.,  V.  1527-33,  1777-8  ;  H.  F.,  239-382,  388-426. 


108  THE   LEGEND   OF   GOOD    WOMEN.  [cH.  IV,  §  2 

and  considering  the  free  manners  of  the  time,  the  customs  of 
"  courtly  love,"  and  the  familiar  sort  of  relations  which  we  are 
coming  to  see  more  and  more  clearly  had  existed  for  years  between 
Chaucer  and  the  court,  why  should  not  the  genial  poet  of  forty- 
five  or  so  have  thus  addressed  his  queen  of  twenty]  It  seems 
also  to  make  the  identification  a  little  too  strict  and  frank  to  see  a 
I  violation  of  good  taste  in  the  bare  mention  of  Alcestis'  death  and 
going  to  hell  instead  of  her  husband ;  was  Chaucer  to  ignore  the 
\  main  element  in  her  story  1  And  the  fact  that  it  is  Alcestis  who 
V^bids  the  poet  present  the  book  to  the  queen  seems  to  me  not  in  the 
slightest  degree  to  contradict  such  a  vague  relation  between  the 
two  as  I  have  conceived,  but  rather  to  strengthen  the  probability 
of  it.1  Finally,  it  seems  to  me  that  in  one  passage  of  the  Prologue,2 
quoted  earlier  for  another  reason,  there  is  strong  evidence  for  pre 
cisely  such  an  ill-defined  but  close  connection  of  the  queen  with 
the  poem,  and  its  daisy  and  lady,' as  I  had  conceived  before  I  noted 
this  passage.  After  highly  praising  Alcestis, 

"  Than  seyde  Love,  *a  ful  gret  negligence 
Was  hit  to  thee,  that  ilke  tynie  thou  made 
"  Hyd,  Absolon,  thy  tresses,"  in  balade, 
That  thou  forgete  hir  in  thy  song  to  sette, 
Sin  that  thou  art  so  gretly  in  hir  dette ' "    (537-41). 

Love  believes  that  the  "  rny  lady  "  of  the  Balade  is  another  than 
Alcestis ;  who  is  she  if  not  the  queen  1  Chaucer  may  have  landed 
himself  in  subtle  difficulties3  by  his  hypostatic  union,  but  some 
such  union  he  clearly  made.  Here  he  sacrifices  a  little  poetic 
^  propriety  in  order  to  make  his  compliment  plainer. 

A  somewhat  close  connection  of  the  Legend  of  Good  Women 
with  the  court  circle  and  the  queen  is  made  particularly  plausible 
by  the  close  and  familiar  association  with  them  which  we  are 
learning  that  Chaucer  enjoyed.  I  need  only  recall  his  almost  life- 

1  The  substitution  in  G  of  And  in  the  "/  al  foryeve"  in  F  450,  of  which 
Lowes  (p.  672,  note)  makes  much,  I  have  little  doubt  is  a  scribal  variation ;  it 
comes  in  a  long  passage  in  which  all  the  variants  appear  to  be  such,  as  we 
shall  see  presently. 

2  Cf.  ten  Brink's .  not  very  satisfactory  discussion  of  this  passage  in  Engl. 
Stud.,  xvii.  16-18. 

3  Another  one  (it  may  be  thought)  is  that  while  according  to  my  suggestion 
it  was  the  queen  who  had  upbraided  Chaucer  for  writing  "the  Rose  and  eek 
Criseyde,"  Alcestis  apologizes  for  his  having  done  so.     Here  it  is  the  God  of 
Love  that  plays  the  queen's  part.     But  a  critic  must  feel  that  this  cold 
blooded  analysis  rather  spoils  things.     Chaucer's  method  here  is  not  only 
intelligible  enough  artistically,  but  is  notably  delicate  and  clever. 


CH.  IV,  §  2]  ITS    CONNECTION    WITH    THE    QUEEN.  109 

long  connection  with  John  of  Gaunt,  and  the  familiar  relations 
which  Professor  Kittredge  has  shown  to  have  subsisted  between 
Chaucer  and  other  members  of  the  court  circle;1  the  fact  that  pro 
bably  his  wife  was  sister  to  Katherine  Swynford,  John's  mistress  and 
finally  wife  ;  that  exactly  as  he  fell  into  misfortune  in  1386,  when 
Parliament  began  to  object  to  the  king's  appointees,  just  so  his 
prosperity  revived  in  1389,  with  the  king's  return  to  authority;2 
that,  to  say  nothing  of  many  other  appointments  and  pensions 
from  the  Crown,  he  had  been  sent  to  France  in  1378  to  negotiate 
Eichard's  marriage,  and  (as  I  have  said  elsewhere)3  perhaps  his  later 
trip  to  Milan  may  have  been  not  unconnected  with  the  marriage- 
proposals  of  Eichard  and  Caterina  Visconti ;  finally,  that  he  wrote") 
the  Parliament  of  Fowls  to  celebrate  the  betrothal  of  Eichard  and  ^ 
Anne,  a  poem  written  in  such  a  light  and  at  times  even  jocose  vein 
as  would  have  been  very  unsuitable  as  coming  from  the  pen  of  any 
but  a  real  friend.  I  should  conceive  Chaucer's  relations  with  the 
royal  family,  allowing  for  personal  differences,  to  have  been  some 
thing  like  those  between  Sir  David  Lyndsay  and  the  young 
James  V.  of  Scotland,  which  account  for  the  respectful  familiarity 
which  the  former  often  expresses  in  his  poems.  There  is  a  parallel 
to  this  in  the  admonitory  tone  of  Chaucer's  balade,  Lack  of  Stead 
fastness,  obviously  addressed  to  King  Eichard. 

For  the  connection  of  Chaucer  and  the  Legend  with  the  queen, 

i  and  certainly  with  the  court  circle,  there  is  some  evidence  in  the 

allusions  in  the  Prologue  to  the  Flower  and   Leaf   cult,  which 

Professor  Kittredge  suggests  imply  some  kind  of  a  court  club.4    In 

1  Modern  Philology,  i.  1  ff. 

2  Within  two  months  in  each  case.     Cf.  Hales  in  Diet.  Nat.  Biogr. ,  x.  165  ; 
ibid.,  xlviii.  148.     Chaucer's  new  appointment  seems  to  have  been  connected 
rather  with  this  than  with  John  of  Gaunt' s  return  to  England. 

3  See  pp.  41-2  above.     See  also  Life  Records,  pp.  xxviii.  203,  230.      Other 
connections   with   the  court  are  his    intimacy   with  the    courtier  Bukton 
(pp.  210-11  below),  and  the  fact  that  the  Earl  of  Oxford  got  him  his  custom 
house  deputy. 

4  Mod.  Philol.,  i.  1-2.     The  lines  which  I  quote  show,  according  to  him, 
"that  English  court  society,  in  the  time  of  Richard  II.,  entertained  itself  by 
dividing  into  two  amorous  orders — the  Leaf  and  the  Flower— and  by  discuss 
ing  .  .  .  the  comparative  excellence  of  those  two  emblems  or  of  the  qualities 
they  typified.     If  we  call  in  Gower's  testimony  also,  we  are  perhaps  justified 
in  supposing  that  the  two  orders  sometimes  appeared  in  force,  each  member 
bedecked  with  the  symbol  to  which  he  or  she  had  sworn  allegiance."     He 
refers  to  Gower's  Confessio  Amantis  (ed.  by  Macaulay,  vol.  iii.,  p.  453),  and  to 
L.  G.  W.  (G),  69-70  ;  T.  C.,  I.,  st.  3 ;  Sq.  T.,  272.     The  Daisy  cult,  presumably 
at  first  independent,  of  course  was  readily  absorbed  by  the  other.    It  is  a  plausi 
ble  guess  that  the  queen  belonged  to  the  order  of  the  Flower,  and  therefore, 
celebrating  her  as  the  daisy,  Chaucer  is  anxious  to  disclaim  permanent  partisan- 


110  THE    LEGEND   OF  GOOD    WOMEN.  [CH.  IV,  §  2 

spite  of  his  devotion  to  the  daisy-blossom,  he  is  anxious  lest  he  shall 
be  thought  a  partisan  of  the  Flower  against  the  Leaf,  which  he 
denies  being  (F,  191-6;  G,  75-80): 

1  *  For,  as  to  me,  nis  lever  noon  ne  lother ; 
I  nam  with-holden  yit  with  never  nother. 
Ne^lTnot  who  serveth  leef ,  ne  who  the  flour  ; 
Wei  brouken  they  hir  service  or  labour  ; 
For  this  thing  is  al  of  another  tonne, 
Of  olde  story,  er  swich  thing  was  begonne." 

This  sounds  as  if  there  were  some  jocose  mystery  about  it,  and  (as 
Professor  Kittredge  points  out  to  me)  as  if  Chaucer  had  not  yet 
become  a  member.  Now  the  first  literary  expression  of  the  Daisy 
and  Flower  and  Leaf  cults  are  in  the  works  of  Machault,  Froissart 
and  Deschamps,  and  further,  one  of  these  poems,  Froissart's  Prison 
Amoureuse,  written  in  1371,  is  addressed  probably  to  Wenceslas  of 
Brabant,  Anne's  own  cousin,  and  Froissart's  friend  and  patron.1 
The  second  cult  seemingly  developed  among  royal  ladies  connected 
with  France,  and  finally  it  involved  one  of  John  of  Gaunt's  daughters, 
in  1386  or  earlier.2  May  we  not  even  conjecture  that  it  was  partly 
through  Queen  Anne  that  it  was  introduced  into  England  ?  There 
is  some  countenance  for  this  suggestion  in  the  way  in  which  Gower 
mentions  the  Flower  and  the  Leaf  (VIII.  24G7-72) ;  the  companies 
of  lovers  wore 

"  Garlandes  noght  of  o  colour, 

Some  of  the  lef,  some  of  the  flour, 

And  some  of  grete  Perles  were ; 

The  newe  guise  of  Beawme  there, 

With  sondri  thinges  wel  devised, 

I  sih,  wherof  thei  ben  queintised." 

He  thus  connects  the  Flower  and  Leaf  cult  with  the  new  Bohemian 
fashions  introduced  by  Queen  Anne. 

Two  or  three  passages  in  the  poem  suggest  that  Chaucer  had  in 
mind  to  read  it  aloud  in  a  circle  of  his  friends,  presumably  at 
court.3  At  the  end  of  the  Legend  of  Phyllis,  he  says  (2559-61) : 

"Be  war,  ye  women,  of  your  sotil  fo, 
Sin  yit  this  day  men  may  ensample  see ; 
And  trusteth,  as  in  love,  no  man  but  me." 

ship.  If  the  Leaf  people  wish  to  make  him  a  member,  he  will  not  decline. 
On  all  this  cf.  an  article  by  G.  L.  Marsh  in  Modern  Philology,  iv.  121-167. 

1  See  Lowes,  in  Publ.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.,  xix.  600. 

2  Kittredge  in  Mod.  PhiloL,  i.  4. 

3  I  find  Mather  makes  the  same  suggestion  (Chaucer's  Prol.}  etc.,  xxiii. ). 


CH.  IV,  §  2]  ITS    CONNECTION    WITH    THE    QUEEN.  Ill 

In  the  Legend  of  Hypsipyle  he  says  of  Jason  (1554-5) : 

"  But  in  this  hous  if  any  fals  lover  be, 
Right  as  him-self  now  doth,  right  so  dide  he." 

I  take  this  as  explaining  a  phrase  in  G  85  : 

"  For  myn  entent  is,  or  I  fro  yow  fare, 
The  naked  text  in  English  to  declare 
Of  many  a  story."  1 

Does  not  this  also  account  for  the  informal,  colloquial,  jocose  and 
even  frivolous  tone  which  is  more  striking  in  the  Legend  2  than  in 
almost  any  of  Chaucer's  poems,  even  than  in  the  Canterbury  Tales, 
which  are  represented  as  orally  delivered  ?  Does  it  not  especially 
account  for  Chaucer's  jocosely  classing  himself,  in  G,  among  "  old 
fools"  (262,315)? 

It  will  be  recollected  that  according  to  Lydgate  it  was  the  queen 
that  dictated  the  subject  of  the  Legend: 

"  This  poete  wrote,  at  the  request  of  the  quene, 
A  Legende,  of  perfite  holynesse, 
Of  Good  Women,  to  fynd  out  nynetene."3 

1  This  passage  is  Koeppel's  chief  argument  for  believing  the  G -prologue  meant 
to  be  delivered  as  a  Canterbury   Tale  (Literaturblatt,  xiv.,  col.  52).      Of. 
p.  89  above.     But  allusions  to  the  practice  of  reading  aloud  are  not  uncommon 
in  Chaucer's  works  ;  see  .4.^,165^6.;  T  C  ,T  45kJLjO,43,  1751  ;  01.  T., 
1163  ;  even  Pars.  T.,  lQST~sM3TAstrolabe,  Prol.,   48.     Cf.   also  Lounsbury, 
Studies,  i.  228. 

2  Cf.  the  end  of  the  Cleopatra  (703-5) : 

"  Now,  er  I  finde  a  man  thus  trewe  and  stable, 
And  wol  for  love  his  deeth  so  freely  take, 
I  pray  god  lat  our  hedes  never  ake  !  " 

See  also  863,  1076-7,  1383,  1557,  1887,  1893,  2177-80,  2227,  2490-3.  I  may 
ask,  by  the  way,  whether  the  intimacy  with  Minos  as  infernal  judge  which 
produced  the  rather  superfluous  apostrophe  to  him  in  one  of  the  above  passages, 
1886-8,  was  not  due  to  his  prominence  in  the  Divine  Comedy  (Inferno,  V.  4-24, 
and  elsewhere),  rather  than  to  the  Aeneid,  where  he  is  barely  mentioned  (VI. 
431-3). 

3  See  Skeat,  III.   xx.       "Lydgate  can  hardly  be  correct,"  according  to 
Skeat,  for  if  Chaucer  had  done  so,  "  he  would  have  let  us  know  it."     Why, 
since  by  hypothesis  he  was  writing  for  the  queen  and  not  for  us  ?    Lydgate's 
testimony  is  also  rejected  by  Pollard  (Globe  Chaucer,  p.  xlv.),  but  is  accepted 
by  Koch  (Chronology,  pp.  43-4),  and  Bilderbeck  (p.  84  ;  cf.  88,  note).    I  have 
even  suggested  already  the  occasion  of  her  (not  very  serious)  request  ;  see  the 
chapter  on  the  Troilus,  p.  17,  in  reply  to  Lowes'  suggestion  that  L.  G.  W. 
is  the  response  to    a  supposed  sensation  produced   by  the  first  appearance 
of  T.  G.     Queen  Anne,  a  foreigner,  coming  to  England  in  December,  1381, 
would  hardly  have  been  able  to  read  the  Troilus  and  the  Romance  of  the  Rose 
much  before  the  date  of  the  Legend  ;  after  she  had  done  so,  what  more  natural 
than  that  she  should  reproach  the  poet  for  Ids  cynical  taste,  and  tell  him  to 
write  now  on  the  other  side — to  accomplish  his  desire  of  writing  on  Alcestis 


112  THE   LEGEND   OF  GOOD    WOMEN.  [CH.  IV,  §  2 

I  have  shown  earlier  that  Lydgate  was  in  a  position  to  know  about 
the  time  when  the  Troilus  was  written,  and  I  see  no  reason  why 
the  above  statement,  which  is  very  unlikely  to  have  been  made  up 
groundlessly,  should  not  be  correct.1  To  substantiate  it  there  is 
very  good  internal  evidence.  For  one  thing,  I  have  said  earlier 
that  Chaucer's  manner  of  mentioning  the  Palamon  suggests  that 
it  was  unfinished.  Why  did  he  drop  it  and  begin  something  else 
/'(returning  to  it  later),  unless  on  external  pressure  1  But  above  all, 
/  why  did  Chaucer,  to  whom  poetry  was  an  avocation,  and  who  was 
/  constantly  leaving  things  unfinished,  continue  this  poem  long  after 
I  ij^had  become  a  burden  to  him  ?  At  times,  as  we  shall  see,  the 
style  is  almost  careless,  and  Chaucer  expresses  far  more  sense  of 
haste  and  weariness  than  in  any  other  of  his  works.2  At  the  end  of 
Prologue  F,  570-7,  Love  tells  him  to  be  brief,8  which  is  certainly 
more  likely  to  be  the  poet's  own  excuse  thaxi  the  record  of  a  com 
mand  by  his  patron ;  so  even  at  first  he  felt  the  task  to  be  a  large 
one.  At  times  he  seems  to  be  spurred  on  only  by  a  sense  of  duty, 
and  shows  a  sense  of  the  monotony  attending  his  subject.  He 
will  not  describe  Cleopatra's  wedding-celebration  lest,  having 
undertaken  so  much  else,  he  should  have  to  omit  matters  of  more 
consequence  (616-23) ;  it  would  be  loss  of  time  to  say  why  Dido 
came  to  Lybia,  and  he  does  not  care  to  (996-7) ;  he  would  to  God 
he  had  leisure  and  time  to  rhyme  all  Jason's  wooing  (1552-3) ; 
Hypsipyle's  and  Medea's  letters  in  Ovid  would  be  too  long  to  write 


which  he  had  expressed  at  the  end  of  the  Troilus  ?  He  says  so  very  much, 
with  such  iteration,  about  the  faithlessness  and  dangerousness  of  men,  that  the 
whole  poem  is  clearly,  as  Lowes  points  out,  a  rejoinder  to  comment  produced 
by  the  Troilus  and  the  Hose,  yet  I  have  tried  to  show  that  the  Legend  cannot 
have  been  written  till  ten  years  or  so  after  the  Troilus  ;  if  it  was  a  rejoinder 
to  the  general  comment  evoked  by  the  latter,  Chaucer  certainly  was,  as-Lowes 
says,  belated.  But  if  it  was  the  Queen  that  chaffed  him,  ail  is  explained. 
He  felt,  of  course,  in  duty  bound  to  carry  out  her  suggestion  ;  the  Prologue 
he  wrote  con  amore,  but  the  legends  without  enthusiasm.  "We  may  conjecture 
that  after  a  time  the  queen  "let  him  off,"  which  accounts  for  the  unfinished 
state  of  the  work  (this  in  answer  to  Pollard,  Globe  Chaucer,  p.  xlv.). 

1  Chaucer  rather  distinctly  suggests  in  the  Legend   that  the   writing   of 
the    Troilus  and  of  the  Romance  of  the  JRose  was  encouraged,    at  least,    by 
some  one  of  high  station  (F,  366-7  ;  G,  346-7)  : 

"  Or  him  was  boden  make  thilke  tweye 
Of  som  persone,  and  durste  hit  nat  withseye." 

2  Kn.  T.  shows  a  sort  of  conscious  rapidity,  because  he  was  always  aware  of 
an  original  five  times  as  long  ;  so  does  M.  L.  T.,  though  without  the  same 
reason.     But  the  manner  of  L.  G.   W.  is  quite  different. 

a  This  prosaic  and  gratuitous  passage  is  omitted  in  G. 


CH.  IV,  §  2]  ITS   CONNECTION    WITH   THE   QUEEN.  113 

(1565,  1679) ;  in  telling  of  Lucretica  he  will  be  brief  and  "  touche 
but  the  grete  "  (1692-3);  the  tale  of  Minos  and  Msus'  daughter 
would  be  too  long  for  him  (1921) ;  he  is  weary  to  tell  of  Tereus, 
and  it  is  time  he  should  make  an  end  (2258,  2341,  2383) ;  he  says 
little  of  the  reception  of  Demophon  by  Phyllis  because  he  is  sick  of 
his  subject,  and  must  hasten  him  in  his  Legend,  which  he  prays  God 
to  help  him  finish  (2454-8);  he  will  rehearse  but  a  word  or  two  of 
Phyllis'  letter,  for  he  will  not  vouchsafe  to  "  swinke  "  on  Demophon, 
"nespende  on  him  a  penne  ful  of  inke  "  (2490-1);  he  cannot  write 
all  of  Phyllis'  letter,  "  for  it  were  to  him  a  charge,"  but  will 
repeat  it  only  here  and  there  where  it  is  good  (2513-17);  and  he 
fears  that  the  tale  of  Hypermnestra  may  be  too  long  (2675). 
Chaucer,  the  busy  man  of  the  world  and  of  affairs,  and  in  his 
leisure  the  easy  and  graceful  poet,  was  not  used  to  groaning  over 
distasteful  literary  tasks,  like  the  plodding  Lydgate ;  he  simply 
i  dropped  them.  What  was  it  here  that  aroused  his  sense  of  duty, 
unless  somebody  was  urging  him  on  whom  he  did  not  like  to 
disappoint  2 J 

Finally,  the  poem  is  dedicated,  in  a  very  graceful  manner,  to  the 
queen.2  At  the  very  end  of  the  F-prologue  (496-7)  Alcestis  bids  him, 

"Whan  this  book  is  maad,  yive  hit  the  queue 
On  my  behalf e,  at  Eltham,  or  at  Shene." 

This  fact  throws  new  light  on  his  references  to  the  Flower  and 

1  One  more  bit  of  a  suggestion  as  to  a  close  connection  between  L.  G.  W. 
and  the  queen  may  be  worth  a  foot-note.     It  must  strike  every  one  at  once  as 
odd  that  Cleopatra  should  appear  as  an  estimable  martyr  to  love.    The  account 
of  her  in  L.  Annaeus  Floras  ^on  the  sources,  see  Bech,  Anglia,  v.  314-18),  and 
elsewhere,  hardly  explains  this  ;  perhaps  that  in  Orosius  (VI.  19)  is  the  least 
unfavourable,  but  Chaucer's  high  conception  and  praise  of  Antony  and  Cleo 
patra  are  unparalleled  anywhere,  so  far  as  I  know.     His  account  was  clearly 
written  from  memory,  but  he  cannot  have  been  unaware  of  the  changes  he 
made.     Furthermore,  why  does  Love  make  it  such  a  point  that  Chaucer  shall 
begin  Avith  her  ?     Now  it  will  be  noted  that  of  all  the  martyrs  celebrated, 
Cleopatra  is  the  only  queen,  and  the  only  woman  except  Thisbe  (the  legend 
of  whom  comes  second'),  whose  lover  is  quite  blameless  toward  her.     Just  as 
Chaucer  highly  praises  Antony,  of  Pyramus  he  says  (917-19) : 

"Of  trewe  men  I  finde  but  fewe  mo 
In  all  my  bokes,  save  this  Piramus, 
And  therfor  have  I  spoken  of  him  thus." 

Chaucer  may  have  felt  a  lack  of  delicacy  in  celebrating  his  own  enamoured 
queen  in  the  Prologue,  and  then  immediately  recounting  the  tales  of  other 
queens  and  women  basely  betrayed  by  their  lovers. 

2  Mr.  Pollard  (Acad. ,  no.  1766,  p.  228)  suggests  that  this  no  more  constitutes 
a  dedication  to  her  than  the  allusions  earlier  to  the  French  poets  are  a  dedication 
to  them.    I  fail  to  see  the  parallel,  and  can  hardly  conceive  a  method  of  indicat 
ing  a  connection  with  the  queen  more  worthy  the  name  of  dedication  than  this. 

DEV.  CH.  I 


114  THE    LEGEND    OF   GOOD    WOMEN.  [CH.  IV,  §  2 

Leaf  cult,  and  his  expectation  of  reading  the  poem  aloud  at  court, 
and  lends  countenance  to  the  belief  that  he  wrote  it,  as  Lydgate 
says,  at  the  request  of  the  queen.  After  all  this  we  shall  surely 
not  be  unprepared  to  find  evidence  that  the  queen  was  definitely 
celebrated  in  the  Prologue. 

Lowes  himself  was  the  first  to  make  the  important  observation 
that  the  omission  from  G  of  the  dedicatory  couplet,  F  496-7,  on  the 
presentation  of  the  poem  to  the  queen,  "at  Eltham,  or  at  Sheen," 
is  probably  due  to  consideration  for  the  feelings  of  King  Richard 
after  the  death  of  his  dearly-loved  wife.1  To  most  bereaved  persons 
it  would  be  a  doubtful  kindness  to  remove  all  references  to  the 
departed,  but  Richard  was  emotionally  eccentric.  Chaucer's  omis 
sion  of  the  reference  to  Anne  as  alive  "  at  Eltham  or  at  Sheen  " 
is  a  perfect  literary  parallel  to  Richard's  conduct.2  As  Lowes 
points  out,  he  caused  the  manor  of  Sheen,  where  she  had  died,  to 
be  destroyed,  though  it  had  been  a.  favourite  royal  resort.  Further 
more,  for  a  whole  year,  according  to  the  Monk  of  Evesham,  he 
avoided  every  spot,  except  churches,  associated  with  her.3  Will 
not  this  be  paralleled  if  we  find  that  Chaucer  omits  all  reminders 
of  the  queen  from  the  Prologue,  and  will  it  not  explain  his  doing 
so?  Is  it  not  possible,  for  instance,  that  the  Legend  of  Good 
J/Vomen  was  a  favourite  poem  of  Richard's,  but  that  he  could  not 
in  it  specific  reminders  of  his  lost  wife  1  4  Richard  was  an 
erratic  member  of  an  erratic  family. 


Pub.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.,  xx.  780-1. 

Yet  Mr.  Pollard  (in  his  criticism  of  Lowes'  article,  Academy,  no.  1766, 
228)  prefers  to  think  Chaucer  struck  out  the  couplet  because  the  queen  had 
not  prevented  his  loss  of  office  in  December,  1386,  rather  than  because  she  was 
dead.  He  cannot  believe  that  L.  G.  W.  was  taken  up  again  after  the  C.  T. 
were  begun,  and  thinks  that  in  encouraging  the  royal  grief  Chaucer  would 
have  been  childish.  But  was  this  anything  like  as  childish,  to  say  no  more, 
as  omitting  the  compliment  for  the  reason  which  Mr.  Pollard  suggests  ? 
Legouis  (p.  63)  agrees  with  Pollard  in  being  unwilling  to  believe  that  Chaucer 
would  concern  himself  with  the  abandoned  Legend  when  once  he  was  started 
on  the  C.  T.  But  why  should  he  not  care  to  handle  again  that  Prologue  about 
which  both  these  critics  are  so  enthusiastic  ? 

3  "Set  nee  in  loco  [sic]  aliquem,  ubi  sciebat  illam  perante  fuisse,  per  totum 
annum  sequentem  introire  dedignabatur,  prseter  in  ecclesiam  "  (Hist.  Vitse,  et 
Regni  Me.  II..  ed.  Hearne,  1729;  pp.  125-6).     Richard's  grief  and  demon- 
strativeness  are  illustrated  by  the  fact  that  beside  her  recumbent  effigy  on  her 
tomb  in  the  Abbey  he  caused  his  own  to  be  put,  '  '  with  their  hands  clasped 
together  "  (Gairdner,  in  Diet.  Nat.  Biogr.,  i.  422-3).    As  Clerk  of  the  Works, 
13S9-91,  Chaucer  had  had  oversight  of  the  manor  of  Sheen  and  the  "lodge" 
at  Eltham.      See  also  Adam  of  Usk's  Chronicon  (ed.  by  Sir  E.  M.  Thompson, 
1994),  p.  9. 

4  Cardinal  Manning,  after  the  death  of  his  much-loved  wife,  would  never 
mention  her  to  anybody  (Purcell's  Life,  i.  123). 


CH.  IV,  §  2]  ITS    CONNECTION    WITH    THE    QUEEN.  115 

What  seems  to  me  far  the  strongest  argument  in  favour  of  the 
orthodox  view  that  [  Chaucer  meant  to  celebrate  the  queen  in  the 
Legend  of  Good  Women,  and  in  some  sort  identifies  her  with  the 
daisy  and  Alcestis,  is  the  fact  that  this  theory  alone  will  account 
for  the  most  puzzling  peculiarities  of  the  revision.  We  have 
already  taken  it  as  proved,  especially  by  Lowes'  parallels  to  the 
French  poems,  that  version  F  is  the  earlier;  but  we  have  taken  it 
as  proved  only  on  condition  that  we  can  account  for  certain  diffi 
culties.  These  are  the  abolition  in  version  G  of  almost  all  the 
warm  feeling,  and  with  it  many  excellent  passages ;  secondly,  the 
giving  up  of  the  suspense  as  to  who  is  the  lady  of  the  Balade,  and 
the  lady  who  comes  with  the  God  of  Love ;  and  thirdly,  the  fact 
that,  although  she  is  repeatedly  named  in  G,  Chaucer  at  the  very 
end  affects  not  to  know  who  she  is.  Without  the  connection  with 

/  the  queen,  all  these  I  believe  to  be  quite  inexplicable ;  with  it,  all 
seems  clear.1  .  . 

Now,  forgetting  all  this  for  a  moment,  let  us  examine  the  facts 
— the  lines  peculiar  to  F,  which  Chaucer  deliberately  omitted  from 
G,  if  that  is  the  later.2  These  lines  number  13|L  Of  these,  50 
occur  in  two  long  passages;  i.e.  152-77  contain  the  description 
of  the  birds,  etc.,  in  the  vein  of  the  Romance  of  the  Rose,  and 
552-65  and  568-77  consist  almost  wholly  of  directions  as  to  choice 
of  subjects  and  brevity  of  treatment;  for  the  omission  of  both 
we  have  seen  that  Chaucer  had  excellent  reason.  Of  the  remain 
ing  85  lines,  153  are  of  miscellaneous  and  indeterminate  character. 

r\  The  other  70  are  connected  more  or  less  closely  with  the  hearty 

I  personal  feeling  ;  the  poet  repeatedly  expresses  his  pleasure  in  the 
daisy,  and  warm  love  to  it,4  calls  on  lovers  to  help  him,  describes 
his  eagerness  to  see  it  and  how  he  kneels  to  watch  it  and  reclines 

.  there  all  day,  he  praises  the  flower  anew,  introduces  his  Balade  in 

1  The  principle  on  which  Legouis  based  his  discussion  of  the  question  of 
priority  was  aesthetic.     "En  1'absence  de  temoignage  direct  qui  tranche  la 
question  de  priorite,  le  bon  sens  dicte  la  regie  suivante :  si  Chaucer^a  pris  la 
peine  de  remanier  son  Prologue,  c'est  afin  de  le  rendre  plus  parfait "  (p.  59). 
This  simple  principle  utterly  breaks  down  under  the  failure  of  the  critics  to 
agree.     The  only  way  in  which  Lowes  makes  his  study  convincing  to  a  reader 
is  by  almost  ignoring  it.    To  make  Chaucer's  procedure  intelligible,  I  maintain 
that  a  different  guiding  clue  is  necessary. 

2  Skeat  in  his  large  edition  marks  them  with  an  asterisk. 

3  I  put  the  following  into  this  class  :  101-2,  120,  143-4  (probably  omitted 
by  accident),  201,  229-31,  335,  348-9,  357,  368,  380. 

4  Cf.  the  substitution  of  G  58,  "As  wel  in  winter  as  in  somer  newe,"  for 
F  56,  "And  I  love  hit,  and  ever  y-lyke  newe." 


116  THE    LEGEND   OF  GOOD    WOMEN.  [CH.  IV,  §  2 

honour  of  his  lady,  whom  he  praises;  records  the  women's  song 
in  praise  of  the  daisy,  calls  it  Love's  "relik,"  says  that  the 
book  shall  be  presented  to  the  queen,  and  is  reproached  by  Love 
for  omitting  Alcestis  from  his  Balade,  since  she  is  the  model 
x  of  lovers.  That  is  to  say7)over  half  of  all  the  lines  omitted  are 
directly  connected  with  the  personal  feeling  in  prologue  F ;  or,  dis 
regarding  two  unified  passages,  the  omission  of  which  has  already 
been  easily  accounted  for,  about  five-sixths. 

Moreover,  most  of  these  passages  are  not  only  excellent  in 
themselves,  but  leave  the  G-prologue  noticeably  poorer.  Their 
omission  is  the  reason  why  it  is  generally  regarded  as  the  inferior 
version ;  even  of  those  who  believe  it  is  the  later,  Koeppel,  as  we 
have  seen,  regards  it  as  less  rich  and  as  injudiciously  revised,  and 
Lowes  admits  that  F  "  is  even  the  more  delightful  version  of  the 
two."1  We  miss  particularly  the  beautiful  expression  of  the  poet's 
love  (83-96)  which  Lowes  has  shown  to  have  been  derived  from 
the  Fildstrato,  the  agreeable  picture  of  him  as  reclining  all  day 
long  in  the  meadows  watching  the  daisy  and  kneeling  by  it  when 
the  procession  enters,2  and  the  deliciously  quaint  line  where  Love 
says  of  the  daisy  : 

"  Hit  is  my  relik,  digne  and  delytable"  (321).3 

I  am  quite  sure  that  a  candid  examination  of  the  two  versions  will 
show  that  almost  all  the  points  of  superiority  in  F,  which  are  not 
trivial  or  debatable,  are  directly  concerned  with  this  matter.  - 

(How  is  all  this  to  be  accounted  for  ]  Koeppel  thinks  Chaucer 
revised  carelessly  and  hastily;  Lowes^  thinks  that  in  F  he  had 
"allowed  himself  to  go  on,  adding  for  the  sake  of  its  beauty  detail 
after  detail  as  one  recalled  another,  until  his  lines  are  like  the 
>  costume  of  the  Squyer,"  that^'the  omissions  in  A  [G]  will  then 
be  amply  accounted  for  if  we  suppose  Chaucer  to  have  come 
back  to  the  Prologue,  the  spell  of  the  marguerite  songs  no  longer 
upon  him,  with  the  unity  of  his  plan  the  dominant  motive  in 
his  mind";4  that  it  was  a  "sterner  sense  of  the  subordination 
of  beauty  of  detail  to  the  demands  of  the  artistic  whole  that 

1  Publ.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.,  xix.  683,  note. 

2  G  less  picturesquely  lias  him  "lening  faste  by  under  a  bente"  (234). 

3  But  it  had  a  much  less  rare  poetic  flavour  in  the  fourteenth  century  than 
now,  just  as  there  was  no  conscious  quaintiiess  in  calling  the  Palladium  a 
Trojan  relic  (T.  C.,  I.  153).     Cf.  also  L.  G.  W.,  1310,  2375-6,  etc. 

4  P.  M.L.A.,  xix.  676. 


CH.  IV,  §  2]  ITS    CONNECTION    WITH    THE    QUEEN.  117 

seems  to  have  underlain  the  excision"1  and  condensation.  But 
'.'  where  else  does  Chaucer  show  any  such  austerity  1  Certainly 
not  in  the  Canterbury  Tales.  Moreover,  it  seems  to  me  the  mere 
extent  of  the  revisions  indicates  that  Chaucer  was  not  simply  trying 
to  improve  things.  The  changes  are  beyond  all  comparison  greater 
than  those  in  the  Troilus,  which  was  perhaps  not  revised  till  after 
a  number  of  years.  Presumably  Chaucer  made  his  first  version  as 
good  as  he  was  able.  Would  it  not  be  almost  a  self-stultification, 
a  confession  of  weakness,  so  utterly  to  recast  a  carefully-studied 
poem  1  If  there  is  no  personal  bearing  in  F,  the  feeling  which  it 
expresses  seems  extravagant  ;  but  if  so,  why  did  Chaucer  put  it  in, 
we  may  ask,  if  his  judgment  later  required  him  to  omit  it  ?  A  long 
and  elaborate  poem,  much  more  than  a  prose-work,  must  be  a  pro 
duct  of  prolonged  planning  and  workmanship  ;  however  spontaneous 
it  may  seem,  it  only  has  the  art  which  conceals  art.  Are  we  to 
suppose  that  Chaucer's  taste  changed  so  extensively  in  a  few  years'? 
I  fully  agree  with  Lowes  that  the  plan  of  G  is  improved,  and  that 
Chaucer  did  well  to  rearrange  it  ;  but  I  do  not  believe  that  he  was 
such  a  tasteless,  hit-or-miss  and  unintelligent  critic  that,  on  one  of 
the  rare  occasions  when  he  revised  an  older  poem,  he  impoverished 
it  so  much  and  so  needlessly  that  posterity  can  hardly  tell  which  is 
the  revised  version.  To  my  mind  all  this  is  a  convincing  argument 
,  that  he  had  a  reason  other  than  purely  aesthetic  to  guide  him  in  his 


i  revson. 

o    The  second  of  the  points  of  superiority  in  F,(of  which  I  have 

1  Publ.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.,  xx.  799,  note. 

2  Besides  showing  consideration  for  Richard's  feelings,  Chaucer  may  have 
felt  that  there  was  no  point  in  thus  celebrating  Anne  after  her  death  ;  the 
Prologue  to  the  Legend  was  hardly  suitable  to  be  turned  into  an  In  Memoriam. 
There  is  ample  evidence  that  mediaeval  poets  sometimes  rededicated   their 
works.     Gower  transferred  the  complimentary  notice  in  the  Confessio  from 
Richard  II.  to  the  future  Henry  IV.  (cf.  Macaulay,  II.  xxi.,  11.),  and  Frois- 
sart  that  of  the  Mttiador  from  the  Duke  of  Luxemburg  to  the  Comte  de  Foix 
(see  Kittredge  in  Engl.  Stud,  xxvi.  323-4).     But  these  cases  lend  no  coun 
tenance  to  the  view  that  Chaucer  may  have  abolished  his  laudation  of  the 
queen  before  her  death,  which  I  agree  with  Lowes  is  inconceivable.     Gower, 
who  transferred  his  compliment  during  the  reign  of  Richard  II.,  was  a  landed 
gentleman,  independent  of  court  favour,  with  uncompromising  political  and 
moral  convictions  ;  Chaucer,  on  the  other  hand,  was  largely  dependent  on 
court  favour,  for  which  during  the  latter  part  of  his  life  he  was  more  or  less 
suing,  and,  even  had  he  been  such  stuff  as  martyrs  are  made  of,  can  have  had 
no  adequate  reason  to  inflict  such  a  slight  on  the  queen.    These  considerations 
do  not  seem  to  have  struck  ten  Brink,  who  dates  the  poem  1393,  or  later— 
possibly,  that  is,  before  the  queen's  death  (Engl.  Stud.,  xvii.  20  ;  Koch  justi 
fiably  objects,   Chronology,  p.   85)  ;   or  Koeppel,  who  dates  it  even  earlier 
(Engl.  Stud.,  xvii.  198), 


118  THE    LEGEND    OF   GOOD    WOMEN.  [CH.  IV,  §  2 

postponed  the  discussion,  is  explained  in  the  same  way.     In  F,  the 

lady  escorted  by  Love,  the  heroine  of  the  Balade,  is  anonymous; 

this,  aside  from  the   unintelligible  and  clumsy  way  in  which  the 

Balade  is  introduced,  is  clearly  an  advantageous  bit  of  suspense.1 

Not  till  the  end  of   the  Prologue  does    Chaucer,  with  a  rush  of 

joyful  surprise,  learn  that  she  is  the  lady  who  has  been  his  ideal 

for  years.     In  G  this  advantage  is  lacking ;  directly  she  enters,  her 

name  is  baldly  and  ungracefully  announced — "  Hir  name  was  Alceste 

the  debonayre"  (179).     Lowes  does  not  try  to  explain  this,  and 

it  seems,  at  first,  evidence  for  the  priority  of  G.     But  I  have  shown 

/"already  that  Love's  belief  that  the  lady  of  the  Balade  is  another  than 

/     Alcestis  makes  Queen  Anne's  presence  in  the  poem  particularly 

clear ;  if  Chaucer  gives  up  the  suspense,  and  makes  it  plain  from 

the  first  that  the  lady  who   enters  with   Love,  and  she  who  is 

celebrated   in  the  Balade,  are  both  Alcestis  and  Alcestis  only,  he 

I  removes  one  of  the  clearest  allusions  to  Queen  Anne.2 

-*>      Connected  with  this  is  the  third  point,  which  may  be  called  the 

main  crux  of  the  whole  poem ;  namely,  the  fact  that  after  Alcestis 

.  has  been  named  in  his  presence,  Chaucer  affects  not  to  know  who 

1  she  is.3     The  trouble  exists  in  both  versions,  but  is  far  worse  in  G. 

The  passages  involved  are  these : 

Version  F.  Version  G. 

241  And  by  the  hande  he  held  this  173  And  by  the  hande  he  held  the 

noble  quene  noble  quene 

179  Hir  name  was  Alceste  .  .  . 

255  "My  lady  cometh"  ...  209  ' '  Alceste  is  here  "  .  .  . 

262       „      „         ,,  216  „      „     „ 

269        „      „          „  223  „       „     „ 

341  Tho  spak  this  lady  ...  317  Than  spak  Alceste  .  .  . 

432  "  I,  your  Alceste,  whylom  quene  422  "I,  your  Alceste,  whylom  quene 

of  Trace  "  of  Trace  " 

459-460  "  And  yeve  me  grace  .  .  .  449-450  "  And  yeve  me  grace  .  .  . 
That  I  may  knowe  soothly  what  That  I  may  knowe  soothly  what 

ye  be."  ye  be." 

499  "Wostow  .  .  .  wher  this  be  wyf  487  "  Wostow  .  .  .  wher  this  be  wyf 

or  mayde  ?  "  or  mayde  ?  " 

505  "Nay,  sir"  ...  493  "Nay,  sir"  .  .  . 

510-11   "  Hastow  nat  in  a  book  .  .  .  498-9  "  Hastow  nat  in  a  book  .  .  . 
The  gret  goodnesse  of  the  quene  The  grete  goodnesse  of  the  quene 

Alceste  ? "  Alceste  ? " 

518  "Now  knowe  I  hir  !    And  is  this  506  "Now  knowe  I  hir  !    And  is  this 

good  Alceste  ? "  goodf  Alceste  ? " 

1  So  Legouis,  pp.  60-61. 

2  I  can  see  no  other  possible  explanation  for  Chaucer's  giving  up  what 
seems  to  me  a  great  merit  in  F  ;  I  certainly  cannot  attribute  it,  as  Lowes  does 
(Publ.  M.  L.  A.,  xix.  681,  note),  to  an  "instinct  for  unity."     Where,  once 
more,  does  he  show  any  such  stringent  (if  not  unintelligent)  method  as  this  ? 

3  Cf.  Lowes,  Publ,  Mod.  Lancj.  Assoc.,  xix.  653-5, 


CH.  IV,  §  2]  ITS    CONNECTION     WITH    THE    QUEEN.  119 

The  incoosistency  in  F  (between  432  and  the  later  passages)  is 
hardly  greater  than  many  another  slip  in  Chaucer's  poetry,1  and 
may  as  easily  have  come  in  a  first  as  in  a  second  version.  In  G  the 
blunders  are  so  outrageous  that  whatever  we  do  we  cannot  reason 
ably  believe  that  Chaucer  made  them  in  straightforward  writing. 
But  on  my  theory  I  think  they  can  be  thoroughly  explained.2 
The  discords  with  the  first  part  are  all  between  lines  450  and  506, 
and  there  is  hardly  any  variation  between  the  two  versions  from 
G  416  to  525;  between  these  limits  the  only  difference  between 
the  two  prologues  for  which  Chaucer  must  be  responsible  is  the 
absence  in  G  of  F  496-7  (the  direct  reference  to  the  queen);  of 
other  variants  there  are  nine,  but  none  are  greater  than  scores  of 
variations  among  the  MSS.  of  version  F.3  There  is  not  the 
slightest  evidence,  therefore,  that  Chaucer  made  any  change 
between  F  426-537  (G  416-525),  except  to  omit  the  single 
couplet  which  directly  mentions  the  queen.  This  couplet  he  was 
sure  to  think  of,  on  our  theory ;  and  it  is  equally  suggestive  that 
the  point  where  he  returns  to  revising  is  at  F  538  ff.,  where  he 
omits  Love's  upbraiding  of  the  poet  for  "  negligence  "  in  omitting 
Alcestis  from  his  Balade.  Is  not  just  one  explanation  of  all  this 
obvious  and  indeed  irresistible?  When  he  began  to  revise  he 
made  in  the  early  part  of  the  Proloyue  the  extensive  changes 
required  by  his  reason  for  revision,  and  took  occasion  also  to  make 
certain  improvements;  in  the  latter  part  his  interest  may  have 
failed,  and  at  any  rate  he  believed  that  only  one  or  two  scattered 

1  E.  g.,  L.  G.  W.,  2075,  2099  ;  Melib.  Prol.,  2154  (the  word  wryte);  and 
cf.  several  in  Kn.  T.,  pp.  69,  70  above,  and  in  the  Legend  of  Ariadne  (Lowes, 
P.  M.  L.  A.,  xx.  811).     We  moderns  were  not  the  first  to  notice  the  slip  in 
F  432,  for  opposite  it  MS.  Fairfax  has  nota.     The  fact  that  it  survived  for 
years  and  reappears  in  G  is  an  illustration  of  Chaucer's  habit  of  not  reading 
his  own  poetry  much. 

2  Cf.  Binz,  in  Anglia  Seiblatt,  xi.  233-4.     Koeppel  thinks  the  inconsist- 
ency  in  G:  due  to  haste  in  revising  (Liter aturblalt,    1893,  col.    51).     Ten 
Brink  curiously  ignores  the  whole  matter.     Koch  (Chronology,  p.  84)  thinks 
it  indicates  the  priority  of  G  ;  so  does  Bilderbeck  (p.  82). 

3  The  lines  may  easily  be  found,  being  the  unmarked  ones  in  Skeat's  large 
edition.     At  times  some  of  the  F  MSS.  agree  with  G,  and  several  times  their 
common  reading    looks  like  the    only  genuine   one.     It  must  always  be 
remembered,  also,  that  version  G  is  in  a  unique  MS.     In  the  most  important 
variant—"  I  al  foryeve"  (F  450),  "And  al  ibryeve"  (G  440)— G  is  probably 
corrupt,  for  Chaucer  had  not  offended  Alcestis,  and  she  needed  no  exhortation 
to  forgive  him  (cf.  French,  p.  91  ;  Lowes,  xix.   672,  note).     For  my  view 
that  in  these  110  lines  there  are  almost  no  genuine  revisions  there  is  a 
good  parallel  in  T.  C.,  IV.  953-1085 ;  I  showed  (p.  9)  that  the  absence  of 
important  variants  here  indicates  that  the  passage  came  in.  during  a  revision, 
and  was  not  revised  itself. 


120  THE    LEGEND   OF  GOOD    WOMEN.  [CH.  IV,  §  2 

changes  were  requisite,  and  neglected  to  read  it«  through.  He 
quite  forgot  that  his  having  given  up  the  lady's  anonymity  made 
some  of  the  latter  part  of  the  poem  nonsense.  I  hope  I  have 
shown,  therefore,  that  the  furious  blunder  of  G,  and  its  almost 
complete  absence  from  F,  so  far  from  being  an  argument  for  the 
priority  of  G,  is  one  for  the  contrary  view. 

And  so  we  seem  to  find  that  the  belief  in  the  lateness  of  G  and 
in  the  close  connection  in  F  of  Anne  with  the  daisy  and  Alcestis 
support  each  other.  If  we  deny  the  second,  there  are  such 
unanswerable  arguments  against  the  first  that  we  are  completely 
at  sea;  but  if  we  believe  both,  everything  connected  with  the 
Prologue  falls  logically  into  place,  and  nothing  remains  for  us 
except  a  discussion  of  the  dates.1 

1  Starting  with  the  identification  of  Alcestis  with  the  queen,  several 
writers*  have  identified  the  God  of  Love  with  Richard  II.  ;  except  by  Bilder- 
beck,  the  point  has  scarcely  been  argued, —  it  has  been  assumed,  f  quite 
groundlessly,  I  am  persuaded.  Bilderbeck's  arguments  have  been  so  thoroughly 
refuted  by  LowesJ  that  I  may  be  brief,  though  1  believe  of  course  that 
Lowes  errs  in  denying  Bilderbeck's  main  argument,  the  connection  ot 
Alcestis  with  Anne.  In  the  first  place,  there  is  no  presumption  in  favour  of 
the  idea  ;  because  a  wife  is  symbolically  represented,  there  is  no  reason  why 
her  husband  should  be  ;  a  symbolizing  of  real  characters  is  under  no  obligation 
to  be  so  complete.  It  may  be  noted  that  Love  speaks  of  and  to  Alcestis  in 
a  distant  and  almost  reverential  manner.  The  sun-crown  (see  F  230)  about 
his  head,  not  only  a  sign  of  royalty,  but  also -a  source  of  brightness,  is 
thoroughly  paralleled  elsewhere,  as  Professor  W.  A.  Neilson  kindly  points 
out -to  me.  In  love-allegory  the  god  is  frequently  spoken  of  as  a  king  or 
prince  (see  .Neilson,  Court  of  Love,  pp,  74,  84,  *105) ;  he  always  wears  a 
crown  in  the  illustrations  to  the  1493  edition  of  the  Roman  de  la  Rose  (see 
nos.  13,  15-8,  etc.,  at  the  end  of  vol.  v.  of  Jules  Croissandeau's  edition  ; 
/Orleans,  1880).  Much  of  the  description  of  him  is  derived  from  the  Roman 
/  de  la  Rose,  aria  some  details,  possibly,  (as  Child  points  out,  Mod.  Lang.  Notes, 
(  xi.  488-90)  from  Boccaccio's  De  Genealogia  Deorum. — But  nevertheless, 
Alcestis'  admonitions  to  the  God  of  Love  (F  373-402,  G  353-88)  it 
seems  not  at  all  unlikely  that  Chaucer  had  Richard  partly  in  mind,  somewhat 
as  Bilderbeck  believes  (pp.  94  ff. )  and  somewhat  as  even  Lowes  admits 
(xx.  779),  though  I  can  hardly  accept  the  former's  specific  suggestions  or 
believe  that  Chaucer  was  so  impertinent  as  to  offer  indirect  advice  to  Richard 
through  Anne.  "We  can  hardly  hope  to  identify  any  particular  incidents 
which  Chaucer  had  in  mind  (though  there  may  be  something  in  those  which 
Lowes  rejects  on  pp.  778-9),  nor  can  any  chronological  conclusions  (I  think) 
be  based  on  these  passages.  But  to  one  who  was  familiar  with  his  character, 
even  during  the  years  when  his  government  was  going  well,  Richard  must 
often  have  given  occasion  for  anxiety.  One  particular  point,  however,  may  be 
mentioned.  Two  passages  are  added  in  G,  360-4  and  368-9,  in  which 

*  Skeat  (III.  xxiv.  f.),  Legouis  (p.  69),  Binz  (Angl.  JSeibl.,  xi.  236),  Koch 
(Engl.  Stud.,  xxx.  457),  Bilderbeck  (85-7,  103). 

t  Binz,  e.  g.  speaks  of  "den  liebesgott,  hinter  dem  sich  offeiibar  der  konig 
Richard  selbst  verbirgt." 

%  P.  M.  L.  A.,  xix.  674-5  ;  xx.  773-9.  He  also  disposes  of  Bilderbeck's 
arguments  for  1385  and  1390  as  the  dates  of  the  two  prologues. 


CH.  IV,  §  3]  THE    LEGENDS   AND    THE    BATE.  121 

§  3.   The  Legends  ami  the  Date. 

The  date  of  the  first  or  F  version  of  the  Prologue  of  the  Legend 
I  think  Professor  Lowes  has  settled  definitively.  One  interesting 
argument  he  quotes  from  Hales.  In  F  203  Chaucer  goes  to  sleep 
"in  a  litel  herber  that"  he  had,  which  implies  a  house  in  the 
country,  or  at  any  rate  on  terra  firma.  Now  for  many  years  he 
had  lived  in  a  house  on  the  city  wall  over  Aldgate  ;  but  in  1385 
he  almost  certainly  left  this  for  Greenwich,  where  he  lived  probably 
till  1399.1  So  unobvious  and  circumstantial  a  detail  as  this  of  his 
having  a  little  arbor  it  is  natural  to  connect  with  the  facts,  not  only 
with  the  poetic  fiction.  This  gives  a  date  at  least  not  earlier  than  1 385. 
But  in  1903  I  showed  that  there  is  no  reason  whatever  for  connect- 


(after  urging  that  a  lord  or  king  should  be  righteous,  not  wilful  and 
tyrannous  and  cruel,  but  benign  and  open-eared  to  his  people,  and  should 
"kepe  his  liges  in  justyce")  the  poet  says, 

"And  therto  is  a  king  ful  depe  y-sworn, 
Ful  many  a  hundred  winter  heer-biforn  ;" 

he  then  declares  that  the  lords  should  be  duly  honoured  but  the  poor  treated 
with  compassion.  Did  not  Chaucer  perhaps  have  in  mind  certain  passages  in 
Richard's  coronation-oath  ?  According  to  Thomas  Walsingham  (I.  333),  he 
swore:  "Tertio,  ut  non  esset  personarum  acceptor,  sed  judicium  rectum 
inter  virum  et  virum  faceret,  et  praecipue  misericordiam  observaret,  sicut 
sibi  suam  indulgeat  misericordiam  clemens  et  misericors  Deus."  Part  of  the 
coronation-oath,  between  1307  and  1603,  is  given  thus  by  L.  G.  W.  Legg 
(Engl.  Coron.  Records,  Westminster,  1901  ;  p.  xxxi.)  :  "Fades  fieri  in 
omnibus  iudiciis  tuis  equam  et  rectam  iusticiam  et  discrecionem  in  miseri- 
cordia  et  veritate  secundum  vires  tuas.  Respondent,  Faciam."  Now  on  June 
3,  1388,  Richard  had  been  compelled  by  Parliament  to  renew  his  coronation- 
oath  that  he  would  observe  the  laws  of  the  realm,  and  follow  the  counsels  of 
the  lords  and  of  parliament,  not  those  of  flatterers  (see  the  Continuatio  Eulogii 
ffistoriarum,  ed.  F.  S.  Haydon,  Rolls  Series,  1863  ;  III.  367).  It  should 
not  be  supposed  that  a  side  glance  at  Richard  would  have  been  felt  to 
be  dangerous  or  in  bad  taste.  I  have  already  compared  Chaucer's  relations 
to  the  English  court  with  those  of  Sir  David  Lyndsay  to  the  Scottish,  and 
Lyndsay  was  free-spoken  enough  ;  Gower  is  frank  enough  to  Richard  in  the 
Confessio,  and  treats  Edward  III.'s  memory  with  scant  respect  in  the  Mirour  ; 
I  shall  show  later  that  the  Physician's  Tale  seems  to  contain  clear  references 
to  two  scandals  in  the  family  of  John  of  Gaunt,  and  the  baladc  Lack  of  Stead 
fastness  shows  no  fear  of  wounding  the  royal  feelings.  I  cannot  think  that 
Lowes  quite  makes  his  point  that  this  passage  of  the  Legend  is  wholly 
accounted  for  by  the  situation  in  the  poem  ;  a  few  lines  on  the  "  natural  king 
or  lord"  might  be  used  by  Alcestis  in  admonishing  the  God  of  Love,  but 
what  was  the  poet's  motive  for  putting  in  so  long  and  detailed  a  discourse  on 
the  "Regiment  of  Princes,"  and  even  in  adding  two  passages  during  revision, 
though  this  part  of  the  poem  is  otherwise  little  changed  ?  I  cannot  but 
suspect  an  extra-resthetic  reason  for  this  addition,  as  for  the  omissions  early 
in  the  poem. 

1  I   treat  this  subject  at  length  in   the  next  chapter,    and  make  some 
modifications  of  Hales'  suggestion. 


122  THE    LEGEND    OF   GOOD    WOMEN.  [CH.  IV,  §  3 

ing  the  Legend  with  the  appointment  of  a  deputy  in  the  custom 
house,  and  therefore  with  the  year  1385;  and  now  Lowes  proves 
that  it  quotes  Deschamps'  Lay  de  franchise,  which  was  written 
about  May,  1385,  and  further  that  Chaucer  can  hardly  have  had 
an  opportunity  to  see  that  poem  before  the  spring  or  summer  of 
1386.1  A  date  much  later  than  this  we  shall  presently  find  to  be 
still  more  unlikely;  therefore  we  may  accept  1386. 
^  On  the  date  of  the  second  prologue,  G,  I  have  little  or 
nothing  to  add  to  Lowes'  discussion,2  which  shows  on  various 
grounds  that  it  must  have  been  •  produced  some  years  after  the 
first.  One  reason  (pp.  782-9)  is  the  jocose  references  in  G  to 

J  Chaucer's  old  age;  another  (pp.  790-6)  is  the  mention  among 
Chaucer's  works  of  the  (probably  recent)  translation  of  Pope 
Innocent's  De  Contemptu  Mundi,  with  which  work  he  shows 
such  familiarity  in  the  Man  of  Law's  Tale,  which  I  hope  to 
show  is  late,  and  in  the  Pardoner's  Tale,  which  certainly  is; 
a  third3  (pp.  800-1)  is  the  existence  of  G  in  but  a  single 
MS.,  since  a  revised  version  published  immediately  after  the 
original  would  be  likely  to  drive  it  out.  Another  may  be  added 
— the  mere  extent  of  the  alterations,  even  apart  from  those  in 
volved  by  the  moving  cause  of  the  revisions.  We  have  seen  also 
that  in  regard  to  structure,  some  of  its  contents  and  the  reading  of 
which  it  gives  evidence,  it  seems  to  place  itself  in  the  period  of  the 
Canterbury  Tales.  As  to  the  exact  date,  we  have  seen  that  it 
can  hardly  have  been  written  before  Queen  Anne's  death,  June  7, 

f  1394 ;  and  since  the  revisions  seem  to  have  been  made  out  of  con 
sideration  for  Richard's  overwrought  feelings,  and  since  by  the 
latter  part  of  1396  he  had  so  far  recovered  that  he  was  willing  at 
any  rate  to  go  through  the  form  of  marriage  again,  it  was  probably 
;  written  soon  after  Anne's  death.  The  date  1394-5  seems  to  be 
clearly  indicated. 

Coming  to  the  question  of  the  time  when  the  Legends  were  writ 
ten,  I  find  that  I  must  wholly  part  company  with  Professor  Lowes.4 
It  is  in  this  connection,  it  is  true,  that  he  made  one  of  his  best 

1  PuU.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.,   xx.   753-71.     He  shows   that  the  relations 
of  France  and  England  were  prohibitively  hostile,  and  that  Chaucer's  and 
Deschamps'    common  friends  could  hardJy  have  served  as  intermediaries 
before  1386. 

2  Ibid.,  xx.  780-801. 

3  And  also  a  rather  strong  argument,  I  think,  for  the  posteriority  of  G. 

4  For  his  views,  which  are  offered  with  the  greatest  open-mindedness,  see 
Publ.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.,  xx.  802-18, 


CH.   IV,  §  3]  THE    LEGENDS   AND    THE    DATE.  123 

observations.  He  shows  very  convincingly  that  certain  details  in 
the  Legend  of  Ariadne  (1960-2122)  are  due  to  Boccaccio's  Teseide. 
"The  prison  of  Theseus  is  a  tower,  which  is  '  joyning  in  the  walle  to 
a  foreyne '  belonging  to  the  two  daughters  of  King  Minos,  who 
dwell  in  their  chambers  above.  The  two  young  women  hear 
Theseus  complaining  as  they  stand  on  the  wall  in  the  moonlight, 
and  have  compassion  on  the  prisoner.  When,  their  plan  for  his 
escape  having  been  formulated,  they  disclose  it  to  Theseus  and  the 
jailor,  Theseus  proposes  to  forsake  his  heritage  at  home  and  to 
become  Ariadne's  page,  working  for  his  sustenance.  In  order  that 
neither  Minos  nor  any  one  else  *  shal  [him]  conne  espye '  he  declares 
he  will  disguise  himself  in  lowly  wise  : 

'  So  slyly  and  so  wel  I  shal  me  gye, 
And  me  so  well  disfigure  and  so  lowe, 
That  in  this  world  ther  shal  no  man  me  knowe.' 

The  proposition  is  of  course  not  carried  out,  and  the  remainder  of 
the  story  follows  more  closely  the  classical  sources"  (pp.  804-5). 
The  resemblance  is  unmistakable  to  the  account  in  the  Teseide 
and  the  Knight's  Tale  of  the  imprisonment  of  Palamon  and  Arcite, 
and  of  the  disguise  and  service  of  the  latter ;  it  even  extends  at 
times  to  verbal  resemblances  between  the  two  English  poems. 
But  I  cannot  at  all  agree  with  the  chronological  inference  which 
Lowes  has  drawn  from  it,1  that  the  Ariadne  must  have  been  written 
before  the  Tale  because  it  contains  "  a  decidedly  inferior  and  rather 
sketchy  replica  of  two  motives  already  fully  and  artistically  worked 
out "  (p.  809). 

That  Chaucer  did  not  object  to  repeating  motives,  any  more  than 
Shakspere  did,  may  be  proved  again  and  again ;  as,  for  example, 
by  the  borrowings  in  the  Merchant's  Tale  from  Melibeus  and  the 
Troilus,  which  will  be  shown  in  a  later  chapter.  We  have  also  seen 
clearly  how  little  he  objects  to  repeating  phrases  and  lines,  a 
thing  still  less  to  be  expected.  Moreover,  the  parallels,  though 
striking  enough  when  pointed  out,  are  so  unobvious  that  it  was 
five  hundred  years,  so  far  as  we  know,  before  any  one  noticed  them. 
As  to  the  inferiority  of  the  "  replica,"  I  do  not  at  all  see  it — just 
the  contrary,  in  fact.  In  contrast  with  the  pretty  but  very  com 
monplace  picture  of  Emily  walking  about  the  conventional  garden, 

1  Some  of  his  secondary  deductions  I  have  already  had  to  combat  in  my 
chapters  on  the  Troilus  and  the  Knight's  Tale. 


124  THE    LEGEND   OF   GOOD    WOMEN.  [CH.  IV,  §  3 

we  have  the  two  princesses  upon  the  wall  in  the  moonlight,1  look 
ing  across  their  courtyard  2  to  the  donjon  whence  issue  the  prisoner's 
groans,  presumably  through  a  loophole;  a  romantic  picture  which 
recalls  that  in  the  Troilus  3  which  so  charmed  Shakspere's  Lorenzo, 
where  the  deserted  lover 

"  mounted  the  Troyan  walls, 
And  sigh'd  his  soul  toward  the  Grecian  tents, 
Where  Cressid  lay  that  night." 

Lowes  also  thinks  that  Chaucer  would  not  have  superimposed, 
upon  "the  very  noble  and  stately  figure  of  Theseus  in  the  Knighfs 
Tale,"  "the  despicable  traitor  of  the  Legend  of  Ariadne."  But 
Theseus  is  not  a  central  character  in  the  Knighfs  Tale,  nor  is  there 
any  sign  that  he  regarded  him  there  with  such  liking  that  he  should 
shrink  from  repeating  the  very  familiar  story  of  his  youth.4 

I  should  go  so  far  as  to  believe  that  internal  evidence  actually 
favours  the  posteriority  of  the  Ariadne.  The  intimate  familiarity 
shown  with  the  details  of  the  story  of  Arcite  and  Palamon,  which 
Lowes  points  out  (pp.  805-9)  more  searchingly  than  I  have  done, 
is  more  likely  to  have  followed  than  to  have  preceded  the  trans 
lation  of  it.  One  or  two  of  the  details  look  like  a  reminiscence  of 
the  Knighfs  Tale  rather  than  of  the  Teseide.  Palamon  has  been 
in  prison  (and  in  love  about)  seven  years ;  Theseus  declares  he  has 

1  There  is  a  very  Chaucerian  touch  here  : 

' '  Hem  leste  nat  to  go  to  bedde  sone. " 

2  1  have  no  hesitation  in  accepting  this  meaning  from  Skeat.    The  question 
was,  how  were  people  in  the  same  thick-walled  building  to  hear  the  prisoner's 
lamentations  ?     The  only  possible  way  was  across  a  courtyard,  which  corre 
sponds  to  Boccaccio's  giardino.     The   tower  was  "joining  in  the  wall"  to 
the  "foreyne,"  which  belonged  to  Minos'  daughters  ;  they  lived  in  the  large 
rooms  above  the  dungeon,  but  when  they  heard  his  groans  they  were  outdoors 
on  the  wall,  across  the  court  from  the  tower.     This  meaning  of  the  word  is 
sufficiently  supported  by  the  N.  K  D.,  which  under  the  third  definition  of  the 
noun  (in  the  plural)  gives  :  ' '  The  outer  court  of  a  monastery  ;  also,  the  space 
immediately   outside   the    monastic    precincts.     Obs.,   but    surviving    as    a 
proper  name  in  various  places  where  monasteries   existed."     Though  the 
earliest  quotation  given  is  of  1668,  this  last  sentence  proves  that  it  must  have 
been  common  ;  the  extension  from  a  monastery  to  a  castle  is  easy  enough. 
As  to  the  extraordinary  interpretation  of  the  word  in  this  passage  offered  by 
Matzner  (in  his  M.  E.  Dictionary)  and  accepted  by  Lowes,  it  seems  to  me, 
though  such  is  the  commonest  meaning  of  the  word,  no  less  repugnant  to 
good  sense  than  to  good  taste. 

:!  T.  0.,  V.  666-79. 

4  Falstaff  must  have  been  a  greater  favourite  with  Shakspere  than  Theseus 
with  Chaucer,  yet  the  dramatist  did  not  shrink  from  covering  with  ridicule  in 
the  Merry  Wives  and  at  the  end  of  Henry  IV.  him  who  had  always  been  SQ 
finely  master  of  the  situation  earlier  in  the  latter  play. 


CM.  IV,  §  3]  THE    LEGENDS   AND    THE    DATE.  125 

loved  Ariadne  seven  years,  though  it  is  not  clear  how  he  has  known 
of  her;  there  is  nothing  of  the  sort  in  the  Teseide  (Lowes,  807  ; 
cf.  811,  note).  The  curious  blunder  which  Lowes  (808,  note) 
points  out  in  1966,  where  Chaucer  (according  to  the  MSS.)  puts 
the  prison  where  Theseus  is  confined  in  Athens  instead  of  Crete,  is 
more  natural  as  a  reminiscence  of  his  own  Knight's  Tale  than  of  the 
Teseide.  On  the  other  hand,  the  deliberate  variations  which 
Chaucer  introduces,  such  as  the  substitution  of  the  moonlit  wall 
scene l  for  the  sunlit  garden,  show  a  natural  unwillingness  to  repro 
duce  his  earlier  motifs  quite  identically.  This  is  the  chief  variation 
from  the  original ;  on  the  principle  which  Lowes  uses  in  his  treat 
ment  of  the  two  forms  of  the  Prologue,  is  not  that'  of  two  versions 
which  is  farther  from  the  original  likely  to  be  the  later? 

For  an  early  date  of  the  Ariadne  Professor  Lowes  .believes  he 
finds  evidence  also  in  its  style.  If  it  was  written  before  the 
Knight's  Tale,  it  was  written  also  before  the  Prologue  of  the 
Legend,  and  for  this  he  thinks  there  is  evidence  in  the  versification 
— a  lack  of  flexibility  and  variety  as  compared  with  that  of  the 
Prologue.  But  in  the  nature  of  the  ^ase  is  not  a  semi-lyrical  poem 
likely  to  have  more  melody  and  variety  of  verse  than  a  rapid 
narrative1?  So  far  as  the  Ariadne  is  needlessly  inferior  in  this 
respect,  I  agree  with  Mr.  Pollard2  that  the  fact  is  due,  not  to  lack 
of  skill  in  the  Ariadne,  but  to  lack  of  care.  Chaucer  makes 
repeatedly  in  the  Legend,  as  we  have  seen,  the  plainest  possible 
declarations  that  he  is  in  haste.  "  Technique  of  that  sort,"  says 
Professor  Lowes  (p.  813),  "is  scarcely  a  thing  that  can  be  put  on 
and  off  at  will."  But  is  it  not  always  rather  a  matter  of  pains  1 
Hasty  writing  at  any  date  will  make  poor  verse.  The  particular 
peculiarity  of  style  on  which  Lowes  dwells  is  so  striking  that  I 
think  it  can  hardly  be  due  to  inexperience ;  when  Chaucer  began 
21  out  of  43  lines  (2136-78)  with  and,  was  he  unconscious  of  the 
fact  or  unable  to  remedy  it  1  I  hold  that  this  is  simply  Chaucer's 
rapid  narrative  style.  In  the  Knight's  Tale,  Lowes  believes 
Chaucer  had  thoroughly  learned  the  technique  which  he  was 
practising  here;  yet  in  the  Knight's  Tale,  1399-450,  out  of  52 
lines  21  begin  with  and  and  7  with  that.  These  and-lines  are 

1  It  may  have   been   suggested   by   an   earlier  passage   in    the    Ariadne 
(1908-11.) 

2  Academy,  no.  1766  (1906),  p.  228.     For  an  earlier  discussion  of  Chaucer's 
verse  in  its  chronological  bearings,  see  my  chapter  on  the  Knight's  Tale,  p.  61. 


126  THE   LEGEND   OF   GOOD    WOMEN.  [CH.  IV,  §  3 

noticeably  frequent  in  the  (late)  Canon's  Yeoman's  Tale  ;  in  1026- 
35  there  are  6  out  of  10,  in  1102-15  there  are  7  out  of  14,  in  1228- 
35  there  are  4  out  of  8,  and  in  1308-26,  11  out  of  19.  In  the 
lively  scene  at  the  end  of  the  Rev&s  Tale,  4292-312,  out  of  21 
lines  12  begin  with  and.  Granted  that  the  Ariadne  passage  is  an 
extreme  instance  of  what  elsewhere  is  often  employed  with  admirable 
effect,1  this  seems  to  me  due  rather  to  excess  than  to  defect  of  ease. 
I  do  not  at  all  agree  with  Mr.  Lowes  (p.  813)  that  "it  is  a  fair  pre 
sumption  that  the  Ariadne  is  unmelodious  because  the  technical 
difficulties  of  a  somewhat  unfamiliar  metre  had  not  yet  been 
surmounted."  I  have  pointed  out  in  an  earlier  chapter  that  the 
differences  between  the  stanza  and  the  couplet  are  hardly  so  great  as 
to  signify  in  this  connection.2 

So,  as  I  read  the  matter,  there  is  no  evidence  for  the  opinion  that 
the  Ariadne  was  written  before  the  Prologue.  A  fortiori  there  is 
none  for  Professor  .Lowes'  opinion  (p.  816)  "that  the  Prologue  was 
written  after  most,  perhaps  after  all,  of  the  narratives  it  introduces." 
For  this  view  I  fail  to  see  the  antecedent  probability  which  he  sees. 
It  seems  to  me  a  prologue,  which  gives  the  plan  of  the  ensuing 
poem,  is  likely  to  be  written  early,  while  the  zeal  is  still  keen  ;  in 
the  next  chapter  I  shall  show  very  good  reasons  for  the  opinion 
that  in  the  Canterbury  Tales  the  Prologue  v  was  one  of  the  very 
earliest-written  parts.  When  Chaucer  had  become  thoroughly 
weary  of  the  Legends,  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  he  would  have 
written  the  Prologue  with  such  delight,  unless  for  some  external 
reason,  and  that  which  Lowes  suggests,  that  it  is  a  poetic  retort  to 
the  criticism  which  the  Troilus  had  evoked,  I  have  tried  to  show 
on  chronological  and  other  grounds  can  hardly  be  accepted. 

There  seems   to    be  evidence,  as   well   as  probability,  for  the 

1  Cf.  Kn.  T.,  2925-66;  N.  P.  T.,  4565-72. 

2  Rather  I  should  find  in  the  carelessness  of  the  Ariadne  and  the  other 
Legends  (so  far  as  it  exists)  an  indication  that  Chaucer  was  kept  at  his  task 
by  an  external  motive  after  his  pleasure  in  it  had  evaporated.     For  this  there 
is  further  evidence  in   the   numerous  inconsistencies  and  blunders  in  the 
Ariadne  which  Lowes  points  out  (p.  811,  note),  and  which  are  much  greater 
than  those  which  I  pointed  out  in  the  Kn.  T.  (pp.  69,  70).    Cf.  also  the  errors 
in  the  second  part  of  the  Sq.   T.,    which   Lounsbury   (Studies,   iii.    318) 
attributes  to  lack  of  revision.     If  any  one  should  object  that  Chaucer  would 
have  put  his  best  work  into  a  poem  written  for  and  at  the  request  of  his  royal 
mistress,  I  reply  that  the  defects  (to  call  them  so)  are  such  that  nothing  can 
be  more  unlikely  than  that  she  would  ever  have  observed  them,  considering 
the  kind  of  reading  to  which  she  was  probably  used.     Compared  with   the 
extemporaneous  style  of  most  mediaeval  poetry,  Chaucer's  style  at  its  poorest 
is  finished  and  polished.     Besides,  the  duty-poems  of  later  poets  laureate  are 
rarely  among  their  best  works. 


CH.  IV.  §  3]  THE    LEGENDS   AND    THE    DATE.  127 

opinion  that  most  or  all  of  the  Legends  were  written  after  the 
Prologue.  In  the  Prologue  we  are  told  that  nineteen  ladies  entered 
after  Alcestis  and  the  God  of  Love ;  and  in  F  554-60  the  latter 
clearly  refers  him  to  the  Balade  for  their  names,  and  appoints  them 
to  be  the  heroines  of  his  legends  : 

"  Thise  other  ladies  sittinge  here  arowe 
Ben  in  thy  balade,  if  thou  canst  hem  knowe, 
And  in  thy  bokes  alle  thou  shalt  hem  finde ; 
Have  hem  now  in  thy  Legend  alle  in  minde, 
I  mene  of  hem  that  been  in  thy  knowinge. 
For  heer  ben  twenty  thousand  mo  sittinge 
Than  thou  knowest." 

It  is  true  that  in  the  Balade  there  are  only  eighteen  women,  and 
that  one  or  two  of  them  would  hardly  have  been  suitable ;  of  course 
when  the  Balade  was  written  Chaucer  had  no  idea  of  making  it  a 
table  of  contents,  and  when  he  wrote  the  above  passage  he  probably 
had  not  carefully  considered  the  details.1  But  if  he  had  already 
written  the  Legends  and  introduced  several  persons  not  mentioned 
here,  it  is  difficult  to  see  why  he  should  have  introduced  this  per 
fectly  needless  passage.  Now  he  follows  the  list  in  the  Balade  till  half 
way  through  the  fourth  legend,  in  which,  after  treating  Hypsipyle, 
the  connection  of  Jason  with  Medea  leads  him  to  deviate  for  her ; 
and  later  he  devotes  the  seventh  legend  to  Philomela,  also  not  in 
the  Balade.  When  he  wrote,  in  the  Man  of  Law's  Prologue,  63-75, 
the  list  of  ladies  whom  he  states  there  to  have  been  treated  in  his 
Legend,  he  had  entirely  abandoned  the  list  in  the  Balade;  and 
finally,  when  he  came  to  revise,  the  passage  in  question  was  omitted 
from  the  Prologue.  How  can  we  avoid  attributing  this  omission  to 
the  fact  that  the  passage  did  not  agree  with  his  changed  plan,2  or 

1  Of.  Lowes'  sensible  remarks  (Publ.  M.  L.  A.,  xx.  817-19);  and  French, 
p.  30.  On  this  passage  cf.  also  Legouis,  p.  65. 

a  So  ten  Brink,  Engl.  Stud.,  xvii.  19.  By  "thise  other  ladies"  Chaucer 
clearly  means  the  19  chief  ones.  Koch  is  surely  not  justified  in  saying  that 
Love  here  gives  him  permission  to  write  the  lives  of  some  of  the  20,000 
others.  (This  number  is  a  mere  convention  for  a  vast  quantity ;  cf.  H.  F. 
2119,  Sumn.  ProL,  1695.)  Therefore  this  passage  does  not  relax  Chaucer's 
bonds,  but  puts  them  on.  Dr.  Koch's  whole  criticism  of  the  matter  is  so 
contused  as  to  be  unanswerable  (Chronology,  p.  85).  The  same  may  be  said 
of  Bilderbeck's  (pp.  82-3)  ;  he  implies  that  the  indefinite  number  in  G  must 
be  larger  than  the  number  20  in  F.  But  x  >  20  is  not  an  axiom  in  algebra. 
It  may  be  added  that,  just  as  is  the  case  in  the  Canterbury  Tales,  the  Prologue 
promises  so  much  more  than  was  ever  performed,  and  than  Chaucer  must  have 
seen  before  long  was  likely  to  be  performed,  that  he  is  hardly  likely  except 
at  the  very  beginning  to  have  made  a  perfectly  unnecessary  announcement  of 
his  design. 


12&  THE    LEGEND   OF   GOOD    WOMEN.  [cH.  IV,  §  3 

rather  his  desire  not  to  be  held  to  the  original  one  ?  The  natural 
conclusion  is  that  the  extant  Legends  were  written  between  the  two 
forms  of  the  Prologue. 

There  are  some  indications  that  the  Legends  were  written  in  about 
the  order  in  which  they  stand  in  all  the  MSS.,1  which  is — 

Cleopatra,  Hypsipyle  and  Medea,          Philomela, 

Thisbe,  Lucretia,  Phyllis, 

Dido,  Ariadne,  Hypermnestra. 

If,  as  we  have  seen  is  probable,  most  or  all  of  the  Legends  were 
written  after  the  F-prologue,  Cleopatra  must  have  been  written 
among  the  first,  since  at  the  end  of  the  Prologue  (566)  Love  bids 
the  poet  begin  with  it.  This  is  also  suggested  by  lines  616-23  : 

"The  wedding  and  the  feste  to  devyse, 
To  me,  that  have  y-take  swiche  empryse 
Of  so  many  a  storie  for  to  make, 
Hit  were  to  long,  lest  that  I  sholde  slake 
Of  thing  that  bereth  more  effect  and  charge."2 

As  to  the  later  Legends,  the  only  references  which  I  find  from 
one  to  another  are  from  Phyllis,  no.  8,  to  Ariadne,  no.  6.  If 
Chaucer  rearranged  the  poems,  Phyllis  should  directly  follow 
Ariadne,  since  they  are  so  closely  and  consciously  connected  in 
subject.3  As  it  is,  the  wholly  irrelevant  legend  of  Philomela  is  inter 
jected.  Again,  certainly  no  method  is  discoverable  running  through 
the  arrangement.  Finally,  the  signs  of  haste  and  weariness  which  I 
have  collected  above  (pp.  112-13)  become  noticeably  more  frequent 
and  intense  toward  the  end ;  and  it  is  the  last  legend  that  is 
unfinished.  All  the  indications  are  that  the  present  is  the  order  of 
writing. 

Indications  of  the  chronological  terminus  ad  quern  of  the  Legend 
are  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  two  non-Chaucerian  works  seem  to 
betray  vestiges  of  its  influence.  One  of  these  is  Gower's  Confessio 
Amantis.  In  book  VIII.,  among  lovers,  the  poet  sees  a  company 
of  unhappy  women-lovers,  namely  (2550-96)  : 

Dido,  Medea,  Progne  and  Philomela, 

Phyllis,  Deidamia,  Canace, 

Ariadne,  "  Cleopatras,"  Polyxena. 

Dejanira,  Thisbe, 

1  Cf.  Bilderbeck,  p.  74. 

12  This  passage  contrasts  with  the  other  indications  of  hurry  and  distaste 
noted  on  pp.  112-13.  Miss  E.  P.  Hammond  calls  my  attention  to  the  parallel  be 
tween  the  above  passage  and  Kn.  T.  885-8,  also  at  the  beginning  of  a  long  task. 

3  Just  as  Hypsipyle  and  Medea  are,  which  form  one  Legend. 


CH.  IV.  §  3]  THE    LEGENDS   AND   THE    DATE.  129 

Then,  after  the  amorous  sorceresses  Circe  and  Calypso,  come  the 
best  of  women-lovers,  Penelope,  Lucretia,  Alcestis  and  Alcyone. 
It  is  true  that  the  tales  of  all  of  these  except  Cleopatra  are  more 
or  less  told  in  various  scattered  earlier  parts  of  the  poem ;  but  it  is 
suggestive  that  here  occur  all  but  two l  of  the  ten  heroines  treated 
by  Chaucer  in  the  Legends,  and  of  the  others  some  entered  into 
Chaucer's  announced  plan.  Cleopatra  comes  just  before  Thisbe,  as 
in  Chaucer  ;  but  it  is  more  important  that  Chaucer's  "  Cleopatras  " 
has  influenced  Gower's  in  other  things  besides  her  name.  All  that 
Gower  says  is  (2572-7) : 

"  I  syh  also  the  wof  ull  queene 
Cleopatras,  which  in  a  Cave 
With  Serpentz  hath  hirself  begrave 
Alquik,  and  so  sche  was  totore, 
For  sorwe  of  that  sche  hadde  lore 
Antony e,  which  hir  love  hath  be." 

Chaucer,  at  the  end  of  her  Legend,  says  (696-702) : 

"  And  with  that  word,  naked,  with  ful  good  herte, 
Among  the  serpents  in  the  pit  she  sterte, 
And  ther  she  chees  to  han  hir  buryinge. 
Anoon  the  neddres  gonne  hir  for  to  stinge, 
And  she  hir  deeth  receyveth,  with  good  chere, 
For  love  of  Antony,  that  was  hir  so  dere  : — 
And  this  is  storial  sooth,  hit  is  no  fable." 

The  representation  of  Cleopatra  as  dying  for  the  love  of  Antony  by 
leaping  into  a  pit  filled  with  serpents,  and  as  being  buried  there,  is 
confined  to  these  two  accounts,2  and  no  one  reading  the  above 

1  Hypsipyle  and  Hypermnestra. 

2  These  points  are  not  in  any  of  Chaucer's  probable  sources  as  given  by  Skeat 
(III.  xxxvii.)  and  M.  Bech  (Anglia,  v.  314-8),  and  are  probably  original  with 
him.     Macaulay  (Gower,  iii.  547)  suggests  that  he  may  have  derived  his  idea 
of  Cleopatra's  death  from  Vincent  of  Beauvais  (by  a  very  confused  recollection). 
The  passage  mentioned  above  seems  to  be  the  only  case  of  borrowing  between  the 
Confessio  and  the  Legend,  unless  two  details  in  their  accounts  of  Ariadne  show 
mutual  influence  (cf.  Macaulay,  iii.  503).     Bech  in  one  section  of  his  essay  on 
the  Legend  of  Good  Women  attempts  to  prove  a  number  of  borrowings  on 
Gower's    part   (Anglia,    v.   365-71) ;    'Skeat  in    a   rather  confused  passage 
(III.  xl.  ff.)  reduces  them  to  two,  but  his  first  seems  hardly  significant.     The 
only  one  of  Bech's  cases  rejected  by  Skeat  which  is  worth  mentioning  is  in 
Conf.  Am.,  i.  93-202,  where  the  striking  thing  is  the  similarity  of  the  rdles 
played  by  Venus  and  Cupid  to  those  of  the  God  of  Love  and  Alcestis  in  the 
Legend  ;  Cupid  is  stern  to  Gower  (though  without  apparent  reason),  and  Venus 
is  kind  to  him.     This  evidence,  however,  is  nullified  by  the  fact  that  ^the 
situation  is  paralleled  in  other  amoristic  allegory  ;  as  Professor  Neilson  points 
out  to  me  (see  his  Court  of  Love,  pp.  42-3),  in  Venus  la  Deesse  d'Amor,  for 
example,  both  deities  appear,  and  Venus  appeals  for  the  lover.  '  Venus'  media 
tion  might  easily  be  derived  by  any  poet  from  the  influence  exerted  on  each 

DEV.  CH.  K 


130  THE    LEGEND    OF   GOOD   WOMEN.  [CH.  IV,  §  3 

passages  can  doubt  that  Gower  was  the  borrower.  As  to  the 
date,  Macaulay  (II.  xxi.)  has  shown  that  the  Confessio  was 
finished  in  1 390  ;  we  have  evidence  therefore  as  well  as  probability 
that  the  Legend  was  as  much  finished  as  it  is  now  not  later 
than  1390. 

The  date  will  be  thrown  still  further  back  by  the  connection 
of  the  Legend  with  Thomas  Usk's  Testament  .of  Love.  I  believe  1 
have  shown  already  (pp.  22,  23)  that  Usk  certainly  knew  the 
Prologue  of  the  poem,  and  probably  one  or  two  of  the  Legends. 
We  have  seen  that  the  Testament  cannot  have  been  written  later 
than  1387,  and  almost  certainly  dates  from  that  year.  The  Legend 
of  Good  Women  was  therefore  presumably  brought  to  an  end  by 
the  latter  part  of  1387.1  It  may  well  have  been  not  much  earlier 
than  that,  for  Usk's  connection  with  Chaucer's  associate  Brembre 
would  doubtless  give  him  exceptional  advantages  for  procuring 
Chaucer's  works. 

This  throwing  back  of  the  elate  is  further  confirmed  by  what  we 
shall  find  in  the  next  chapter  as  to  the  date  of  the  Canterbury  Tales, 
the  beginning  of  which  we  shall  find  reason,  partly  depending 
on  what  we  have  learned  as  to  the  date  of  the  Legend,  to  put  about 
1 387.  We  can  hardly  believe  that  the  Legends  were  continued  after 
the  Canterbury  Tales  were  once  under  way.  Nor  is  there  need 
of  thinking  that  the  Legend  was  interrupted  by  the  conception 
of  the  more  promising  poem ; 2  it  has  every  appearance  of  having 
run  down,  as  it  were,  of  itself.  We  have  seen  good  reason  to  think 
that  it  was  written  rapidly,  and  we  may  assume  that  no  more  of  it  was 
ever  written  than  is  now  extant — that  Chaucer  never  told  us  for  just 
what  "  conclusion  "  the  tale  of  Hypermnestra  was  said.3  Therefore 

other  during  the  Middle  Ages  by  the  conceptions  of  Venus  and  of  the  Virgin 
Mary.  Both  Skeat  and  Bech  find  a  borrowing  in  Conf.  Am.,  VIII.,  about 
2440-2750,  where  Cupid  comes  with  a  vast  train  of  lovers  (2456-8)  ;  though 
this  too  is  somewhat  paralleled  elsewhere  (cf.  Neilson,  Romania,  xxix.  87), 
the  influence  of  Chaucer  is  not  unlikely,  but  the" passage  is  really  part  of  the 
one  I  have  cited.  As  to  the  mention  of  the  flower  and  the  leaf  in  Conf.  Am., 
VIII.  2468,  Kittredge  has  shown  (Mod.  Philol.  i.  2)  that  this  is  an  allusion 
rather  to  contemporary  life  than  to  literature. 

1  If  this  view  is  correct,  of  course  it  disposes  of  Bilderbeck's  suggestion  that 
the  Legends  were  produced  at  the  rate  of  one  a  year  (see  his  pp.  89-91,  108). 
But  there  are  many  other  reasons  to  doubt  this  idea. 

2  Cf.  Pollard,  Globe  Chaucer,  p.  xxiv. 

3  Lydgate's  manner  of  speaking  of  the  poem  (quoted  in  Skeat,  III.xx.),  and 
the  colophon  put  by  the  scribe  of  MS.  Fairfax  at  the  head  of  the  Prologue, 
indicate  that  they  at  least  believed  the  poem  to  have  been  not  nearly  finished. 
The  unanimity  of  the  MSS.  is  further  confirmed  by  a  spurious  Oronyde  made 


CH.  V,  §  1]  THE    CANTERBURY    TALES   AS    A   WHOLE.  131 

the  whole  period  of  Chaucer's  occupation  with  the  2723  lines  of  the 
Legend  may  have  been  only  a  few  months.  We  have  learned  from 
Lowes  that  the  earlier  part  of  1386  is  the  earliest  likely  date  for  the 
Prologue;  and  we  have  just  seen  that  the  latter  part  of  1387  is  the 
latest  date  possible  for  the  publication  of  the  whole  work.  The  date 
1386-7  for  the  Legend  of  Good  Women  may  therefore  be  accepted.1 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  CANTERBURY  TALES. 
§  1.  The  Canterbury  Tales  as  a  Whole. 

SEVERAL  attempts  have  been  made  to  find  a  point  of  departure 
for  dating  the  Canterbury  Tales  as  a  whole,  but  few  of  the  results 
seem  very  reliable  and  some  of  them  are  worthless.  The  conjectures 
which  have  attracted  most  attention  have  started  with  the  idea 
that  the  basis  of  the  poem  is  an  actual  pilgrimage  made  by  Chaucer. 
This  idea  seems  to  be  wholly  baseless. 

*%It  is  quite  unnecessary,  of  course,  in  order  to  explain  the  exist 
ence  of  the  poem ;  I  need  hardly  recall  the  various  mediaeval 

by  Chancier,  in  one  of  Shirley's  MSS.  (see  Odd  Texts  of  Chaucer's  Minor 
Poems,  Ch.  Soc.,  1871,  I.  vi.-viii.),  which  treats  of  the  "nyene  worshipfullest 
Ladyes." 

1  Professor  Bilderbeck  (pp.  32-44)  tries  to  prove  that  Chaucer  revised  the 
first  six  (but  not  the  last  three)  legends,  and  that  MS.  Camb.  Gg  contains 
the  earlier  version  of  them  as  of  the  Prologue.  Since  it  seems  to  be  quite 
certain  that  this  MS.  contains  the  later  version  of  the  Prologue,  his  view  as 
to  priority  between  his  versions  of  the  Legends  is  hardly  possible.  When  we 
come  to  examine  the  evidence,  we  find,  I  think,  no  reason  to  change  our  minds. 
Of  the  two  or  three  dozen  variants  which  Bilderbeck  quotes,  none  compares  in 
importance  with  those  in  the  Troilus,  or  those  in  the  Prologue  to  the  Legend, 
even  apart  from  the  excision  of  allusions  to  the  queen.  Even  the  readings  peculiar 
to  MS.  Harl.  7334  of  the  Canterbury  Tales,  which  I  am  convinced  cannot  be 
attributed  to  Chaucer,  look  far  more  genuine  than  these.  The  most  favourable 
of.  Bilderbeck's  cases  (2008-9) : 

"  .  .  .he  shal  at  (on)  him  lepe^ 
And  (To)  slen  hym  as  (or)  they  comen  .  .  .," 

is  not  in  the  least  striking.  In  no  case  does  the  variation  seem  to  me  too  great 
to  have  been  produced  by  a  scribe,  even  unconsciously.  It  is  natural  that  the 
text  of  MS.  Gg  should  be  notably  different  from  the  others,  since  it  probably 
parted  from  them  very  early  in  the  MS.-tradition.  If  there  were  a  striking 
contrast  in  the  number  of  more  important  variants  in  legends  1-6  and  7-9,  we 
might  hesitate  ;  but  according  to  Bilderbeck's  account,  in  the  former  there  is 
1  in  53  lines,  and  in  the  latter  1  in  100,  and  I  cannot  see  that  they  are  any 
less  important.  So  probability  and  evidence  alike  seem  to  negative  the  idea, 
of  revision. 


132  THE   CANTERBURY   TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  1 

collections  of  stories  in  a  frame,  of  which  of  course  the  Decameron 
is  only  one,  and  other  things  may  have  contributed  their  hints.1 
In  the  fourteenth  century  story-telling  must  have  been  common  on 
pilgrimages.2  Nor  is  it  necessary  in  order  to  explain  the  vividness  of 
the  narrative.3  Absolutely  all  the  familiarity  shown  with  the  external 
circumstances  of  the  pilgrimage  Chaucer  would  have  gained  from 
the  numerous  times  he  had  passed  over  the  same  road  on  his 
journeys  to  the  continent,4  and  the  two  observations  on  the  position 
of  the  sun  (M.  L.  Prol,  1-14;  Pars.  ProL,  1-11)  might  have 
been  taken  at  home  as  well  as  on  the  road,  or  have  been  made  up 
at  any  time  of  year  by  a  little  calculation.5 

1  The  assumption  that  the  Decameron  must  have  been  Chaucer's  model  was 
the  mere  child  of  ignorance,  and  dates  from  the  Dark  Ages,  the  eighteenth  cen 
tury ;  it  is  one  of  the  few  things  which  we  have  to  forgive  Tyrwhitt  (ed.  of  1830; 
I.  clix.).     More  recently  it  has  been  denied  with  patriotic  vehemence  ;  e.  g. 
by  Skeat  (III.  371  ;  yet  in  V.  270  he  seems  to  think  Chaucer  to  have  been 
familiar  with  the  Decameron},  and  Pollard  (Globe  Chaucer,  xxviii.).    In  Italy, 
naturally,  it  is  still  popular.     Peter  Borghesi  argues  very  unconvincingly  that 
Chaucer  must  have  known  the  Decameron  ( Bocc.  and  Ch.,  Bologna,  1903  ;  pp. 
50  ff.).    Professor  Cino  Chiarini  inclines  (though  without  bigotry)  to  believe  it 
(Nuova  Antologia,  Ixxii.   334  ;  on  pp.  148-65,  325-43,  he  rather  agreeably 
introduces  the  C.  T.  to  Italian  readers).     It  will  be  seen  that  none  of  these 
writers  have  any  evidence  ;  the  argument  is  always  that  he  must  have  known 
the  Decameron.     It  seems  to  me  almost  certain  that  he  did  not.     Hales,  who 
thinks  he  did,  is  misleading  in  his  arguments  (Diet.  Nat.  Biog.,  x.  163).     Cf. 
also  pp.  160-1  below.    The  germ  of  C.  T.  is  in  the  house  of  Rumour  in  H.  F. 
(lines  2121-36  ;  cf.  A.  W.  Ward,  Chaucer,  E.  M.  L.  Series,  95-6) ;  in  Piers 
Plowman  (Seeley,  in  Skeat,  III.  372  ;  ten  Brink,  Hist.  E.  L.,  ii.  140-1— he 
rejects  a  real  pilgrimage  as  unnecessary).     Chaucer  had  already  produced  an 
approximation  to  the  C.  T.  in  the  L.  G.  W.    More  than  this,  the  frame-story 
might  develop  spontaneously  at  any  moment  out  of  the  mediaeval  fondness  for 
anecdotes  and  exempla,  as  it  did  in  Gower's  Confessio  Amantis.     The  H.  F. 
illustrates  the  point,  with  its  sketches  of  ancient  heroines. 

2  Only  singing  and  piping  are  mentioned  in  the  dialogue  between  Thorpe 
and  Abp.  Arundell  (in  1407  ;  cf.  Littlehales'  Road  from  London  to  Canterbury, 
51-2)  ;  but  during  the  halts,  anyway,  we  may  be  sure  there  was  "  taling." 
That  it  was  common  on  pilgrimages  seems  to  be   implied  in  all  versions  of 
Piers  Plowman : 

' '  Pilgrimes  and  palmers  .  .   . 
Wenten  forth  in  heore  wey  •  with  mony  wyse  tales. " 

(A,  ProL,  46-8  ;  C  has  vn-wyse.) 

3  Cf.  Pollard  (Globe  Chaucer,  xxvii.) :  "  No  one  who  has  read  the  talks  by 
the  way  can  doubt  that  the  poet  himself  had  travelled  over  the  ground.  .  .  . 
Chaucer's  own  pilgrimage,  then,  may  have  been  made  in  1385."     Cf.  Primer, 
p.  100. 

4  Probably  also  in  going  to  Canterbury  on  business  connected  with  his 
wardship  in  1375  ;  see  R.  E.  G.  Kirk  in  L^fe  Records  (Ch.  Soc.,  1900),  p.  xxv. 

5  Nobody  pretends  that  Dante,  from  whom  as  well  as  from  real  life  Chaucer 
may  have  imitated  this  way  of  telling  time,  must  always  have  just  made  an 
exact  observation  when  he  mentions  the  positions  of  the  heavenly   bodies. 
This  sort  of  attempt  to  extract  chronological  sunbeams  from  cucumbers  is  no 
more  tempting  than  it  is  fallacious, 


CH.  V,  §  1]  THE    CANTERBURY    TALES   AS    A    WHOLE.  133 

Connected  with  the  idea  of  an  actual  pilgrimage  is  the  attempt 
to  discover  the  year  meant  in  the  Canterbury  Tales  from  the 
passage  in  the  Parson's  Prologue  (1-11);  at  four1  o'clock 

.  .  ."the  mones  exaltacioun, 
I  mene  Libra,2  alwey  gan  ascende." 

W.  Hertzberg,  in  his  German  translation  of  the  Canterbury  Tales? 
follows  Tyrwhitt  (iv.  335)  in  thinking  that  exaltacioun  cannot  be 
used  here  in  the  strict  astrological  sense,  since  Taurus,  not  Libra, 
is  the  exaltation  of  the  moon,  and  Libra  is  that  of  Saturn,4  but  that 
it  must  mean  simply  rising ;  and  he  thinks  that  Chaucer  meant 
here  to  hint  at  the  year  of  the  pilgrimage  5 — apparently  in  a  cabal 
istic  way.  He  assumes  that  the  journey  occupied  but  one  day,  and 
therefore,  on  the  basis  of  Tyrwhitt's  reading  (also  the  Ellesmere) 
for  M.  L.  Pro?.,  5,  that  the  day  here  was  April  28.  With  the 
assistance  of  his  "  verehrter  Freund "  Professor  Scherk,  ho  an 
nounces  that  on  that  day  within  the  proper  limits  as  to  years  the 
moon  could  have  risen  at  four  in  Libra  only  in  1393.  Therefore 
the  date  of  the  imaginary  pilgrimage  was  April  28,  1393. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  follow  this  ball  as  it  was  tossed  back  and 
forth  in  Germany,  with  an  occasional  kick  from  England.  By 
various  changes  and  corrections  in  the  number  of  days  of  the  pil 
grimage,  in  the  MS.  reading  and  in  the  astronomy,  Koch,6  Skeat,7 
A.  von  During  8  and  C.  Ehrhart9  find  (or  accept  or  reject)  the  years 
1393,  1391,  1388  and  1385.  This  last  year  was  fully  accepted  by 
Pollard10  in  1893. 

1  Most  of  the  MSS.  read  ten,  which  is  certainly  wrong  ;  Chaucer  cannot  have 
blundered  to  this  Extent. 

2  Harl.  7334,  and  also  Laud  600  (in  the  Bodleian  Library),  read  "In  mena 
Libra,"  which  gives  no  sense,  and  is  one  of  the  Harleian  eccentricities  which 
do  not  look  as  if  they  came  from  Chaucer.     MS.  Canib.  li  reads  "I  meen  in 
libra." 

3  Hildburghausen,  1866  ;  pp.  666-7. 

4  See,  e.  g.,  Wm.  Lilly's  Christian  Astrology  (London,  1647),  pp.  57,  80. 

5  Similarly  A.  E.  Brae  ( The  Treatise  on  the  Astrolabe  of  Geoffrey  Chaucer, 
London,  1870;  p.  74).     He  deduces  the  year  1388,  by  emending  "I  mene 
Libra  alwey"  to  "  In  Libra  men  alawai"  (the  name  of  a  star,  which  he  says 
could  have  risen  with  the  moon  at  the  proper  time  only  in  that  year).     In 
broad  daylight ! 

6  Ch.  Soc.  Essays,  415-7  ;  Ausgewcihlte  Kl.  Dicht.  Chaticers  (Leipzig,  1880), 
65-6  ;  Chronology,  49-50,  64-6.     His  opinion  was  the  same  in  1902  (Pard. 
T,,  xxii.). 

7  Ch.  Soc.  Essays,  417. 

8  See  his  German  translation  of  Chaucer,  iii.  409. 

9  Engl.Stud.,  xii.  469-470. 

10  Chaucer  Primer,  p.  100.    In  the  Globe  Chaucer,  however,  he  ignores  this 
argument  (see  p.  xxvii. ). 


134  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  1 

All  this  seems  to  me  entirely  out  of  the  question.  The  idea  that 
the  passage  concerned  proves  a  real  pilgrimage  supposes  that 
Chaucer  either  wrote  the  last  link  of  all  immediately  on  his  return, 
or  else  that  he  made  notes  of  such  trivialities  for  use  years  after 
wards.  Even  if  the  meaning  assumed  for  exaltacioun  were  possible, 
it  would  be  infinitely  more  likely  that  Chaucer  inserted  the  remark 
simply  as  indicating  the  sort  of  thing  which  a  star-wise  person 
would  have  seen  if  he  had  been  there,  than  because  he  remembered 
seeing  it.  But  the  whole  idea  is  practically  disposed  of  by  the  fact 
that  Chaucer  elsewhere  uses  exaltacioun  and  its  adjective  only  in 
the  correct  astrological  sense,  which  is  what  any  fourteenth-century 
reader  would  have  understood  here ;  and  by  the  fact  that  the  other 
interpretation  really  makes  Chaucer  say  "  the  moon's  rising  con 
tinued  to  rise,"  which  is  almost  as  bad  as  Dr.  Johnson's  *' observa 
tion  with  extensive  view."  The  only  possible  explanation  of  the 
passage  as  it  stands  seems  to  be  that  either  the  scribe  blundered,1 
or  Chaucer,  through  forgetfulness ;  and  I  do  not  see  the  least  im 
probability  in  thinking  that  it  was  Chaucer,  even  if  he  did  know 
his  astrology  fairly  well.2  Therefore,  whether  in  connection  with 
the  pilgrimage  idea  or  not,  conjectures  founded  on  this  passage 
are  to  be  rejected3  without  qualification. 

1  Tyrwhitt  (iv.  336)  suggests  that  "themones"  is  an  error  for  "  Saturnes." 
An  error  would  be  the  easier  because  the  first  10°  of  Libra  are   "the  moon's 
face"  (Skeat,  V.  445);    and  the  second  10°  of  Libra  are  "Saturn's  face" 
(Lilly,  op.  cit.,  pp.  58,  81). 

2  Surely  Lounsbury  has  pointed  out  inaccuracies  enough  in  Chaucer's  woik, 
and  the  list  can  easily  be  enlarged.     As  another  astronomical  blunder,  he 
puts  Ariadne's  Crown  in  the  sign  of  Taurus,  to  which  it  is  just  opposite 
(L.  G.  W. ,  2223-4).    But  the  curious  thing  about  the  passage  under  discussion, 
which  apparently  has  never  been  remarked  upon,  is  that  what  Chaucer  seems 
to  imply  that  he  saw,  the  sign  or  constellation  Libra  rising,  he  could  not 
possibly  have  seen  at  four  o'clock  of  an  April  afternoon.     The  passage  sounds 
much  more  like  a  conscious  reminiscence  of  Dante  than  like  an  observation  of 
nature.     This  manner  of  telling  time  occurs  again  and  again  in  the  Divine 
Comedy  ;  cf.,  e.  g.,  Inf.  XL  113-4,  XX.  124-6,  XXIX.  10;  Purg.  I.,  19-21, 
II.  1-6,  55-7,  XXV.  1-3,  and  E.   Moore's    Time- References  in  the  Divina 
Commedia,  Tables  V.  and  VI.     Purgatorio,  II.  1-6  is  particularly  suggestive  : 

"  Gia  era'l  Sole  all"  orizzonte  giunto, 
Lo  cui  meridian  cerchio  coverchia 
Gerusalem  col  suo  piu  alto  pun  to  : 
E  la  notte,  ch'  opposita  a  lui  cerchia, 
Uscia  di  Gange  fuor  con  le  bilance, 
Chele  caggion  di  man  quando  soverchia." 

Cf.  also  Man  of  Law's  ProL,  1-12,  with  Purg.,  IV.  15-16  : 

"  Che  ben  cin quanta  gradi  salit'  era 
Lo  Sole,  ed  io  non  m'era  accorto.' 

3  So  Skeat  in  1894  (V.  445). 


CH.  V,  §  1]  THE    CANTERBURY    TALES   AS   A    WHOLE.  135 

That  Chaucer  did  make  a  pilgrimage  to  Canterbury  at  some  time 
or  other  is  likely  enough — religionis  erga  perhaps,  or  he  may  even 
have  been  so  modern  as  to  wish  to  know  how  a  real  pilgrimage  felt 
while  he  was  writing  about  an  imaginary  one.  All  that  can 
be  said  is  that  there  is  not  the  slightest  evidence  for  it  in  the 
Canterbury  Tales. 

Some  scholars  have  advanced  the  idea  that  by  the  last  decade  of 
his  life  Chaucer  had  aged  too  much  to  have  written  many  of  the 
Canterbury  Tales,  or  at  any  rate  to  have  planned  the  whole.  Dr. 
Furnivall  in  1871 J  took  the  years  about  1386  as  the  central  period 
of  the  work,  when  the  best  tales  were  written,  and  assigned  the 
"dull  ones"  to  times  earlier  and  later;  to  the  years  1390-1400  he 
definitely  assigned  only  small  and  inferior  works,  and  from  a  pas 
sage  in  Venus  and  from  the  supposed  inferiority  of  the  minor  poems 
known  to  have  been  written  about  then  he  deduces  "  a  slow  autumn 
of  decay."  2  Dr.  Mather  agrees  with  his  general  idea,3  mainly  because 
of  the  Retractations.  Mr.  Pollard  says  :  "  The  short  poems  written 
towards  the  close  of  his  life  show  that  the  not  very  advanced  age 
to  which  he  attained  pressed  heavily  on  him,  and  it  would  be 
unreasonable  to  assign  the  plan  of  the  Tales  to  his  last  decade."  4 
Similarly,  Professor  Hales  believes  that  practically  all  the  Canter 
bury  Tales  which  were  not  earlier  work  were  written  between 
1387  and  1392.5 

As  to  the  Retractations,  if  the  poem  was  never  published  by  Chaucer 
as  a  whole,  as  I  hope  to  show  on  a  later  occasion,  they  need  imply 
nothing  more  than  a  few  weeks  of  other-worldliness  at  the  very 
end,  and  surely  have  nothing  to  say  as  to  a  whole  decade.  The 
remarks  in  Scogan  and  Venus  seem  to  me  to  have  little  more  signi 
ficance.  In  the  former  he  refers  to  his  portly  figure  and  to  the  fact 

1  Trial  Forewords,  pp.  16,  25  ;  cf.  6  (note),  99. 

2  Ibid.,  28,  99.  a  Chaucer's  Prologue,  etc.,  p.  xxxiv. 

,  4  Globe  Chaucer,  p.  xxvii.  So  also  Koch  (ChronoL,  51-2,  69),  who  thinks 
Chaucer  was  in  poor  circumstances  during  this  period.  He  does  hot  deny 
that  some  of  the  tales  may  have  been  written  then,  but  in  his  table  (p.  79)  he 
recognizes  the  possibility  only  for  the  Parson's  Tale.  Pollard  regards  "the 
scheme  of  the  Canterbury  Tales  as  taking  form  during"  1386-8  (p.  xxvii.). 
Ten  Brink  denies  (Studien,  p.  153)  that  Chaucer  has  left  any  works  which 
show  failing  powers.  Koch  has  a  quaint  conjecture  founded  on  Chaucer's  age. 
He  points  out  that  Chaucer  "in  the  wast  is  schape  as  wel  as"  the  Host 
(B,  1890),  who  was  "a  semely  man"  (A,  751) ;  therefore  "  we  must  figure  the 
poet  to  ourselves  as  a  stately  man  of  s,ome  forty  years  rather  than  as  one  who 
already  feels  old  age  approaching,  and  is  '  hore  and  round  of  shape '  ('Scogan  ' 
1.  31)"  (ChronoL,  pp.  52-3).  But  the  Prologue  to  Sir  Thopas  is  a  Selbstportrdt 
in  hardly  such  a  photographic  sense  as  this. 
5  Folia  Literaria  (London.  1893),  pp.  101-2. 


136  THE    CANTERBURY  TALES.  [OH.   V,  §  1 

that  he  is  no  longer  young,  and  even  says  that  he  thinks  never 
again  to  wake  Jhis  muse  (1.  38) ;  the  date  may  well  be  1393.1  Yet 
the  whole  tone  of  the  poem  is  light,2  and  any  sense  of  discourage 
ment  which  may  lie  beneath  may  be  accounted  for  by  the  appeal 
for  court-favour  in  the  Envoy.  In  Venus,  which  was  probably 
written  somewhere  near  this  time,3  he  complains  that  age  has  dulled 
his  spirit  and  nearly  bereft  his  subtlety,  and  that  close  translation 
of  elaborate  verse  is  difficult  in  English  (76-82) ;  yet  it  certainly 
cannot  be  said  to  show  failing  powers.  The  evidence  of  these 
poems,  therefore,  is  almost  negligible;  and  since  they  may  date 
from  the  same  period,  possibly  one  of  trouble  and  ill-health,  they 
cannot  be  used  to  characterize  the  whole  decade.  Bukton,  on  the 
other  hand,  certainly  written  at  the  end  of  1396,4  obviously  is  with 
the  Canterbury  Tales  in  spirit,  and  we  shall  see  later  is  closely 
associated  with  some  of  them ;  it  shows  a  gentle  cynicism,  somewhat 
recalls  the  Merchant's  Tale,  and  refers  to  the  Wife  of  Bath's  Pro 
logue.  The  Complaint  to  his  Purse,  one  of  the  last  things 
Chaucer  wrote,5  is  full  of  cheery  punning,  exaggeration  and 
flippancy.  Neither  shows  a  spirit  which  was  incapable  of  pro 
ducing  any  part  of  the  Canterbury  Tales  at  the  same  time.  The 
sharp  contrast  in  tone  among  various  parts  of  the  Canterbury  Tales 
and  other  works  of  this  period  simply  shows  what  we  may  be  very 
ready  to  believe  of  Chaucer,  that  he  was  a  man  of  moods.  It  seems 
fair,  then,  to  say  that  there  is  no  evidence  here  against  his  having 
written  any  of  the  undated  tales  between  1390  and  1400,  or  even,  if 
this  were  not  unlikely  on  other  grounds,  against  his  having  designed 
the  poem  then.  It  is  rather  satisfactory  if  we  can  feel  under  no 
necessity  of  believing  Chaucer  ever  to  have  had  a  "decline."6 

Several  scholars  have  thought  the  time  about  1386-8  so  full  of 
change  and  trouble  as  to  have  been  unsuitable  for  projecting  or 
even  working  much  on  the  Canterbury  Tales.  Ten  Brink,7  who 
did  not  commit  himself  as  to  exact  dates  for  that  work,  believed 

1  Skeat,  I.  556-7  :  Lounsbury,  Studies,  i.  36-42;  Lowes,  Publ.  M.  L.  A., 
xx.  787,  792. 

2  Cf.  G.  L.  Ki-ttredge,  Harvard  Studies  and  Notes,  i.  116-17. 

3  See  Skeat,  I.  86.  4  See  pp.  210-11  below  ;  and  cf.  Skeat,  I.  85. 

5  Skeat,  I.  88. 

6  Professor  Kittredge   has  some  wise   remarks  on  the  injudiciousness  of 
taking  these  words  of  Chaucer's  very  seriously,  in  the  New  York  Nation,  liv. 
214  ;   he   is   answering   Lounsbury,    who   is   inclined  to   do  so.      See    also 
Kittredge's  article  on  Scogan,  just  mentioned. 

7  Hist,  of  Engl.  Literature,   ii.   119-20 ;  cf.  also   Koch,    Pardoner's   Talc 
(1902),  p.  xxiii. 


CH.  V,  §  1]  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES   AS   A    WHOLE.  137 

that  the  political  unrest  of  this  period  must  have  produced  a  deep 
impression  on  Chaucer's  mind,  and  that  his  personal  troubles 
(financial  and  family)  may  well  have  produced  a  time  of  serious 
ness  ;  to  this  time  he  accordingly  assigns  some  of  the  more  serious 
works  which  he  thinks  were  not  till  later  connected  with  the  Can 
terbury  Tales.  In  1389,  however,  he  points  out1  an  improvement 
in  Chaucer's  circumstances,  to  which  he  attributes  such  spirited 
poems  as  the  Wife  of  Bath's  Prologue  and  the  Merchant's  Tale — 
still  unconnected  with  the  poem  as  a  whole.  Not  till  about  1390, 
for  no  very  clear  reason,  does  he  recognize  the  proper  time  for  the 
conception  of  the  whole  work.2  Dr.  Koeppel,  similarly,  in  his 
review3  of  the  Chronology r,  thinks  that  Koch  assigns  "a  feverish 
poetic  activity"  to  years  too  engrossed  with  other  things  to  be 
poetically  productive ;  he  refers  to  Chaucer's  parliamentary  career 
in  1386  and  the  misfortunes  of  the  succeeding  years,  and  thinks  that 
we  may  suppose  him  to  have  written  then  little  besides  Melibeus, 
the  Parson's  Tale  and  a  partial  translation  of  Pope  Innocent's 
De  Contemptu  Muncli,  and  that  the  conception  of  the  Canterbury 
Tales  came  later,  beginning  with  an  attempt  to  recast  the  Legend 
of  Good  Women  for  use  in  it.4 

All  such  arguments  as  those  of  these  two  or  three  German 
Chaucerians  seem  to  me  such  as  we  commonly  use  when  we  have 
no  others.  Caution  here  seems  very  necessary.  We  know  so 
little  of  those  details  of  Chaucer's  life  which  may  have  had  as 
much  effect  on  his  state  of  mind  as  weightier  matters,  so  little  even 
of  the  details  of  his  personality,  that  it  is  unsafe  to  draw  con 
clusions.  There  is  no  necessary  connection  between  ill  circum 
stances  and  solemn  literary  work,  and  the  leisure  perhaps  implied 
by  the  former  might  make  such  a  time  peculiarly  productive  of  poetry 
of  all  kinds.  Was  not  Chaucer  just  the  man  to  beguile  a  dreary 
time,  and  perhaps  occupy  his  enforced  leisure,  by  working  on  his 
art]5  So  out  of  this  whole  mass  of  a  priori  conjecture  we  seem  to 
have  gained  nothing  reliable. 

1  Hist,  of  Eng.  Literature,  ii.  pp.  123  ff. 

2  He  therefore  seems  to  put  such  tales  as  the  Millers  in  the  very  period 
from  which  other  scholars  have  excluded  all  but  serious  and  dull  works.     He 
and  Koch  are  diametrically  opposed.     Such   disagreement   indicates   some 
thing  wrong  with  the  method. 

3  •  Literaturblatt  fur  germ.  u.  roman.  Philologie,  xiv.  54. 

4  Of.  p.  Ill  above. 

5  Cf.  Lowes'  wholesome  remarks  to  this  effect  (Publ.  Mod.   Lang.  Assoc., 
xx.  792). 


138  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  1 

I  shall  begin  my  consideration  of  the  more  important  arguments 
with  one  which  justifies  treatment  at  length  rather  "because  of 
its  interest  than  its  weight.  Why  did  Chaucer  select  a  Canterbury 
pilgrimage  as  the  frame  for  his  tales  ?  Even  though  such  amuse 
ments  were  common  on  pilgrimages,  there  is  a  certain  lack  of 
realism,  even  as  Dean  Stanley  points  out,1  in  representing  the  tales 
as  told  during  the  ride,  and  heard  by  any  considerable  number  of 
people  amid  the  clattering  and  chunking  of  one  hundred  and  twenty- 
eight  hoofs.  This  he  was  willing  to  overlook  for  the  sake  of  other 
points  of  fitness,  a  large  and  miscellaneous  assemblage  doing  an 
everyday  thing  in  common.  But  is  not  this  selection  especially 
natural  if  pilgrimages  to  Canterbury  were  daily  under  his  eyes? 
Where  was  Chaucer  living  during  the  planning  and  writing  of  the 
Canterbury  Tales  ? 

On  May  10,  1374,  Chaucer  leased  the  house  above  Aldgate  for 
his  whole  life,  and  without  the  power  to  sublet  ("  alicui  dimittere  ") ; 
four  weeks  later,  June  8,  he  received  his  formal  appointment  as 
Comptroller  of  Customs  of  Wools,  etc.,  in  the  Port  of  London. - 
February  17,  1385,  he  received  the  formal  permission  to  discharge 
the  duties  of  this  office  through  a  deputy  which  he  already  had  for 
those  of  the  Customs  office  received  in  1382.3  October  12,  1385, 
he  was  appointed  one  of  the  Justices  of  the  Peace  for  the  county 
of  Kent,  apparently  to  take  the  place  of  one  of  those  appointed  the 
previous  year  who  had  died;  June  28,  1386,  he  was  one  of  sixteen 
(all  but  two  of  whom  were  in  the  previous  list)  to  receive  a  new 
commission  for  the  same  office.4  In  August  or  September,  1386, 
he  was  elected  Knight  of  the  Shire  for  Kent.5  October  5,  1386, 
the  house  above  Aldgate  was  leased  by  the  city  to  Richard  Forster, 
probably  a  friend  of  Chaucer's.6  March  12,  1390,  he  was  appointed, 
with  five  others,  to  survey  and  keep  in  repair  the  bank  of  the 
Thames  between  Greenwich  and  Woolwich.7  In  the  Canterbury 

1  Historical  Memorials  of  Canterbury  (London,  1900),  pp.  213-14. 

2  Life  Records,  pp.  190-1  ;  the  two  records  are  consecutive. 


:}  Ibid.,  pp.  237,  251. 
4  Ibid.,  pp.  254,  259. 


5  Ibid.,  pp.  261-2.     The  sheriff  of  the  county  who  signed  the  return  had 
been  one  of  his  colleagues  as  J.P.  in  1385  (but  not  in  1386). 

6  Ibid.,  p.  264  ;  cf.  p.  216. 

7  Ibid.,  pp.  283-5.     Among  the  commissioners  were  his  friend  Sir  Richard 
Stury,   and   apparently  one  of  the   Culpepper  family  which  had  supplied 
one  of  his    colleagues  as   J.P.   in    1385    and    1386.     Two   of  his    present 
colleagues  served  also  on  a  similar  commission  for  Middlesex,  but  Chaucer 
did  not. 


CH.   V,  §  1]  THE    CANTERBURY    TALES    AS    A    WHOLE.  139 

Tales  (Reeve's  ProL,  3907)  there  is  a  curious  and  unexplained 
innuendo  about  Greenwich  : 

"Lo,  Grenewich,  ther  many  a  shrewe  is  inne." 

The  last  stanza  of  the  Envoy  to  Scogan  (43-6)  addresses  the  poet's 
friend  thus  : 

"  Scogan,  that  knelest  at  the  stremes  heed 
Of  grace,  of  alle  honour  and  worthinesse, 
In  thende  of  which  streme  I  am  dul  as  deed, 
Foryete  in  solitarie  wildernesse." 

The  MSS.  gloss  the  first  line  "  Windesore"  and  the  last  "Grene 
wich."  Finally,  Chaucer  did  not  hire  his  house  near  Westminster 
Abbey  till  1399.1 

The  following  explanation  seems  usually  certain  and  always 
probable.  In  May,  1374,  when  he  knew  that  he  was  to  receive 
the  appointment  at  the  Custom-House,2  he  took  the  house  over 
Aldgate,  ten  minutes'  walk  from  his  office,  a  little  over  half-a-mile.8 
But  the  way  in  which  Chaucer  vivifies  French  conventions  in  the 
Prologue  of  the  Legend  of  Good  Women  is  alone  enough  to  tell 
us  that  he  was  a  lover  of  nature;  so  as  soon  as  his  appointment 
of  a  deputy  rendered  his  daily  presence  at  the  office  unnecessary, 
he  moved  to  an  easily  accessible  spot  in  the  country,  Greenwich. 
The  city  did  not,  it  is  true,  lease  the  house  again  till  twenty  months 
after  the  deputy  was  allowed ;  but,  especially  since  the  new  lease 
was  by  the  city  and  not  by  Chaucer  himself,  he  may  have  left  the 
house  long  before.4  We  can  hardly  doubt  that  he  was  a  resident 
of  Kent  when  he  was  appointed  J.P.,5  eight  months  after  the  per 
mission  to  have  a  deputy.  It  is  almost  equally  certain  that  -as 

1  Life  Records,  p.  329. 

'2  Of.  Hales,  in  Diet.  Nat.  Biogr.,  x.  161;  cf.  also  his  Folia  Literaria 
(London,  1893),  pp.  87-9  (reprinted  from  Acad.,  xvi.  410,  December  6, 1879). 

3  Aldgate  is  under  half-a-mile  north  of  the  Tower.     The  Custom-House  was 
very  near  the  Tower  (Life  Records,  290  ;  cf.  xxxix.) ;  it  obviously  would  be 
near  London  Bridge,  the  head  of  marine  navigation.     At  the  present  day  it  is 
between  the  two,  and  was  there  in  1543  (cf.  Van  den  Wyngaerde's  Panorama  ; 
e.  j/.,-in  Sir  W.  Besant's  London  in  the  Time  of  the  Tudors,  350-1). 

4  Cf.  Skeat  (I.  xxvi.,  xxxviii.).     Hales  (Academy,  Fol.  Lit.,  I.e.]  and  Lowes 
(Publ.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.,  xx.  772)  rather  assume  the  contrary,  and  think  it 
may  have  been  his  entering  Parliament  which  led  him  to  move ;  Lowes  also 
suggests  that  his  appointment  as  J.P.  may  have  been  the  cause.     But  is  not 
this  putting  it  wrong-end  to  ? 

5  Cf.  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  ii.  272-3,  and  especially  D.  J,  Medley,  EngL 
Const.  Hist.  (Oxford,  1894),  351-60  ;  cf.  also  Statutes  of  the  Realm,  I.  364. 
It  is  interesting  to   note  that  in  1388  J.P.s  were  required  by  a  re-enacted 
statute  to  hold  sessions  four  times  a  year,  and  during  the  session  were  to  be 
paid  4s.  a  day  (Medley,  354,  358). 


140  THE    CANTERBURY    TALES.  [cH.  V,  §  1 

Knight  of  the  Shire  he  \vas  a  resident.  In  the  latter  part  of  the 
preceding  century,  those  who  held  that  office  were  clearly  residents  ; 
"  the  office  was  not  coveted,"  and  at  times  the  sheriff:  may  almost 
have  had  to  compel  service.1  By  1413,  it  is  true,  apparently  non 
residents  sometimes  had  served,  for  in  a  statute  of  1  Henry  V.  it  is 
required  that  knights  shall  be  residents  of  their  shires ;  hut  since 
the  same  statute  requires  that  electors  shall  also  be,  it  probably  does 
not  imply  any  frequent  deviation  from  the  obvious  and  original 
rule.2  "It  may  be  said  that,  with  here  and  there  an  exception,  in 
the  early  days  of  the  representative  system  the  counties  were  repre 
sented  by  men  of  landed  wealth  and  social  standing,  and  that  the 
election  of  men  not  possessing  land  in  the  counties  they  represented 
was  comparatively  rare."3  Since  Chaucer  must  have  owned  land  in 
the  county  outside  the  cities  and  boroughs,  which  sent  their  own 
representatives  to  parliament,  since  he  was  not  a  rich  man  and  can 
have  had  but  little  landed  property,  and  since  Greenwich  was 
neither  city  nor  borough,4  therefore  his  land  was  probably  his  home 
stead  in  Greenwich.  In  his  responsibility  for  the  south  bank  of 
the  Thames  from  Greenwich  to  Woolwich  there  is  confirmatory 
evidence  for  his  residence  in  the  former  place ;  and  although  of 
course  the  Host's  remark  about  the  tough  characters  who  lived  in 
Greenwich  might  be  a  well-known  local  hit,  it  is  natural  to  take  it 
as  a  jocose  dig  by  Chaucer  at  himself  or  his  friends.  Perhaps  his 
friends  and  he,  the  genial  man  of  the  world  and  courtier,  were 
regarded  as  fast  by  quiet  suburban  Greenwich,  or  he  may  be  chaff 
ing  his  unsophisticated  neighbours.  Finally,  it  is  clear  that  when 
he  wrote  Scogan  he  was  living  in  some  small  place  far  down  the 
river,  and  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt  thab  the  scribe  knew  what 
he  was  talking  about  when  he  glossed  the  allusion  as  being  to 
Greenwich.  Skeat  shows  good  reason  to  believe  that  the  poem 
was  written  in  1393.5 

1  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist  of  Engl,  ii.  68,  90,  221-3,  232,  483. 

2  Statutes  at  Large,  iii.  1  ;  cf.  Medley,  p.  152,  and  Sir  Harris  Nicholas'  Life 
of  Chaucer,  Note  S  (in  Morris'  Chaucer,  1883  ;  I.  102). 

3  E.  Porritt,  The  Unreformed  House  of  Commons  (Cambridge,  1903),  i.  511 ; 
cf.  21,  122,  512.     Seats  did  not  begin  to  be  in  demand  till  early  in  the  fifteenth 
century.     Non-residence  first  came  in  among  the  representatives  of  cities  and 


century, 
boroughs. 


4  See  Life  Records,  p.  262  ;  T.  H.  B.  Oldfield,  Representative  History  of 
Great  Britain  and  Ireland  (London,  1816),  vi.  311,  and  History  of 
Boroughs  (London,  1792),  iii.  42  (at  the  end).  Before  the  nineteenth  cen 
tury,  Greenwich  itself  was  represented  in  Parliament  only  in  4  and  5  Philip 
and  Mary.  5  I,  556-7. 


CH.  V.  §  1]  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES   AS   A    WHOLE.  141 

Chaucer's  odd  calamities  of  September  6,  1390,  afford  curious  con 
firmation  of  the  belief  that  at  this  time  he  was  living  in  Greenwich. 
It  may  be  remembered  that  on  this  day  he  was  robbed  twice,  once 
at  Westminster,  of  £10,  by  one  William  Huntingfield,  or  Richard 
Brerelay,  and  others  unknown,  and  again  at  "  Hacchesham,"  Surrey, 
of  over  £9,  by  Brerelay  with  three  others  (being  a  gang  of  profes 
sional  robbers).1  Chaucer  at  this  time  was  Clerk  of  the  King's 
Works  at  Westminster,  among  other  places ;  Hatcham  is  between 
Peckham  and  New  Cross,  near  the  Old  Kent  Road,  the  direct  route 
from  Westminster  to  Greenwich,  about  two-thirds  of  the  way.  The 
obvious  explanation  of  all  this  is  that  Brerelay,  or  whoever  it  was, 
after  the  first  robbery,  knowing  or  suspecting  that  Chaucer  was  to 
carry  a  large  sum  home  with  him  the  same  night,2  therefore  collected 
part  of  his  gang  and  lay  in  wait  for  him  on  the  way.  If  Chaucer 
was  not  going  home,  how  did  they  know  where  to  catch  him  ? 3 

It  may  be  taken  as  a  certainty,  then,  that  from  1385  till  well 
into  the  nineties  (probably  till  1399)  Chaucer  lived  in  Greenwich. 
Not  only  has  this  some  possible  bearing  on  the  date  of  the  Legend 
of  Good  Women,  as  Professor  Hales  points  out ; 4  as  Professor  Skeat 
shows,  it  offers  a  bit  of  evidence  for  dating  the  Canterbury  Tales. 
Since  Canterbury  pilgrims  went  past  Greenwich,  Chaucer's  daily 
familiarity  with  them  probably  dated  from  his  residence  there; 
living  in  Aldgate  he  would  not  see  them  at  all.  The  inference, 
though  by  no  means  necessary,  is  natural,  that  the  first  conception 
of  the  Canterbury  Tales  dates  from  1385  or  later. 

The  most  important  element  for  ascertaining  the  terminus  a  quo 
of  the  Canterbury  Tales  is  the  date  of  the  Legend  of  Good  Women. 
Lowes  has  shown  us  that  it  cannot  antedate  1386,  and  Skeat  has 
shown  reason  (independent  of  the  date  of  the  Tales)  to  believe  that 
it  was  known  to  the  world  in  1387.  We  can  hardly  doubt  that 
the  beginning  of  the  greater  work  came  after  the  Legend ;  and  it 
may  be  that  impatience  to  be  at  it  was  one  reason  for  the  sense  of 

1  See  Life-Records  (1875),  pp.  8,  9,  15,  19,  28,  30  ;  also  (1900)  xl.-xlii. 
The  accounts  are  not  wholly  consistent,  but  so  much  is  certain  from  the 
indictments. 

2  Possibly  in  order  to  pay  wages,   or  the  like,  at  some  of  the  "Kings 
Works  "  down  the  river. 

3  For  earlier  and  partial  treatments  of  Chaucer's  residence  in  connection 
with  his  poems,  see  J.  W.  Hales,  Academy  and  Fol.  Lit.,  I.  c.;  Skeat,  Chaucer 
Society  Essays,  670-1  (cf.  Chaucer,  I.  xlii.);  and  cf.  J.  L.  Lowes,  Pull.  Mod. 
Lang.  Assoc.-,  xx.  771-3. 

4  Academy,  and  Fol.  Lit.,  1.  c.     See  also  p.  121  above. 


142  THE    CANTERBURY    TALES.  [CH.  .V,  §  1 

haste  betrayed  in  the  other.  There  is  the  further  consideration 
that  as,  with  all  proper  deductions  of  parts  earlier  written,  the 
Canterbury  Tales  compose  nearly  half  of  Chaucer's  known  literary 
work,  so  it  is  not  injudicious  to  allow  them  nearly  half  his  literary 
life.  The  date  1387  x  for  the  commencement  of  the  Canterbury 
Tales  harmonizes  with  all  that  we  have  found  already ;  and  also 
with  the  results  of  our  next  deliberation,  as  to  the  date  of  the 
General  Prologue. 

•   §  2.  The  General  Prologue. 

Was  the  Prologue  written  early  or  late  in  the  Canterbury  period  1 
Dr.  Furnivail  believes  that  it  and  the  links  were  written  after  most 
of  the  tales.2  Skeat  says,3  "  The  Prologue,  answering  somewhat  to 
a  preface,  is  one  of  his  very  latest  works,  and  in  his  best  manner ; 
and  before  writing  it,  he  had  in  some  measure  arranged  a  part  of  his 

1  An  opinion  favoured  by  critics.     Tyrwhitt  (I.  clxii.,  note)  thought  the 
poem  could  not  have  been  "  much  advanced  before  1389  "  ;   Mather  (Chaucer's 
Prologue,  etc.,  p.  xxxiii.)  thinks  "the  writing  and  arranging  of  the  Canter 
bury  Tales  must  have  proceeded  intermittently  from  1387  to  1400  "  ;   Skeat 
(III.  372)  thinks  the  poem  "was  most  likely  in  hand  up  to  the  time  of  his 
death,  though  lie  probably  neglected  it  towards  the  last."     Pollard,  however, 
seems  inclined  rather  to  think  that  Chaucer  dropped  the  Canterbury  Tales  soon 
after  1390  (Globe  Chaucer,  p.  xxii.).     There  is  possible  confirmation  for  the 
date  1387  in  a  suggestion  of  Skeat's  ;  though  I  must  say  that  by  itself  I  should 
attach  little  value  to  it.     Excluding  all  years  except  1386-90,  and  starting 
with  the  date  mentioned  in  the  Man  of  Law's  Prologue,  April  18,  the  second 
day  after  the  pilgrims  assembled,  he  says  (III.  373-4)  that  the  year  could  not 
have  been  1389,  when  that  day  was  Easter :   nor  1390,  when  April  17  was 
Sunday  ;  nor  1386,  when  the  pilgrimage  would  have  been  in  Holy  Week  ; 
nor  1388,  when  April  19  was  Sunday,  and  something  must  have  been  said 
of  the  pilgrims  hearing  mass.     (Skeat  sometimes  forgets  the  fragmentary  state 
of  the  poem.)    This  leaves  only  1387,  when  they  would   have  assembled, 
Tuesday,  April  16,  "and  had  four  clear  days  before  them."     (I  should  prefer 
to  say  three  ;  cf.  my  article  in  Publ.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.,  vol.  xxi.,  pp.  478-85, 
on  the  number  of  days  of  the  pilgrimage.)    The  confirmation  which  Skeat  sees 
in  the  date  1387  which  he  had  selected  for  the  revised  Knight's  Tale  must 
vanish  if  that  poem  is  practically  identical  with  the   Palamon  and  Arcite  ; 
and  I  have  tried  to  show  earlier  that  his  method  of  arriving  at  it  is  hardly 
trustworthy.     In  writing  so   protracted  a  poem  as  the   Canterbury   Tales, 
Chaucer  would  have  involved  himself  in  some  inconveniences  by  choosing  a 
definite  year  and  carrying  it  all  through,  and  nothing  would  have  been  gained 
by  so  doing.     Dante  did,  to  be  sure,  but  in  rigid  consistency  there  is  a  vivid 
contrast  between  the  two  poets.    Even  if  he  laid  his  plan,  and  wrote  the  Man 
of  Law's  Prologue,  at  the  season  of  year  of  which  he  writes,  still  more  if  he 
did  not,  there 'is  no  strong  ground  for  thinking  that  he  would  have  adapted 
his  poem  to  the  Sundays  and  movable  feasts  of  the  year  in  which  he  wrote,  or 
of  any  year.     But  the  coincidence  between  Skeat's  date  and  that  reached  by 
other  routes  may  perhaps  suggest  that  he  did. 

2  Trial  Forewords,  p.  10. 

3  III.  374-5.   Yet  he  quotes  Hales'  evidence  as  to  the  date  (to  be  mentioned 
presently). 


CH.   V,  §  2]  THE    GENERAL    PROLOGUE.  143 

materials."  When  Chaucer  wrote  the  end,  at  least,  of  the  Prologue, 
he  had  probably  planned  and  perhaps  written  the  first  group  or  so ; 
the. Knight's  Tale  was  ready  to  hand,  and  Chaucer's  apology  (725- 
42)  seems  to  have  reference  to  the  Miller's  and  Reeve's  Tales.  But 
if  a  considerable  time  had  passed  since  the  whole  work  had  been 
designed  and  begun,  he  would  hardly  have  announced  the  immense 
plan  which  we  find  in  lines  791-5,  almost  at  the  end ;  and  is  not  a 
prologue  which  lays  a  ground-plan  likely  to  come  early  I1  I  shall 
present  evidence  later  that  several  parts  of  the  poem  were  written 
after  the  Prologue ;  most  of  the  links  palpably  were,  since  they 
take  for  granted  the  characterizations  presented  in  it.  Therefore, 
quite  apart  from  other  evidence  on  the  date,  it  certainly  appears  that 
the  whole  Prologue  was  among  the  earlier-written  parts  of  the 
poem ;  and  there  is  nothing  against  putting  it  immediately  after 
the  conception  of  the  whole,  as  I  should  do.2 

'For  dating  the  Prologue  exactly,  only  one  piece  of  evidence  has 
hitherto  been  found,  but  happily  that,  so  far  as  it  goes,  is  conclusive. 
The  Merchant,  says  Chaucer  (276-7), 

"  wolde  the  see  were  kept  for  any  thing 
Bitwixe  Middelburgh  and  Orewelle,"  3 

which  makes  it  plain  that  those  were  the  ports  of  entry  and  departure 
for  the  traffic  in  which  he  was  engaged. 

During  the  fourteenth  century,  as  is  well  known,  there  was  more 
or  less  legislation  in  England  directed  to  the  control  of  trade  for  the 
benefit  of  the  royal  exchequer  and  of  English  merchants,  and  one  of 
the  items  in  this  legislation  was  the  establishment  of  the  staple. 
Though  the  exact  history  of  this  institution  is  not  perfectly  clear,  it 

1  This  in  answer  to  Lowes  on  L.  G.  W.  (Pull.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.,  xx.  816  ; 
and  cf.  p.  126  above). 

2  The  Prologue  may  not  have  been  written  quite  continuously.     As  Miss 
E.  P.  Hammond  suggested,  I  believe,   in  a  paper  read  before  the  Modern 
Language  Association  of  America,  in  Madison,  Wisconsin,  December,  1905, 
lines  542-4  look  like  a  fresh  start.     No  doubt  Chaucer  left  for  years  a  blank 
between  the  Prioress  and  the  Monk,  where  the  "  Prestes  thre"now  stand 
(164)  ;  it  is  not  impossible  that  at  this  point  he  cancelled  descriptions  of  the 
Second  Nun  and  the  Nun's  Priest ;  it  should  never  be  forgotten,  however,  that 
all  the  evidence  shows  that  cancellation  was  anything  but  Chaucer's  practice. 
The  "  wel  nyne  and  twenty  in  a  corapanye  "  (1.  24)  Chaucer  must  have  put  in 
after  the  Prologue  was  practically  complete,  since  it  is  hardly  to  be  supposed 
that  he  settled  on  this  unobvious  number  at  the  start. 

3  The  former  is  in  Holland,    on  the  island  of  Walcheren,  at  the  mouth 
of  the  Scheldt,  and  the  latter  is  just  across  the  river  Orwell  from  Harwich. 
The  route  was  therefore  the  same  as  that  of  the  modern  North  Sea  steamers 
from  Harwich  to  Antwerp. 


144  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES.  [cH.  V,  §  2 

was  an  establishment  in  an  English  or  continental  port  to  which  the 
chief  products  of  England,  wool,  woolfells  and  leather,  had  to  be 
taken  before  they  could  be  sold  to  foreigners ;  and  it  was  connected 
not  primarily  with  the  collection  of  customs,  but  with  the  attempt 
to  create  a  forced  monopoly.1  Now  Professor  J.  W.  Hales  has 
pointed  out,2  by  a  reference  to  Craik's  History  of  British  Commerce 
(cited  below),  that  Middleburgh  was  the  staple-port  only  between 
1384  and  1388,  and  therefore  concludes  that  the  Prologue  must  have 
been  written  between  those  years.  The  matter  may  be  confirmed 
by  reference  to  more  reliable  sources  of  information,  David 
Macpherson's  Annals  of  Commerce  3  and  contemporary  documents. 

In  1353  the  staple  was  removed  from  the  continent,  where  it  had 
been  for  some  time  previously,  and  fixed  "  for  ever  "  at  ten  places 
in  England  and  several  in  Wales  and  Ireland;  in  1363  the  staple 
for  wool,  woolfells  and  hides  was  moved  to  Calais;  in  1369,  in 
consequence  of  the  war  with  France,  it  was  restored  to  much  the 
same  list  of  English  towns  as  before;  in  1376  it  was  restored 
to  Calais;  in  1378  merchants  from  countries  in  the  extreme  west 
of  Europe  were  allowed  to  come  to  Southampton  or  elsewhere 
instead  of  Calais.4  In  1382-3  (6  Eic.  II.)  there  was  a  prospect  of 
its  being  moved  from  Calais,  in  consequence  of  a  treaty  with  the 
Flemings;  in  1383-4  it  was  arranged  to  be  either  at  Calais  or 
at  some  English  port.5  That  the  staple  was  still  at  Calais  on 
September  22, 1383,  is  probably  indicated  by  the  fact  that  on  that 
date  the  King  promised  to  repay  a  loan,  which  the  mayor  and  com 
monalty  of  London  had  made  him,  by  abating  their  subsidies,  etc., 
to  him,  "  and  by  grant  hereby  made  that  when  the  20001.  for  the 
safe  keeping  of  Calais  has  been  fully  discharged  by  the  subsidy  of 
23s.  4d.  a  sack  of  wool,  the  collectors  of  that  subsidy  shall  deliver 
the  same  to  the  said  mayor,"  etc.6  It  was  at  Middleburgh  April 

1  See   Hubert  Hall  in  the  Gentleman's  Magazine,   cclv.   (1883),  255-75, 
especially    p.    257  ;    R.   H.   I.   Palgrave,    Dictionary  of  Political  Economy 
(London,  1901),  iii.  460-2  ;    George  L.  Craik,  History  of  British  Commerce 
(London,  1844),  i.  120  (the  account  here,  however,  is  not  quite  accurate). 
For  information  and  references  on  this  whole  subject  I  am  much  indebted  to 
the  kindness  of  Professor  E.  F.  Gay,  of  Harvard  University. 

2  In  a  letter  to  the  Athenceum,  April  8,  1893  (no.  3415,  443-4),  reprinted 
in  his  Folia  Literaria,  99-102.     See  Craik,  i.  123. 

3  London,  1805. 

4  Macpherson,  i.  546-7,  566,  576,  582,  587-8. 

5  RotuliParl,  iii.  136b,  159a. 

6  Calendar    of   the    Patent    Rolls:   Richard    II.    (London,    1895-1902), 
ii.  307. 


OH.   V,  §  2]  THE    GENERAL   PROLOGUE.  145 

20,  1384,  as  is  shown  by  the1  "appointment  of  William  Brampton, 
of  London,  governor  of  the  merchants  of  the  staple  of  wools  kept 
at  Middelbufgh,  to  search "  for  money  illegally  exported ;  and 
several  references  show  that  it  was  still  there  at  least  in  1386  and 
1387.2  In  February,  1388,  the  Commonsprayedthat  the  staple  of  wool 
might  be  moved  from  "Mideburgh"  to  Calais  on  or  before  the  next 
Michaelmas  (September  29) ;  the  king  granted  that  it  should  be 
moved  to  Calais  or  to  a  port  in  England  before  the  next  Parliament 
(which  was  held  in  January,  1390).3  According  to  other  authorities, 
Parliament  ordered  that  the  staple  should  be  moved  from  Middle- 
burgh  to  Calais  by  December  1,  1388.4  It  had  been  moved  to 
Calais  before  January,  1390.5  On  December  3, 1390,  certain  wools, 
woolfells  and  hides  were  declared  forfeit  to  the  crown  "  because 
shipped  in  Newcastle  on  Tyne  for  the  staple  of  Calais  and  taken  to 
Middelburgh  in  Seland  contrary  to  the  king's  prohibition  thereof. "  6 
In  November,  1390,  it  was  ordered  to  be  moved  from  Calais  to 
England  by  the  following  January.7  In  December,  1390,  it  was 
still  in  Calais;  in  November,  1391,  it  was  ordered  to  be  within 
the  realm.8  From  1388  to  1390,  according  to  Macpherson,9  the 
staple  was  at  Calais,  and  during  the  remainder  of  the  century  it  was 
sometimes  at  Calais  and  sometimes  at  English  towns.  It  is  certain, 
then,  that  during  the  latter  part  of  the  fourteenth  century  the  staple 
for  wools,  etc.,  was  at  Middleburgh  from  late  in  1383  or  early  in 
1384  till  1388,  and  then  only.10 

1  CaL  Pat.  R.,  Rich.  II. ,  ii.  397.  Of  this  says  Macpherson  (i.  596,  uote) : 
"  This  is  probably  the  first  establishment  of  the  staple  at  Middleburg." 

3  See  note  10  below.  3  Rot.  Parl.,  iii.  250b. 

4  Knighton's  Chronicle  (Rolls  Series,  1895),  ii.  298,  308.    Cf.  also  Walsing- 
hara,  ii.  177  ;  Statutes  of  the  Realm,  ii.  60  ;  Macpherson,  i.  600. 

5  Rot.  Parl. ,  iii.  268b.    The  Monk  of  Evesham  is  therefore  clearly  mistaken 
or  misleading  in  implying  that  as  late  as  1392  the  staple  had  been  at  Middle- 
burgh  (Hist.  Vitce  et  Regni  Ric.  II. ,  ed.  Th.  Hearne,  p.  123). 

6  CaL  Pat.  R.,  Rich.  II. ,  iv.  355. 

7  Stat.  of  the  Realm,  ii.  76  ;  Rot.  Parl.,  iii.  278a. 

8  Rot.  Parl.,  iii.  279b,  285a. 

9  i.  600,  602,  604,  etc. 

10  I  give  here  certain  further  items  about  Middleburgh  and  Orwell  as  ports. 
Before  the  establishment  of  the  staple  at  Middleburgh  some  persons  had  been 
allowed,  by  royal  patent,  though  it  was  against  the  ordinance  of  Parliament, 
to  carry  wools,  etc.,  to  Middleburgh  and  elsewhere.  The  right  was  guaranteed 
by  Parliament,  with  reference  to  Middleburgh,  in  1372  (Rot.  Parl.,  ii.  315b). 
But  that  both  Middleburgh  and  Orwell  were  relatively  unimportant  for  Eng 
lish  commerce  except  when  the  staple  was  at  the  former  place  is  indicated  by 
the  fact  that,  while  both  appear  frequently  in  the  CaL  Pat.  Rolls,  beginning 
at  the  end  of  1383,  neither  is  mentioned  during  the  years  1377-82  (see  indexes), 
and  each  only  twice  between  1388  and  1392.  The  staple  at  Middleburgh  is 

DEV.  CH.  L 


146  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  2 

From  all  this,  two  interesting  deductions  may  be  made.  In  the 
first  place,  it  is  natural  to  find  that  the  Merchant  was  probably  one 
of  the  merchants  of  the  staple,1  and  dealt  in  the  commodity  with 
which  Chaucer  was  best  acquainted — wool.  But  much  more 
important  is  the  fact  that  the  description  of  the  Merchant  (and 
therefore,  we  may  infer,  most  of  the  Prologue)  cannot  have  been 
written  earlier  than  1384.  That  it  was  written  some  little  time 
after  this  is  suggested  by  the  fact  that  the  Merchant 

"  wolde  the  see  were  kept  for  any  thing  "  ; 

it  had  therefore  proved  to  be  dangerous.  This  is  confirmed  by 
actual  incidents  in  1385  and  1387.2  Therefore  for  two  or  three 
years  there  may  have  been  agitation  for  a  safer  route,  which  may 
have  been  one  reason  for  the  petition  of  the  Commons  to  have  the 
staple  transferred.  It  is  not  quite  certain,  perhaps,  that  the  passage 
was  written  in  1388  or  earlier,  for  Chaucer  may  have  had  in  mind 
a  definite  year,  or  vaguer  period,  a  little  further  back  than  the  time 
when  he  wrote.  But  since  there  is  not  the  slightest  evidence 


mentioned  July  1,  1386,  and  January  15,  1387  (iii.  190,  253)  ;  on  the  latter 
date  the  king  orders  vessels  of  war  to  convoy  certain  ships  laden  with  wool 
from  the  port  of  Orwell  to  the  staple  of  Middleburgh..  This  and  the  next 
item  explain  the  Merchant's  desire  that  the  sea  should  be  ' '  kept  for  any 
thing."  Under  date  October  2,  1385,  we  learn  (iii.  86)  that  a  ship  belonging 
to  Florentine  merchants,  laden  at  Middleburgh  and  bound  for  England,  was 
chased  by  the  king's  enemies,  beached  and  abandoned  at  Orwell,  and  her  cargo 
plundered.  (See  also  Essays  on  Chaucer,  Ch.  Soc.,  pp.  470-1.  According  to 
Walsingham,  ii.  217,  Danish  pirates  greatly  harassed  merchants  and  seamen, 
especially  the  men  of  Norfolk,  in  1395.)  The  fact  that  several  contemporary 
authorities  mention  the  transfer  of  the  staple  back  to  Calais,  and  all  ignore  the 
previous  change,  suggests  that  the  dangers  of  the  North  Sea  passage  had  caused 
considerable  agitation  for  removal.  During  the  session  of  Parliament  in  October, 
1385,  there  was  agitation  for  restoring  the  staple  to  an  English  port ;  where  it 
was  then  is  not  stated,  but  it  is  implied  that  it  was  at  some  port,  other  than 
Calais,  outside  of  England  (Rot.  Part.,  iii.  203a,  204b,  214a).  For  other 
references  to  Middleburgh  and  Orwell  in  these  years  see  Gal.  Pat.  Eolls, 
Eich.  II.,  vols.  ii.,  iii.,  iv.,  indexes.  Under  date  of  February  20,  1388, 
Orwell  is  shown  to  have  been  a  terminus  of  the  wool-traffic  (iii.  470).  I  may 
add  here  a  little  note  on  the  ^Shipman,  who  for  aught  Chaucer  knew  was 
from  Dartmouth,  and  was  in  the  habit  of  stealing  wine.  On  December  6,  1386 
(Gal.  Pat.  R.,  Eich.  II.,  iii.  247),  the  bailiff  of  Plymouth,  John  Hanley  of 
Dartmouth  and  others  were  appointed  to  compel  restitution  by  five  men 
of  Plymouth,  Hugh  de  "Weston  of  Dartmouth,  and  three  men  of  Kingswear 
("  Kyngeswere")  for  the  theft  of  four  tuns  of  wine  from  the  "Cristaven" 
of  Middleburgh.  But,  unfortunately,  we  have  no  information  that  the  master 
of  the  ship  "  Maudeleyne,"  hailing  from  Dartmouth,  was  ever  named  Hugh 
de  Weston  (cf.  Ch.  Soc.  Essays,  484-5). 

1  He  even  wears  a  "  Flaundrish  bever  hat." 

"  See  note  10  above. 


CH.  V,  §  2]  THE   GENERAL   PROLOGUE.  147 

of  this,1  we  may  conclude  that  the  probabilities  are  strong  for  1387-8 
as  the  date  of  this  passage,  and  therefore  presumably  of  the  entire 
Prologue. 

Striking  confirmation  for  a  date  no  later  than  this  is  afforded 
by  a  probable  other  contemporary  allusion.     The  Squire 

"  had  been  somtyme  in  chivachye, 
In  Flaundres,  in  Artoys,  and  Picardye, 
And  born  hym  wel,  as  of  so  litel  space  "  (85-7). 

On  this  Dr.  Mather2  remarks:  "The  English  under  Edward  III. 
made  numerous  descents  upon  the  Low  Countries.  Chaucer  may 
well  be  thinking  particularly  of  the  campaign  of  1359-60,  in  which 
he  himself  was.  taken  prisoner."  But  this  campaign  did  not  take 
place  in  Flanders  at  all ;  the  English  army  went  through  Artois 
and  Picardy,  but  only  en  route  to  Eheims,  near  which8  Chaucer 
was  made  prisoner,  and  to  Paris ;  the  peace  was  signed  at  Bretigny, 
near  Chartres.4  Chaucer  no  doubt  did  think  of  his  own  maiden 
campaign,  but  it  can  hardly  have  supplied  him  with  his  geography. 
Moreover  I  find  in  Walsingham  no  record  whatever  of  an  English 
campaign  in  Flanders  between  1359  and  1383,  or  between  1383 
and  1395. 

But  in  1383  there  was  one  which  exactly  fits  the  conditions.5 
In  May  of  that  year,  Henry  le  Despenser,  the  militant  Bishop  of 
Norwich,  with  the  benediction  of  Pope  Urban  VI.,  and  to  the 
indignation  of  John  Wyclif,  led  from  England  an  expedition, 
which  he  gave  all  the  airs  of  a  Crusade,  against  the  schismatic 

1  If  there  is  internal  evidence  of  adaptation  to  any  year,  that  year,  as  we 
have  seen,  is  1387. 
3  Chaucer's  ProL,  etc.,  p.  5. 

3  At  "Re tters,"  according  to  the  contemporary  account;   i.e.  at  Rethel, 
as  Lounsbury  seems  to  have  been  the  first  to  point  out  (Studies,  iii.,  452). 
J.  W.  Hales  (Diet.  Nat.  Biogr.,  x.  157)  says  "Ketiers  in  Brittany,"  which  is 
certainly  wrong.     Rtthel  and  Rethers  were  different  forms  for  the  same  name 
(see  Kervyn  de  Lettenhove,  Froissart,  xxv.  228). 

4  See  Walsingham's  Historia  (Rolls  Series,  1863),  i.  287-90. 

5  The  best  early  account  is  Walsingham's,  ii.  71-104.     Froissart  gives  a 
very  detailed  one  in  book  II.,  chaps.  207-14  (ed.  by  J.-A.  Buchon,  Coll.  des 
Chron.  Nat.   Franc.,   Paris,   1826;  vol.    xxxii.   pp.    413-71;  see    also   the 
translation  by  T.    Johnes,  pt.    II.    chapters  131-45).     See  also  Eulogium 
Historiarum  a  Monacho  Malmesburiensi  (ed.  by  F.  S.  Haydon,  Rolls  Series, 
1863),   iii.    356-7  ;    Malverne,   in    Higden  (Rolls    Ser.,    1886),   ix.    15-26  ; 
Chronicon  a  Monacho  S.   Albani  (R.  Ser.,   1874),  pp.  355-7.     The  fullest 
modern  accounts  are  The  Crusade  of  1383,  by  G.  M.  Wrong  (London,  1892) ; 
and  Der  Krcuzzug  des  Biscliofs  Heinrich  von  Norwich  im  Jahre  1383,  a 
dissertation  by  Gerhard  Skalweit  (Konigsberg,  1898) .    For  a  fuller  bibliography, 
see  Diet.  Nat.  Biogr.,  xiv.  412  ;  and  Skalweit,  pp.  5-7,  75-83. 


148  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  2 

French  adherents  of  the  antipope  Clement.  For  political  reasons, 
the  greater  part  of  the  campaign  was  in  Flanders,  though  the 
Flemings  were  as  good  Urhanists  as  the  English,  especially  about 
Gravelines  (Gravenynge) , Dunkirk,  Ypres and  Bourbourg  (Burburgh), 
all  of  them  in  that  province.1  But  in  August  the  bishop,  hearing 
that  the  King  of  France  was  come  to  Amiens  with  an  army, 
entered  Picardy  2  with  a  part  of  his  force,  and  defied  the  king  to 
battle ;  his  defiance  not  being  accepted,  he  returned  to  Gravelines. 
He  must  have  passed  through  Artois  going  each  way.  He  ended 
his  short  "chivachye"  by  surrendering  Bourbourg,  retreating,  and 
destroying  Gravelines ;  his  reception  in  England  shortly  after 
wards  was  not  cordial. 

In-discussing  the  characters  in  the  Prologue  there  is  always 
danger,  of  course,  that  we  may  attribute  to  Chaucer  a  more 
detailed  and  realistic  conception  than  he  had;  but  at  any  rate 
everything  here  fits  with  great  nicety  the  strikingly  circumstantial 
account  given  by  Chaucer.  The  Squire  had  been  on  a  "  chivachye  "  3 
which  had  not  lasted  long  (1.  87),  in  exactly  the  region  which  had 
been  covered  by  the  Bishop  of  Norwich's  expedition,  and  which 
had  not  been  the  scene  of  such  events  for  a  generation  or  more. 
His  father's  campaigns  had  all  been  semi-religious,  of  the  nature  of 
Crusades,  and  the  Knight  was  just  the  sort  of  man  to  be  imposed 
on  by  the  ecclesiastical  zeal  of  the  bishop  into  thinking  his  cause 
a  sacred  one.  These  events  created  a  great  deal  of  talk  and 
scandal,  and  must  have  been  fresh  in  every  one's  mind  when 
Chaucer  wrote  the  passage.  The  account  of  the  Squire's  experiences 
is  as  detailed  and  specific,  so  far  as  it  goes,  as  that  of  his  father's, 
which  have  all  been  identified  with  real  events  within  the  lifetime 
of  such  a  man.  Surely  the  inference  is  not  forced  that  Chaucer 
meant  the  Squire  to  have  been  in  this  expedition. 

But  we  have  now  ample  grounds  for  believing  that  the  Prologue 
cannot  have  been  written  before  1387.  Professor  Lowes  has 
shown  that  the  Prologue  to  the  Legend  of  Good  Women  cannot 

1  Cf.  Atlas  de  Geographic  Historique,  ed.  by  F.  Schrader  (Paris,   1896), 
plate  28  ;   or  the   Spruner-Mencke  historical   atlas.     Nearly  all  the   places 
mentioned  in  the  sources  may  be  found  in  the  Atlas  des  Baillages  en  1789, 
by  Armand  Brette  (Paris,  1904). 

2  See  Wrong,  p.  77,  and  "Walsingham.     Froissart  passes  over  this  episode, 
but  Skalweit  shows  (pp.  71-4)  that  his  account  of  the  Crusade  is  neither 
complete  nor  very  valuable. 

3  Froissart  constantly  uses  in  his    account  the  verb   chevauchcr.      The 
campaign  hardly  outlasted  the  summer. 


CH.  V,  §  2]  THE    GENERAL   PROLOGUE.  149 

well  have  been  written  before  1386,  and  Chaucer  can  hardly  have 
been  at  leisure  to  begin  a  new  poem  before  the  following  year. 
Yet  the  Squire  at  the  time  ~ of  the, pilgrimage  was  only  about 
twenty,  which  would  make  him  only  sixteen  or  so  on  his 
campaign.  It  may  be  attributing  too  much  exactness  to  Chaucer's 
conception  to  argue  the  matter  thus,  but  at. any  rate  this  objection 
will  prove  to  have  no  weight.  It  will  be  noticed  that  the  Squire 
has  not  just  returned — it  was  "  somtyme,"  "at, one  time;"  similarly, 
the  Crusade  was  not  over  till  the  fall,  and  this  is  April.  Moreover, 
if  this  is  not  pushing  realism  too  far,  while  his  father  has  just 
arrived,  all  travel-stained,  from  a  journey,  the  Squire  is  in  most 
exquisite  order.  But,  most  interesting  of  all,  sixteen,  does  not 
seem  to  have  been  an  exceptionally  early  age  for  the  fourteenth- 
century  soldier  to  enter  his  profession.1  In  the  fourteenth  century 
people  certainly  matured  earlier  than  under  modern  social  conditions, 
and  at  a  time  when  the  military  class  was  not  expected  to  have 
very  much  education,  what  should  a  squire  be  at,  when  once  he 
had  got  his  growth  1  The  hero  of  the  romance  of  King  Horn  is 
ripe  for  warlike  exploits  and  is  knighted  soon  after  he  is  fifteen.2 
Much  evidence  to  bear  me  out  is  also  supplied  by  the  royal  families 
of  England  and  France,  the  members  of  which  are  no  more  likely 
to  have  been  precociously  military  than  others  of  the  fighting  class. 
On  Chaucer's  campaign  in  1359  Edward  III.  was  accompanied  by 
his  four  eldest  sons,  of  whom  Lionel  was  twenty-one,  John  nineteen 
and  Edmund  eighteen.3  At  the  age  of  seventeen  Lionel  was 
knighted,  and  went  on  a  military  expedition  to  France.  At  the 
Battle  of  Crecy  (August,  1346)  Edward  the  Black  Prince  com 
manded  one  of  the  two  main  divisions  of  the  English  army,  and 
was  left  quite  independent  by  his  father  in  order  that  he  might 
win  his  spurs ;  yet  he  was  only  sixteen.4  Most  striking  of  all,  at 

1  Which  should  not  be  too  surprising  to  a  generation  which  has  allowed 
preparatory-school  boys  to  kill  each  other  in  playing  university  football. 

2  MS.  Laud,  1.  18  (Herrig's  ArcMv,  vol.  1.,  41)  ;  MS.   Harl.  (in  Kitson)  ; 
omitted  in  MS.  Camb.  (E.  E.  T.  S.,  1866).     In  the  description  of  the  Squire 
there  are  some  possible  reminiscences  of  the  romance  of  King  Horn  ;  compare 
83-4  with  Horn  93-4,  899-900  (Cambridge  MS.,  E.  E.  T.  S.),  and  100  with 
233-4  and  indeed  the  whole  account  of  Horn  and  his  education.     (But 
cf.  also  Mill's  History  of  Chivalry,  i.  36  ;  Life  Records  of  Chaucer,  Ch.  Soc., 
1876,  p.  xiii.  ;  Furnivall's  Manners  and  Meals,  E.  E.  T.  S.,  1868,  pp.  137-9, 
369).     With  Horn  133-4  (MS.  Harl.,  in  Ritson)  compare  also  Nun's  Priest's. 
Tale,  4391-2. 

3  Diet,  of  Nat.  Biog.,  xxxiii.  336,  xxix.  417,  xxxii.  109. 

4  Ibid.,  xvii.  90  ;  Green's  Short  History  (New  York,  1890),  p.  226, 


150  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES.  [CH.  V,  §3 

the  Battle  of  Poitiers  (September,  1356)  King  John  of  France  was 
accompanied  by  his  four  sons,  of  whom  Charles  was  nineteen, 
Louis  was  seventeen,  Jean  under  sixteen  and  Philippe  only  four 
teen  ;  and  though  the  three  older  ones  fled,  Philippe  stood  by  and 
aided  his  father  in  his  last  stand,  and  was  taken  prisoner  with  him.1 
So  there  is  nothing  whatever  against  our  believing  that  Chaucer 
deliberately  represented  his  twenty-year  old  Squire  as  having 
campaigned  in  1383.  But  to  have  done  so  much  later  than  1387 
would  have  been  a  real  oversight,  and  probably  would  never  have 
occurred  to  him.  We  have  here,  I  think,  genuine  confirmation 
for  the  belief  that  at  least  the  first  part  of  the  Prologue  was 
written  in  1387.2 

§  3.  The  Physician's  Tale. 

The  Physician's  Tale  has  been  little  regarded  in  Chaucer  criticism, 
for  the  obvious  reason  that  it  is  short  and  not  of  the  first  merit.  It 
has  usually  been  put  in  the  early  part  of  the  Canterbury  period,  but 
for  almost  valueless  reasons.3  I  hope  to  show  others,  conjectural 
but  respectable,  for  the  same  opinion. 

That  it  comes  after  the  first  Prologue  of  the  Legend  of  Good 
Women  may  be  inferred  on  several  grounds.4  The  argument,  used 
more  than  once  elsewhere,  must  be  used  here  also,  that  it  is  pre 
cisely  such  a  story  as  Alcestis  should  have  scored  up  to  Chaucer's 
credit,  had  it  existed.  We  have  also  seen  that  the  more  poems  in 

1  Michaud,  Biographic   Universelle,  vii.    531,  xxv.    297,   iv.    102,  xxxiii. 
118  ;  Guizot's  History  of  France  (N.  Y.,  1885),  ii.  104.     In  connection  with 
Chaucer's  own  1359  campaign,  this  opens  the  door  to  the  belief  that  he  may 
have  been  born  later  than  1340,  for  which  I  believe  there  is  not  a  little  to  be 
said  ;  at  least  it  would  make  the  earlier  part  of  his  life  somewhat  more 
intelligible. 

2  Possibly  a  little  more  evidence  for  a  date  in  this  neighbourhood  may  be 
found  in  the  Prologue.     In  August  or  September,  1386,  Chaucer  was  elected 
Knight  of  the  Shire  for  Kent  (Life  Records,  Ch.  Soc.,  pp.  261-2)  ;  and  of 
the  Franklin  he  says  : 

"Fill  ofte  tyme  he  was  knight  of  the  shire  "  (356). 

Of  course  this  might  be  a  coincidence,  but  Chaucer's  own  office  makes  the 
detail  especially  natural.  Moreover  "at  sessiouns  ther  was  he  lord  and  sire," 
and  his  friend(  and  companion  the  Man  of  Law  was  justice  in  assizes  by 
patent  and  by  "  pleyn  commissioun."  Chaucer  was  appointed  J.P.  for 
Kent  in  1385,  and  received  a  full  commission  in  1386. 

3  Cf.  my  Introduction ;  and  also  p.  155  below,  and  J.  Koch,  Pardoner's 
Tale,  p.  xxii. 

4  Of  course  it  followed  the  Troilus.    For  one  thing,  it  may  be  worth  noting 
that  in  T.  0.,  IV.  414  Chaucer  represents  "  Zanzis  "  as  a  writer  ;  and  in  Phys. 
T.,  16,  correctly,  and  following  Le  Roman    de  la  Hose,  as  a  painter.     Cf. 
T.  R.  Lounsbury,  Studies,  ii.  411-12. 


CH.  v,  §  3]  THE  PHYSICIAN'S  TALE.  151 

10-sy liable  couplets  we  put  before  the  Prologue  of  the  Legend,  the 
stranger  becomes  the  metrical  allusion  in  F,  562.  Doubtless,  there 
fore,  it  was  written  later  than  1386.1 

A  date  not  far  from  this,  near  the  Legends  of  Good  Women,  is 
suggested  by  its  general  similarity  to  them  in  treatment.  Here,  as 
in  them,  Chaucer  is  singularly  bald  in  his  account  and  slavish 
toward  his  source.  There  is  none  of  the  warmth  and  expansive- 
ness  which  characterizes  most  of  the  Canterbury  Tales.  Chaucer 
here  observes  the  respectful  and  pupillary  and  frigid  treatment  of 
classical  story  which  appears  in  the  Legend,  but  which  he  wholly 
got  over  in  such  a  poem  as  the  Manciple's  Tale.  The  Physician's 
Tale  in  every  respect  is  harmonious  with  the  Legend  of  Good  Women. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  probably  preceded  the  publication  of 
Gower's  Confessio  Amantis,  1390.2  I  hope  to  show  strong  reason 
to  believe  that  Chaucer  had  read  and  remembered  Gower's  version 
of  the  story  of  Constance  when  he  wrote  the  Man  of  Law's  Tale  ;  3 
now  there  is  not  only  no  evidence  that  he  had  read  Gower's  story 
of  Virginia4 — there  is  striking  evidence  that  he  had  not,5  but 

1  It  may  seem  as  if  we  should  put  Phys.  T.  after  the  translation  of  Innocent's 
De  Contemptu  Mundi.     We  shall  *see  in  .the  case  of  M.  L.  T.  (see  p.  182), 
the  peculiarly  strong  probability  that  works  which  quote  this  book  followed 
Chaucer's  version  of  it,  which  there  is  reason  to  date  (probably  late)  in  the 
period  1387-94  ;   Chaucer  certainly  shows  no  sign   of  having  known  the 
original  before  this  time.     Phys.  T.,  280, 

"  The  worm  of  conscience  may  agryse," 

seems  at  first  sight  to  repeat  a  phrase  from  the  pope's  work :  "  vermis  enim 
conscientise  nunquam  moritur"  (I.  19) ;  "vermis  conscientise  tripliciter  lacer- 
abit"  (III.  2).  But  the  phrase  "Livers  de  conscience  "  occurs  in  Jean  de 
Meun's  Testament,  1939,  as  is  shown  by  Koeppel  (Anglia,  xiv.  266) ;  he  shows 
also  that  Chaucer  certainly  quotes  this  poem  in  W.  B.  ProL,  and  probably 
elsewhere  in  the  C.  T.  Considering  his  intimacy  with  Le  Roman  de  la, 
Rose,  he  is  likely  at  any  time  to  have  known  Jean's  Testament.  On  the 
possible  connection  of  Chaucer's  phrase  with  Innocent,  see  Skeat,  V.  264  ; 
and  K.  C.  M.  Sills,  Journ.  Compar.  Lit.,  i.  390-1  (1903-4,  the  only  year  it  was 
published),  in  connection  with  a  possible  borrowing  by  Wyatt  from  Chaucer  ; 
both  Sills  and  Koeppel  declare  the  phrase  to  be  common,  but  each  quotes 
only  three  passages.  All  I  can  find  are  the  one  in  Chaucer,  the  two  in 
Innocent,  the  one  in  Jean  de  Meun's  Testament,  and  finally  one  in  Richard 
III.,  I.  iii.  222.  Shakspere  is  no  doubt  quoting  Chaucer  ;  of  course  the  ulti 
mate  source  of  the  phrase  is  "Vermis  eorum  non  moritur,"  St.  Mark  ix.  43, 
45,  47,  perhaps  through  some  patristic  or  scholastic  allegorization. 

2  The  date  is  fixed  by  Macaulay,  II.  xxi. 

3  See  pp.  183-6.  4  C.  A.,  VII.  5131-306. 

5  So  Skeat,  III.  437  ;  0.  Rumbaur,  Die  Geschichte  von  Appius  u.  Virginia 
in  der  engl.  Litt.  (Breslau,  1890),  pp.  12-15.  The  latter  is  certainly  correct 
in  believing  also  that  Gower's  account  shows  no  influence  of  Chaucer  (p.  16). 
Lounsbury  (Studies,  ii.  281-4)  shows  very  convincingly  that  Chaucer  did  not 
use  Livy. 


152  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  3 

merely  expanded  the  bald  and  crude  account  in  Le  Roman  de  la 
Nose.1  Had  he  read  a  better  account,  in  a  large  number  of  points 
he  could  not  have  failed  to  show  its  influence.2  One  small  detail  is 
especially  significant.  Chaucer  always  calls  the  judge  "  Apius," 
and  the  accomplice  "  Claudius,"  and  is  even  very  emphatic  about 
the  names.3  Gower  makes  particularly  conspicuous  the  fact  that  the 
former  was  named  "Apius  Claudius,"  and  the  latter  "Marchus 
Claudius."4  It  is  hardly  a  risky  inference,  therefore,  that  the 
Physician's  Tale  is  not  only  later  than  1386,  but  antedates  1390. 

But  this  may  be  further  confirmed.  To  begin  with,  Professor 
Kittredge  points  out5  a  probable  and  very  interesting  contemporary 
allusion  in  the  tale.  "  It  is  now  generally  admitted  that  Chaucer's 
wife  was  the  sister6  of  Katherine  Swynford,  who  was  for  some 
time  governess  of  John  of  Gaunt's  daughters,7  and  whose  career  as 
the  Duke's  mistress8  and  subsequently  his  wife  is  well  known. 
Is  it  possible  that  Chaucer  put  the  following  verses  into  the 
Doctor's  mouth  without  thinking  of  his  own  sister-in-law  ? " 
Then  he  quotes  Physician's  Tale,  72-85,  verses  in  which  the  poet 
reminds  the  mistresses  in  charge  of  lord's  daughters  (note  that  he 
and  Le  Roman  de  la  Rose  call  Yirginius  only  a  Jmight,  and  lay 

1  5613-82  (Meon) ;  conveniently  given  by  Skeat,  III.  435-7. 

2  E.  g.,  the  fact  that  Virginia  was  betrothed  (to  Ilicius  in  Gower,  Icilius  in 
Livy,  III.  44),  heightens  the  pathos.     All  this  is  by  no  means  parallel  to  such 
a  bit  of  forgetfulness  as  is  mentioned  in  connection  with  the  Monk's  T.  (see 
p.  169  belpw). 

5.  .  .   "  The  cherl,  that  high  te  Claudius. 
This  false  luge,  that  highte  Apius, 
So  was  his  name  (for  this  is  no  fable) "  (153-5). 

Chaucer  follows  the  error  of  E.  E.  For  a  similar  blunder,  cf.  House  of  Fame, 
177-8  ;  and  for  the  opposite  kind,  Monk's  T.,  3887. 

4  "At  Rome  whan  that  Apius, 

Whos  other  name  is  Claudius  "  (5131-2) ; 

"  Which  Marchus  Claudius  was  hate  "  (5167). 

5  Modern  Philology,  i.  5,  note. 

6  In  the  Chaucer  Society's  Life  Records  (London,  1900  ;  pp.  xv.-xix.)  will 
be  found  all  the  evidence,  which  makes  it  practically  certain  that  if  Philippa 
was  not  Katherine's  sister  she  was  her  sister-in-law.     See  also,  among  other 
references,  J.  W.  Hales,  Athenceum,  no.  3153  (1888),  pp.  404-5,  on  Thomas, 
Philippa  and  Elizabeth  Chaucer.    Even  if  she  was  neither,  Chaucer  must  have 
been  so  familiar  with  the  affairs  of  the  Lancaster  family  that  the  allusion,  to 
be  noted  shortly,  seems  obvious. 

7  From  before  1369  to  1382,  when  she  retired  to   the  country  with  her 
illegitimate  children,  the  Beauforts.     See  S.  Armitage-Smith,  John  of  Gaunt, 
Westminster,  1904  ;  pp.  390-1. 

8  Beginning  about   1371-2  ;   in  1396  they  were  married.     See  Armitage- 
Smith,  pp.  196,  433. 


CH.  v,  §  3]  THE  PHYSICIAN'S  TALE.  153 

no  stress  on  his  rank)  that  they  owe  their  positions  to  the  fact  that 
either  they  have  kept  their  virtue,  or  through  having  formerly  lost 
it  are  peculiarly  fitted  to  safeguard  that  of  others.1 

But  the  whole  first  part  of  the  tale  has  a  singularly  actual  effect, 
where,  after  a  long  and  detailed  account  of  Virginia's  beauty  and 
goodness,  the  poet  addresses  "  maistresses "  and  parents,,  and 
recommends  judicious  strictness.  Any  one  who  carefully  reads  it, 
I  think,  will  grant  that  it  has  every  appearance  of  having  been 
inspired  by  personal  feeling  or  reminiscence ;  it  has  much  more  the 
air  of  having  been  written  with  interest  than  anything  which 
follows  in  the  tale,  it  is  not  even  remotely  suggested  by  anything 
in  Le  Roman  de  la  Hose,  and  is  not  a  particularly  obvious  out 
growth  of  the  story  itself.  More  than  this,  no  such  serious,  overt 
and  practical  criticism  of  life  is  to  be  found  anywhere  else  in  the 
Canterbury  Tales.2  We  shall  not  be  unprepared,  therefore,  if  we  de 
tect  another  contemporary  allusion,  closely  connected  with  the  other. 

One  of  Virginia's  virtues  was  that  she  avoided  company  too  old 
and  too  dissipated  for  a  girl  of  fourteen  : 

"  And  of  hir  owene  vertu,  unconstreyned, 
She  hath  ful  ofte  tyme  syk  hir  feyned, 
For  that  she  wolde  fleen  the  companye 
Wher  lykly  was  to  treten  of  folye, 
As  is  at  festes,  revels,  and  at  daunces, 
That  been  occasions  of  daliaunces. 
Swich  thinges  maken  children  for  to  be 
To  sone  rype  and  bold,  as  men  may  see, 
Which  is  ful  perilous,  and  hath  ben  yore. 
For  al  to  sone  may  she  lerne  lore 
Of  boldnesse,  whan  she  woxen  is  a  wyf  "  (61-71). 

Then  comes   the  warning   to  duennas.     Now   one  of   Katherine 

1  Line  79  in  this  passage — 

"  (Or  elles  ye  han  falle  in  freletee,) 
And  knowen  wel  y-nough  the  olde  daunce," 

at  once  suggests  the  last  line  of  the  description  of  the  Wife  of  Bath  in  the 
Prol.  (476),  and  a  line  at  the  end  of  the  account  of  her  original  in  R.  R.,  La 
Vieille,  who  acts  as  jailor  over  the  imprisoned  Bel-Acueil : 

"  Qu'el  scet  toute  la  vielle  dance  "  (4078,  ed.  Marteau). 

Clearly,  the  Wife  of  Bath  and  La  Vieille  were  not  absent  from  Chaucer's  mind 
when  he  wrote  this  passage  in  Phys.  T.  ;  but,  clearly  also,  it  was  this  passage 
which  recalled  them  to  him,  not  vice  versa.  Cf.  pp.  209-210. 

2  Except,    perhaps,   in    the   beautiful   passage   on   connubial  conduct   in 
FranJcl.  T.,  761-86  ;  and  possibly  the  ironical  digression  at  the  beginning  of 
Merch.  T. 


154  THE   CANTERBURY   TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  3 

Swynford's  young  charges  had  been  all  that  Virginia  was  not.1 
Elizabeth,  second  daughter  of  John  of  Gaunt  and  Blanche  of 
Lancaster,  born  about  1368,2  solemnly  betrothed  in  1380  to  the 
young  Earl  of  Pembroke,  and  of  marriageable  age  in  1386,3  was 
then  introduced  to  society  and  had  her  first  taste  of  "chere  of 
court."  "Altera  vero  fuit  desponsata,"  according  to  Malverne's 
continuation  of  Higden,  "comiti  Penbroke  puero  immature  setatis; 
sed  ilia  viripotens  tune  effecta,  in  regalem  curiam  est  delata  ad  con- 
spicandum  gestus  aulicos  et  mores  eorum.  Quam  ut  aspexit  domi- 
nus  Johannes  Holand,  f rater  domini  regis  nunc  ex  parte  materna, 
vehementer  captus  est  ejus  amore,  propter  quod  die  noctuque  earn 
sollicitavit,  tamen  per  temporum  intervalla  tandem  tarn  fatue  illam 
allexit,  sic  quod  tempore  transitus  domini  ducis  patris  sui  ad  mare 
per  eum  extitit  impregnata.  Unde  illam  incontinent!  postea  duce 
acceptante,  duxit  in  uxorem  ante  prolis  exortum  transivitque  in 
Hispaniam  cum  illo."4  Elizabeth  and  her  husband  returned  to 
England  in  June,  1388,  or  earlier.5  The  whole  episode  is  the  more 

1  This  is  not  the  first  time  that  the  people  concerned  in  this  affair  have 
been  brought  in  to  explain  a  Canterbury  Tale.    In  1889  Professor  A.  Brandl 
tried  to  show  that  the  Squire's  Tale  is  an  elaborate  historical  allegory  (Englische 
Studien,  xii.  161-74).    Professor  G.  L.  Kittredge  (E.  S.,  xiii.  1-24 ;  he  gives  a 
large  amount  of  valuable  information),  as  Brandl  himself  admitted,  promptly 
and  utterly  overthrew  his  opinions.  It  will  be  seen  that  the  incident  to  be  quoted 
is  the  most  complete  possible  confirmation  of  Kittredge's  position  (if  such  were 
needed) ;  as  he  conjectures  from  Knighton's  language,  Elizabeth,  instead  of 
wearing  the  willow,  conferred  it ;  this  also  explains  why  the  Earl  of  Pembroke 
refused  to  confirm  his  marriage  with  her  (see  Kittredge,  p.  21,  and  cf.  p.  12). 
Brandl  would  have  to  change  his  sexes  ;  the  tercelet  would  be  Elizabeth,  the 
peregrine  falcon  young  Pembroke  and  the  kite  John  Holland.     One  authority 
for  the  matter  is  Knighton's  Chronicle  (ed.  J.  R.  Lumby,  Rolls  Series,  1895), 
ii.  208,  but  he  omits  the  scandalous  inner  history,  perhaps  out  of  good  feeling 
(see  Kittredge,  p.  13,  n.  2) ;  the  authority  for  this  is  John  Malverne's  con 
tinuation  of  Higden's  Polychronicon  (ed.   Lumby,  Rolls  Series,    1886;   who 
wrongly  gives  the  date  of  the  incident  as  1387,  p.  xvii.),  ix.  96-7.     Armitage- 
Smith  (p.  459)  says  that  "he  is  usually  so  full  and  accurate  that  there  can  be 
little  hesitation  in  accepting  the  story,  especially  as  it  squares  with  every 
thing  known  of  John  Holland's  character  and  the  manners  of  the  English 
court  at  the  time."     He  was  a  contemporary  (died  about  1415,  according  to 
Gross,  Sources  and  Literature  of  English  History,  p.  289).     The  only  dis 
crepancy  between  Knighton  and  Malverne  is  that  according  to  the  former  the 
marriage  of  Elizabeth  and  Holland  took  place  after  her  departure  to  Spain, 
and  according  to  the  latter  just  before,  in  which  he  is  supported  by  Froissart 
(cf.  Kittredge,  pp.  12-14).     An  earlier  intrigue  of  Holland's,  according  to 
Shirley's  testimony,  is  the   subject  of   Chaucer's  Complaint  of  Mars  (see 
Skeat,  I.  65). 

2  Cf.  Kittredge,  Engl.  Stud.,  xiii.  19. 

3  The  marriageable  age  for  women,  according  to  canon-law,  was  twelve  (see 
Kittredge,  1.  c. ,  p.  20) ;  of  course  she  was  long  past  this,  but  Malverne  implies 
that  she  had  been  kept  away  from  court. 

4  Malverne's  continuation  of  Higden's  Polychronicon  (Rolls  Series,  1886), 
ix.  96-7  ;  also  quoted  by  Armitage-Smith,  John  of  Gaunt,  p.  459,  and  cf.  310. 

5  Kittredge,  I.  c.,  pp.  14-15. 


CH.  v,  §  3]  THE  PHYSICIAN'S  TALE.  155 

likely  to  have  impressed  itself  on  people  because  Elizabeth  had 
been  really  married  to  Pembroke,  in  1380,1  so  far  as  legally  she 
could  be  to  so  young  a  boy.2  He  secured  a  divorce  either  just  after, 
or  shortly  before,  her  departure  for  Spain  ;  it  is  pretty  clear,  there 
fore,  if  we  compare  the  accounts  of  Malverne  and  Knighton,  that 
she  was  still  bound  to  Pembroke  when  her  liaison  with  Holland 
began,  and  the  inference  is  obvious  that  it  was  at  least  one  cause 
for  the  divorce.  The  suggestion  of  the  passage  in  the  Physician's 
Tale  is  clear;  Virginia  avoided  just  the  dangers  that  had  led 
Elizabeth  (only  four  years  older  than  she)  into  ruin.  Everything 
fits  so  well  the  passage  in  the  Physician's  Tale  that,  considering 
Chaucer's  relations  with  the  Lancaster  family,  even  if  he  had  been 
writing  such  a  passage  ten  years  later,  he  could  hardly  have  failed 
to  think  of  his  sister-in-law  and  the  then  Duchess  of  Exeter.  Yet 
the  reference  is  not  direct  enough  to  have  given  offence  in  a  rather 
coarse  age;3  besides  which,  directly  after  (or  just  before)  the 
marriage,  which  would  then  have  been  thought  to  make  everything 
right,  all  concerned  went  to  Spain  and  Erance  for  two  years. 

The  bearing  of  all  this  on  the  date  of  the  Physician's  Tale  is 
plain.  If  the  allusion  is  admitted,  the  date  is  1386  or  later. 
But  such  a  long  and  serious  discourse  as  Chaucer's  is  likely  to  have 
been  written  when  the  incident  was  fresh  in  his  mind ;  and  perhaps 
he  is  a  little  more  likely  to  have  so  delivered  himself  when  the 
persons  whom  he  had  in  mind  were  out  of  the  country.  A  further 
suggestion  of  about  this  date  is  afforded  by  ten  Brink,  who  believes 
that  the  strong  interest  which  Chaucer  shows  here  in  the  bringing 
up  of  young  girls,  and  his  warning  to  parents  (93-104),  indicates 
the  time  just  after  the  death  of  his  wife,  between  June  and 
Michaelmas  of  1387.4  This  is  not  unlikely,  though  he  is  plainly 
thinking  in  the  main  of  people  of  much  higher  station  than  his 
own,  or  even  that  of  Virginius.  But  we  certainly  have  tolerable 
grounds  for  dating  the  Physician's  Tale  between  1386  and  1390, 
probably  about  1388.  Since  we  have  found  reason  to  believe  that 
the  General  Prologue  was  written  about  1387,  the  Physician's 

1  Armitage-Smith,  p.  459. 

a  Kittredge,  L  c.,  18-23.     He  was  born  in  1372. 

3  I  have  suggested  already,  in  connection  with  L.  G.  W.,  that  Chaucer  did 
not  have  to  be  as  careful  as  some  have  supposed  about  exciting  royal  resent 
ment.     Cf.  also  the  balade,  Lack  of  Steadfastness. 

4  Hist,  of  Engl.  Lit.  (London,  1893),  ii.  121,  note.     We  know  nothing, 
however,  of  any   daughter  of  Chaucer ;   Elizabeth  Chausier,   who  entered 
religion  in  1377,  cannot  have  been,  as  Hales  assumes,  his  daughter  (see  Life- 
Records,  337-8) ;  she  was  probably  a  sister,  or  niece,  or  cousin. 


156  THE    CANTERBURY  TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  4 

Tale  may  very  well  be  the'  first  story  written  expressly  for  the 
Canterbury  Tales. 

§  4.  The  Clerk's  Tale. 

On  the  date  of  the  Clertis  Tale  opinions  have  varied  rather 
widely.  "While  Koch,  ten  Brink  and  Mather  regard  it  as  dating 
from  the  period  of  the  Canterbury  Tales,  Pollard  and  Skeat  date  it 
immediately  after  Chaucer's  first  journey  to  Italy.  The  latter1 
believes  that  Chaucer  learned  the  tale  directly  from  Petrarch. 
According  to  Pollard2  we  have  "Chaucer's  distinct  statement  that 
he  learnt  the  story  of  Grisilde  at  Padua  of  *  Fraunceys  Petrak,' " 
whom  he  "may  have  met  on  his  Genoa  mission  of  1373,  when 
Petrarch  was  living  at  Arqua,  near  Padua " ;  Mr.  Pollard  is  also 
somehow  conscious  of  a  "  general  agreement "  that  he  wrote  his 
Englishing  of  the  Griselda  story  soon  after  his  return. 

The  supposed  early  date  of  the  Cleric's  Tale  partly  rests  on  the 
idea  of  a  meeting  between  Chaucer  and  Petrarch,  though  it  should 
not  be  forgotten  that  the  one  by  no  means  proves  the  other.  On 
the  other  hand,  if  the  meeting  is  disproved,  a  date  for  the  tale 
earlier  than  1378  or  so  goes  with  it,  as  will  be  seen  later. 
Pleasant  though  the  thought  may  be  of  an  interview  between  the 
two  most  distinguished  literary  men  of  their  time,  it  must  (I  think) 
be  relegated  to  the  Imaginary  Conversations ;  as  Dr.  F.  J.  Mather 
has  done  so  much  to  show  us  in  his  admirably  thorough  and 
judicious  article.3 

It  must  be  clearly  recognized  at  the  outset  that  there  is  not  a 
shred  of  evidence  for  such  a  meeting.  It  is  not  in  the  least  needed, 
of  course,  in  order  to  account  for  Chaucer's  obtaining  the  Latin  ver 
sion  of  the  Griselda  story.  Considering  the  reputation  both  of  the 
Decameron  and  of  Petrarch,  MSS.  of  his  cultivated  Latinization  of 
its  last  tale  are  likely  to  have  been  speedily  multiplied.  His  version 
and  its  authorship  were  known  in  France  as  early  as  1392-4,  for 

1  III.  454-5. 

2  Globe  Chaucer,  p.  xxv.  ;  cf.  Chaucer  Primer,  pp.  66-8,  and  Knight's  Tale 
(1903),  p.  xvi. 

3  Mod.  Lang.  Notes,  xii.,  coll.  1-21.     Besides  other  more  obvious  references 
see  the  following :  Pro. :  J.  J.  Jusserand,  Nineteenth  Century,  xxxix.  923-1005  ; 
C.  H.  Bromby,  Athenceum,  no.  3699  (1898),  pp.  388-9   (and  later) ;  Peter 
Borghesi,  Boccaccio  and  Chaucer,  Bologna,  1903,  71  pp.  (thinks  probably 
Boccaccio  introduced  Chaucer  to   Petrarch,  pp.  17-18) ;   J.  W.  Hales,  Diet. 
Nat.  Biogr.,  x.   160.     Con:  S.  C.  Baddeley, -Athenccum,  no.  3710,  p.  791 
(and  earlier) ;  P.  Bellezza,  Engl.  Studien,  xxiii.  335-6";  Sir  Harris  Nicholas, 
in  Morris's  Chaucer,  I.  7-17. 


CH.  v,  §  i]  THE  CLERK'S  TALE.  157 

it  is  the  avowed  source  of  a  part  of  the  Menagier  de  Paris.1  A^ain 
it  is  pleaded  that  the  Clerk  tells  us  he  had  learned  the  tale  at 
Padua  from  Petrarch's  mouth ;  we  have  equally  strong  evidence  in 
the  Canon's  Yeoman's  Tale  that  Chaucer  had  known  a  roguish 
canon  who  cheated  chantry  priests.2  It  seems  highly  probable,  as 
Mather  suggests,  that  this  dramatic  touch  is  due  to  two  passages, 
near  the  beginning  and  end  of  the  letter  to  Boccaccio  3  which  con 
tains  Petrarch's  Latin  version  of  the  Griselda  story,  and  which  we 
know  to  have  been  Chaucer's  source;  in  these  passages  Petrarch 
tells  how  he  had  communicated  the  tale  to  many  of  his  friends, 
how  it  had  been  praised  and  sought  after,  and  how  profoundly  it 
had  affected  one  of  them.  This  anecdote,  and  the  familiarity  with 
Petrarch  which  Chaucer  no  doubt  gained  by  hearsay,  makes  such 
a  fiction  as  the  Clerk's  meeting  him  absolutely  natural,  and  even 
obvious.4  At  first  sight  a  rather  striking  coincidence  suggests 
intimate  knowledge  on  Chaucer's  part  of  Petrarch's  movements ; 
during  Chaucer's  first  visit  in  Italy,  because  of  war  between  Padua 
and  Venice,  Petrarch  was  living  at  Padua,  where  the  Clerk  says  he 
saw  him,  instead  of  at  Arqua,  his  home.  But  the  strangeness 
disappears  when  we  reflect  that  to  the  western  Italian  Petrarch 
must  have  passed  as  a  Paduan ;  the  two  places  are  under  twenty 
miles  apart,  and  Petrarch  had  often  lived  in  the  larger,  where  he 
held  ecclesiastical  preferment.  But,  what  is  especially  important, 
Mather  has  shown  that  it  would  have  been  no  easy  matter  to  crowd 
a  long  winter  journey,  across  the  Apennines,  through  districts  full 
of  wars  and  tumults,  into  the  short  time  which  Chaucer  had  in 
Italy,  certainly  less  than  four  months,5  with  king's  business  to 
attend  to  in  Genoa  and  Florence. 

1  Ed.  by  Jerome  Pichon,  Paris,  1846;  see  vol.  i.,  pp.  99-125,  and  on  the 
date  of  the  work,  p.  xxii.  There  is  not  the  least  evidence,  as  a  brief  com 
parison  will  show,  that  Chaucer  ever  saw  this  version  ;  it  is  striking,  however, 
that  he  uses  the  French  forms  of  some  of  the  proper  names,  such  as  Saluces. 
The  Menagier  contains  also  the  French  version  of  Melibeus,  which  was  the 
source  of  Chaucer's  tale. 

a  Skeat's  arguments  seem  singularly  nugatory  (III.  454,  note),  if  not  worse. 
Were  not  poor  travelling  clerks  one  of  the  most  characteristic  classes  of  the 
Middle  Ages  ?  And  how  much  realism  does  he  feel  justified  in  demanding  of 
the  Canterbury  Tales? 

3  Originals  and  Analogues  (Ch.  Soc.),  pp.  152,  170-1. 

4  Professor  G.  L.  Hendrickson  of  Chicago  shows  in  Modern  Philology  (iv. 
179-88)  that  a  similar  method  of  making  citations  is  a  literary  convention  as 
old  as  the  Ciceronian  dialogue  (though  he  does  not  show  how  Chaucer  became 
acquainted  with  it). 

5  See  Mod.  Lang.  Notes,  xi.  419-25  ;  and  cf.  my  article  in  Mod.  Phil.,  i. 
319-21.     On  the  duration  of  the  journey  to  Italy,  cf.  Chronicon  Adae  de  Usk 
(ed.  by  Sir  E.  M.  Thompson,  1904),  pp.  xxii.-xxvi. 


158  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  4 

One  piece  of  negative  evidence  against  the  meeting  I  think  has 
never  been  allowed  sufficient  weight.  Can  any  Chaucerian  doubt 
that  Chaucer  would  have  made  a  rather  considerable  impression  on 
Petrarch?  It  was  late  in  April,  1373,  that  Petrarch  wrote  the 
letter  to  Boccaccio  which  includes  the  Latin  version  of  Griselda,1 
and  if  Chaucer  met  Petrarch  it  must  have  been  in  February  or 
March.  Now  in  his  letter  Petrarch  tells  much,  as  we  have  seen,  of 

1  The  most  difficult  point  of  all  is  the  date  when  Petrarch  composed  his 
version  of  the  Griselda  story.  Dr.  F.  J.  Mather's  reconstruction,  following 
M.  Jusserand's  lead,  of  Petrarch's  procedure  in  regard  to  his  last  three  or  four 
letters  to  Boccaccio  is  a  clever  and  usually  satisfactory  treatment  of  a  puzzling 
tangle  (see  Mod.  Lang.  Notes,  xii.,  columns  1-21).  Late  in  June,  1373,  it 
seems  quite  certain,  Petrarch  wrote  a  short  letter  to  Boccaccio  in  which  he 
said  that  two  months  earlier  he  had  written  and  begun  to  copy  a  long  letter  to 
him,  evidently  of  rather  impersonal  character  ;  relieved  of  the  labour  of  copy 
ing  by  a  friend,  he  wrote  another,  nearly  as  long  as  the  first,  and  more 
personal.  That  one  of  the  two  letters  contained  the  Griselda  story  we  know 
from  a  letter  of  Boccaccio's.  In  the  Epistolce  de  Rebus  Senilibus,*  which 
Petrarch  himself  edited,  the  first-mentioned  of  the  above  three  letters  stands 
first  in  the  17th  book,  followed  by  two  longer  ones ;  of  these  the  first  has 
every  appearance  of  being  the  second  he  mentions,  and  the  second  the  first. 
This  latter  is  the  one  which  contains  the  Griselda  story.  "We  cannot  doubt, 
therefore,  that  the  Petrarch  had  the  Griselda  letter  copied  about  the  end  of 
April,  1373.  When  the  Griselda  part  was  composed  is  a  more  difficult  question. 
It  is  clear  that  the  Decameron  had  not  been  long  in  Petrarch's  hands  :  "  Lib- 
rum  tuum  ...  ad  me  delatum  vidi.  Nam  si  dicam  legi,  mentiar,  siquidem 
.  .  .  tempus  angustum  erat ;  idque  ipsum,  ut  nosti,  bellicis  undique  motibus 
inquietum,  a  quibus  et  si  animo  procul  absim,  nequeo  tamen  fluctuante 
Republica  non  moveri."f  The  reference  is  to  the  war  between  Padua  and 
Venice,  which  began  about  the  middle  of  1372  ;  Venetian  troops  "penetrated 
into  the  Padovano  '(November,  1372),  and  spread  desolation  through  the 
entire  district."  J  By  November  14  Petrarch  had  taken  refuge  in  Padua. §  It  is 
clear  that  the  Decameron  came  into  his  hands  at  a  time  of  great  anxiety  over 
the  war ;  not  earlier,  therefore,  than  the  middle  of  1372.  He  goes  on  to  say 
that  he  had  gone  through  the  book  in  a  cursory  way,  and  read  more  par 
ticularly  the  beginning  and  the  end  ;  the  last  novel  so  charmed  him  that  he 
learnt  it  by  heart  and  used  to  repeat  it  to  his  friends.  "  Quod  cum  brevi  post- 
modum  fecissem  gratiamque  audientibus  cognovissem,"  it  occurred  to  him  that 
those  who  knew  no  Italian  would  also  enjoy  it.  "Itaque  die  quodam  .  .  . 
calamum  arripiens,  historian!  ipsam  tuam  scribere  sum  aggressus.  .  .  .  Quae 
licet  a  multis  et  laudata  et  expetita  fuerit,  ego  rem  tuam  tibi  non  alteri  dedi- 
candam  censui."  It  is  clear  from  all  this,  especially  the  last  sentence,  that 
the  translation  must  have  been  made  at  least  some  weeks  before  the  end  of 
April,  when  the  copy  was  made ;  Mather  seems  to  overlook  this  fact 
when  he  thinks  April  a  possible  date.  The  earliest  possible  date  of 
Petrarch's  Latin  version  of  the  Griselda  story  is  therefore  the  end  of  1372, 
and  the  latest  is  March,  1373.  Since  Chaucer,  if  he  went  to  Padua,  must  have 
been  there  not  later  than  March,  nor  earlier  than  February  (cf.  Mod.  Lang. 
Notes,  xii.  11),  it  is  perfectly  possible,  so  far  as  concerns  the  date  of  the  story, 
that  Chaucer  got  it  immediately  from  Petrarch.  But  obviously  there  is  no 
evidence  here  that  he  did ;  and  I  have  tried  to  show  evidence  that  he  did  not. 

*  See  the  Italian  translation  by  Giuseppe  Fracassetti  (Firenze,  1870),  vol.  ii. 
523-566). 

t  Originals  and  Analogues  (Chaucer  Soc.),  p.  151. 

$  The  Venetian  Republic,  W.  C.  Hazlitt,  i.  653. 

§  Petrarca's  Leben  und  Werke  (Leipzig,  1878),  by  Gustav  Koerting,  p.  444. 


CH.  v,  §  4]  THE  CLERK'S  TALE.  159 

how  the  story  had  been  admired  and  sought  after  in  both  Boccaccio's 
and  Petrarch's  versions,  and  in  particular  how  deeply  it  had  affected 
a  Paduan  friend,  and  how  differently  a  Veronese  had  taken  it.  If  a 
month  or  two  earlier  Chaucer  had  heard  it,  and  begged  a  copy,  it  is 
strange  indeed  that  we  know  nothing  of  the  fact ;  that  Petrarch 
says  nothing  of  "quidam  advena  ultimas  Thulse,"  or  "viator  a 
partibus  barbarorum  adhuc  profectus."  He  missed  an  admirable 
chance  to  compliment  his  friend.  And  Petrarch's  own  vanity  is 
sufficiently  well  known;  he  was  surely  not  proof  against  such  a 
compliment  as  Chaucer  would  have  paid  him  by  taking  such  a 
journey  to  see  him,  nor  was  he  too  modest  to  mention  the  fact. 
It  seems  to  me  this  argument  from  silence  is  peculiarly  strong. 

A  few  other  pieces  of  evidence  may  be  given  that  Chaucer 
did  not  meet  Petrarch.  He  was  never  at  all  familiar  with  his 
works.  Besides  this  story  he  shows  knowledge  only  of  a  single 
sonnet.  In  another  point  he  shows  strange  ignorance.  It  is 
well  known  that  Petrarch's  father  was  named  Petracco,1  and  that 
the  poet's  name  would  naturally  have  been  Francesco  Petracchi ; 
but  that  for  some  unknown  reason  he  changed  it.2  The  earlier 
form  of  the  name  is,  however  (even  at  times  in  autograph),  often 
found  in  Latin  and  Italian  MSS.  of  the  fourteenth  century,3  and 
must  have  been  familiar.  Now  according  to  the  great  preponderance 
of  MS.  evidence,4  this  is  the  form  which  Chaucer  uses  in  the  three 
passages  in  which  the  name  occurs — Montis  T.  3515,  Cl.  Prol.  31, 
Cl.  T.  1147.5  Petrak  (with  variants,  once  Patrikl),  instead  of 
Petrark,  is  the  reading,  in  the  first  passage,  of  12  MSS.  out  of  16, 
including  the  best  (El,  Hn,  Cm) ;  in  the  second,  of  17  out  of  24, 
including  all  the  S.-T.  MSS. ;  in  the  third,  of  14  out  of  17,  includ 
ing  all  the  S.-T.  The  spelling  with  two  r's  later  of  course  became 
universal,  in  England 6  as  well  as  elsewhere,  so  its  occurrence  in  late 

1  Of.  G.  Koerting,  Petrarca's  Leben  und  WerTcc  (Leipzig,  1878),  p.  49. 

2  There  are  facsimiles  of   three  autograph  signatures,    "Petrarca"  arid 
"  Petrarcha,"  dated  1338-1341,  in  Ugo  Foscolo's  Essays  on  Petrarch  (London, 
1823),  frontispiece. 

3  Fracassetti,  Lettere  FamiMari,  i.  216,  note.    "Petrac"  is  the  form  used  in 
the  introduction  to  the  story  of  Griselidis  in  the  Menagier  de  Paris,  of  date 
1392-4  ;  see  vol.  i.,  99,  124. 

4  As  Pollard,  in  the  Globe  edition,  seems  to  have  heen  the  only  editor  to 
recognize. 

5  In  the  two  latter  cases  fortunately  we  can  consult  sixteen  MSS.  ;  see 
Spec,  of  all  the  Access.   Unpr.  MSS.  of  the  "  C.  T."  ;  parts  vi.  and  vii.  (Ch. 
Soc.,  1899,  1900).     I  have  further  supplemented  by  nine  unprinted  MSS.,  the 
four  in  Cambridge,  those  in  the  Lichfield  and  Lincoln  Cathedral  libraries,  and 
MSS.  Harl.  1239,  1758  and  7333. 

6  Of.  the  entry  "Petrarchse  qucedam"  in  Eitson's  list  of  Lydgate's  works 


160  THE    CANTERBURY    TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  4 

MSS.  is  natural.  The  older  form  would  never  have  come  into  the 
earliest  MSS.,  in  all  these  passages,  at  the  hands  of  scribes ;  yet  if 
Chaucer  knew  Petrarch,  he  certainly  must  have  known  his  name. 

Another  rather  strong  piece  of  evidence,  far  stronger  than  his 
speaking  of  Petrarch,  seems  to  me  Chaucer's  constant  silence  as  to 
Boccaccio  and  his  obligations  to  him.  I  do  not  propose  to  go 
into  the  Lollius  problem,  or  record  his  various  wrong  attributions 
of  Boccaccio's  works,  but  I  will  recall  the  fact  that  in  the  passage 
of  the  Monk's  Tale  just  mentioned  he  assigns  to  Petrarch  the  De 
Casibus,  a  work  really  by  Boccaccio,  just  as  in  the  Clerk's  Prologue 
he  implies  as  distinctly  as  possible  that  Petrarch  was  the  author 
of  the  Griselda  story.1  If  he  had  met  Petrarch,  and  obtained 
a  copy  of  the  Griselda  story  from  him,  he  could  not  have 
failed  to  learn  who  was  the  author  of  it  as  well  as  of  the  De 
Casibus,  and  something  of  his  personality  and  other  works  as  well. 
It  seems  to  me  nearly  certain  that  Chaucer  did  not  know  the 
Decameron?  and  quite  certain  that  he  did  not  know  it  well  or 
own  it,  yet  Petrarch  had  just  obtained  a  copy.  If  he  met  Petrarch, 
his  attitude  toward  Boccaccio  is  utterly  inconceivable,3  On  the 


(Bibl.  Poet.,  p.  80).  "Petir  Petrarke"  is  mentioned  by  Lydgate  (Halliwell, 
Minor  Poems,  Percy  Soc.,  p.  ix.).  L.  Einstein  (The  Italian  Renaissance  in 
England  ;  see  index)  indicates  that  Petrarch  was'  becoming  fairly  well  known 
in  England  by  the  second  quarter  of  the  fifteenth  century. 

1  It  has  been  pointed  out  before  now  that  Pierre  de  Beauvau,  author  of  the 
old  French  translation  of  Boccaccio's  Filostrato,  attributed  the  original  with 
out  hesitation  to  "ling  poethe   Florentin   nomme  Petrearque"  (Moland  et 
d'Hericault,  Nouv.  Fran?,  du  xive  Siecle,  Paris,  1858,  p.  120). 

2  Professor  Cino  Chiarini  (Nuova  Antologia,  Ixxii.  333)  argues  conversely 
that  since  Chaucer  met  Petrarch,  he  must  have  known  of  the  Decameron. 
In  the  complete  absence  of  perfect  evidence  in  regard  to  either  matter,  the 
a  priori  argument  for  the  negative  view  of  both  is  incomparably  stronger  than 
for  the  positive. 

3  As  to  Chaucer's  silence  as  to  Boccaccio's  name,  I  do  not  see  how  it  can  be 
attributed  to  any  cause  but  ignorance.     Probably  all  the  works  of  Boccaccio 
which  he  possessed  were  in  one  or  two  MSS. ,  which  lacked  the  author's  name. 
Boccaccio  was  almost  certainly  not  in  Florence  during  Chaucer's  short  visit 
there  in  1373.     In  the  first  part  of  1373  Boccaccio  seems  to  have  been  in 
Certaldo,  where   he  had  been  extremely  sick  during  the  latter  part  of  the 
preceding  year.     [See  Gustav  Koerting,  Boccaccio's  Lelen  u.  Werke  (Leipzig, 
1880),  p.  322.]    He  was  not  appointed  to  lecture  in  Florence  on  Dante  till 
August,  1373,  and  did  not  begin  till    October    23.      [See  Paget   Toynbee, 
Athenaeum,  no.  4034  (1905),  p.  210.     Mr.  Toynbee  might  have  much  more 
vehemently  denied  Hales'  guess  that  Chaucer  may  have   heard   Boccaccio 
lecture,  and  must  have  become  familiar  with  his  name,  if  he  had  known  of 
Mather's  proof  that  Chaucer  was  back  in  England  in  May.     I  should  point 
out  that  this  fact  was  known  to  Furnivall  as  long  ago  as  1875-6  ;  see  Thynne's 
Animadversions  (Ch.   Soc.),  p.  22,  note.]     Certaldo  is  twenty  miles  from 
Florence.    Chaucer's  short  visit  in  Florence   must  have  been  in  February 


CH.  v,  §  4]  THE  CLERK'S  TALE.  161 

whole,  therefore,  these  arguments,  coupled  with  the  total  absence 
of  evidence  in  its  favour,  perhaps  warrant  us  in  dismissing  the 
idea  of  a  meeting  between  Chaucer  and  Petrarch. 

If  they  did  not  meet,  of  course  it  is  absolutely  out  of  the 
question  that  he  learned  the  story  on  his  first  visit  to  Italy.  The 
letter  containing  it,  of  which  it  is  certain  that  Chaucer  had  a  copy, 
cannot  have  got  into  general  circulation  before  the  middle  of 
1373,  and  probably  not  before  a  year  later,  after  Petrarch's  death. 
What  can  be  plainer,  therefore,  than  that  Chaucer  first  came  upon 
the  story  during  his  second  visit  to  Italy,  in  1378?  So  far,  there 
fore,  this  seems  to  be  the  earliest  possible  date  for  the  Clerk's  Tale. 

But  it  is  very  difficult  to  believe  that  Chaucer  made  his  trans 
lation  before  the  Prologue  of  the  Legend  of  Good  Women  was 
written,1  that  is,  before  1386.  There  is  not  one  of  the  works 
mentioned  there  which  offsets  the  Romance  of  the  Rose  and  the 
Troilus  and  Criseyde  so  capitally  as  the  story  of  Griselda  would 
have  done.  If  he  pleads  the  House  of  Fame,  the  Boethius,  and 
(though  it  was  unpublished  and  very  probably  unfinished)  the 
Palamon  and  Arcite,  could  he  conceivably  have  passed  over  such 
a  story  of  feminine  patience  and  devotion?  This  brings  us  to 
the  very  verge  of  the  period  of  the  Canterbury  Tales,  and  I  think 
we  shall  find  that  there  is  not  the  least  evidence  that  it  does  not 
date  from  that  period.  Professor  Skeat's  discussion2  of  the  subject 
is  one  of  the  most  unsatisfactory  parts  of  his  edition.  The 
evidence  of  the  metre  as  to  date  is  wholly  nugatory,  and  to  plead  it 
arrantly  begs  the  question;  that  "the  closeness  of  the  translation  also 
proves "  the  earliness  of  the  tale  is  just  as  gratuitous.  It  is  also 

or  March.  He  is  therefore  most  unlikely  to  have  seen  the  old  invalid.  Prof. 
Hales  (D.  N.  B.t  x.  160),  like  Mr.  Borghesi,  suggests  that  Chaucer  met 
Petrarch  through  Boccaccio;  if  he  knew  neither  of  them,  how,  asks  Hales, 
did  he  obtain  a  copy  of  the  Griselda  story  ?  To  this  I  reply — how  did  the 
French  writer  of  the  Menagier  de  Paris  get  a  copy  of  it  (see  pp.  156-7  above), 
no  later  than  1392-4  ?  On  Chaucer's  second  visit  to  Italy,  both  Boccaccio  and 
Petrarch  were  dead.  Chaucer's  failure  to  learn  more  of  the  personality  and 
works  of  the  distinguished  Italians  illustrates  vividly  the  degree  to  which  he 
must  have  been  preoccupied  with  business  during  his  two  very  brief  visits  in 
Italy  ;  which  makes  it  the  more  unlikely  that  he  undertook  the  long  and 
arduous  journey  to  Padua.  It  must  be  remembered,  too,  that  he  went  to 
Italy  only  as  a  diplomat,  and  at  the  time  was  still  obscure  as  a  literary  man  ; 
he  was  little  over  thirty,  and  had  written  no  poem  of  importance,  and  none  of 
any  length  except  the  Book  of  the  Duchess.  Boccaccio  was  sixty  and  Petrarch 
sixty-nine,  and  Chaucer  had  no  claim  upon  them.  It  defies  chronology  to 
picture  two  laureled  forms  rushing  into  each  other's  arms. 

1  Cf.  Mather,  Mod.  Lang.  Notes,  xii.,  col.  16.  2  III.  453  ff. 

DEV.  CH.  M 


162  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  4 

difficult  to  see  how  the  excellence  of  verses  995-1008  indicates 
that  they  were  written  at  a  different  time  from  the  rest  of  the  poem. 
The  chief  reason,  no  doubt,  why  many  persons  have  felt  disposed 
to  rfut  the  Clerk's  Tale  comparatively  early  in  Chaucer's  career  is 
its  thoroughly  mediaeval  character — its  want  of  harmony  with  the 
modern  spirit  and  with  that  of  the  more  advanced  and  realistic  of 
the  Canterbury  Tales.1  May  I  be  permitted  to  say  here,  as  I  say 
elsewhere,  in  the  cases  of  the  Man  of  Law's  Tale,  the  Monk's  Tale 
and  Melibeus,2  that  there  seems  to  me  something  radically  errone 
ous  in  this,  point  of  view  *?  Was  Chaucer  so  far  beyond  the  most 
modern  of  the  Italians,  Boccaccio  and  Petrarch  ?  Chaucer's  feeling 
in  the  matter  seems  thoroughly  intelligible  and  characteristic.  He, 
like  the  two  Italians,  and  like  many  men  since,  was  profoundly 
touched  by  the  ideal  beauty  of  the  story,  and  reproduced  it  with 
perfect  sympathy  ;  then,  like  Petrarch,  but  unlike  the  less  reflective 
Boccaccio,  he  disclaimed  literal  approval  of  Griselda's  conduct, 
and  drew  an  obvious  mediaeval  moral;  and  finally,  unlike  either 
of  his  predecessors,  he  became  somewhat  frivolous  and  ironical 
in  the  Clerk's  Envoy  at  the  expense  of  the  modern  woman.  The 
fact  that  the  Greek  tragedian  completed  his  serious  and  elevated 
trilogy  by  a  mocking  and  farcical  satyr-play  does  not  prove  that  it 
must  have  been  written  long  after  the  trilogy,  or  that  he  had  come 
to  think  lightly  of  the  earlier  plays.  This  is  not  the  only  time  that 
Chaucer  shows  indisposition  to  take  himself  too  seriously  ;  nor 
is  he  the  last  man  who  has  covered  sensibility  by  a  little  cynicism. 
His  literary  taste  can  hardly  have  changed  so  much  between  the 
ages  of  forty  and  fifty  that  he  came  to  scoff  at  what  had  once 
affected  him.  I  cannot  believe  that  the  Envoy  implies  any 
more  aloofness  from  the  tale  than  would  have  been  as  natural 
just  after  writing  it  as  ten  years  later.3  It  seems  to  me  also 

1  Professor  Lounsbury  (Studies,  iii.  344)  thinks  Chaucer  inserted  it  in  the 
C.  T.  because  lie  wished  them  to  contain  something  which  would  appeal  to 
all  kinds  of  people.     This  is  by  no  means  the  most  striking  case  where  that 
scholar  seems  greatly  to  exaggerate  Chaucer's  modernness. 

2  I  point  out  elsewhere  that  Cl.  T.,  Monk's  T.  and/M.  are  the  only  ones 
of  the  C.   T.  which  Lydgate  thinks  worth  specific  mention  in   his  list   of 
Chaucer's  works  in   the  Falls  of  Princes  (see  Lounsbury's  Studies,  i.  421). 
There  is  also  evidence  in  the  MSS.  that  CL  T.  was  one  of  the  most  popular 
of  the  C.  T.    The  popularity  of  the  Griselda  story  in  England  lasted  for  centuries. 

3  The  Envoy  is  no  doubt  egregiously  out  of  character  for  the  Clerk  ;  but  I 
cannot  in  the  least  see  why  this  should  indicate  that  it  was  written  long  after 
the  tale  (this  in  answer  to   Koch,  Beitrdge  zur  neueren  Philologie,  Jakob 
Schipper  dargebracht,  Wien,  1902  ;  p.  284).     Chaucer  would  always  rather 


CH.  v,  §  4]  THE  CLERK'S  TALE.  ,        163 

proper  to  deprecate  the  practice  of  regarding  the  Canterbury  Tales 
as  a  dumping-ground  for  Chaucer's  old  outgrown  literary  work.1 

A  specific  date  for  the  Clerk's  Tale  seems  impossible  to  arrive  at 
for  the  present.  Ten  Brink  2  believes  he  finds  internal  evidence  for 
a  date  after  1387,  for  he  sees  in  995-1008,  where  the  narrator 
exclaims  over  the  warm  greeting  given  Walter's  second  wife  by  his 
people,  a  reference  to  the  hearty  reception  given  Richard  II.,  on 
November  10,  1387,  by  the  citizens  of  London,  who  both  before 
and  after  sided  with  his  opponents.  But  the  conjecture  carries  no 
conviction.3  There  was  apparently  a  more  gorgeous  reception  on  a 
similar  occasion  in  August,  1393.4  Or  the  reminiscence  might 
equally  well  be  of  the  events  of  1381.  But  the  closest  parallel  that 
can  be  found  in  contemporary  history  to  the  situation  in  the  poern 
is  the  reception  given  the  little  Isabelle  of  France,  in  1396,  on  her 
arrival  in  London  to  be  Richard's  second  bride,  by  the  citizens  who 
had  been  so  attached  to  the  first ;  "  multi  de  civitate  exierunt  per 
pontem  ad  videndam  earn,"  insomuch  that  in  returning  some  were 
"  oppressi  et  ad  mortem  conculcati."  5  But  without  further  evidence 

lose  his  dramatic  propriety  than  his  jest.     Compare  the  self-exposure  of  the 
Pardoner. 

1  It  may  be  asked  if  any  evidence  for  an  early  date  for  the  CL  T.  is  to  be 
found  in  the  MSS. ,  especially  in  the  two  or  three  which  contain  it  alone  (and 
thus  testify  to  its  popularity).  There  is  not  the  slightest  evidence  in  any 
MS.  that  the  tale  ever  existed  in  Chaucer's  day  apart  from  the  C.  T.  Of 
printed  MSS.  there  are  sixteen,  of  which  one  (MS.  Longleat)  contains  only 
Kn.  T.  arid  CL  T.,  and  two  contain  only  CL  T.  (MSS.  Phillipps  and 
Naples  ;  on  this  latter  see  Koch,  in  the  Schipper  Festschrift  just  mentioned, 
pp.  257-85).  All  these  three  naturally  omit  the  CL  ProL,  and  MSS. 
Longl.  and  Ph.  omit  a  little  at  the  end,  including  the  reference  to  the  Wife 
of  Bath  (Ph.  omits  1163-76,  L.  omits  1170-6  ;  MS.  Petworth  also  omits 
1170-6)  ;  but  all  three  have  the  Envoy,  and  MS.  Naples  has  the  whole  end, 
the  Envoy  and  the  "  Host-Stanza  "  (given  by  Skeat  in  a  note  at  the  end  of  the 
tale).  It  is  clear,  therefore,  that  these  MSS.  are  all  derived  from  more 
complete  ones  of  the  C.  T.,  and  are  not  survivors  from  an  earlier  version.  1 
have  also  examined  32  unpublished  MSS.,  being  all  that  exist  in  public 
libraries  in  England  and  France,  except  MS.  Sion  (published).  They  com 
pletely  bear  me  out.  To  the  above-mentioned  three  fragmentary  MSS. ,  which 
testify  to  the  especial  popularity  of  CL  T,,  I  may  add  MS.  Harl.  1239,  which 
contains  only  Kn.  T.,  M.  L.  2'.,  W.  B.  T.,  CL  T.  and  Frankl.  T. 

>J  Hist,  of  Engl.  Lit.  (London,  1893),  ii.  123. 

a  See  H.  Wallon,  Richard  II.  (Paris,  1864),  i.  330  ;  Knighton's  Chronicle 
(Rolls  Series,  1895),  ii.  241.  Walsingham  says  nothing  of  the  incident.  The 
Monk  of  Evesham,  to  whom  ten  Brink  refers,  certainly  does  not  dwell  on  it, 
and  his  account  of  the  fickleness  of  the  Londoners  is  in  another  connection 
(see  Thomas  Hearne's  edition  of  the  Hist.  Vit.  et  Regni  Ric.  II.,  p.  85). 

4  Hofler  dwells  on  this  more  than  on  the  other  ;  see  his  monograph  on 
Queen  Anne,  in  the  Denkschriften  of  the  Vienna  Academy  (Phil.-Hist.  Classe), 
xx.,  pp.  193,  218.     See  also  Hist.  Vit.  et  Regni  Ric.  II.,  p.  124. 

5  Hist.  Vit.  et  Regni,  p.  129. 


164  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  5 

it  will  hardly  do  to  use  any  of  these  possible  references  as  arguments 
for  dating  the  Clerk's  Tale  ;  for  the  passage  in  the  poem  explains 
itself  without  them.  For  the  present  we  must  be  contented  with 
the  certainty  that  it  was  written  after  1378,  and  the  strong  pro 
bability  that  it  was  written  after  the  Legend  and  in  the  Canterbury 
period,  after  1387. 


§  5.    The  Monk's  Tale. 

There  cannot  be  the  least  doubt  that  the  Monk's  Tale  dates  from 
later  than  Chaucer's  first  journey  to  Italy.  It  is  not  merely  that 
more  or  less  of  the  poem  is  derived  from  Boccaccio's  De  Casibus 
Virorum  Illustrium  and  De  Claris  Mulieribus,1  works  which 
Chaucer  is  much  more  likely  to  have  found  in  Italy  than  in  Eng 
land  ;  or  that  the  account  of  "  Hugelinus  Comes  de  Pize  "  is  derived 
avowedly  from  Dante,2  since  some  regard  this  as  a  later  insertion. 
He  quotes  "Dante  also  in  the  account  of  Nero;3  and  the  Italian 
influence  is  also  plain  in  the  form  of  the  names  which  he  gives  to 

1  Cf.  certain  passages,  especially,  in  the  account  of  Zenobia  (Skeat,  V.  236- 
238),  and  the  rubric  at  the  beginning  of  the  poem  in  MSS.  El,  Cp,  Ln,  and 
Cm  Dd.     It  seems  at  first  as  if  we  could  prove  that  Chaucer  could  not  have 
seen,  and  certainly  not  have  secured  a  copy  of  the'De  Casibus  until  his  second 
journey  to  Italy ;  for  Hortis  (Studj  sulle  opere  latine  del  Boccaccio,  Trieste, 
1879  ;  p.  134,  note),  Koerling  (Boccaccio's  Lebenund  Werlce,  Leipzig,  1880  ;  p. 
730),  and  others,  declare  with  a  good  apparent  show  of  reason  that  the  work 
cannot  have   been  published  till   1373-4.     But  Henri  Hauvette   (Soc.   dcs 
anciens  eleves  de  la  Fac.  des  Lettrcs  de  I' Univ.  de  Paris,  1901    279-97)  shows 
not  only  that  this  conclusion  is  not  necessary,  but  also  that  there  is  strong 
evidence  against  it  and  in  favour  of  the  date  1356-9  for  the  composition  of  the 
De  Casibus,  and  about  1363  for  its  publication  (p.  296).     One  of  the  most 
promising  Chaucerian  subjects  still  to  be  investigated  seems  to  be  the  sources 
of  the  Monk's  Tale,  which  have  been  left  somewhat  at  loose  ends. 

2  Possibly  Chaucer  used  also  Villani ;  see  Paget  Toynbee,  N.  and  Q. ,  8 
ser.,  xi.    205  f.  (and  cf.   S.   C.   Baddeley,  ibid.,  369   f.).     But  cf.  M.   T., 
3651-2.     J.  W.  Hales  (The  Bibliographer,  i.  37-9)  argues  for  a  knowledge  on 
Chaucer's  part  of  Italian  and  Dante  before  his  first  journey  to  Italy ;  he  has 
no  evidence,  and  his  a  priori  considerations  are  not  in  the  least  convincing. 
For  the  same  view  cf.  also,  among  other  places,  Lounsbury's  edition  of  the 
Parliament  of  Fowls  (Boston,  1877),  p.  7,  and  Francesco  Torraca  (Journ.  of 
Compar.  Lit.,  i.  82-4)  ;   the  latter's  argument  is  completely  disposed  of  by 
J.  L.  Lowes,  Mod.  PJiilol.,  iii.  1-46.     At  the  same  time  it  is  wholesome  to 
remember  that  the  belief,  on  which  so  much  Chaucer  chronology  is  based, 
that  the  Italian  influence  cannot  antedate  1372,  supported  though  it  is  by 
probability  and  what  evidence  we  have,  is  not  quite  a  certainty. 

3  "His  lustes  were  al  lawe  in  his  decree  "  (3667) ;  cf.  "  Che  libito  fe'  licito 
in  sua  legge  "  (Inf. ,  V.  56).    This  borrowing,  along  with  many  others,  was  first 
pointed  out  by  Gary,  in  his  translation  of  the  Divine  Comedy  ;  see  vol.  i. ,  p. 
201  (London,  1831).     Cf.  my  article  in  Mod.  PhiloL,  iii.  371,  note.     Skeat 
and  Lounsbury  curiously  ignore  this  borrowing. 


CH.  v,  §  5]  THE  MONK'S  TALE.  165 

Zenobia's  sons  (3535).1  So  far  we  have  1373  as  the  earliest 
possible  date,  on  which  all  will  probably  agree. 

A  date  not  earlier  than  1379-81  2  is  suggested  by  a  probable 
quotation  from  Gower's  Mir  OUT  de  I'Omme.  At  the  end  of  the 
account  of  Alexander,  the  Monk  apostrophizes  him  thus : 

"Thy  sys  fortune  hath  turned  into  as"  (385 1).3 

Speaking  at  some  length  of  the  uncertainties  in  the  life  of 
potentates,  Gower  says  : 

"  Fortune  leur  changa  le  de"e4 
Et  desmontoit  ce  q'ot  monte  "  (22024-5) ; 

continuing,  he  apostrophizes  Fortune  for  her  instability,  speaks  of 
her  wheel,  compares  her  to  the  winds,  tells  of  her  two  trumpets  of 
fame,5  and  relates  the  career  of  Alexander  (22051-68),  how  Fortune 
made  him  king  and  then  poisoned  him.  Addressing  the  goddess, 
he  says  : 

"  Le  dee  du  quell  tu  jueras 
Ore  est  en  sisz,  ore  est  en  as"  (22102-3).6 

An  even  closer  parallel  is  to  be  found  in  23399 : 
"Dieus  changera  tes  sis  en  as." 

Chaucer  and  other  poets  not  infrequently  derive  figurative  language 
from  dicing,  but  no  such  cases  as  these  have  been  found. 

It  is  necessary  now  to  examine  carefully  the  prevalent  view  that 
the  Monk's  Tale  was  written  not  long  after  Chaucer's  introduction  to 

1  Apparently  Chaucer  did  not  like  the  Latin   fashion  of  the  names  (see 
Skeat,  V.  236)  ;  he  says  they  are  Persian  (3536),  but  has  really  changed  them 
to  an  Italian  form.     It  is  remarkable  that  he  has  done  the  same  thing  in 
many  other  cases,  either  because  the  Italian  form  pleased  his  ear  better  or 
because  it  afforded  more  rhymes.    In  Skeat's  index  of  names  I  find  the  follow 
ing  instances,  omitting  those  in  poems  of  directly  Italian  origin  (2.  <?.,  T.  0., 
K.   T.\  and  H.  F.,  1229  :— Cambalo  (Sq.  T.,  31,  667;  but  cf.  656);  Danao 
(L.   G.    W.,  2563,  etc.);  Hermanno  (Monk's  T.,  3535);  lulo  (H.  F.,  177); 
Lino  (L.  G.  W.,  2569,  etc.  ;  cf.  Skeat,  III.  xl.) ;   Myda  ( W.  B.  T.,  951,  953  ; 
possibly  from  T.  C.,  III.  1389)  ;  Parnaso,  Pernaso  (passim) ;  Sitheo(Z.  G.  W., 
1005);  Thymalao  (Monk's  T.,  3535) ;   Vulcano  (H.  F.,  138). 

2  See  Appendix  A,  pp. -^220-5,  on  the  date  of  the  Mirour. 

3  I  cannot  deprive  my  readers  of  a  "jewel  five  words  long  "  afforded  by  the 
scribe  of  the  Lansdowne  MS. ,  who  reads  : 

"  pin  suster  fortune  ha])6  torne  in- to  an  as." 

4  Cf.  K.  T.,  1238. 

5  In  this  part  Gower  seems  to  have  borrowed  from  H.  F. ;  see  pp.  38-40 
above. 

«  Cf.  also  11.  1 1  600-1. 


166  THE    CANTERBURY  TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  5 

things  Italian,  at  any  rate  before  the  period  of  the  Canterbury  Tales.1 
The  ground  on  which  this  position  rests  appears  to  be  that  the  tale 
to  us  is  dull,  and  very  inferior  in  merit  to  the  tales  which  we  know 
date  from  the  period  of  the  whole  poem ;  and  further  that  in  the 
Nun' s  Priest' s  Prologue  the  Host  and  Knight  show  somewhat  the  same 
opinion.  It  is  presumed,  therefore,  to  have  been  Chaucer's,  as  the 
Host's  opinion  of  the  Tale  of  Thopas  no  doubt  is,  and  the  history 
of  the  tale  to  have  been  parallel  to  that  of  the  Second  Nun's.  The 
subject  has  never  been  thoroughly  overhauled,  however,  nor  the 
evidence  all  collected  or  carefully  treated.  By  doing  this  I  think 
I  shall  establish  a  strong  probability  that  the  Monk's  Tale  was 
written  for  the  Canterbury  Tales. 

In  the  first  place,  I  must  protest  against  the  slur  on  Chaucer's 
literary  conscience  cast  by  this  opinion ;  if  the  tale  is  too  poor  to 
date  from  his  heyday,  he  must  have  been  conscious  of  its  inferiority, 
and  could  hardly  have  been  so  slack  and  slovenly  as  to  embody  it 
permanently  in  his  masterpiece.  Sir  Thopas  and  St.  Cecelia  are 
not  parallel  cases ;  the  use  of  the  former,  an  unmistakable  parody,  is 
doubtless  due  to  Chaucer's  tactful  wish  to  avoid  seriously  competing 
among  his  pilgrims,  and  the  latter  is  by  no  means  so  poor  a  poem, 
to  our  way  of  thinking,  as  the  Monk's  Tale,  and  the  reasons  for  dating 
it  early  are  quite  different.  Nor  is  there  the  least  evidence  that 
Chaucer  thought  ill  of  it.  But  I  must  also  refer  to  what  I  have  said 
elsewhere  in  connection  with  the  Man  of  Law's  Tale,2  as  to  the 
caution  necessary  in  discussing  Chaucer's  taste.  He  was  not  wholly 
beyond  his  age,  or  beyond  the  sort  of  thing  which  appealed  to  men 
as  advanced  as  Petrarch  and  Boccaccio.  Though  it  was  tempera 
mentally  impossible  for  him  (if  not  for  anybody)  to  write  con  amove 
a  poem  like  the  Monk's  Tale,  yet  it  is  not  without  a  certain 
impressiveness,  even  for  us,  and  its  subject,  the  mutability  of 
fortune,  had  a  peculiar  interest  for  Chaucer  to  the  end  of  his  life. 
The  stories  are  too  brief  to  be  interesting,  and  he  was  never  good  at 
vitalizing  material  derived  from  ancient  sources.  But  is  there  any 
difficulty  in  putting  the  Monk's  Tale  not  long  after  the  Legend 
of  Good  Women  ;  or,  allowing  for  the  difference  of  plan,  is  it  greatly 
inferior  to  the  Physician's  Tale,  which  perhaps  dates  from  about 
1388?3  And  could  a  man  who  had  quite  grown  beyond  the 

1  Cf.  e.  g.t  Pollard,  Knight's  Tale  (1903),  p.  xvi.,  andSkeat,  III.  427-431. 
For  a  fuller  statement  of  this  vie\v,  see  Lounsbury,  Studies,  iii.  332-4. 

2  Seep.  176.  3  See  pp.  155-6. 


on.  v,  §  5]  THE  MONK'S  TALE.  167 

Monk's  Tote  have  translated  and  inserted  in  his  masterpiece  the 
interminable  dreariness  of  the  Tale  of  Melibeus  without  a  sign  of 
emotion  %  Moreover,  sufficient  stress  has  never  been  laid  on  the 
nicety  with  which  the  tale  is  adapted  to  the  teller.  The  Monk, 
though  a  sportsman  and  a  bon  vivant,  was  a  man  of  position  and 
dignity  ;  of  these  he  would  be  particularly  conscious  in  a  large  and 
miscellaneous  company,  especially  after  the  impudent  familiarity  of 
the  Host  in  his  prologue.  Accordingly  he  searches  his  memory  for 
something  safe,  monastic  and  improving  ;  if  not  the  life  of  St. 
Edward,  then  tragedies,  some  biblical  and  all  other-worldly  in  their 
tendency. 

Professor  Lounsbury,  who  is  always,  if  I  may  be  permitted 
to  say  so,  much  inclined  to  take  Chaucer  out  of  his  age,  with 
which  he  himself  appears  hardly  to  be  in  sympathy,  it  seems  to  me 
takes  a  very  mistaken  view  of  the  Monk's  Tale.  It  belongs  to  a 
"species  of  composition  to  which,"  he  says,  "  the  men  of  Chaucer's 
age  were  exceedingly  addicted"  ;J  he  refers  to  Boccaccio's  De  Casibus, 
to  Lydgate's  Falls  of  Princes,  and  to  the  Mirror  for  Magistrates. 
Though  Chaucer,  he  thinks,  "fell  at  first  under  the  influence  of  the 
dominant  taste,"  "his  clear  critical  perception  put  him  speedily  in 
advance  of  his  contemporaries"  ;  and  in  the' Canterbury  Tales  "the 
Monk's  tale  is  introduced  as  a  specimen  of  these  collections  of  stories, 
and  largely  and  perhaps  entirely  for  the  sake  of  satirizing,  or  at  least 
of  censuring,  the  taste  that  created  and  enjoyed  them."  Now  the 
first  sentence  which  I  have  quoted  is  absolutely  misleading.  There 
is  no  question  that  the  genre  represented  in  the  Monk's  Tale  was 
wholly  the  creation  of  Boccaccio,2  both  in  conception  and  form, 
though  hints  are  of  course  traceable  to  other  mediaeval  works. 
If  the  De  Casibus  was  the  first  work  of  the  species,  the  "  taste  "  was 
certainly  not  widely  popular  in  Chaucer's  age  anywhere  in  Europe, 
and  was  doubtless  wholly  unknown  in  England.  So  Chaucer's 
procedure  in  introducing  the  species  in  order  to  censure  it  would  be 
something  like  that  of  a  prohibition  agitator  who  should  debauch  an 
innocent  community  with  strong  drink  in  order  to  secure  the  diver 
sion  of  preaching  against  it.  The  Monk's  Tale  certainly  could  not 
be  taken  as  a  parody,  and  there  cannot  be  the  least  question  that 

1  Studies  in  'Chaucer  (New  York,  1892),  iii.  332-4. 

2  See  Attilio  Hortis,  Studj  mile  opere  latine  del  Boccaccio  (Trieste,  1879), 
pp.  117,  120.     A  forthcoming  dissertation  by  Professor  K.  C.  M.  Sills  will 
doubtless  throw  much  new  light  on  the  subject.     I  am  already  bound  to  him 
for  information  and  much  generous  assistance. 


168  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  5 

it  would  have  been  thoroughly  enjoyed  by  serious-minded  readers. 
That  the  genre  was  likely  to  become  popular  in  England  is  indicated 
by  its  harmony  with  mediaeval  taste  ;  by  its  later  vogue  due  to 
Lydgate's  Falls  of  Princes  (often  printed  in  both  the  fifteenth  and 
sixteenth  centuries),  and  (nearly  two  centuries  later  than  the  Montis 
Tale)  to  the  Mirror  for  Magistrates ;  and  by  the  fact  that  the 
Monk's  Tale,  Melileus,  and  the  Clerk's  Tale  are  the  only  individual 
Canterbury  Tales  deemed  worthy  of  separate  mention  by  Lydgate 
in  his  long  list  of  Chaucer's  works  in  the  Falls  of  Princes.1  On  the 
whole,  therefore,  instead  of  first  following  and  then  scorning  a 
"  dominant  taste,"  it  seems  probable  that  Chaucer  constantly  shared 
it  and  was  in  the  head  and  front  of  its  creation. 

The  attitude  of  the  Knight  and  Host  toward  the  tale  seems  to 
me  more  worthy  of  attention  than  any  other  adverse  argument ; 
it  does  seem  at  first  a  trifle  odd  that  Chaucer  should  put  into  their 
mouths  such  disrespectful  language  toward  the  subject  and  even  the 
phraseology  of  a  poem  seriously  intended.  But  to  this  I  reply 
that  he  may  have  had  a  revulsion  of  feeling  when  he  wrote  the 
Nun's  Priest's  Prologue,  and  have  felt  that  a  moderate  amount 
of  this  sort  of  thing  certainly  was  sufficient.2  After  a  time  he  may 
have  wearied  of  its  gloom  and  monotony,  as  he  did  in  the  Legend 
of  Good  Women  ;  but  this  does  not  mean  that  he  came  to  regard 
the  whole  thing  with  alienation  and  scorn.  A  bantering  manner  is 
characteristic  of  Chaucer,  even  toward  things  which  he  really 
respected,  and  (if  I  may  be  allowed  to  say  so)  it  is  perfectly  possible 
to  take  his  humour  too  seriously.  Moreover,  the  attitude  of  the  two 
critics  is  thoroughly  good  dramatically.  Neither  the  Knight  nor 
the  Host  was  likely  to  care  for  such  a  tale.  I  can  hardly  grant 
Lounsbury  that  the  Knight,  who  had  passed  his  life  campaigning, 
was  representative  of  "  the  highest  cultivation  of  the  community  "  ; 
nor  was  he  especially  likely  to  welcome  a  recent  literary  departure. 
As  for  the  Host,  he  was  disappointed  as  well  as  bored.  He  deserved 
some  reward  for  his  patience  through  Melibeus ;  it  is  evident,  by 
his  banter,  that  he  expected  something  merrier  from  the  Monk,  and 
after  the  interruption  he  pleads  for  a  tale  of  hunting  (cf.  3114-5, 
3995).  But.  once  more,  the  presence  of  Melibeus  just  before, 

1  Lydgate  was  surely  no  unfavourable  example  of  contemporary  cultivation 
(cf.  pp.  162,  190-1,  and  Lounsbury's  Studies,  i.  421). 

2  Boccaccio  and  Lydgate,  who  were  far  more  lengthy  than  Chaucer,  express 
over  and  over  again  (as  Mr.  Sills  points  out  to  me)  a  sense  of  effort  and 
exhaustion.     But  they  certainly  did  not  think  ill  of  their  work. 


en.  v,  §  5]  ,  THE  MONK'S  TALE.  169 

uninterrupted  and  uncondemned,  seems  to  me  a  sufficient  refutation 
of  the  notion  that  the  Host  and  Knight  voice  Chaucer's  serious  and 
permanent  opinion. 

So  far  there  is  nothing  like  proof  of  the  earliness  of  the  tale. 
Three  other  arguments  adduced  by  Professor  Skeat  *  seem  to  be  of 
still  less  value.  The  canon  that  poems  in  stanzas,  are  early  is  useful 
for  general  classification,  but  has  no  weight  in  argument.  The 
Prioress1  Tale  is  universally  granted  to  be  late,  and  I  have  shown 
elsewhere  reason  to  think  that  the  Man  of  Laitfs  and  Clerics  are 
also.  The  Monk's  Tale  is  Chaucer's  only  narrative  poem  in  the 
8-line  stanza,  but  of  the  half-dozen  other  poems  written  in  it  two  at 
least  (Bukton  and  Venus)  date  from  the  last  decade  of  his  life. 
Skeat  also  deduces  from  Chaucer's  confusion  of  Busiris  with 
Diomedes  (3293-4),  who  are  properly  distinguished  by  Boethius, 
that  he  had  not  yet  produced  his  translation  of  that  philosopher; 
it  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  the  lapse  of  fifteen  or  twenty 
years  may  produce  forgetfulness  of  a  trivial  matter  as  dense  as 
original  ignorance.  Dr.  Skeat  also  tries  to  prove  the  greater  part 
of  the  poem  earlier  than  the  so-called  Modern  Instances,2  which  are 
known  to  date  from  1386  or  later  ;  "  the  difference  in  style  between 
the  tragedy  of  Ugolino  and  such  a  tragedy  as  that  of  Samson  or 
Hercules,  must  strike  the  most  careless  reader."  Skeat  ignores  the 
fairly  obvious  fact  that  in  the  Ugolino  Chaucer  is  closely  following  one 
of  the  greatest  poets  of  the  world.  The  question  of  excellence  is  of 
course  a  purely  subjective  matter  ;  I  can  only  say,  however,  that  after 
many  careful  readings  I  can  see  no  difference  or  superiority  in  the 
Modern  Instances,  except  so  far  as  the  Ugolino  is  indebted  to  Dante. 
They  seem  as  bald  as  any  part  of  the  poem,  and  even  in  the  Ugolino 
the  want  of  congruity  and  feeling  at  times  (e.  g.  3619-20,  3635-6) 
is  the  more  striking  because  of  the  moving  horror  of  the  original.3 


1  III.  427,  430.    Tf"  Ttrink-algn  has  another  argument    He  thinks  (Sprache, 
p.  23)  the  imperfect  rhyme  of  close  with  open  o  characteristic  of  Chaucer's 
earlier  work,  and  points  to  ons  in  M.  T.,  3510-2-3-5.     But,  to  say  nothing 
of  the  excuse  here  in  the  number  of  rhyme-  words  required,  ten  Brink  himself 
shows  that  the  same  rhyme  (to,  tho)  occurs  in  the  W.  B.  Prol,  369-70.    Was 
this  one  reason  for  his  extraordinary  opinion  that  the  Wife's  Prologue  was  an 
early  work  ?  We  certainly  need  a  more  thorough  chronological  study  of  Chaucer's  <• 
rhyme  and  verse  usage  ;'  it  will  be  highly  valuable  negatively  if  riot  positively. 
Where  is  the  Quintus  Curtius  ? 

2  The  quaint  and  convenient  term  applied  by  Bradshaw  to  the  tragedies  of 
the  two  Pedros,  Ugolino  and  Bernabo  Visconti. 

3  I  find  that  the  late  Professor  Francis  Palgrave  expressed  exactly  the  same 
opinion  of  the  Ugolino  passage  (for  his  interesting  essay  on  Chaucer  and  the 


170  THE    CANTERBURY  TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  5 

The  least  significant  of  the  contrary  evidence  seems  to  me  weighty 
compared  with  this.  We  may  note,  in  the  first  place,  the  manner 
of  address  in  line  3429,  at  the  end  of  the  account  of  Balthasar : 

"  Lordinges,  en  sample  heer-by  may  ye  take"  ; 

lordings  as  a  vocative  Chaucer  seems  to  use  only  in  the  Canterbury 
Tales  and  toward  people  physically  present ;  usually  in  the  links, 
but  sometimes  in  the  tales1  as  well  it  is  used  to  the  pilgrims. 
Here,  clearly,  Chaucer  has  in  mind  oral  delivery.  Again,  Professor 
Koeppel2  has  detected  a  probable  borrowing  from  Pope  Innocent's 
De  Contemptu  Mundi  in  the  account  of  Adam  (3199) : 

"With  goddes  owene  linger  wroght  was  he, 
And  nat  bigeten  of  mannes  sperme  unclene"  ; 

compare  "formatus  est  homo  .  .  ,  de  spurcissimo  spermate."  The 
pope's  work  is  freely  quoted,  it  will  be  remembered,  in  the  Man 
of  Law's  and  the  Pardoner's  Tales,  and  Chaucer's  translation  of  it 
was  produced  between  his  two  versions  of  the  Prologue  to  the 
Legend  of  Good  Women,  1387-1394.  Considering  its  exceedingly 
uncongenial  character,  it  is  hard  to  doubt  that  his  familiarity 
with  it  dates  from  the  time  of  his  own  translation.3  Next,  at  the 
beginning  and  end  of  the  Monk's  Tale  a  colloquial  style,  an 
absence  of  formality,  may  be  detected  : 

"  I  wol  biwayle  in  maner  of  Tragedie"  ; 

the  definition  of  tragedy,  echoing  that  in  the  Monk's  Prologue,  is 
casually  introduced  in  the  third  line  of  the  last  stanza,  a  strange 
place  for  it  if  the  poem  was  originally  independent  and  unconnected 
with  the  Monk's  Prologue ;  we  should  rather  have  expected  it  in 
the  first  stanza.  Of  course  Chaucer  might  have  made  these  changes 
in  adapting  the  poem  to  the  Tales  ;  but  they  are  so  unnecessary  as 
to  be  wholly  improbable.  Elsewhere  in  reassigning  tales  he  usually 
neglects  highly  necessary  revisions.4 

But  the  most  important  evidence  relates  to  the  position  of  the 

Italian  Renascence,  see  The  Nineteenth  Century  for  1888  ;  xxiv.  340-59).  He 
even  goes  so  far  (p.  350)  as  to  think  such  a  passage  as  3620,  compared  with  its 
original,  enough  to  make  one  doubt  the  authenticity  of  the  whole  Monk's  Tale  ; 
which  can  hardly  represent  a  mature  conviction. 

1  Pard.    T.,  573;  01.  T.,  1163;  Mane.    T.  309.     In  Melibeus  it  is  used 
occasionally  by  the  characters  in  addressing  each  other  (e.  g.  2212,  2228). 

2  Skeat,  V.  228. 

3  See  pp.  181-2.     Of.  also  Lowes,  Pull.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.,  xx.  794. 

4  AsinKn.  T.,  Sh.  T.,  S.  N.  T. 


CH.  v,  §  5]  THE  MONK'S  TALE.  171 

Modern  Instances.  Bernabo  Yisconti  died  December  18,  1385,1 
and  thereby  supplies  us  with  the  latest  acknowledged  allusion  in  any 
part  of  the  Canterbury  Tales.  Clearly,  this  passage  cannot  have  been 
written  before  1386  at  the  earliest,  so  if  the  tale  was  early,  this 
passage  was  a  later  addition ;  this  is  generally  assumed,  and  also 
that  the  three  contiguous  passages  came  in  with  it.  But  I  think 
it  can  be  shown  conclusively  that  these  passages  were  not  a  later 
addition.  Out  of  41  MSS.  which  I  have  examined,  in  10  2  the 
Modern  Instances  come  at  the  end  of  the  tale  ;  in  22  3  they  come 
about  the  middle.  If  they  were  added  later,  the  natural  place 
for  them  was  at  the  end ;  not  only  would  this  carry  out  the 
chronological  order  which  is  generally  observed,  but  to  put  them 
in  the  middle  would  require  MS. -readjustment,  no  small  matter. 
But  it  is  clear  that  when  Chaucer  put  the  Monk's  Tale  into  the 
Canterbury  Tales  they  were  where  they  are  now  in  the  majority 
of  MSS.  The  life  of  Croesus  was  clearly  meant  to  come 
last,  for  it  ends  with  a  definition  of  tragedy,  just  as  another 
precedes  the  whole  poem  at  the  end  of  the  Monk's  Prologue;  and 
the  last  line  of  Crossus  is  alluded  to  in  the  Nun's  Priest's  Prologue, 
3972.4  Another  thing,  the  Monk  in  his  prologue  (3174-80) 
apologizes  at  some  length  for  departing  from  the  chronological 
order,  of  which  to  a  mediaeval  reader  there  is  no  violation  worthy 
such  apology  if  Bernabo  and  his  associates  are  at  the  end.5  So 
when  the  tale  was  put  in  its  place,  it  was  certainly  arranged  in  a 
strikingly  incorrect  order.  The  only  way  in  which  we  can  make 
Chaucer  responsible  also  for  the  order  in  the  Ellesmere  group 
is  to  suppose  that,  presumably  in  preparing  the  poem  for  the 
Canterbury  Tales,  he  first  added  the  Modern  Instances  at  the  end, 
that  the  poem  in  this  form  got  into  independent  circulation,  that 


1  Skeat,  V.  240  ;  Froissart,   Chronicles  (tr.   by  Thomas  Johnes,  London, 
1839),  ii.  32. 

2  MSS.  El,  Hn,  Cm,  Hodson  (Second  Supplement  to  the  S.-T.,  Pard.  Prol. 
and  T.,  Ch.  Soc.  1900),  Line,  R.  Coll.  Phys.,  Ad  5140,  Haist,  Ch.Ch.,  Seld. 

3  MSS.  HI,  Cp,  Pt,  Ln,  Cm  Dd,  Lich.,  Cm  Ii,  Cm  Mm,  TC  3.  15,  TC  3.  3, 
HI  1758,  SI  1686,  Roy.  17  D,  Roy.  18  C,  SI  1685,  Rawl.   141,  Land  600, 
New  Coll.,  T  C  49,  Bodl.  414,  Hatt.,  Barl.  20.     They  (together  with  all  or 
almost  all  the  tale)  are  lacking  in  8  MSS.,  HI  1239  and  7335,  Ad.  25718, 
Paris,  Rawl.  149  and  223,  Laud  739,  and  Bodl.  686.     In  MS.  HI  7333  they 
occur  in  both  positions,  a  good  example  of  scribal  meddling. 

4  Of.  Skeat,  III.  429  ;  his  whole  argument  is  unintelligible. 

5  Omitting  them,  the  order  is  Lucifer,  Adam,  Samson,  Hercules,  Nebuchad 
nezzar,  Belshazzar,  Zenobia,  Nero,  Holofernes,  Antiochus,  Alexander,  Caesar, 
Crcesus. 


172  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  5 

here  these  ten  MSS.  go  back  to  a  MS.  that  originated  thus,  that 
he  afterwards  distorted  the  tale  and  placed  it  in  the  Canterbury 
Tales,  and  that  most  of  the  MSS.  are  descended  from  this  form. 
It  would  require  an  enormous  alternative  difficulty  to  make  one 
accept  such  an  improbability  as  this ;  yet  there  is  no  alternative 
difficulty  whatever.  Therefore  I  do  not  see  how  we  can  avoid  the 
conclusion  that  the  arrangement  with  the  Modern  Instances  at  the 
end  is  due  to  a  stupid  and  pedantic  scribe  j1  that  the  other  arrange 
ment  is  the  only  genuine  one,  that  therefore  the  whole  second  half 
of  the  poem  was  written  not  earlier  than  1386.2  But  that  it  was 
not  written  so  immediately  after  Bernabo's  death  is  suggested  by 
the  fact  that  his  "tragedy"  is  preceded  by  those  of  the  two  Pedros, 
who  died  in  1369;  we  should  expect  that  Chaucer  would  have 
begun  with  the  modern  potentate  whom  he  had  known,  if  he  had 
just  died.  Finally,  Professor  Lowes  has  shown  that  Chaucer 
must  have  been  occupied  with  the  Legend  in  1386,  and  we  have 
seen  that  this  and  the  following  year  were  pretty  well  occupied 
with  that  and  with  the  zealous  beginning  of  the  Canterbury  Tales. 
Everything  therefore  indicates  that  the  Monk's  Tale  was  written 
when  the  Canterbury  Tales  were  already  well  under  way. 


§  .6.   The  Man  of  Law's  Tale. 

The  materials  for  dating  the  Man  of  Law's  Prologue  3  and  Tale, 
aside  from  their  connection  with  the  Canterbury  Tales,  are  their 
relation,  on  the  one  hand,  to  Gower's  Confessio  Amantis — an  allu 
sion  to  it  in  the  Man  of  Law's  Prologue,  and  the  connection  between 
Chaucer's  and  Gower's  versions  of  the  story  of  Constance;  and,  on 
the  other,  to  the  Legend  of  Good  Women. 

The  Man  of  Law's  Prologue,  as  I  am  not  the  first  to  point  out, 
was  certainly  written  after  the  Confessio  Amantis.  After  giving  a 
sort  of  programme  of  the  Legend  of  Good  Women,  the  Man  of  Law 
declares  that  Chaucer  has  written  no  word  of  the  wicked  example 

1  It  was  pointed  out  long  ago  by  Bradshaw  that  these  MSS.  show  signs  of 
"editing"  (see  FurnivalTs  Temp.  Pref.,  pp.  23-4).     I  am  simply  enlarging 
upon  the  opinion  of  these  two  scholars. 

2  Of  course  it  is  open  to  any  one  to  believe  that  the  earlier  part  was  written 
long  before,  but  I  do  not  see  what  will  be  gained  by  so  doing. 

3  I  use  this  term  for  the  Man  of  Law's  Headlink  (Furnivall),  or  Introduction 
to  Man  of  Law's  Prologue  (Skeat)  ;  and  for  the  stanzas  on  poverty  the  term 
Proem. 


CH.  V,  §  6]  THE    MAN   OF   LAW* S    TALE.  173 

of  Canacee  or  of  Apollonius  of  Tyre,  and  expresses  the  strongest 
abhorrence  of  such  stories.  When  we  find  these  two  1  the  only 
really  objectionable  stories  (and  both  related  at  length)  in  a  con 
temporary  poem  the  author  of  which  Chaucer  knew  well,  and  in  the 
first  of  them  the  author's  good  taste  so  perverted  that  he  throws 
blame  on  the  father's  violence  and  condones  the  corruptness  of  the 
children,  it  cannot  be  doubted  that  the  reference  is  to  that  poem.2 

1  Canacee  is  in  the  Confessio  Amantis,  III.  143-336,  and  Apollonius  in  VIII. 
271-2008  (Macaulay,  vols.  II.  and  III.). 

2  Dr.  Bech  (Anglia,  v.  375-6)  offers  the  extraordinary  explanation  that  it 
was  the  Man  of  Law's  soul  which  was  horrified  by  the  illegality  of  the  conduct 
of  Canacee  and  Apollonius  ;  "  bei  dieser  auffassung  wird  zugleich  die  annahme 
einer  invective  Chaucer's  gegen  Gower  beseitigt."   Could  the  force  of  perversity 
further  go  ?     Dr.  Root  has  an  over- facile  note  on  the  subject  (Poetry  of  CJiaucer, 
p.  184).     It  is  neither  here  nor  there  to  urge  that  the  pavement-detail  (1.  85) 
is  not  in  Gower  ;  neither  is  it  in  the  half-dozen  other  versions  of  the  Apol 
lonius  story  which  I  have  examined,  including  Godfrey  of  Viterbo's,  Gower 's 
source.     Chaucer   must   have  had  a  confused   recollection  either  of  another 
horrible  touch  in  the  original  Latin  version  (ed.  Riese,  p.  2),  or  of  a  passage  in 
Gower's  Canacee  story  (III.  307-320).     I  do  not  see  how  we  can  deny  the  exist 
ence,  of  some  ill-feeling,  perhaps  temporary  and  mild,  between  Chaucer  and 
Gower  ;  who  may  be  said,  therefore,  to  supply  us  with  one  of  the  earliest  bits 
of  literary  gossip  in  our  history.    Macaulay  (I.  xxvii. )  may  be  right  in  thinking 
that  Chaucer,  conscious  of  his  own  occasional  lapses  from  decorum,  could  not 
resist  the  temptation  to  make  a  humorous  dig  at  the  moral  Gower  (cf.  Karl 
Meyer,  John  Gower's  Beziehungen  zu  Chaucer  u.  K.  Richard  II. ,  Bonn,  1889, 
p.  12).     It  is  true  that  Professor  Hales  points  out  (Diet.  Nat.  Biogr.,  x.  166) 
what  looks  like  a  complimentary  reference  (or  is  it  sarcastic  ?)  to  the  Canter 
bury  Tales,  of  the  character  of  which  work  Gower  would  be  cognizant  years 
before  it  was  published,  in  the  revised  prologue  of  the  Confessio  (11.  81-2) : 

"  Bot  for  my  wittes  ben  to  smale 
To  tellen  every  man  his  tale  " 

(cf.  Pars.  Prol.,  25).  This  prologue  dates  from  1392-3.  But  the  passage  in 
the  Man  of  Law's  Prologue  certainly  gives  an  impression  of  perfect  seriousness. 
It  surely  must  also  be  more  than  a  coincidence  that  the  complimentary  refer 
ence  to  Chaucer  which  Gower  had  inserted  in  1390  (probably)  at  the  end  of  the 
Confessio  he  omitted  before  the  middle  of  1391.  I  must  agree  with  Dr. 
Heinrich  Spies  (Engl.  Stud.,  xxxv.  108)  in  rejecting  Macaulay's  suggestion 
(II.  xxviii.)  that  Gower  removed  the  lines  merely  in  order  to  make  room  for 
something  else.  In  1387  Gower  highly  disapproved  of  the  Earl  of  Oxford,  to 
whom  Chaucer  was  bound  •  by  a  great  favour  ;  so  the  alienation  of  the  two 
poets  may  possibly  have  had  political  connections  (see  Gower's  Cronica 
Tripertita,  I.  63-76;  Wallon,  Richard  II.,  I.  484;  Mod.  Philol.,  i.  328). 
Very  tentatively  I  will  offer  a  further  possible  contribution  to  the  evidence. 
There  is  certainly  something  a  little  odd  about  the  Man  of  Laiv's  Prologue. 
Almost  half  of  it  is  quite  irrelevant.  After  admitting  his  obligation  to  tell  a 
tale,  the  Man  of  Law  laments : 

'"I  can  right  now  no  thrifty  tale  seyn, 
But  Chaucer,  though  he  can  but  lewedly 
On  metres  and  on  ryming  craftily, 
Hath  seyd  hem  in  swich  English  as  he  can 
Of  olde  tyme,  as  knoweth  many  a  man. 


174  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  6 

And  when  we  consider  further  that  the  story  of  Apollonius  is  the 
last  in  the  whole  of  Gower's  work,  it  is  tolerably  clear  that  that  had 


And  if  he  have  not  seyd  hem,  leve  brother, 
In  o  book,  he  hath  seycl  hem  in  another. 
For  he  hath  told  of  loveres  up  and  doun 
Mo  than  Ovyde  made  of  menciouu 
In  his  Epistelles,  that  been  ful  olde. 
What  sholde  I  tellen  hem,  sin  they  ben  tolde  ? 
In  youthe  he  made  of  Ceys  and  Alcion, 
And  sithen  hath  he  spoke  of  everichon, 
Thise  noble  wy ves  and  thise  loveres  eek. '  " 

Here  follow  seventeen  lines  describing  the  Legend,  and  then  in  thirteen  lines 
he  reprehends  the  tales  of  Canacee  and  Apollonius,  ending  : 

"  '  And  therfor  he,  of  ful  avysement, 
Nolde  never  wryte  in  none  of  his  sermouns 
Of  swiche  unkinde  abhomiiiaciouns, 
Ne  wol  I  noon  reherse,  if  that  I  may.'  " 

Chaucer  nowhere  else  in  the  C.  T.  names  himself,  and  he  appears  to  be 
incognito  when  he  tells  his  own  tales.  Why  does  he  speak  so'modestly  of  his 
own  versification,  one  of  the  points  in  which  everybody  knew  he  was  most  in 
advance  of  contemporary  standards  ?  If  he  wished  to  give  a  list  of  his  earlier 
works,  why  does  he  mention  those  alone  which  relate  classical  love-stories, 
thereby  namiug  the  Book  of  the  Duchess  only  by  a  minor  episode  in  it  ? 
Why  is  this  whole  passage  such  an  echo  of  the  latter  part  of  the  Prologue  to 
the  Legend?  I  will  venture  to  commit  the  following  conjecture  to  fine  print. 
Chaucer  may  have  been  more  or  less  seriously  nettled  at  a  continuation 
or  revival  of  the  criticisms  of  him  for  misogyny  and  cynicism  which  had 
evoked  the  Legend  of  Good  Women.  These  criticisms  may  have  been  echoed 
by  Gower  or  accompanied  by  contrasting  praise  of  him.  Now  he  was  the  one 
contemporary  poet  with  whose  versification  Chaucer  had  any  reason  to  fear 
comparison  ;  much  as  we  may  prefer  Chaucer's,  Gower's  is  the  most  regular  and 
accurate  verse  from  Orm  to  Surrey  (cf.  Macaulay,  II.  xvi.-xix.),  and  some  con 
temporary  taste  may  have  preferred  it,  as  Gascoigne  and  other  mid-sixteenth 
century  poets  probably  would  have  done,  had  they  known  how  to  read  it. 
Chaucer  declares  that  lewd  though  his  metres  and  uncrafty  though  his  rhymes 
may  be,  every  one  knows  that  he  has  done  his  best,  in  more  books  than  one,  to 
exalt  lovers,  and  has  written  a  whole  large  volume  (here  he  stretches  the  truth) 
of  legends  of  Cupid's  saints  ;  but  one  thing  he  has  not  done,  "of  ful  avyse 
ment,"  he  has  told  no  such  tales  as  have  defaced  the  Confessio,  nor  will  the 
Man  of  Law  do  so.  This  explanation  will  account  for  his  mentioning  the 
Book  of  the  Duchess  as  he  does ;  he  needed  its  testimony  in  his  favour,  but 
perhaps  did  not  care  to  recall  the  tears  which  he  had  shed  for  John  of  Gaunt's 
first  wife  after  the  bereaved  husband's  twenty  years  of  domestic  vicissitudes 
and  his  relations  with  Chaucer's  own  sister-in-Jaw.  Though  Chaucer  was  not 
very  far  from  thirty  when  he  wrote  it,  that  was  twenty  or  twenty-five  years 
before,  so  that  the  phrase  "  in  youthe"  is  not  surprising,  and  we  are  not 
forced  to  the  opinion  that  Oeyx  and  Alcyone  was  an  independent  work  ;  any 
one  who  will  read  critically  Professor  Bilderbeck's  note  in  his  edition  of  the 
Minor  Poems  will  see  how  little  there  is  to  be  sa,id  for  this  view.  One  would 
hesitate  to  suggest  such  an  explanation  as  this  of  the  Man  of  Law's  Pro 
logue  if  it  implied  anything  like  pettiness  or  malice  or  ill-temper  on  Chaucer's 
part,  which  it  is  impossible  to  attribute  to  him  ;  but  there  is  nothing  here 
that  is  not  perfectly  just,  and  even  delicate  and  good-humoured.  It  seems 
also  to  suggest  rather  vividly  how  much  to  the  same  "set"  the  two  poets 
belonged. 


CH.  V,  §  6]  THE    MAN   OF   LAW*S    TALE.  175 

been  already  finished.  Professor  Macaulay  shows,  on  the  clear 
evidence  of  dates  in  the  MSS.,  that  the  second  version  of  the 
epilogue  to  the  Confessio  was  written  in  the  last  half  of  1390  or 
the  first  half  of  1391  ;  and  that  the  first  form  of  prologue  was 
written  in  1390,  therefore  after  the  poem  was  finished.1  This  plainly 
assigns  to  the  Man  of  Law's  Prologue  the  date  1390  or  later.2 

As  to  the  Tale  of  the  Man  of  Law,  it  is  necessary  to  notice 
first  the  view  of  Skeat,  Pollard,  Hales, -Professor  W.  P.  Ker  and 
others  that  it  was  written  somewhat  early  in  Chaucer's  literary 
life.3  Skeat's  belief  that  in  his  story  of  Constance  Gower  borrowed 
from  Chaucer's  will  be  noticed  later,  but  its  evidential  value  in  this 
connection  disappears  at  the  same  time  with  Pauli's  early  date  for 
the  Confessio.  Xor  can  the  fact  that  the  Man  of  Law's  Tale  is  in 
stanzas  be  used  as  evidence,  for  not  only  is  the  stanza  particularly 
well  adapted  to  a  remote,  lyrical  and  rhetorical  poem  like  this,  but 
Dr.  Skeat  himself  admits  that  the  stanzaic  Prioress'  Tale  was 
written  late.4  All  that  is  left,  then,  is  the  subject,  treatment  and 
style. 

1  Macaulay's  Gower,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  xxi.,  xxii.  and  13,  and  iii.  468. 

a  According  to  ten  Brink  (Engl.  Stud.,  xvii.  19-20),  M.L.P.,  60-76 
indicates  that  Chaucer  was  purposing  a  continuation  of  the  Legend  of  Good 
Women;  since  the  list  of  heroines  there  said  to  be  treated  in  the  Legend 
is  larger  than  the  correct  list,  and  otherwise  different.  He  associates  this 
project  with  the  revision  of  the  Prologue  to  the  Legend,  and  attributes 
both  to  the  year  1393  or  a  later  time.  Little  can  be  built,  I  think,  on 
this  argument,  simply  because  we  cannot  be  sure  that  Chaucer  had  not 
intended  all  along  to  continue  the  Legend  at  some  time  ;  as  to  the  revision 
of  the  Prologue,  we  have  seen  that  it  was  probably  due  to  a  special  cause. 
Koeppel  (Engl.  Stud.,  xvii.  199)  and  Lounsbury  (Studies,  i.:4l8)  drop  a  couple 
of  other  chronological  hints  which  can  hardly  be  taken  up. 

3  Hales  (Folia  Literaria,  p.  101  ;  cf.  also  Diet.  Nat.  Biogr.,  x.  161-2)  dates 
M.  L.  T. ,  Cl.  T. ,  Pri.  T.,"  and  possibly  other  pieces, "  ' '  many  years  before  "  the 
C.  T.    Skeat  says  (III.  409  and  cf.  413) :   "  We  can  easily  see,  from  the  style 
and  by  the  metrical  form,  that  this  Tale  is  a  piece  of  Chaucer's  early  work 
manship,  and  was  revised  for  insertion  among  the  Tales,  with  the  addition  of 
a  Prologue  and  four  stanzas,  about  1387."     Mr.  Pollard  says:  "There  are 
many  blots  in  the  story :  the   monotony  of  the  parts  played  by  the  two 
rnothers-in-law— one  in  Syria,  the  other  in  Northumberland— the  unreasoning 
prodigality  of  time,  and  the  refusal  of  Constance  to  declare  who  she  is,  being 
the  most  obvious.    Chaucer  ....  had  not  yet  learnt  to  reconstruct  a  story 
for  himself,  or  to  clothe  his  characters  in  flesh  and  blood  "  (Primer,  p.  69). 
"The  Man  of  Lawcs  Tale,  once  more  a  curiously  inappropriate  one,  is  cast  in 
the  same  seven-line  stanza  as  the  Seint  Cecyle  and  the  Griselde,  and  from  its 
subject,  style,  and  tone  appears  to  have  been  written  towards  the  close  of  the 
same  period"  (1369-79;  Pollard,  Globe,  Chaucer,  p.  xxvi.).     The  remarks  of 
Professor  Ker  are  not  dissimilar  (see  his  discriminating  Essays  on  Mediaeval 
Literature,  London,  1905  ;  pp.  96-7).     Cf.  also  my  Introduction,  for  other 
opinions. 

4  The  "quod  she  "  of  line  1644  of  course  shows  that  the  proem  at  least  was 


176  THE    CANTERBURY    TALES.  [cH.  V,  §  6 

The  idea  that  Chaucer  is  not  quite  as  likely  to  have  written  a 
poem  on  such  a  subject  after  1390  as  in  1380  seems  in  a  measure 
to  disregard  two  facts — that  at  earliest  he  was  a  middle-aged 
man  when  he  wrote  it,  and  that  as  a  poet  he  was  always  a 
mediaeval  as  well  as  a  modern.  In  the  first  place,  we  are  not 
justified  in  assuming  that  a  kind  of  subject  which  attracted  Chaucer 
at  thirty-five  or  forty  he  would  have  despised  at  fifty  because  mean 
while  he  had  begun  writing  on  others  which  happen  to  please  us 
better.  I  do  not  forget  that  Chaucer  experienced  a  reaction  against 
allegory,  which  is  absolutely  out  of  harmony  with  the  concreteness 
which  is  his  ideal  in  the  Canterbury  Tales,  but  there  is  no  reason 
to  suppose  that  in  ten  years  of  middle  life  his  taste  changed  so 
completely  that  pleasure  in  the  Nun's  Priest's  or  Miller's  Tale 
drove  out  pleasure  in  the  story  of  Constance.  He  must  have 
enjoyed  reading  both  at  forty;  at  fifty,  why  not  writing  both? 
Besides,  is  the  tone  of  the  Man  of  Law's  Tale  so  very  different  from 
that  of  the  Franklin's  Tale,  for  example  ?  Moreover,  the  fact  that 
Chaucer  turned  his  back  on  the  Middle  Ages  in  some  respects 
cannot  be  held  to  show  that  he  did  so  in  all.  Even  the  poet  who, 
because  his  peculiar  genius  was  for  realism,  was  capable  of  so 
miraculously  modern  a  touch  as  where  the  friar  in  the  Sumner's 
Tale  drives  the  cat  off  the  bench — even  .he  could  express  himself 
only  in  such  ordinary  mediaeval  genres  as  religious  and  moral 
legends,  or  in  Boccaccio's  new  invention,  tales  of  fallen  great  ones, 
when  he  turned  in  a  more  serious  mood  to  a  subject  which  greatly 
interested  him,  the  mutability  of  fortune,  and  to  admiration  of 
the  Christian  virtues.  Chaucer's  sympathy  was  catholic  enough  to 
embrace  them  all ;  there  were  other  Chaucers  besides  him  of  the 
May  mornings  or  of  the  "merry  tales."  And  is  there  any  reason 
to  suppose  that  he  ever  quite  grew  beyond  the  sort  of  thing  which 
was  written  by  the  very  Italians  from  whom  he  had  learned  so 
much?  a 

written  for  the  Prioress  (and  cf.  also  line  1653).     The  passionate  indignation 
against  the  Jews  is  exquisitely  in  character  for  her  ;  and  lines  1832-3, 

"This  abbot,  which  that  was  an  holy  man, 
As  monkes  ben,  or.elles  oghten  be," 

suggests  her  disapproval  of  the  worldly  Monk. 

•  Does  not  Professor  Brandl  commit  the  error  of  taking  Chaucer  too  much 
out  of  his  age  by  pairing  the  Prioress'  Talc  with  Sir  TJwpas  (Paul's  Gfrundriss, 
1893;  ii.  680):  "Auf  die  unmittelbar  vorhergehende  Verspottung  kindi- 


CH.  V,  §  6]  THE    MAN    OF   LA^S    TALE.  177 

The  element  in  the  story  and  its  conduct  to  which  critics  have 
especially  objected  is  a  certain  crudity  in  the  plot.  We  may  admit 
that  several  motifs  are  a  little  overworked — the  treacherous  mother- 
in-law,  the  caitiff  lover,  and  the  divinely-guided  voyage ;  but  the 
mediaeval  reader,  and  writer,  was  used  to  such  repetition  of  good 
things.1  As  to  what  Mr.  Pollard  calls  "  the  unreasoning  prodigality 
of  time,"  he  himself  has  pointed  out  exactly  the  same  thing  as 
existing  to  an  unusual  extent  in  the  Knight's  Tale,2  which  is 
certainly  neither  crude  nor  early,  and  which  Mr.  Ker  uses  as  a 
standard  of  comparison  for  the  Man  of  Laitfs  Tale.  The  lack  of 
intelligible  motivation  in  Constance's  conduct  I  shall  speak  of 
later ;  her  refusal  to  declare  her  identity  is  more  or  less  necessary 
to  the  plot,  and,  at  any  rate,  is  dismissed  more  briefly  by  Chaucer 
than  by  either  Trivet,3  his  source,  or  by  Gower.4  It  must  not  be 
forgotten  that  Chaucer  was  relating  a  story  already  made  well 
known  by  Trivet  and  by  Gower  (as  I  hope  to  show  shortly),  and  that 
in  the  Middle  Ages  history  and  fiction  had  not  yet  made  the  declar 
ation  of  mutual  independence  which  to  their  common  advantage 
they  have  made  since.  He  did  not  care  by  deviating  markedly  from 
the  received  version  to  make  his  readers  open  their  eyes  in  amaze 
ment;  in  one  or  two  minute  points  among  those  where  he  does 
deviate,  as  we  shall  see,  he  comments  on  the  fact.  Wherever  we  can 

scher  Legenden  setzt  er  die  der  vnlgarisierten  Romanzen  "  ?  Professor  Gum- 
mere  has  an  admirable  paper  on  the  mediaeval  and  the  modern  in  Chaucer,  in 
Publ.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.,  XVI.  xxxvii.-xl.,  Appendix;  and  Professor  Louns- 
bury  makes  some  judicious  remarks  on  the  unwisdom  of  attempting  to  date 
poems  merely  according  to  their  excellence,  and  illustrates  his  point  from 
other  poets  (Parl.  of  Fowls,  Boston,  1877  ;  pp.  7-8). 

1  It  is  much  more  striking  in  one  of  the  gems  of  Middle  English  romance, 
King  Horn ;  which  introduces  a  Saracen  invasion  three  times,  and  ;twice 
Horn's  coming  to  a  foreign  court  and  having  a  princess  thrust  on  him,  twice 
his  arrival  just  in  time  to  stop  a  fatal  wedding,  twice  his  entrance  in  lowly 
disguise   and   his   slaughter   of    the   guests,   and   twice   a   veridical   dream. 
Keynild  is  an  understudy  to  Rymenhild,  and  Arnoldin  to  Athulf.     In  that 
other  Middle-English  gem,  Sir  Gfawainand  the  Green  Knight,  the  unaccount 
able  and  the  unmotived  are  far  more  prominent  than  in  the  Man  of  Law's  Tale. 
With  how  many  mediaeval  narratives  would  M.  L.  T.  suffer  by  comparison  ? 
If  we  compared  Chaucer  with  our  contemporaries  less,  and  with  life  own  more, 
we  should  get  a  truer  estimate  of  him. 

2  See  his  edition  of  it,  pp.  81-2.     Though  one  would  hesitate  to  construct  a 
time-table  for  a  fairy  ship,  the  allowance  of  several  years  (the  same  in  Trivet 
and  Gower)  for  drifting  from  Syria  to  Northumberland,  and  thence  to  Spain  and 
Italy,  seems  rather  a  concession  to  realism  than  the  reverse.     A  similar  voyage 
in  the  lay  of  Emare  takes  only  "a  full  seuene-nyght  and  more"  (1.  674). 

3  See  the  passage  from  Nicholas  Trivet's  Anglo-French  Chronicle,  edited  by 
Edmund  Brock,  in  the  Chaucer  Society's  Originals  and  Analogues,  pp.  iii.-53. 

4  Confessio  Amantis,  II.  587-1598. 

DEV.  CH.  N 


178  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES.  [cH.  V,  §  6 

see  Chaucer  at  work  (especially  on  well-known  originals)  we  never 
find  him  making  such  radical  changes;  he  is  well  content  with 
his  data  as  he  finds  them,  and  confines  himself,  in  the  main,  to 
adding,  illuminating,  and  vivifying.  Nor  can  I  grant  Mr.  Ker 
that  the  story  seriously  lacks  unity  or  is  unwieldy.  Few  of 
the  Canterbury  Talcs  are  more  free  from  disproportionate  and 
overgrown  passages.  If  we  compare  some  of  the  discourses  and 
soliloquies  in  the  Tales  of  the  Knight,  the  Franklin,  the  Wife 
of  Bath  and  the  Nuns  Priest,  the  Man  of  Laiv's  Tale  will  not 
suffer  greatly.  It  seems  to  me  that  Pollard  and  Ker  make  quite 
too  much  of  a  relatively  small  matter. 

As  to  its  conduct  and  style,  the  Man  of  Law's  Tale  seems  quite 
harmonious  with  Chaucer's  best  period.  In  spite  of  the  remote  and 
fragile  character  of  the  subject,  here  and  there  are  gleams  of  humour ; 
after  esoteric  discussion  the  soldan's  counsellors  can  find  no  remedy 
for  his  woe  but  marriage  (217),  and  the  soldaness  is  of  the  opinion 
that  if  they  are  baptized  (352), 

"Cold  water  shal  not  greve  us  but  a  lyte." 

The  poet  smiles  again,  for  better  or  worse,  in  lines  272-3  ("  Hous- 
bondes  been  alle  gode"),  355-7,  709-14,  and  789.  In  vividness 
and  realism  of  detail  (except  as  regards  Constance  herself)  the 
poem  compares  not  unfavourably  with  any  of  the  non-humorous 
tales.  We  may  note  the  conferences  of  the  soldan  (204-31)  and 
the  soldaness  (326-57)  with  their  councils  (in  neither  Trivet1 
nor  Gower)  ;  in  both  the  other  writers  the  traitor  knight  is  con 
founded  directly  after  his  accusation  of  Constarice  for  the  murder, 
but  in  Chaucer  there  is  a  highly  vivid  judgment-hall  scene 
(617-86);  there  is  a  lifelike  and  wholly  original  touch  in  the 
embarrassment  of  the  pagan  official  at  hearing  Christianity  openly 
taught  by  his  wife  (568-9).  No  one  can  miss  what  Mr.  Ker  calls 
the  "  nobility  of  temper "  in  the  poem  :  or  its  magnificently 
rhetorical  character,  especially  in  its  use  of  astrology  and  in  its 
occasional  passages  of  melancholy,  pathos  and  devoutness,2  a 
character  which  led  ten  Brink 3  for  some  reason  to  conjecture 
that  Chaucer  originally  meant  to  deliver  this  tale  himself  on 
the  pilgrimage.  It  is  hardly  just  to  pick  out  a  few  of  these  finer 
passages  which  are  not  found  in  Chaucer's  source,  as  Dr.  Skeat  does 

1  In  whose  version  the  soldaness  merely  hires  seven  hundred  ruffians. 

2  E.  g.,  11.  295-315,  421-7,  449-62,  631-58. 

3  History  of  Enyl.  Literature  (London,  1893),  ii.  157. 


CH.  V,  §  6]  THE    MAN   OF   LAW'S    TALE.  179 

(III.  410),  and  explain  them  as  later  additions,  especially  since  we 
have  at  least  the  tales  of  the  Second  Nun,  the  Shipman  and  the 
Parson  to  show  that  Chaucer's  practice  was  not  to  revise  works 
which  he  transferred  to  the  Canterbury  Tales  or  from  one  teller  to 
another.  Many  of  the  best  passages,1  sometimes  contiguous  with 
those  which  Skeat  points  out  as  possible  additions,  are  so  intimately 
connected  with  the  rest  of  the  story  as  to  forbid  the  conjecture  that 
they  were  written  at  a  different  time.  And  finally  the  Man  ofLaio's 
Tale  shows  an  ease,  a  mastery  and  an  artistic  aloofness  in  Chaucer's 
attitude  toward  his  material  which  is  far  different  from  his  earlier 
manner.  The  style  of  the  poem  is  remarkably  unified  and  har 
monious  ; 2  the  original  and  splendid  passages  are  not  jewels  stuck 
in  a  plain  setting,  but  as  it  were  flowers  growing  out  of  a  plant 
which  naturally  produces  them.3 

This  attitude  toward  his  material  may  help  to  account  for 
Chaucer's  treatment  of  Constance,  the  chief  puzzle  of  all  and 
probably  the  main  thing  which  has  led  some  critics  to  put  the 
tale  early  in  Chaucer's  literary  life.  In  Chaucer  she  has,  it  is  true, 
more  human  feeling  than  in  Trivet ;  she  pities  her  child  when  they 
are  about  to  be  cast  adrift  (853-61),  and  is  not  without  sense 
of  her  husband's  cruelty  (863,  1055-7),  which  accounts  for  her 
slowness  to  make  herself  known  to  him  in  Eome  ;  none  of  this  is  in 
Trivet.4  But  though  she  says  far  more  than  in  Trivet  or  Gower,  she 
acts  less ;  except  for  her  religious  duties,  she  can  be  said  to  come 
out  of  her  passiveness  only  three  times,  when  she  tells  her  son  to 
stand  before  Alia,  proposes  to  her  husband  a  feast  for  the  Emperor, 
and  alights  from  her  horse  to  make  herself  known  to  him  (1013, 
1079,  1104).  Her  concealment  of  her  identity  from  the  Constable 
and  the  Senator  (524-7,  972-3)  is  more  complete  in  Chaucer  than 
in  Trivet ;  it  is  probably  for  the  sake  of  brevity  as  well  as  mystery 

1  E.g.,  11.  211-7,  270-87,  351-7,  811-19,  1052-78. 

2  With  the  sole  exception  of  the  position  of  Constance  in  it. 

3  This  air  of  mastery  and  aloofness  shows  especially  in  the  religious  and 
astrological  passages,  and  is  even  the  cause  of  some  of  the  imperfections  which 
strike  a  modern  reader.    Without  being  at  all  perfunctory,  Chaucer  greatly 
condenses,  especially  towards  the  end,  and  omits  many  minor  circumstances. 
This  accounts  for  the  obscurity  where  the  blind  man  appeals  to  Hermengild 
for  his  sight  (561-2),  without  apparent  reason  or  explanation  ;  in  Trivet  he  is 
taught  by  the  Holy  Ghost  to  do  so.     The  Tale  is  far  shorter  than  Trivet's 
version,  and  (save  for  Chaucer's  lyrical  additions)  even  than  Gower's.     No 
other  of  the  Canterbury  Tales,  unless  it  is  the  Knight's,  has  so  many  references 
to  the  fact  that  the  poet  was  condensing. 

4  Nor  in  Gower,  except  for  her  attentions  to  her  child  (C.  A.,  IL  1061-83). 


180  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  6 

that  Chaucer  refuses  to  dwell  on  it.1  Chaucer's  Constance,  as 
compared  with  Trivet's  and  Gower's  more  commonplace  figure,  is 
marked  by  vividness  without  intelligibility,  and  against  Chaucer's 
far  more  realistic  background  she  passes  about,  attended  by  miracles, 
like  a  being  from  another  world  (which  perhaps  she  is).  It  is 
impossible  to  be  sure  of  Chaucer's  motive  for  the  change  which  he 
made  in  her  relation  to  the  story,  of  which  he  can  hardly  have  been 
unconscious,  but  the  following  suggestions  may  come  somewhere 
near  the  truth.  He  was  probably  interested  in  the  story  chiefly  for 
its  possibilities  of  rhetorical  poetry  and  impersonal  feeling,  and 
in  its  heroine  chiefly  as  a  decorative-  figure,  an  embodiment  of 
suffering  and  constancy.  To  rationalize  her  would  have  been  to 
make  yet  more  incongruous  than  it  is  a  story  which  is  incurably 
miraculous.  Therefore,  though  giving  her  more  human  feeling 
than  Trivet  does,  in  order  to  enhance  her  pathos,  he  leaves  her  in 
the  nimbus  of  conservatism  which  is  the  proper  surrounding  of  a 
religious  figure,  while  he  draws  forward  the  rest  of  the  story  into  a 
more  modern  light.  To  all  this  there  is  a  general  parallel  in  the 
Clerk's  Tale  ;  and  just  as  by  disclaiming  an  intention  to  hold  up 
Griselda  as  a  model  to  other  wives  he  shows  his  consciousness 
of  her  remoteness,  so  here  by  affecting  to  attribute  to  all  wives  the 
sanctity  of  Constance  (708-14).2 

Whether  all  this  was  quite  deliberate  we  cannot  say,  and  it  does 
not  free  Chaucer  from  the  imputation  of  occasional  bad  art,  but  his 
method  is  the  best  possible  with  such  an  intractable  subject.  It  is 

1  In  both  cases,  in  Trivet's  version,   she  does  explain  who  she  is,  in  very 
general  terms  ;  but  for  no  intelligible  reason  refuses  to  mention  names,  even  to 
the  Senator  at  Rome,  whom  she  recognizes  (pp.  13-15,  41).    Gower's  treatment 
of  her  reticence  is  odder  than  that  of  either  of  the  others.  Though  she  explains 
herself  vaguely  to  the  Senator  (1148-69),  she  utterly  refuses  to  do  so  to  the 
Constable  (738-9)  ;  and  will  not  reveal  her  history  to  her  husband  either  when 
they  are  married  or  when  they  are  reunited  in  Rome  (910-11,  1450-5  ;  neither 
of  these  two  points  is  in  Trivet  or  in  Chaucer).     Constance's  reticence  is 
paralleled  in  the  lay  of  Emare,  which  of  course  is  nearly  related  to  M.  L.  T. 
(11.  358-60;  in  Ritson,  vol.  ii.,  and  edited  by  A.  B.  Gough,  London,  1901), 
and  the  heroine  of  which  changes  her  name.     Dr.  Gough  shows  that  it  is  a 
primitive  and  wide-spread  element  in  the  story  ;  see  The  Constance  Saga  (Palaes 
tra,  xxiii. ;  Berlin,  1902),  pp.  13,  17.     Is  not  this  silence  perhaps  the  relic  of 
the  tabu  frequently  found  in  tales  of  fairy-lovers,  which  doubtless  Constance 
originally  was  ?    (Of.  Schofield,  English  Literature  from  the  Norman  Conquest 
to  Chaucer,  pp.  191-2.) 

2  On  the  similarity  of  Constance  to  Griselda,  compare  : 

"  And  she  sorwe  as  domb  stant  as  a  tree  "  (M.  L.  T.,  1055). 
"  And  she  ay  sad  and  constant  as  a  wal "  (Cl.  T.,  1047). 


CH.  V,  §  6]  THE    MAN   OF   LAW'S    TALE.  181 

a  delicate  matter  to  know  just  how  much  new  wine  can  be  safely 
poured  into  old  bottles.  Chaucer  is  a  positive,  not  a  negative 
realist;  that  is,  he  constantly  adds  reality,  but  does  not  remove 
unreality.  At  times  he  becomes  the  more  incongruous,  therefore,  by 
the  very  reason  of  his  greatness.  Though  this  may  somewhat  mar 
the  perfection  of  his  art,  it  adds  greatly  to  its  interest  from  a 
historical  point  of  view.  That  his  sense  of  congruity  did  not  keep 
him  from  sounding,  even  in  his  best  days,  notes  that  jar  on  our 
ears,  we  shall  see  if  we  remember  Troilus'  long  soliloquy  (IV. 
958-1078),  Dorigen's  long  list  of  heroines  on  an  agitated  occasion 
(Frankl.  T.,  1367-456),  and  the  introduction  into  the  Canterbury 
Tales  of  Melibeus  and  the  P arson's  and  Montis  Tales.  Even  if  in 
a  sense  the  Man  of  Law's  Tale  is  more  incongruous  than  the  Second 
Nun's,  chiefly  because  of  its  superior  realism,  it  is  certainly  a  far 
better  poem  and  bears  every  mark  of  a  much  later  period  in 
Chaucer's  development.  In  a  word,  can  any  one  deny  that  Chaucer 
might  choose  such  a  subject  late  in  his  life  2  And  if  he  did,  in 
what  regard  have  we  a  right  to  expect  the  M an  of  Law's  Tale  to  be 
different  from  what  it  is  1 1  It  seems  to  me,  therefore,  that  in  the 
plot  of  the  tale,  still  more  in  its  style  and  subject,  there  is  nothing 
whatever  against  putting  it  late,  even  in  the  last  decade  of  his  life. 
One  piece  of  evidence  that  the  Man  of  Law's  Tale  is  later  than 
the  first  Prologue  to  the  Legend  of  Good  Women,  and  perhaps 
not  much  earlier  than  the  second,  is  to  be  found  in  the  presence  in 
it  of  five  passages2  translated  from  the  De  Contemptu  Mundi  of 

1  Emare  is  an  example  of  a  similar  story  completely  rationalized,   and 
thereby  made  (save  for  two  or  three  life-like  touches)  utterly  prosaic. 

2  Lines  99-121  in  the  Proem  and  421-7,  772-7,  925-7  and  1134-8.     See 
Skeat,   III.  407-8,  or  Koeppel  in  Herrig's  Archiv,  Ixxxiv.    405-18.     Com 
parison  with  the  Latin  will  show  that  only  the  lines  which  I  have  indicated 
are  taken  from  it.     The  passage  in  the  Proem  was  first  pointed  out  by  A.  von 
During  in  1885  (see  his  translation  of  Chaucer,  iii.  352)  ;  the  others  simul 
taneously  by  Koeppel  and  Lounsbury.     Skeat  thinks  (III.  307,  408)  that  all 
live  passages  are  fragments  rescued  from  Chaucer's  own  poetic  version  of  the 
Latin  work,  which  he  dates  1373-7  (Chaucer  Canon,  p.  154),  and  that  they 
were  inserted  here  on  the  revision  of  the  Tale.    Thus  the  evil  communica 
tions  of  ten  Brink  on  the  stanzaic  Palaman  continue  to  corrupt  the  world. 
Koeppel  also  thinks  these  passages  derived  from  Chaucer's  version  of  Innocent 
(Engl.  Stud.,  xvii.  196-7,  199);  which  is  the  more  odd  because  he  (like  ten 
Brink)  believes  that  this  work  was  in  prose,  and  that,  when  Chaucer  wrote 
the  G-prologue,  it  had  not  advanced  beyond  the  first  few  chapters  of  the 
pope's  treatise  ;  while  all  the.  passages  quoted  in  the  Man  of  Law's  Proem  and 
Tale  and  in  the  Pardoner's  Tale  are  from  the  last  chapters  of  the  first  book  or 
from  the  second.     I  find  no  evidence  that  these  passages  are  in  any  sense 
quoted  from  Chaucer's  translation.     In  the  first  place,  the  manner  in  which 
the  work  is  mentioned  in  the  Legend  (G,  413-15)  certainly  seems  to  imply  that 


182  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  6 

Pope  Innocent  III.  It  will  be  remembered  that  Chaucer's  lost 
translation  of  this  is  mentioned  in  the  Prologue  to  the  Legend, 
but  only  in  the  second  version,  and  is  the  only  addition  which  the 
latter  makes  to  the  list  of  Chaucer's  works  given  in  the  earlier 
version.  Disregarding  the  use  of  it  here,  it  is  quoted  only  in  the 
Pardoner's  Tale  and  perhaps  the  Monk's,  both  late.  On  this  and 
other  grounds,  fully  set  forth  by  Professor  Lowes,  the  probabilities 
are  overwhelming  that  it  was  written  not  long  before  1394,  certainly 
later  than  1386.1  There  is  no  impossibility,  of  course,  in  the  idea 
that  Chaucer  made  these  quotations  before  he  had  made  his 
translation;  yet  one  cannot  but  feel  that  the  pope's  work  was  so 
foreign  to  Chaucer's  disposition  that  it  could  hardly  have  been  one 
of  his  favourite  books,  and  that  he  is  not  likely  long  before  he 
translated  it  to  have  acquired  such  familiarity  with  it  that  he 
could  readily  have  made  these  not  very  striking  excerpts.2  It  is 
not  a  forced  inference,  then,  that  these  passages  were  written  after 
(and  probably  a  good  while  after)  1386. 

But  Skeat  would  have  us  believe  "  that  the  Prologue  [Proem]  and 
the  four  inserted  stanzas  were  placed  where  they  now  are  at  the 

it  was  in  prose.  Secondly,  there  is  not  the  least  reason  to  believe  that  it  ever 
advanced  very  far ;  if  there  ever  was  excuse  for  Chaucer's  habit  of  dropping 
things  in  the  midst,  it  was  here.  His  way  of  speaking  of  it, — 

"  And  Of  the  Wrecked  Engendring  of  Mankinde, 
As  man  may  in  pope  Innocent  y-finde," — 

strongly  suggests  that  the  translation  included  only  the  early  part  of  the 
work.  The  second  of  the  above  lines  seems  to  imply  only  a  partial  version  ; 
and  very  much  as  Koeppel  points  out,  while  the  title  of  the  original  is  De 
contemptu  mundi,  sive  de  miseria  conditionis  humance,  Chaucer's  title  corre 
sponds  only  to  the  first  five  chapters  of  the  first  of  the  pope's  three  books  ; 
they  alone  deal  with  conception  and  gestation,  which,  according  to  the  pope, 
are  very  wretched  indeed.  This  is  an  odd  subject  for  Chaucer  to  treat,  but  so 
is  the  whole  book,  which  may  explain  his  getting  no  farther.  Koeppel's  only 
reason  for  thinking  he  did  get  farther  is  the  presence  of  these  quotations  in  the 
Man  of  Law's  Tale  and  elsewhere  ;  which  is  amazingly  like  reasoning  in  a 
circle.  Dr.  Koeppel,  in  one  of  his  admirable  source-studies  (Anglia,  xiii. 
175),  affords  us  one  more  warning  illustration  of  the  orthodox  view  as  to 
Chaucer's  "economy"  in  cutting  out  purple  patches  from  cast-off  poems; 
Koeppel  carries  it  to  such  a  point  that,  in  speaking  of  St.  Jerome's  "good 
women"  mentioned  in  the  G-prologue  of  the  Legend,  he  says  that  Chaucer 
transferred  them,  after  he  had  revised  the  Prologue,  to  Dorigen's  lament  in 
the  Franklin's  Tale. 

1  See  Lowes'  discussion  in  Publ.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.,  xx.  790-4  ;  and  pp. 
101-2,  170  above. 

2  Why  did  he  translate  it  at  all  ?     One  cannot  help  guessing  that  Chaucer's 
rendering  was  done  by  request.     As  Lowes  suggests,  it  may  also  have  been 
not  unconnected  with  Deschamps'  version  of  a  part  of  the  De  Contemptu  ;  see 
Publ.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.,  xx.  795,  note. 


CH.   V,  §  6]  THE    MAN    OF   LAW'S    TALE.  183 

time  of  the  revision  of  what  was  once  an  independent  tale  "  (III. 
408).  How  it  may  have  been  with  the  proem  we  cannot  tell,  except 
that  is  far  more  closely  connected  with  the  Tale  than  with  the 
Prologue  ;  but  in  the  other  four  passages  the  evidence  is  all  against 
Skeat's  opinion.  In  only  one  case  (421-7)  do  the  lines  from 
Innocent  form  a  complete  stanza.  In  the  last  case  (1134-8)  one 
line  is  in  one  stanza  and  four  in  another,  both  of  which  stanzas 
form  an  integral  part  of  the  narrative ;  somewhat  the  same  is  true 
of  lines  772-7.  It  is  therefore  incorrect  to  speak  of  "  the  four 
inserted  stanzas."  At  worst,  none  of  the  passages  shows  any  more 
sign  of  being  a  later  addition  than  any  of  the  exclamatory  stanzas 
in  the  poem,  and  I  have  pointed  out  several  times  elsewhere  that 
in  reassigning  tales  it  was  Chaucer's  practice  rather  to  neglect 
necessary  revisions  than  to  make  unnecessary  ones.  These  passages 
therefore  seem  to  have  been  written  at  the  same  time  as  the  rest  of 
the  Tale,  and  hence  to  afford  a  respectable  amount  of  evidence  that 
the  Man  of  Law's  Tale  was  written  well  within  the  Canterbury 
period,  certainly  after  the  first  Prologue  to  the  Legend.1 

But  an  almost  conclusive  argument  against  putting  the  Man  of 
Laic's  Tale  before  the  Legend  of  Good  Women  seems  to  me,  as  in 
the  case  of  several  others  of  the  Canterbury  Tales,  the  fact  that  it 
is  not  mentioned  in  the  Prologue  to  that  poem,2  where  Alcestis  is 
dragging  in  everything  to  Chaucer's  credit  which  she  can  find,  and 
omits  nothing  of  any  length  except  the  Anelida  and  Arcite,  which 
was  unfinished  and  doubtless  unpublished.  If  the  tale  of  Con 
stance  had  been  written  as  a  separate  work  before  the  first  version 
of  the  Prologue,  where  Boetliius,  the  House  of  Fame  and  Origen 
on  the  Magdalen  are  duly  recorded,  nothing  seems  more  unlikely 
than  that  Chaucer  should  have  ignored  it. 

The  relation  between  Chaucer's  and  Gower's  versions  of  the  story 
of  Constance  has  been  studied  by  Dr.  Emil  Liicke,3  incidentally 

1  Koeppel     (Herrig's     Archiv,    Ixxxiv.    411)    points    out    another    more 
trifling  link  between  the  Tale  and  the  second  Prologue  to  the  Legend ;  with 
M.  L.  T.,  701-2  cf.  L.  G.  W.,  prol.-G,  312,  529.     I  must  say,  however,  that 
corn  as  a  symbol  for  learning  and  poetry  occurs  also  in  Parl.  of  Fowls,  22-3, 
and  L.  G.   W.,  prol.-F,  74-6  (G,  62-4). 

2  Cf.    Koeppel,  Engl.    Stud.,  xvii.    198,  who  thinks  the  omission  shows 
that  the   Tale  followed  even  the  second  version  of  the  Prologue.     But  the 
reply  will  serve  here,  as  in  the  case  of  other   Tales  of  pious  women,  that 
Chaucer  might  not  wish  to  mention  a  poem  which  he  was  reserving  until  the 
C.  T.  should  appear  as  a  whole. 

3  Anglia,  xiv.  183-5;  whple  article,  pp.  77-122,  147-85. 


184  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES,  [cH.  V,  §  6 

to  an  investigation  of  the  obligations  of  both  to  Trivet's  Anglo- 
French  Chronicle.  He  proves  beyond  cavil  that  Trivet  was  the 
main  source  in  each  case,  but  also  finds  twenty-seven  small  resem 
blances,  founded  on  nothing  in  Trivet,1  which  convince  him  that 
the  two  English  versions  cannot  be  mutually  quite  independent. 
Skeat  agrees  with  him,  and  quotes  (III.  415-17)  the  more  striking 
parallels.  Even  though  some  of  them  are  trivial,  the  cumulative 
effect  is  irresistible,  especially  when  we  consider  the  complete 
absence  of  parallels  between  the  two  poets'  versions  of  the  story  of 
Virginia,  and  the  almost  complete  absence  of  them  between  the 
Wife  of  Bath's  Tale  and  the  story  of  Florent  in  the  Confession 

On  the  question  which  of  the  two  was  written  first  opinions 
diifer.  Liicke,  says  Skeat  (III.  413),  "  draws  what  is,  in  my 
opinion,  the  erroneous  conclusion,  that  it  was  Chaucer  who  copied 
Gower  ;  which  seems  like  suggesting  that  Tennyson  was  capable  of 
borrowing  from  Martin  Tupper."  I  cannot  feel,  however,  that  there 
is  the  slightest  presumption  one  way  or  the  other.  Literary  borrow 
ing  in  the  fourteenth  century  was  quite  a  different  matter  from 
what  it  was  in  the  nineteenth,  and  at  any  time  a  poet  may  "  prendre 
son  bien  ou  il  le  trouve."  Chaucer  frequently  borrows  from  writers 
far  inferior  to  Gower,  and  it  is  most  unlikely  that  he  had  at  all 
as  •  low  an  opinion  as  modern  critics  have  of  a  poet  whom  their 
contemporaries  and  successors  constantly  put  beside  him.  Fliigel 
has  pointed  out3  that  in  the  best  of  all  his  works,  the  General 
Prologue,  Chaucer  was  not  above  frequently  drawing  phraseology 
from  Gower's  Mirour  de  TOmme. 

As  to  evidence,  it  seems  to  me  nearly  convincing  that  Chaucer 
borrowed  from  Gower4  —  not  that  he  wrote  with  the  Confessio 

1  A  few  others  may  be  recorded.  Constance's  prayer  and  her  pity  for  her 
child,  as  she  goes  aboard  ship  (825-68),  resemble  the  episode  in  Gower  after 
they  are  at  sea  (1055-83  ;  in  Trivet  scarcely  in  germ).  In  both  Chaucer 
(904  ff.)  and  Gower  (1084,  ff.),  when  Constance  runs  aground  in  Spain,  she 
is  not  brought  before  the  Spanish  admiral  (as  in  Trivet),  but  remains  in  the 
ship.  There  is  an  analogy  between  their  ways  of  mentioning  the  death  of 
Alia: 

"  Deeth,  that  taketh  of  heigh  and  low  his  rente  "    (J/.  L.  T.y  1142)  ; 

'  '  Bot  he  which  hindreth  every  kinde 
And  for  no  gold  mai  be  forboght, 
The  dethe  comende  er  he  be  soght"  (C.  A.,  1572-4). 


2  Cf.  pp.  151-2  and  217. 

3  Anglia,  xxiv.  437-508. 


4  Ten  Brink  favours  this  view  (Hist.  E.  L.,  ii.  156). 


CH.   V,  §  6]  THE    MAN   OF   LAW'S    TALE.  185 

Amantis  open  before  him,  but  that  he  had  read  Gower's  story 
attentively,  and,  perhaps  not  always  knowing  that  he  did  so,  repro 
duced  some  of  his  ideas  and  phrases.  It  certainly  does  not  look  as 
if  Gower  borrowed  from  Chaucer.  There  is  no  point  among  the 
agreements  of  the  two  as  against  Trivet l  which  must  have  emanated 
from  Chaucer,  and  which  is  beyond  Gower's  not  inconsiderable 
abilities.  Moreover,  while  in  every  point  of  any  consequence2 
where  Gower  differs  from  Trivet,  Chaucer  agrees  with  Gower,  there 
are  many  other  and  more  important  places  where  Chaucer  adds  to, 
or  otherwise  differs  from,  Trivet,  and  where  Gower  does  not  follow 
him.  I  say  nothing  of  Chaucer's  rhetorical  additions,  which  Gower 
might  have  wilfully  disregarded,  or  of  his  more  subtle  touches, 
which  he  might  have  missed.  But  such  matters  as  the  following 
are  worth  attention.  At  the  beginning,  while  both  the  English 
poets  say  nothing  of  Constance's  learning,  the  only  point  on  which 
Trivet  dwells,  Gower  has  none  of  Chaucer's  eloquent  praise  of  her 
beauty  and  goodness  (155-68) ;  he  says  nothing  of  her  submissive 
grief  at  leaving  home  for  the  oriental  marriage  (264-87) ;  nothing 
of  the  conferences  of  the  soldan  and  his  mother  with  their  councils 
(204-31,  326-57) ;  nor  of  Constance's  prayer  on  being  cast  adrift 
the  first  time  (449-62) ;  nor  of  her  mingled  emotions  toward  her 
husband  when  they  are  reunited  (1055-7S).3  Such  omissions  on 
Gower's  part  could  not  be  explained  by  an  effort  at  condensation, 
for  which  he  shows  in  this  tale  (as  usual)  much  less  disposition 
than  Chaucer  does :  nor  by  unwillingness  to  take  hints,  since  if  he 
was  the  latter  he  took  many  small  points  and  one  or  two  larger. 
To  review  the  evidence  here  adduced,  I  say  that  since  one  of  the 
English  poets  was  so  familiar  with  the  work  of  the  other  as  to 
reproduce  even  details  of  language,  since  where  Gower  departs 
(except  for  the  worse)  from  their  common  source  Chaucer  departs 
also,  and  since  in  many  more  important  points  where  Chaucer 
departs  from  or  adds  to  their  source  Gower  does  not,  the  probable 
conclusion  is  that  not  Gower  but  Chaucer  was  the  borrower. 

1  See  Orig.  and  Anal.,  pp.  vi.-x. 

2  Except  for  a  few  changes  for  the  worse,  as  where  the  miraculous  and 
unaccountable  element  is  increased.    See  numbers  3,  5  and  7,  Orig.  and  Anal. , 
p.  vi.  ;  and  Conf.  Am.,  II.  910-11,  1450-5,  where  Constance  twice  refuses  to 
tell  her  husband  who  she  is. 

3  Cf.  also  the  three  writers'  accounts  of  her  rescue  by  the  Roman  Senator 
after  her  second  solitary  voyage  (T.,  pp.  39,  41  ;  G.,  1126,  ff.  ;  C.,  967-74). 
Here  Gower  reduces  her  toing  and  froing,  just  as  he  does  when  she  runs 
aground  in  Spain,  but  not  as  much  as  Chaucer  does. 


186  THE    CANTERBURY    TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  6 

One  thing  more  will  clinch  the  matter.     Speaking  of  Maurice  at 
Alla's  feast,  Chaucer  says  (1009-10)  : 

11  Som  men  wolde  seyn,  at  requeste  of  distance, 
This  senatour  hath  lad  this  child  to  feste  " ; 

and  of  the  invitation  to  the  emperor  (1086-7) : 

"  Som  men  wold  seyn,  how  that  the  child  Maurice 
Doth  this  message  un-to  this  emperour ; 
But,  as  I  gesse,  Alia  was  nat  so  nyce." 1 

Tyrwhitt2  thought  that  Chaucer  was  alluding  to  Gower,  from 
whom  he  believed  him  to  have  taken  the  whole  story ;  Skeat 
(V.  162-4)  thinks  the  allusion  only  to  Trivet.  It  is  not  Chaucer's 
practice,  or  that  of  mediaeval  writers  generally,  to  mention  their 
departures  from  authority — rather  to  plead  precedent  where  they 
have  none.3  There  was  no  reason  why  Chaucer  should  call  atten 
tion  to  a  deviation  from  Trivet,  who  was  not  an  especially  well- 
known  writer.  But  if  the  reference  is  to  Gower,  all  is  explained ; 
conscious  that  he  was  differing  from  a  poem  which  had  (probably) 
but  just  appeared,  and  was  being  widely  read  in  the  very  circles 
into  which  he  expected  his  own  poem  to  go,  he  suggests  that  his 
predecessor  may  have  been  mistaken.  I  find  it  impossible  to  doubt, 
therefore,  that  Chaucer  had  carefully  read ,  Gower's  story  of  Con 
stance,  and  therefore  that  the  Man  of  Law's  Tale  was  written  after 
at  least  the  early  part  of  the  Confessio  Amantis. 

The  testimony  which  this  conclusion  bears  as  to  the  exact  date 

1  Both  Trivet  and  Gower  represent  the   invitation  as  being    carried   by 
Maurice,    but   Chaucer  thinks   it  would   hardly   have   been   court-etiquette 
to  send  a  boy,  as  Professor  Child  used  to  say,  with  the  message,  "  Papa  wants 
you  to  come  to  dinner."     But  in  the  former  case  it  is  curious  that  Chaucer's 
memory  played  him  false,  for  neither  of  the  others  says  that  Constance  asked 
that  her  son  might  go,  but  both  merely  say,  as  Chaucer  does,    that  she 
instructed  him  to  keep  in  the  king's  sight. 

2  Edition  of  1830,  I.  clxxxvii.  f. 

3  Cf.  an  example  of  the  usual  attitude  toward  a  source  (at  least  as  avowed) 
in  lines  904-5  of  this  very  poem  : 

"' an  hethen  castel  .  .  . 

Of  which  the  name  in  my  text  noght  I  finde." 

We  may  notice  also  the  definiteness  of  "som  men"  as  compared  with  such 
more  usual  expressions  as  "  but-if  that  bokes  lye."  The  nearest  parallel 
to  these  passages  which  I  find  in  Chaucer  is  that  in  speaking  of  Criseyde 
and  Diomed  he  says  (T.  and  C.,  V.  1050)  : 

"  Men  seyn,  I  noot,  that  she  yaf  him  hir  herte," 
where  the  independence  is  less  and  the  motive  for  it  greater. 


CH.  V,  §  6]  THE    MAN   OF  LAW*S   TALE.  187 

of  the  Man  of  Law's  Tale  unfortunately  is  not  perfectly  definite. 
It  is  quite  possible  that  Chaucer  read  Gower's  tale,  on  a  "  private 
view,"  soon  after  it  was  written,  and  when  this  was  we  have  no 
means  of  knowing.  Professor  Macaulay  thinks  the  plan  of  the 
Confessio  was  laid  about  1386,  "under  the  combined  influence  of 
Chaucer's  Legend  of  Good  Women  and  of  the  royal  command ; "  if 
we  admit  the  influence  of  the  Legend,  we  must  bring  the  date 
a  year  or  two  later,  but  that  influence  is  by  no  means  clear  (unless 
at  the  very  end),  and  such  a  date  would  involve  extraordinarily 
quick  writing,  since  the  poem  was  finished  in  1390.  The  Confessio 
was  certainly  written  after  the  Vox  Glamantis.  This  was  probably 
begun  soon  after  the  peasant  rising  in  1381,  and  a  third  of  the  way 
through  the  writer  refers  to  an  event  of  1383.1  It  may  fairly  be 
supposed  that  before  beginning  his  elaborate  English  poem  Gower 
would  spend  some  time  in  planning  and  collecting  materials.  It  is 
difficult  to  believe  that  he  could  have  reached  the  second  book 
of  the  Confessio  before  1386-7,  the  verge  of  Chaucer's  Canterbury 
period,  and  the  earliest  possible  date,  therefore,  for  the  Man 
of  Law's  Tale.  It  seems  much  more  likely,  however,  that  Chaucer's 
knowledge  of  Gower's  tale  dates  only  from  its  publication,  especially 
since  his  knowledge  of  it  seems  to  have  been  so  intimate.  There 
fore  if  an  almost  certain  date  is  after  1386,  a  highly  probable  one  is 
after  1390. 

As  to  the  meaning  of  the  way  in  which  the  Man  of  Law's 
Prologue,  Proem  and  Tale  are  put  together,  it  is  impossible  to  come 
to  any  certain  conclusion.  Ten  Brink,2  Skeat 3  and  others  have  more 
or  less  ingenious  and  unacceptable  suggestions.  We  may  be  qiiite 
sure,  however,  that  the  tale  of  Constance  was  not  written  for  the 
Man  of  Law— one  of  the  most  unworldly  and  poetic  of  tales  for  one 
of  the  shrewdest  and  most  prosaic  of  the  pilgrims.  It  is  far  more 
inappropriate  to  its  teller  than  the  Shipman's  Tale,  the  only  other 
one  which  is  at  all  unsuitable,  and  that  was  certainly  written  for  a 
different  person.4  For  whom  the  story  of  Constance  was  written  it 
would  be  idle  to  guess.  But  it  is  certainly  noteworthy  that  the 
manner  of  its  assignment  to  the  Man  of  Law  is  more  ambiguous 
and  clumsy  than  that  of  any  other  of  the  Canterbury  Tales.  In 

1  The  Bishop  of  Norwich's  Crusade  ;  see  bk.  III.,  chap.  vi. 

2  Engl.  Stitd.,  xvii.  22  ;  Hist,  of  Engl.  Lit.,  ii.  156-9. 

3  III.  406-8  ;  cf.  also  Koch,  Chronology,  p.   68  ;  Koeppel,  Engl.  Stud., 
xvii.  196.  4  Cf.  pp.  205-6  below. 


188  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  6 

fact,  the  unanimity  of  the  MSS.  in  putting  it  after  the  Man 
of  Law's  Prologue  is  the  only  thing  that  assigns  it  to  him  at  all. 
Though  the  proem  on  poverty  has  110  connection  of  content  with  the 
Tale,  granted  that  Chaucer  wished  to  present  it  he  has  effected 
a  rather  clever  mechanical  connection.  But  connection  of  any  kind 
between  the  proem  and  the  Prologue  is  totally  lacking ;  more  than 
this,  they  absolutely  contradict  each  other.  Though  the  Man  of  Law 
announces  that  he  shall  "  speke  in  prose  "  (96),  three  lines  later  he 
begins  his  lyrical  outburst.  Moreover,  as  seems  never  to  have  been 
remarked,  this  derelict  tale  is  no  more  anchored  aft  than  forward. 
The  following  Link  begins  : 

"  Our  hoste  up-on  his  stiropes  stood  anon, 
And  seyde,  '  good  men,  herkneth  everich  on ; 
This  was  a  thrifty  tale  for  the  nones  ! ' ' 

and  then  proceeds  to  address  the  Parson.  The  only  thing  to  which 
this  passage  is  linked  is  the  Prologue  of  the  Man  of  Law  (46),  by 
this  word  thrifty,  which  the  Host  uses  to  assure  the  teller  that  he 
has  been  better  than  his  word.  Thrifty  is  surely  a  most  non 
committal,  if  not  highly  inappropriate,  epithet  to  apply  to  this  tale, 
and  there  is  not  a  single  other  end-link  in  the  whole  of  the  Canter 
bury  Tales  which  is  not  indissolubly  connected  to  the  preceding 
tale  or  its  teller.  We  are  therefore  forced  to  the  conclusion  that, 
when  the  Prologues  of  the  Man  of  Law  and  the  Shipman  were 
written,  the  story  of  Constance  had  not  yet  been  assigned  to  the 
Man  of  Law.  As  to  Chaucer's  original  plan  for  him  we  may  find 
some  light  when  we  come  to  consider  the  Tale  of  Melibeus.1 

§  7.   The  Tale  of  Melibeus. 

Before  presenting  evidence  that  Chaucer's  Tale  of  Melibeus  was 
written  late,  it  is  necessary  to  take  up  some  a  priori  considerations. 
The  dates  of  the  individual  Canterbury  Tales  have  been  so  little 
discussed  that  one  is  sometimes  compelled  rather  to  anticipate  than 
to  answer  objections.  But  there  is  one  here  which  is  quite  certain 
to  be  raised.  If  the  Tales  of  the  Monk,  the  Clerk  and  the  Man  of 


1  See  pp.  195-7  below.  The  problems  connected  with  "  Group  B  "  are  more 
interesting  and  puzzling  than  any  others  involved  by  the  growth  of  the 
Canterbury  Tales.  The  splitting  of  Group  B  in  all  the  MSS.  but  one,  the 
reassignment  of  the  first  two  tales,  and  the  variety  of  the  readings  in  Shipm. 
Prol.y  1179,  are  all  elements  in  the  puzzle.  I  must  reserve  further  discussion 
for  my  book  on  the  evolution  of  the  Canterbury  Talcs,  and  for  p.  218  below. 


CH.  V,  §  7]  THE    TALE   OF   MELIBEUS.  189 

Law  have  been  thought  to  have  been  written  early,  before  the 
period  of  the  Canterbury  Tales,  because  of  their  unmodern 
character,  a  fortiori  such  an  opinion  is  sure  to  be  advanced  of 
Melibeus.  Indeed  it  has  already  been  advanced,  casually  and  tenta 
tively,  even  by  so  judicious  a  critic  as  Dr.  Mather,1  who  is  "  inclined 
to  place"  the  composition  of  Melibeus  between  1373  and  1378,  "for 
it  is  difficult  to  believe  that  Chaucer  would  have  included  this 
rather  stupid  piece  among  the  Tales  were  he  not  working  in  old 
material";  he  even  seems  to  suggest  a  motive  for  its  inclusion — 
"  Chaucer,  cut  off  in  the  middle  of  his  Rime  of  Sir  Thopas, 
avenges  himself  by  telling  the  very  dull  prose  tale  of  Melibeus." 
May  I  be  permitted  again  to  deprecate  what  seems  an  unwise, 
though  very  natural,  tendency  to  exaggerate  Chaucer's  modern  side 
and  take  him  too  much  out  of  his  age ;  and  the  still  worse  tendency 
to  regard  the  Canterbury  Tales  as  a  kind  of  foundling  asylum  for 
the  waifs  and  strays  of  his  earlier  begetting  ?  I  shall  endeavour  to 
point  out  both  probability  and  evidence  that  when  Chaucer  put 
Melibeus  in  the  Canterbury  Tales  the  value  he  set  on  it  was  such 
that  he  may  perfectly  well  have  just  written  it. 

To  us  Melibeus  is  dull  because  its  human  element  is  thin  and 
crude  and  its  general  truths  are  commonplaces.  Is  it  impertinent 
to  suggest  that  to  the  mediseval  reader  neither  was  so  ?  The 
interest  of  the  earlier  Middle  Ages  in  creative  literature  had  been 
chiefly  for  lyric  feeling  and  for  action ;  they  had  produced  little 
analysis  of  human  motive  and  shown  little  knowledge  of  the  human 
heart.  At  a  certain  stage  in  the  intellectual  development  of  a 
people,  these  become  intelligible  and  attractive ;  witness  the  rise  of 
literary  allegory  into  popularity  in  the  thirteenth  century.  Now 
Melibeus  offers  both ;  strange  as  the  statement  may  seem  at  first, 
Melibeus  really  shows  insight.  We,  the  heirs  of  all  the  ages,  do 
not  readily  perceive  it ;  but  is  not  the  case  of  Richardson's  Pamela 
somewhat  parallel,  allowing  for  the  fact  that  it  is  more  than 
three  times  as  near  us  as  Melibeus  is  1  Can  most  of  us  at  present 
at  all  understand  the  furore  which  it  excited,  all  over  Europe] 
Again,  though  the  sayings  of  dead  wiseacres  in  Melibeus  seem  to 
us  unspeakably  trite  and  dry,  all  the  literature  of  the  Middle  Ages 
proves  that  they  took  a  different  view  of  such  things.  There  was 
a  time  when  every  commonplace  was  fresh  and  startling;  the 

1  Chaucer's  Prologue,  etc.  (Boston,  1899),  xiv.,  xv.,  xxxi. 


190  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  7 

Middle  Ages  found  mental  stimulus  in  very  obvious  truths,  and 
a  perpetual  relish  in  the  gnomic  style.1  Does  not  Chaucer's 
constant  use  of  it,  notably  through  the  mouths  of  Pandarus  and 
others  in  the  Troilus,  but  everywhere  else  as  well,  prove  that  he 
could  enjoy  it?  Moreover,  we  shall  see  later  that  Chaucer's 
extreme  familiarity  with  the  "  plot "  and  contents  of  Melibeus 
during  the  middle  of  the  Canterbury  period  is  proved  by  its  strong 
influence  on  the  Merchant's  Tale.  Why  did  he  become  familiar 
with  it  unless  he  admired  it? 

But  we  are  not  wholly  left  to  inference.  In  the  Prologue  to 
Melibeus,  of  course  written  after  the  tale,  there  is  proof  that 
Chaucer  regarded  it  with  no  alienated  eye.  He  alludes  to  the  fact 
that  more  than  one  version  of  the  work  was  already  extant2 
(2131-42),  and  apologizes  for  diverging  from  his  original  (2143-54). 
He  thus  shows  solicitude  as  to  the  opinion  of  his  readers.  Can  we 
believe,  then,  that  as  Mather  seems  to  suggest,  he  deliberately 
afflicted  his  real  readers  in  order  to  punish  his  imaginary  auditors 
for  their  interruption  of  Sir  Thopas  ?  A  prose  tale  of  16,000  words 
forms  a  pretty  extensive  practical  joke.  More  than  this,  the  Monk's 
Prologue  does  not  show  a  sign  that  the  pilgrims  regarded  Melibeus 
as  a  penance.  In  the  insertion  of  it  there  was  no  doubt  some  irony 
and  amused  sense  of  contrast  with  the  former  attempt  (cf.  Mel. 
Prol,  2127-30,  2154);  Chaucer  in  his  own  tales  deliberately 
goes  to  the  two  extremes.  But  the  fact  that  he  apologizes,  not  for 
the  tale,  but  for  deviating  from  another  version  of  it,  and  actually 
admits  that  he  tells 

"  som-what  more 
Of  proverbes,  than  ye  han  herd  bifore"  (2145-6),3 

proves  that  he  derived,  and  expected  others  to  derive,  serious 
pleasure  from  reading  it.4  Is  not  the  other  view  something  like  an 

1  The  scribes  constantly  call  attention  ^o  adages  or  other  pithy  sayings  in 
their  texts  ;  MS.  Harl.  7334  repeatedly  has  nota  in  the  margin,  MS.  Arch. 
Seld.  has  A  proverbe  opposite  Mill.  T.%  3391. 

2  Therefore  now,  if  not  before,  he  knew  both  the  French  and  Latin  versions 
(cf.  p.  216).     His  intimate  familiarity,  shown  here  and  elsewhere,  with  two 
earlier  versions  of  the  work  certainly  proves  that  he  regarded  it  with  serious 
interest. 

3  This  is  very  odd,    considering  the  character  of  Albertano's  version,  to 
which  he  is  alluding. 

4  The  popularity  of  the  French  version  seems  to  have  been  considerable 
from  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  to  the  early  sixteenth  century  (see  Skeat,  III. 
426-7).    It  is  not  a  little  striking,  moreover,  that  of  all  the  individual  Canter 
bury  Tales  the  only  ones  which  John  Lydgate  thinks  worthy  of  mention  in 


CH.  V,  §  7]  THE    TALE  OF   MELIBEUS.  191 

unconscious  survival  of  the  older  view  of  Chaucer's  relation  to  the 
English  language ;  and  to  represent  him  as  a  man  aloof  from  his 
age,  and  taking  a  patronizing  or  improving  attitude  toward  it1? 
Nor  will  it  do  to  attribute  the  insertion  of  such  works  as  Melileus 
and  the  Parson's  Tale  to  a  sudden  whim  or  late  aberration,  for  their 
prologues,  which  presuppose  the  decision,  contain  as  good  writing 
as  there  is  in  the  whole  poem.  A  frank  recognition  of  Chaucer's 
mediaeval  side,  it  seems  to  me,  will  promote  both  a  more  faithful 
estimate  of  him  and  also  that  intellectual  breadth  and  that  power 
of  sympathetic  insight  which  are  among  the  best  things  one  can 
gain  from  the  study  of  mediaeval  literature. 

But  to  turn  now  to  evidence  as  to  the  date.  The  Tale  of 
Melibeus  is  in  general  translated  very  faithfully  from  its  French 
original,1  as  I  find  after  a  complete  detailed  comparison.  Chaucer 
very  seldom  adds  anything  of  consequence,  and  hardly  ever  omits 
anything,  except  a  mere  phrase  or  two,  or  a  longer  passage  plainly 
skipped  by  accident :  that  is,  when  two  neighbouring  passages  end 
in  the  same  word,  Chaucer  or  a  scribe,  glancing  up  after  tran 
scribing  the  first,  confused  the  end  of  the  second  with  it,  and  went 
on  from  that  point.2  In  the  whole  work  I  find  just  three  passages 

the  Falls  of  Princes  are  Melibeus,  Clerk's  T.  and  Monk's  T.  (see  the  passage  in 
Lounsbury's  Studies,  i.  421).  Lydgate  was  no  unfavourable  specimen  of  the 
cultivated  man  of  the  next  age. 

1  Attributed  sometimes  to  Jean  de  Meun,  sometimes  to  Renaud  de  Louens.  It 
is  most  accessible  in  Le  Menagier  de  Paris  (ed.  by  Jerome   Pichon  for  the 
Sociele  des  Bibliophiles  Fran?ais,  Paris,  1846),  vol.  i.,  pp.  186-235.     This 
work,  which  was  written  1392-4  (ibid.,  p.  xxii.),  there  is  no  evidence  that 
Chaucer  ever  saw.     The  Latin  original,    Liber  Consolationis  et  Consilii,  by 
Albertano  of  Brescia,  was  edited  by  Thor  Sundby,  and  issued  by  the  Chaucer 
Society  in  1873. 

2  This  is  very  frequent,  of  course,  in  MSS.,  especially  those  in  prose.     But 
of  such  passages  omitted  in  Melibeus  there  are  not  more  than  half-a-dozen  as 
long  as  two  lines  in  the  French.     For  one  of  the  passages  in  Chaucer  and  not  in 
the  French  text  see  pp.  193-4  below.     Another  is  in  1.  2157  ;  neither  the  Latin 
nor  the  French  names  the  daughter.     These  are  about  the  most  important  of 
twelve  or  so  worth  mentioning.     Some  of  these  passages  were  probably  in  the 
MS.  which   Chaucer  used.     The   longest  addition  is  at  the  end,    3074-8. 
Chaucer  so  constantly,  however,  adds  unimportant  or  synonymous  words  and 
phrases  (generally  of  an  explanatory  nature)  that  the  translation  is  extremely 
verbose   and  dilatory ;    the  French  contains   about   12740  words,  and  the 
English  about  16320.     Matzner  calls  the  translation  ' '  entschieden  wortlich" 
(AltengL  Sprachproben,  ii.   373  ;  his  introduction  and  notes  are  excellent). 
Some  idea  of  its  character  may  be  gained  by  examining  Zupitza's  quotations 
from  the   original  in   Koeppel's  article  in   Herrig's  Archiv,  Ixxxvi.  30-8. 
Chaucer's  MS.  of  the  French  was  rather  different  from  that   published  in 
the  Mtnagier,   and  better  ;  see  Mel.    2177,  2185,   2235-8,  2408-10,  2581-2 
(Menagier,  pp.    187, '188,  192,  203,  212),  but  in   2252-3  and  2515,   e.g., 
Chaucer's  readings  are  less  good.     The  French  version,  on  the  other  hand, 


192  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES.  [cH.  V,  §  7 

of  two  lines  or  more  in  the  French,  the  omission  of  which  by 
Chaucer  is  not  clearly  due  to  this  cause.  Two  of  these  (between 
2702  and  2703,  and  2776-7;  see  the  Menayi&r,  pp.  218,  222)  are 
unimportant,  and  there  is  no  visible  reason  for  their  omission.  But 
the  third  is  in  quite  a  different  category ;  it  is  more  than  twice  ~as 
long  as  any  other  omitted,  there  is  not  the  least  chance  for  such  a 
skipping  as  I  have  described,  and  there  is  an  obvious  reason  for  its 
intentional  omission.  Prudence  is  instructing  her  helpless  husband 
as  to  what  sort  of  advisers  he  is  to  avoid,  and  ends  in  the  English 
thus :  "  Thou  shalt  also  eschewe  the  conseilling  of  yong  folk ;  for 
hir  conseil  is  nat  rype  "  (2389).  But  the  French  text  continues : 
"  De  quoy  Salemon  dit :  dolente  est  la  terre  qui  a  enfant  a  seigneur  ! 
Et  le  philosophe  dit  que  nous  n'eslisons  pas  les  jeunes  en  princes 
car  communement  ils  n'ont  point  de  prudence ;  et  dit  encores 
Salemon :  dolente  est  la  terre  de  quoy  le  prince  no  se  lieve 
matin ! " l  The  meaning  of  this  omission  cannot  bo  mistaken. 
Chaucer  was  thinking  of  Richard  II. ,  and  was  anxious  not  to 
annoy  him  and  his  family.  Melibem  must,  therefore,  have  been 
written  after  June  8,  1376,2  when  Edward  the  Black  Prince  died, 
and  Richard  became  heir-apparent.  More  definite  than  this  we 
cannot  be  with  equal  certainty,  except  that  in  the  later  nineties,  till 
the  very  end,  Richard  was  neither  so  young  nor  so  imprudent  that 
the  cap  would  have  fitted.  In  the  earlier  nineties  the  memory  of  past 
unpleasantness  would  still  be  fresh.  The  fit  would  have  been  par 
ticularly  exact,  of  course,  in  the  middle  eighties,  but  at  any  time 
from  1376  to  (say)  1395  a  tactful  and  courtierlike  person  would  not 

departs  widely  from  the  Latin,  and  should  really  be  called  a  paraphrase.  It 
is  much  shorter,  and  makes  important  omissions,  some  additions,  odd  mistrans 
lations,  and  other  changes.  In  particular,  on  p.  202  (between  Mel.  2389  and 
2390)  it  omits  almost  two  pages  (Sundby,  53-5) ;  and  on  p.  203  (between  Mel. 
2400  and  2401),  about  a  page  (Sundby,  57-8).  In  this  latter  passage  is  the 
quotation  from  the  pseudo-Seneca  on  the  virtue  of  prudence  mentioned  in  my 
article  on  Chaucer  and  Dante  in  Mod.  Philol.  iii.,  p.  368  ;  therefore  this 
can  hardly  have  been  the  source  of  T.  C.,  V.  746-9.  It  is  rather  to  be 
regretted  that  the  Chaucer  Society  published  the  ultimate  instead  of  the 
immediate  source  of  Mel.  We  may  hope  that  before  long  some  one  will  give 
us  a  critical  edition  of  the  French  version,  perhaps  in  parallel-columns  with 
Mel.,  at  any  rate  with  line  for  line  references  ;  and  with  a  discussion  of  the 
character  of  the  MS.  which  Chaucer  used. 

1  Mdnagier,  i.  202,  and  cf.  the  foot-note.     Apparently  one  MS.  substitutes 
for  everything  after  seigneur  the  clause  :  "  et  de  laquelle  le  prince  se  desjusne 
matin."     This  and  the   end  of  the  alternative  reading  seem   to   be  due  to 
Albertano's  "et  cujus  principes  mane  comedunt"  (Sundby,  p.  53). 

2  See  e.  g.  Armitage-Smith,  John  of  Gaunt,   p.   129  ;   Richard  was  born 
January  6,  1367  (ibid.,  p.  44). 


CH.  V,  §  7]  THE    TALE    OF   MELIBEUS.  193 

have  hesitated  to  make  the  omission.1  Somewhere  between  these 
dates,  therefore,  Melibens  probably  falls;  certainly  after  1376. 

One  argument  for  a  late  date  for  Melibeus  is  the  fact  that  none  of 
Chaucer's  Avorks  which  show  its  influence  seem  to  be  early,  as  is 
shown  by  Dr.  Koeppel's2  article.  Of  the  parallels  which  he  quotes 
between  the  Troilus  and  Melibeus  I  shall  speak  in  a  moment.  The 
parallels  between  Melibeus  and  the  Wife  of  Battis  Prologue  (itself 
late)  we  shall  see  are  probably  of  no  consequence.  Besides  these, 
the  only  works  in  which  Koeppel  finds  parallels  are  Chaucer's 
Proverbs  (of  unknown  date),  the  Nun's  Priest's  Prologue  and  Tale, 
the  Man  of  Law's  Tale?  the  Pardoner  s  Tale  and  the  Merchant's 
Tale.  Considering  the  quotable  character  of  the  work,  and  Chaucer's 
fondness  for  pithy  "  sentence,"  this  is  a  considerable  argument. 

That  Melibeus  was  written  after  the  Troilus  is  not  only  proved  by 
the  date  1376,  or  later,  already  arrived  at,  but  is  of  course  strongly 
probable  a  priori;  for  one  thing,  the  proverb-loving  Pan  darns4 
would  have  been  so  particularly  likely  to  show  the  influence  of  the 
work  that  probably,  when  he  wrote  the  Troilus,  Chaucer  was  not 
even  familiar  with  the  original.5  But  there  is  strong  positive 
evidence  for  the  priority  of  the  Troilus.  In  one  of  his  characteristic 
sententious  speeches  (I.  956)  Pandarus  says  : 

"  He  hasteth  wel  that  wysly  can  abyde." 

As  Skeat  and  Koeppel  point  out,6  the  same  words  occur  in 
Melibeus,  2244  :  "  The  proverbe  seith  :  '  he  hasteth  wel  that  wysely 
can  abyde ' ;  and  in  wikked  haste  is  no  profit."  7  Chaucer  went 

1  Walsingham  frequently  comments  on   Richard's  youth  and  folly ;   see, 
e.  g.,  ii.  69,  70,  97,  113  (Rolls  Series).     He  even  quotes  (under  date  1383)  the 
same  words  of  Solomon  which  Chaucer  omits:    "Vse   terrse,  cujus  rex  puer 
est "  (p.  97).     One  of  the  authors  of  Piers  Plowman,  also,  who  was  restrained 
by  no  courtiership,  quotes  the  same  passage  in  the  B-text  in  1377  (Prol.  191 ; 
ed.  Skeat,  I.  16),  and  it  remains  in  the  C-text,  about  1393. 

2  Archiv,  Ixxxvi.  30-9. 

3  I  have  tried  already  to  disprove  the  view  that  this  is  an  early  work. 

4  It  should  be  remarked  that  the  use  of  proverbs  is  characteristic  of  the 
poem  in  general  rather  than  of  this  particular  person  in  it ;    Troilus  and 
Diomed  use  them  as  well. 

5  Koeppel  cites  two  parallel  passages  in  the  two  works  (Herrig's  Archiv, 
Ixxxvi.  30),  but  of  course  believes  that  T.  C.  antedates  Mel.  (p.  32).    The  first 
of  them  is  so  commonplace  as  to  be  nugatory  (cf.  W.  Haeckel,  Das  Sprich- 
wort^ei  Chaucer,  Erlangeu,  1890  ;  pp.  24-5).    The  other,  quoted  above,  proves 
Mel.  to  be  the  later. 

6  Oxford  Chaucer,  v.  206  ;  Herrig's  Archiv,  Ixxxvi.  30. 

7  With  the  last  clause  cf.  Pars.  T.,  1003  ;  Skeat,  Haeckel  and  Koeppel  also 
refer  to  T.  C.,  IV.  1567-8.    A  poem  containing  similar  sentiments  is  attributed 
to  Lydgate  by  Ritson  (Bibl.  Poet.,  p.  73  ;   and  is  therefore  probably  not  by 
him). 

DEV.  CH.  O 


194  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  7 

out  of  his  way  to  insert  this  passage,  for  it  is  in  neither  the  Latin 
nor  the  French  original.1  Moreover,  though  there  are  plenty  of 
parallels  for  the  sentiment  of  the  proverb,2  none  have  been  found 
for  the  form.  But  the  striking  thing  is  that  not  only  are  the 
words  in  Melibeus  identical  with  those  in  the  Troilus — they  form 
a  complete  metrical  line,  which  stands  out  as  conspicuously  from 
Chaucer's  amorphous  prose  as  a  flint  in  a  mass  of  clay.  Can  any 
one  doubt  that  the  poem  which  contains  the  proverb  preceded  the 
prose  work '? 

That  Melibeus  followed  the  Knight's  Tale  there  is  similar  evi 
dence.  Not  only  is  there  not  the  least  suggestion  of  the  influence 
of  Melibeus  on  it,  but  of  this  poem,  too,  there  appears  to  be  a  line 
embedded  in  the  prose  work.  In  Arcite's  farewell  to  Emily,  he 
speaks  of  lying  in  the  grave, 

"  Allone,  with-outen  any  companye"  (2779). 

In  her  discourse  on  poverty,  Prudence  says :  "And  if  thy  fortune 
change  that  thou  wexe  povre,  farewel  freendshipe  and  felaweshipe  ; 
for  thou  shalt  be  allone  with-outen  any  companye,3  but-if  it  be  the 
companye  of  povre  folk  "  (2749-50).  This  would  put  Melibeus 
after  1384-6.4 

Though  I  do  not  wish  to  use  excessively  the  argument  from 
the  silence  of  the  Legend  of  Good  Women,  I  must  point  out  that 
Melibeus,  had  it  been  written  then,  would  have  been  a  much  more 
suitable  work  to  mention  in  the  first  version  of  the  Prologue  than 
Boethius,  the  House  of  Fame,  and  perhaps  some  others.  This 
would  date  it  after  1386.  Of  course  there  is  no  reason  why  it 
should  be  mentioned  in  the  revised  Prologue,  if  it  was  destined  for 
inclusion  in  the  Canterbury  Tales.  That  it  comes  from  their  period 
is  clear  from  this  date,  and  the  busy  fulness  of  the  next  year  or  two 
perhaps  justifies  us  in  putting  it  forward  to  1388  at  earliest. 

Next  may  be  noted  a  bit  of  evidence  that  Melibeus  was  written 
before  the  Man  of  Laitfs  Tale.  There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that 
the  Man  of  Laiv's  proem  on  poverty  was  written  about  the  same 

1  See  Albertano  in  Thor  Sundby's  edition  (Chaucer  Society),  p.  12  ;  and 
Le  M6nagier  de  Paris,  I.  192.  I  have  said  that  Chaucer  very  rarely  adds 
anything  of  importance. 

a  See  Haeckel,  Das  Sprichwort  bei  Chaucer,  p.  25. 

3  For  the  whole  passage  from  farewel  to  folk  the  French  has  only  ' '  tu 
demoureras  tout  seul "  (Menagier,  I.  221 ;  or  Zupitza's  note  in  Koeppel's  article, 
Archiv,  Ixxxvi.  34).     The    Teseide  has  nothing  corresponding. 

4  See  p.  82  above. 


CH.  V,  §  7]  THE    TALE    OF   MELIBEUS.  195 

time  as  the  rest  of  the  poem.  Both  draw  largely  on  Pope 
Innocent's  De  Contemptu  Mundi,  and  I  have  shown  in  my 
discussion  of  the  tale  that  the  Innocent  passages  within  it  cannot 
be  a  later  addition.1  Besides  this,  the  Innocent  part  of  the  proem 
grows  into  an  apostrophe  to  rich  merchants  (120-6),  which  leads 
skilfully  into  the  main  narrative  ;  the  proem  has  not  all  the  air  of 
having  been  added  when  the  poem  was  assigned  to  the  Man  oj 
Law.  Now  a  part  of  the  passage  in  the  proem,  lines  99-121, 
which  is  (somewhat  freely)  translated  from  Innocent's  Latin,2 
appears  also  in  Melibeus,  2758-61,  attributed  to  Innocent  and 
still  more  closely  translated  from  the  free  French  version  of 
Albertano's  Latin,  which  quotes  the  pope  fairly  accurately.3  There 
is  not  the  least  suggestion  of  mutual  influence  between  the  two 
Chaucerian  passages.  If  the  Man  of  Law's  proem  had  preceded 
Melibeus,  we  should  expect  that,  in  writing  the  latter,  Chaucer 
would  have  recalled  his  former  direct  and  much  more  extensive  use 
of  Innocent,  and  that  at  least  a  phrase  or  two  of  his  neat  and 
harmonious  poetic  version  would  have  stuck  in  his  memory,  so 
retentive  of  words,  and  come  forth  in  his  prose.4  We  have  just 
seen  that  a  few  lines  before  in  Melibeus  he  does  quote  the  Knight's 
Tale  verbatim,  and  elsewhere  the  Troilus,  departing  from  his 
original  in  so  doing.5  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  less  probability 
that  a  prose  version  should  affect  one  in  verse,  since  verse  requires 
more  manipulation  of  the  material,  and  Chaucer's  prose  is  always 
less  polished  than  his  verse.  Besides,  in  the  poem  he  is  translating 
from  Innocent  directly,  and  in  Melibeus  only  from  a  small,  and  by 
no  means  literal,  excerpt  in  French.  If  this  evidence  is  allowed 
some  weight,  which  I  believe  it  deserves,  a  relatively  early  date 
is  suggested  for  Melibeus. 

Now  can  we  form  any  plausible  conjecture  as  to  the  original 

1  Cf.    pp.  181-3  above.     Professor  Lowes  seems  hardly  to  recognize  the 
arguments  for  this  view  (Pull.  Mod.  Lang  Assoc.,  xx.  796) ;   see  below. 

2  For  which  conveniently  see  Skeat,  III.  407. 

3  For  Albertano's  Latin  see  Sundby's  edition  (Ch.  Soc. ),  p.  100 ;  for  the 
French  see  Menagier,  I.  221-2,  or  Zupitza's  note  in  Koeppel's  article,  Herrig's 
ArcMv,  Ixxxvi.  33.     In  a  neighbouring  passage  there  is  a  possible  verbal 
reminiscence  between  Chaucer's  two  works ;  cf.  Mel.,  2749  and  M.  L.  P.,  116 
(not  in  either  original). 

4  E.  g.,  Mel.,  2761,  and  M.  L.  P.,  114  :  "bet  it  is  to  dye  than  for  to  have 
swich  poverte,"  "  bet  is  to  dyen  than  have  indigence." 

5  See  p.  213  for  a  possible  similar  case  of  reminiscence  from  Wife  of  Bath's 
Prol.  to  Mel.  and  then  to  Merck.  T. 


196  THE    CANTERBURY    TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  7 

purpose  of  Melibeus  ?  Lounsbury,1  I  believe,  first  suggested  that 
the  Man  of  Laic's  Prologue,  96,  indicates  that  Chaucer  had  in 
tended  a  prose  tale  for  the  Man  of  Law.2  Skeat  makes  the  same 
suggestion,  though  without  conviction,  and  also  the  further  one 
that  this  tale  was  Melibeus.  He  then  proceeds  to  reject  both  ideas.3 
Dr.  Lowes4  takes  up  the  first  suggestion,  and  on  the  basis  of  the 
Man  of  Laiu's  Prologue,  especially  11.  46,  90-6,  seems  to  make  it 
quite  clear  that  Chaucer  intended  for  the  Man  of  Law  not  his 
present  tale  but  something  in  prose,  of  a  pedestrian  character ;  I 
need  not  rehearse  his  arguments,  which  of  course  are  obvious 
enough. 

It  is  impossible  to  regard  with  as  much  favour  his  very 
tentative  suggestion  that  what  Chaucer  meant  for  the  Man  of 
Law  was  his  prose  translation  of  Pope  Innocent's  De  Contemptu 
Mundi.  The  Man  of  Law  is  nowhere  represented  as  being  of  a 
"  sombre "  turn  of  mind,  as  Lowes  seems  to  think.  And  could 
Chaucer  conceivably  have  ever  meant  to  have  such  a  thing  recited 
as  a  tale  ]  The  only  thing  which  even  approaches  it  in  character 
is  the  Parson's  Tale,  which  is  suitable  to  the  teller,  and  for  the 
insertion  of  which  he  fully  accounts  in  its  prologue.  Certainly 
the  Man  of  Law's  Prologue  does  not  prepare  us  for  any  such 
extraordinary  selection  as  Innocent's  work.  Moreover,  if  he 
wrote  Innocent  for  a  Canterbury  Tale,  and  just  before  the  second 
Prologue  of  the  Legend,  as  Lowes  believes,5  how  came  he  to 
mention  it  in  that  poem  1  The  obvious  explanation  of  his  omitting 
to  mention  such/  infinitely  more  appropriate  works  as  Physician's 
Tale,  Melibeus  and  perhaps  others,  is  that  he  was  holding  them  in 

1  Studies  in  Chaucer  (N.  Y.,  1892),  iii.  436. 

2  "  '  But  of  my  tale  how  shal  I  doon  this  day  ? 
Me  were  looth  be  lykned,  doutelees, 
To  Muses  that  men  clepe  Pierides — 
Metamorphoseos  wot  what  I  mene  : — 
But  nathelees,  I  recche  noght  a  bene 
Though  I  come  after  him  with  hawe-bake  ; 
I  speke  in  prose,  and  lat  him  rymes  make. ' 
And  with  that  word  he,  with  a  sobre  chere, 
Bigan  his  tale,"as  ye  shal  after  here  "  (M.  L.  P.,  90-8). 

3  Vol.  III.,  406.     His  idea  that  "  I  speke  in  prose"  refers  to  the  lawyer's 
pleading  in  the  courts  seems  to  me  very  unlikely  ;  for  one  thing,  the  Man  of 
Law  has  been  just  speaking  of  the  character  of  the  tale  he  is  about  to  tell, 
contrasting  it  with  those  which   Chaucer  habitually  writes.     Mr.   A.  W. 
Pollard  (Primer,  123-4)  also  suggests  Melibeus  for  the  Man  of  Law,  with 
more  conviction  than  Skeat. 

4  Publ.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.,  xx.  794-6.  5  L.  c.t  p.  793. 


OH.  V,  §  7]  THE    TALE   OF   MELIBEUS.  197 

reserve  for  the  Canterbury  Tales.  Finally,  Lowes  points  out  that 
the  actual  Man  of  Law's  Tale  begins  with  a  quotation  from 
Innocent,  and  suggests  that  this  and  other  bits  of  Innocent  were 
derived  from  his  own  version  and  worked  in  when  he  was  adapting 
the  Constance-story  to  the  Man  of  Law.  But  I  point  out  elsewhere 
that  the  evidence  is  clear  against  any  of  those  passages  having  been 
added  on  revision.  Therefore,  from  the  first,  Innocent  was  quoted 
in  the  present  Man  of  Law's  Tale.  Therefore  the  connection 
between  Innocent  and  the  Man  of  Law's  Prologue  is  via  the 
present  Man  of  Law's  Tale  and  not  the  earlier.  Therefore  all  the 
evidence  and  an  enormous  weight  of  probability  is  against  the 
opinion  that  Chaucer  meant  Innocent  for  the  Man  of  Law. 

We  have  seen,  then,  that  at  one  time  Chaucer  probably  meant 
a  prose  tale  for  the  Man  of  Law,  but  that  it  was  not  his  version  of 
Innocent.  If  the  tale  was  ever  written,  and  has  not  disappeared 
without  leaving  the  slightest  trace,  we  must  return  to  Skeat's 
suggestion  and  conclude  that  Chaucer  originally  meant  Melibeus 
for  the  Man  of  Law.1  In  this  view  I  think  there  is  great 
probability.  From  beginning  to  end  Melibeus  is  one  series  of 
arguments,  and  formal  ones  at  that,  with  constant  appeal  to 
precedent  and  authority.  There  is  not  a  single  other  pilgrim  to 
whom  it  would  have  been  half  so  appropriate  as  to  him  of  whom 
it  is  said  : 

"  Discreet  he  was,  and  of  greet  reverence  : 
He  semed  swich,  his  wordes  weren  so  wyse. 

In  termes  hadde  he  caas  and  domes  alle, 

That  from  the  tyme  of  king  William  were  falle." 

It  is  perfectly  prepared  for  by  the  talk  of  the  Man  of  Law  in  his 
prologue,  where,  after  answering  the  Host  in  legal  phraseology, 
he  deprecates  comparison  with  Chaucer's  mythological  and  poetic 
tales.  It  seems  to  me  that  therefore  we  have  excellent  reason 
to  believe  that  Melibeus  was  at  one  time  intended  for  the  Man  of 
Law,  and  was  perhaps  written  for  him. 

1  It  does  not  necessarily  follow,  of  course,  though  it  is  very  likely,  that 
he  composed  it  for  him,  nov  is  there  the  slightest  sign  that  he  composed  it  to 
recite  himself. 


198  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  8 


§  8.   The  Wife  of  Bath's  Prologue  and  Tale,  the  Shipman's 
Tale,  the  Merchant's  Tale. 

On  the  dates  of  the  poems  to  be  discussed  in  this  section,  the 
Wife  of  Baths  Prologue  and  Tale,  the  Shipman's  Tale,  and  the 
Merchant's  Tale,  hardly  anything  has  been  written.  Ten  Brink  * 
dates  the  first  and  the  last,  whose  general  resemblance  he 
recognizes,  about  1390,  earlier,  however,  than  the  conception  of  the 
Canterbury  Tales.  The  name  of  the  Wife  of  Bath,  he  thinks, "  had 
probably  been  a  sort  of  proverb  before  the  poet  undertook  to  make 
it  immortal"  (p.  126).  For  these  strange  and  unparalleled  views 
he  gives  no  reasons  which  need  be  discussed  here.2  We  have 
therefore  a  clear  field  before  us,  for  research  and  for  conjecture. 

There  is  something  about  the  Merchant's  Tale  which  more  than 
calls  for  comment,  which  demands  explanation.  Every  one  knows 
that  Chaucer  was  no  cynic.  We  can  throw  ourselves  heart  and  soul 
into  accord  with  his  moods  of  mockery  and  his  flings  of  derision, 
as  we  cannot  with  those  of  such  a  man  as  Swift  or  Byron,  because 
we  can  see  that  under  his  severity  and  contempt  are  inexhaustible 
stores  of  good-humour  and  tolerance  and  charity.  But  with  the 
Merchant's  Tale,  if  we  read  it  with  understanding,  we  cannot  do  so. 
Its  spirit  is  anything  but  agreeable.  Its  satire  on  woman  and  on 
marriage  is  the  bitterest  that  Chaucer  has  anywhere  permitted 
>l  himself,  on  this  or  any  subject.  The  fact  that  it  is  somewhat 
covered3  only  makes  it  the  bitterer.  The  poem  certainly  does  not 
strike  one  as  an  overflowing  of  jollity,  or  as  a  tour  de  force.  The 
satire  has  a  serious  air,  the  emphasis  is  not  at  all  on  the  brutal 


1  History  of  English  Literature  (Engl.  tr.,  London,  1893),  ii.  126-32. 

2  See  Hist.  E.  L.,  iii.  267,  and  Chaucers  Sprache,  §  31,  but  cf.  p.  169  above. 
His  only  important  points  I  treat  later. 

3  One  or  two  writers  on  Chaucer  have  actually  been  misled  into  thinking 
the  first  part  of  the  poem  (1245-1392)  sincere  praise  of  woman  and  marriage. 
To  say  nothing  of  the  caustic  lines  which  are  interspersed,  it  is  astonishing 
that  any  one  should  imagine  he  finds  sincere  domestic  sentiments  in  the 
preface  to  such  a  story.     We  must  choose  between  bitter  intentional  sarcasm, 
or  still  bitterer  and  very  stupid  unintentional  sarcasm.     The  ironical  con 
cessions  which  Chaucer  makes  in  this  passage,  and  which  depend  for  their 
antidote  on  the  tacit  criticism  supplied  by  the  tale  which  follows,  are  wholly 
paralleled  by  the  pillorying  of  men,  ostensibly  for  the  benefit  of  the  female 
sex,  in  Mane.   T.,  187-95.      Merck.    T.   is,  however,  well  offset  by  some 
beautiful  passages  at  the  beginning  of  Frankl.  T. ;  note  that  M.  T.,  1260  = 
/'.  T.,  805,  verbatim,  and  with  M.  T.,  1379  cf.  F.  T.,  751-2, 


CH.  V,  §  8]         THE    WIFE    OF   BATIKS   PROLOGUE   AND    TALE,   ETC.         199 

humour  of  the  situations ;  the  teller  even  apologizes l  for  his 
indelicate  speech  : 

"  Ladies,  I  prey  yow  that  ye  be  nat  wrooth  ; 
I  can  nat  glose,  I  am  a  rude  man  "  (2350-1);  2 

"  it  may  nat  ben  expressed, 
But  if  I  wolde  speke  uncurteisly  "  (2362-3). 

Not  only  is  the  coarseness  less  light-hearted  and  naturalistic  than 
in  the  Miller's,  Reeve's  and  Sumner's  Tales,  and  the  cynicism 
inherent  in  the  story  heightened  in  every  way  ;3  there  is  an  occa 
sional  touch  of  earnestness  and  almost  pathos,  and  the  danger- 
ousness  of  woman  and  the  folly  of  marriage,  especially  when  the 
husband  is  old,  are  dwelt  on  at  extraordinary  length  and  with  a 
notable  air  of  feeling.4  The  openly  satirical  flings  are  peculiarly 
frequent  and  keen;  the  following  passages  may  be  especially 
noted  : 

"  '  Wedlok  is  so  esy  and  so  clerie, 
That  in  this  world  it  is  a  paradys.' 
Thus  seyde  this  olde  knight,  that  was  so  wys  "  (1264-6) ; 

"  A  wyf  wol  laste,  and  in  thyn  hous  endure, 
Wei  lenger  than  thee  list,  para  venture  "  (1317-8) ; 

' '  They  been  so  knit,  ther  may  noon  harm  bitycle, 
And  namely  up-on  the  wyves  syde  "  (1391-2) ; 

"  'And  elles  god  forbede,  but  he  sente 
A  wedded  man  him  grace  to  repente 
Wei  ofte  rather  than  a  sengle  man,"  (1665-7) ; 

"Whan  tendre  youthe  hath  wedded  stouping  age, 
Ther  is  swich  mirthe  that  it  may  nat  be  writen ; 
Assayeth  it  your-self,  than  may  ye  witen 
If  that  I  lye  or  noon  in  this  matere  "  (1738-41). 5 

1  The  only  other  apology  in  a  coarse  story  is  in  Mane.  T.,  205-11.    Cf.  also, 
of  course,  Chaucer's  own  apology  in  ProL,  725-42  ;  and  Mill.  ProL,  3167-86, 
and  Reeve's  ProL,  3917. 

2  Of  course  the  last  phrase  must  not  be  taken  too  seriously.     The  impreca 
tion  on  "the  cursed  monk  dan  Constantyn"  (1810)  is  another  suggestion  of 
the  refinement  and  seriousness  of  the  teller. 

3  Cf.  especially  1967-76,  where  the  narrator  leaves  God  to  decide  why  May 
fell  so  easily  ;  1987-94,  where  he  affects  to  praise  her  for  her  "  franchyse  "  and 
soft-heartedness ;  2185-218,  where  in  one  breath  she  declares  with  tears  her 
honour  and  fidelity,  and  coughs  to  Damian. 

4  Cf.  especially  1263-71,  1634-56,  and  the  speeches  of  Justinus  and  Pluto. 

5  Here  and  elsewhere  one  is  almost  inclined  to  feel  that  Chaucer  was  writing 
somehow  from  his  own  experience.     If  not,  the  intensity  of  Merck.  T.  is  a 
little  hard  to  account  for,  even  with  my  explanation,  to  be  mentioned  later. 


200  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  8 

Even  Chaucer's  own  "  favourite  line"  l  appears  in  a  connection 
which  turns  its  milk  of  human  kindness  sour  :  it  is  when  May  has 
resolved  to  grant  her  love  to  Damian  that  the  narrator  comments  : 

"  Lo,  pitee  renneth  sone  in  gentil  herte"  (1986). 

It  is  specially  noteworthy  that  when  the  poem  is  barely  begun  the 
narrator  makes  a  long  and  quite  independent  discourse,  unparalleled 
elsewhere  in  the  Canterbury  Tales,2  126  lines  of  veiled  and  grave 
irony.  And  as  to  the  gist  and  upshot  of  the  story,  January's 
expectations  and  their  outcome  are  a  perfect  commentary  on  the 
words  of  the  Epistola  Valerii:  "Amice,  nulla  est  Lucretia,  nulla 
Penelope,  nulla  Sabina;  omnes  time."  The  anti-feminine  quality 
of  the  tale  is  the  more  striking  because  the  character  of  the  "  olde 
dotard  holour  "  January  (as  the  Parson  would  call  him)  has  been 
such  that  we  cannot  but  regard  his  cuckoldry  as  poetic  justice ; 3 
the  emphasis  with  which  Chaucer  reads  the  story  contradicts  its 
natural  emphasis. 

Now  how  is  all  this  to  be  explained  ?  An  amount  of  it  greatly 
less  in  quantity  and  intensity  might  be  accounted  for  by  the  con 
ventional  misogyny  of  the  Middle  Ages,  as  a  passing  allusion  to 
Chaucer's  own  experience  or  observation,  as  an  excuse  for  the 
following  story,  or  as  mere  wanton  humour.  But  the  discourse  at 
the  beginning  and  the  tone  all  through  suggest,  it  seems  to  me,  if 
they  do  not  imply,  a  definite  purpose.  We  should  not  like  to 
believe  that  it  is  to  set  forth  Chaucer's  own  convictions,4  and  we 
cannot  if  we  read  the  first  part  of  the  Frarikliris  Tale.  Nothing 
remains  except  that  the  tone  of  the  Merchant's  Tale  is  a  dramatic 
device.  Yet  in  the  description  of  the  Merchant  in  the  General 
Prologue  there  is  not  a  syllable  to  account  for  it.  Nor  should  we 
seek  an  explanation  in  the  Merchant's  Prologue  or  Epilogue.  The 
latter  was  certainly  written  after  its  tale,  and  the  former,  like 

The  poem  comes  to  strike  one  as  occupying  somewhat  the  same  puzzling  and 
graceless  position  in  Chaucer's  works  as  the  Troilus  and  Cressida  does  in 
Shakspere's,  though  of  course  the  explanation  must  be  quite  different. 

1  It  occurs  four  or  five  times  in  Chaucer's  poetry  ;  see  Skeat,  V.  383. 

2  The  only  abstract  digressions  elsewhere  are  of  about  a  fourth  the  length  ; 
seePhys.  T.,  67-104,  and  Frarikl.  T.,  761-86. 

8  No  doubt  because  Chaucer  wished  to  keep  the  story  well  within  the  limits 
of  comedy. 

4  In  one  of  Chaucer's  poems  he  does  set  forth,  with  every  appearance  of 
seriousness,  an  unfavourable  view  of  wedlock — Lenvoy  a  Bukton  ;  it  refers  to 
W.  B.  P.,  and  is  full  of  parallels  to  its  phraseology,  but  it  is  utterly  unlike 
Merch,  T, 


CH.  V,  §  8]         THE    WIFE    OF   BATH'S   PROLOGUE    AND    TALE,  ETC.         201 

almost  all  the  prologues,  most  likely  was.  With  its  improbable 
exaggeration,  its  account  of  his  wife's  "  passing  crueltee"  after  only 
two  months  of  marriage,  it  has  every  appearance  of  having  been 
written  to  account  for  the  extravagant  animosity  of  the  tale  which 
follows.  So  we  are  still  left  with  an  inviting  field  for  conjecture 
to  run  riot  in. 

We  may  get  some  light  on  the  subject  if  we  observe  the  affilia 
tions  of  the  Merchant's  Tale.  The  parallel  passages  in  it  and  the 
Wife  of  Bath's  Prologue  are  numerous  and  important ;  especially 
is  the  precept  of  the  former  constantly  supported  (or  refuted)  by 
the  Wife's  example  in  the  latter : 

"For  she  vvol  clayme  half  part  al  hir     But  tel  me  this,  why  hydestow,  with 
lyf"  (M.  T.,  1300;  cf.  1343).  sorwe, 

The  keyes  of  thy  cheste  awey  fro  me  ? 
It  is  my  good  as  wel  as  thyn,  pardee 
(W.  B.  P.,  308-10). 

".  .  .  She  that  waiteth  ay  They  had  me  yeven  hir  gold  and  hir 

After  thy  good,  and  hath  don  many  a         tresoor  ; 

day  "  J  (1303-4  ;  cf.  1270).  Me  neded  nat  do  lenger  diligence 

To    winne  hir  love,    or  doon    hem 
reverence  (204-6  ;  cf.  197,  526). 

She  seith  not  ones  "nay  "whan  he     For  by  my  trouthe,    I   quitte   hem 
seith  "ye"  (1345).  word  for  word 

(422  ;  cf.  425  and  379-92). 

Suffre  thy  wyves  tonge,  as  Caton  bit ;  Suffreth  alwey,  sin  ye  so  wel  can 
She  shal  comande,  and  thou  shalt  preche  (437). 

suffren  it  (1377-8).  .  .  .  Sith  a  man  is  more  resonable 

Than  womman  is,  ye  moste  been  suf- 
frable  (441-2  ;  cf.  434). 

For  sondry  scoles  maken  sotil  clerkes;      Diverse  scoles  maken  parfit  clerkes, 
Womman  of  manye  scoles  half  a  clerk      Divers     praktik,    in    many    sondry 
is  (1427-8).  werkes, 

Maketh  the  workman  parfit  sekirly. 
Of  fyve  husbondes  scolering  am  I 
(between  44  and  45).2 


1  The  first  two  passages  in  Merck  T.  are  from  Theophrastus. 

2  These  lines,  with  two  more,  are  to  be  found  in  only  a  few  MSS. ;  besides 
the  three  mentioned  by  Skeat,  they  are  in  MSS.  Trin.  Coll.  3.15,  Royal  17  D, 
Christ  Ch.,  New  Coll.  and  Arch.  Seld.     They  are  in  no  other  MS.  in  any 
public  library  in  England  or  Paris  (but  I  have  not  examined  MS.  Sion).    No  one 
can  doubt  their  genuineness,  but  Tyrwhitt  and  Skeat  regard  them  as  rejected  on 
revision.     The  fact  that  they  resemble  the  lines  in  Merck.  T.  seems  to  be  no 
reason  whatever  for  this  opinion  ;  Chaucer  is  particularly  unlikely  to  have 
rejected  the  more  for  the  less  elaborate  version.     The  connection  between  the 
including  lines,  44-5,  is  so  perfect  that  we  may  well  believe  the  extra  lines  to 
have  been  inserted  later,  and  their  presence  in  some  of  the  MSS.  to  be  due  to 
contamination  with  a  separate  copy  of  W.  B.  P.     There  is  other  evidence  that 
it  circulated,  somewhat,  apart  from  the  rest  of  the  C.  T.     These  lines  should 
certainly,  I  think,  be  restored  to  the  text. 


202  THE    CANTERBURY    TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  8 

But  sires,  by  your  leve,  that  am  nat  I     Aud  lordiiiges,  by  your  leve,  that  am 
(1456).1  nat  I  (112). 

But  I  wot  best  wher  wringeth  me  my     Whan  that  his  shoo  ful  bitterly  him 
sho  (1553).2  wrong  (492). 

Paraunter   she   may  be  your  purga-      By  god,  in  erthe  I  was  his  purgatorie, 
torie  !  (1670  ;  cf.  1647).  For  which  I  hope  his  soule  be  in  glorie 

(489-90). 

He  was  al  coltish,  ful  of  ragerye,  And  I  was  yong  and  ful  of  ragerye, 

And  ful  of  largon  as  a  flekked  pye          Stiborn  and  strong,  and  loly  as  a  pye 
(1847-8).  (455-6). 

And  whan  he  wolde  paye  his  wyf  hir     That  man  shal  yelde  to  his  wyf  hir 
dette  (2048  3;  cf.  1452).  dette  (130). 

Though  such  reminiscences  are  frequent  in  Chaucer,  we  have 
found  some  significance  in  such  numerous  parallels  as  connect  the 
Troilus,  the  Knight's  Tale,  and  the  Legend,  and  are  justified  in  find 
ing  it  here. 

Another  link  is  to  be  found  in  the  works  which  are  quoted  in 
the  two  poems.  The  Parson's  Tale  is  quoted  in  the  Merchant's 
more  frequently  than  in  any  other  of  Chaucer's  works  except  the 
Pardoner's  Prologue  and  Tale,  and  next  most  frequently  in  the 
Wife's  Prologue.*  He  uses  St.  Jerome's  work  against  Jovinian, 
and  the  extract  from  Theophrastus  which  it  contains,  more  ex 
tensively  in  the  Wife's  Prologue  than  anywhere  else ; 5  next  to  this 
and  the  Franklin's  and  Sumner's  Tales  he  uses  them  oftenest  in  the 
Merchant's  Tale,  where  he  also  refers  explicitly  to  Theophrastus 
(1294-5,  1310).6  Walter  Map's  Epistola  Valerii  ad  Rufinwn  he 
mentions  and  quotes  in  the  Wife's  Prologue  ;  elsewhere  he  quotes 
it  only  in  the  Merchant's  Tale.*? 

Certain   other   points   of   contact  between   the  Wife  of  Bath's 

1  Cf.  Melibeus,  2278.     See  p.  213  below.       The  order  of  composition  is 
perhaps  W.  B.  P.,  Mel.,  Merck.  T. 

2  From  Jerome  against  Jovinian. 

3  Cf.  Pars.  T.,  940. 

4  See  Koeppel  in  Herrig's  Archiv,  Ixxxvii.  39-46.    Some  of  the  passages  are 
biblical,  but  the  more  one  investigates; Chaucer's  reading,  the  more  convinced 
one  becomes  that  his  familiarity  with  the  Bible  (and  other  quotable  literature, 
like  Cato  and  Seneca)  was  largely  at  second-hand. 

5  See  Koeppel  in  Herrig's  Archiv,  Ixxxiv,  414-15  ;  and  in  Anglia,  xiii. 
175-6  ;  W.  W.  Woollcombe  in  Chaucer  Society  Essays,  297-304.     The  use  of 
Theophrastus  is  the  reason  for  the  resemblance  between  some  of  the  remarks  at 
the  beginning  of  the  Merch.  T.  and  those  quoted  by  the  Wife  from  her  old 
husband,  as  is  noted  above  ;  cf.  1294-310  with  248-378. 

6  Anglia,  xiii.  178-80. 

7  The  "Valerie"  referred  to  in  L.  G.  W.,  G-prol.  280,  is  doubtless  Valerius 
Maximus.     See  Anglia,  xiii.  181-3  ;  and  also,  on  all  this,  Skeat's  index  and 
notes. 


CII.   V,  §  8]          THE    WIFE    OF   BATHES    PROLOGUE   AND    TALE,  ETC.         203 

Prologue  and  the  Merchant's  Tale  make  it  difficult  or  impossible  to 
doubt  not  only  that  the  two  were  written  near  together,  but  also 
that  the  latter  was  written  after  the  former ;  further,  not  only  that 
Chaucer  had  the  Wife  of  Bath  and  her  prologue  in  mind  when  he 
wrote  the  Merchant's  Tale,  but  also  that  he  meant  his  readers 
to  have  them  in  mind.  January  is  remarkably  like  the  Wife 
of  Bath's  old  husband.1  It  is  noteworthy  that  of  the  dozen  or  so 
of  analogues  to  the  story2  none  seem  to  have  anything  about 
difference  of  age  between  the  husband  and  wife  except  Boccaccio's, 
which  barely  mentions  it  (Decameron,  VII.  9) ;  it  is  natural  that 
the  only  two  great  mediaeval  writers  who  treated  the  story  should 
develop  this  dramatic  contrast,  but  Chaucer  lays  much  stress  on 
it.  May  has  striking  points  of  similarity  to  the  Wife  of  Bath 
(with  M.T.,  2187-206,  2368-415,  cf.  W.B.  P.,  443-50,  226-34); 
she  certainly  follows  the  Wife's  principles,  and  does  rather  more 
than  bear  her  husband  "  on  hond  the  cow  is  wood."3  Again,  just 
as  Pluto's  talk  is  suggestive  of  Jankin's,4  Proserpina's  is  a  curious 
reminiscence  of  the  Wife  of  Bath's ;  women,  she  says,  shall  never 
lack  the  power  of  facing  out  their  offences,5  and  she  flouts  the 
authority  of  Solomon.6  Another  suggestion  of  the  Wife's  Prologue 
is  that  January  will  have  none  of  an  elderly  wife  : 

"  And  eek  thise  olde  widwes,  god  it  woot, 
They  conne  so  muchel  craft  on  Wades  boot, 
So  muchel  broken  harm,  whan  that  hem  leste, 
That  with  hem  sholde  I  never  live  in  reste. 
For  sondry  scoles  maken  sotil  clerkis  ; 
Woniman  of  manye  scoles  half  a  clerk  is"  7 (1423-8). 

1  Cf.  one  external  touch  : 

"  The  slakke  skin  aboute  his  nekke  shaketh  "  (1849) ; 

"  Mote  thy  welked  nekke  be  to-broke  ! "  ( W.  B.  P.,  277). 

2  See  Originals  and  Analogues  (Ch.  Soc.),pp.  177ff.,  341  ff.  ;  andVarnhagen 
in  Anglia  vii.,  Anzeiger,  p.  163. 

3  Unless  this  was  a  by-word,  it  shows  that  Chaucer  knew  the  version  of  the 
Tell-tale  Bird  story  which  occurs  in  the  romance  of  the  Seven  Sages  ;   cf.  par 
ticularly  W.  B.  P.,  233-4.    If  he  did,  it  is  odd  that  he  used  for  the  Manciples 
Tale  the  vastly  inferior  and  less  Chaucerian  version  found  in  Ovid.     See 
Skeat's  note,  and  Academy,  vol.  xxxvii.  p.  239. 

4  With  Merch.  T.,  2237-53,  cf.   W.  B.  P.,  641-785. 

5  It  is  true,   of  course,  that  the  way  in  which  May  allays  her  husband's 
indignation  is  one  of  the  traditional  elements  in  the  story. 

6  With  Merch.  T.,  2264-2310,  cf.  W.  B.  P.,  226-234,35-43,  and  the  whole 
early  part.     It  is  striking  that  whenever  Chaucer  portrays  a  sceptic,  it  is  as  a 
woman.     His  four  sceptics  are  the  Wife  of  Bath,   Proserpina,   Partlet,  and 
Criseyde. 

7  Cf.   W.  B.  P.,  601-6,  44c-44f,  and  passim. 


204  THE    CANTERBURY    TALES.  [oil.  V,  §  8 

It  is  true  that  Chaucer  along  here  is  using  Albertano's  Liber  de 
Amore,  but  all  that  the  latter  says  is  :  "  Et  uxorem  accipias  potius 
.  .  .  puellam  quam  viduam ;  dixit  enim  quidam  philosophus : 
'  Accipe  puellam  in  uxorem,  quam  vis  sit  vetula.'  " l  January's 
remarks  sound  very  much  like  a  deliberate  dig  at  the  Wife  of  Bath, 
and  certainly  reflect  her  language.  Clearly,  then,  the  Merchant's 
Tale  was  written  with  one  eye  on  the  Wife  of  Bath's  Prologue, 
and  Chaucer  must  have  known  that  his  readers  would  be  aware 
of  the  fact. 

But  finally  the  allusions  to  the  Wife  of  Bath  became  explicit. 
Justinus,  at  the  end  of  his  temperate  and  comparatively  optimistic 
advice,  some  of  which  contains  reminiscences  of  her  prologue, 
openly  appeals  to  her.  Skeat  tries  to  make  the  lines  an  interpola 
tion  of  the  narrator's,  and  prints  the  passage  thus  : 

" '  My  tale  is  doon  : — for  my  wit  is  thinne. 
Beth  nat  agast  her-of,  my  brother  dere.' — 
(But  lat  us  waden  out  of  this  matere. 
The  Wyf  of  Bathe,  if  ye  han  understonde, 
Of  mariage,  which  we  have  on  honde, 
Declared  hath  ful  wel  in  litel  space). — 
'  Fareth  now  wel,  god  have  yow  in  his  grace '"  (1682-8). 

In  this  endeavour  to  save  Chaucer  from  himself  I  think  the  editor 
makes  two  mistakes.  For  we  (1686)  all  the  eight  published  MSS. 
except  the  Camb.  Dd  and  the  Hengwrt  read  ye;2  and,  therefore, 
though  Dr.  Skeat  would  doubtless  explain  it  as  caught  by  a  scribe 
from  the  line  above,  I  think  we  should  accept  it.  Secondly,  at  a 
time  when  there  was  no  such  paraphernalia  of  dashes,  parentheses 
and  quotation-marks  as  Dr.  Skeat  needs  to  bolster  up  his  inter 
pretation,  it  is  certain  that  any  reader  would  have  understood  these 
lines  to  be  a  part  of  Justinus'  speech,  as  any  one  will  be  convinced 
who  will  glance  at  the  passage  in  the  Six-Text ;  what  the  reader 
would  have  understood  we  may  be  sure  Chaucer  meant,  even  if  he 
had  been  capable  otherwise  of  such  a  piece  of  monstrously  and 
gratuitously  bad  style  as  the  editor  attributes  to  him.  Chaucer 
therefore  deliberately  perpetrates  so  gross  a  dramatic  impropriety  as 

1  Koeppel,  in  Archiv,  Ixxxvi.  42. 

2  Ye  is  the  reading  of  eight  others,  in  London  and  Oxford  (Laud  600  and 
739,  Harl.  1758  and  7333,  Royal  17D  and  180,  and   Sloane  1685  and  1686)  ; 
toe,  of  six  others  (Bodley  686,  Arch.  Seld.,  Barlow  20,  Rawl.  149,  Egerton, 
Addit.  5140;  passage  imperfect  in  Harl.  7335).     Mr.  George  Stevenson  has 
kindly  given  me  this  information. 


CH.  V,  §  8]          THE    WIFE   OF   BATHES   PROLOGUE   AND    TALE,  ETC.         205 

to  make  a  character  in  one  of  the  tales  refer  to  one  of  the  people  on 
the  pilgrimage  •  why,  unless  she  had  been  in  his  mind  all  along, 
and  he  wished  to  make  the  connection  explicit  1 l 

The  Shipmaris  Tale  must  now  be  brought  into  the  discussion. 
To  begin  with,  two  verbal  parallels  may  be  noted  between  it  and  the 
Merchant's  Tale  (1199  and  1315,  apparently  taken  from  Parson's 
Tale,  1068;  and  1559  and  2322,  apparently  from  Le  Roman  de 
la  Hose).2  The  two  plots  in  outline  are  also  more  alike  than  either 
is  to  any  other  except  the  Miller's  Tale?  They  stand  together  and 
quite  apart  from  any  other  of  the  coarse  tales4  in  their  higher  literary 
and  (if  I  may  so  put  it)  social  tone.  They  are  more  refined,  and 
more  cynical.  Between  the  Shipman' s  Tale  and  the  Wife  of  Bath's 
Prologue  there  are  one  or  two  rather  striking  parallel  passages ; 
compare  Sh.  T.,  1194-209  with  W.  B.  P.,  337-56  (on  the  extrava 
gance  of  wives  in  dressing,  and  its  perils),  and  1363-7  with  257-62 
(on  the' six  good  points  of  a  husband  and  those  of  a  wife).5  Besides 
these  there  is  the  general  congeniality  between  the  woman  in  the 
tale  and  the  Wife  of  Bath  in  her  prologue. 

If  these  points  of  contact  between  the  Shipman's  Tale  and  the 
other  two  poems  do  not  seem  very  significant,  there  is  another 
which  is  quite  conclusive.  The  Shipman's  Tale  was  certainly 
written  not  for  the  Shipman  but  for  a  woman ;  six  times  the  speaker 
classes  himself  among  wives  (1202-9,  1364).6  The  Shipman  no 

1  Another  reference  to  the  Wife  of  Bath,  which  is  almost  as  plain,  and 
which  in  a  manner  makes  a  connection  between  Merck.  T.  and  W.  B.  P.,  is  in 
Merck.  Epil.,  2433-40.    The  Host  regrets  that  he  is  bound  to  a  shrewish  wife, 
but  will  say  no  more  of  her,  for  fear  his  words  should  be  reported  to  her  by 
some  woman  in  the  company.    It  is  as  plain  as  possible  that  2437-8  mean  the 
Wife  of  Bath. 

2  Cf.  Koeppel  in  Anglia,  xiv.  257. 

3  As  long  ago  as  1877  Mr.  Fleay  noted  their  resemblance  to  each  other,  and 
to  the  Wife  of  Bath's  Tale  (apparently),  and  suggested  that  they  were  written 
in  the  order,  W.  B.  T.,  Merck.  T.,  Sh.  T.  (Guide  to  Chaucer  and  Spenser, 
pp.  56,  62).     In  general,  however,  Fleay's  little  book  is  a  blind  guide. 

4  Unless  perhaps  the  rather  slight  Manciple's  Tale. 

5  For  similar  or  complementary  passages,  see  W.  B.  T.,  925-50  ;  N.  P.  T., 
4102-7.     With  Sh.  T.,  1417,  also  compare   W.  B.  P.  312  (also  Reeve's  T., 
4264,  and  Sumn.  T.,  1943). 

6  First  pointed  out  by  Tyrwhitt  (London,  1830  ;  iv.  280) :  "  Which  would 
lead  one   to  suspect  that  this  Tale   was  originally  intended  for  a  female 
character."     The  matter  was  noted  also  by  A.  J.  Ellis  (Early  English  Pro 
nunciation,  i.  244),    Hertzberg  (German  translation  of  the  G.   T.,  p.  644), 
Furnivall  (Temp.  Pref.,  p.  10),  Fleay  (Guide  to  Chaucer  and  Spenser,  54), 
Lounsbury  (Studies,  iii.  435),  and  Skeat.    Skeat  seems  to  be  referring  to  this 
confusion  of  sexes  in  Sh.  T.,  but  in  a  manner  still  more  confused,  when  he 
mentions  the  Wife  of  Bath's  Tale  in  The  Chaucer  Canon,  p.  110.     Furnivall 
and  Skeat  suggest  that  Sh.  T.  may  have  been  meant  for  the  Wife  of  Bath's 
second  tale  (Temp.  Pref.,  10,  note ;  v.  168). 


206  THE    CANTERBURY    TALES.  [dl.  V,  §  8 

doubt  had  his  faults,  but  muliebrity  was  not  one  of  them.  Nor  is 
the  subject,  drawn  from  trivial  social  life,  appropriate  to  him. 
And  there  cannot  be  the  smallest  doubt  that  the  woman  is  the 
Wife  of  Bath,  since  the  only  other  women  in  the  party  are  nuns. 
Two  or  three  passages  in  the  tale,  already  mentioned,  are  especially 
appropriate  to  her — those  on  dress  and  "  society,"  and  on  the  six 
good  points  of  a  husband.  Considering  the  way  in  which  the 
Canterbury  Tales  grew,  it  seems  to  me  much  less  likely  to  have 
been  meant  for  her  second,  than  to  have  been  displaced  from  the 
position  of  her  first  tale. 

But  to  recapitulate.  We  have  seen  that  the  Shipman's  Tale  was 
certainly  written  for  the  Wife  of  Bath.  We  have  found  many 
points  of  connection  between  it,  the  Merchant's  Tale  and  the  Wife 
of  Bath's  Prologue ;  strong  probability  that  the  Merchant's  Tale 
was  written  near  the  Wife's  Prologue,  and  irrefragable  proof  that 
it  was  written  after  it.  Next,  it  is  plain  that  the  Merchant's 
attitude  toward  the  Wife  of  Bath,  and  "  al  hir  secte,"  is  by  no 
means  an  amicable  one ;  that  he  betrays  a  deep-seated  and  cynical 
animosity  toward  the  latter,  and  pretty  clearly  also  toward  the  Wife 
herself,  which  is  by  no  means  accounted  for. 

Now  we  must  observe  that  the  victim  in  the  Shopman's  Tale  is  a 
merchant,  who  has  considerable  points  of  resemblance  to  him  of  the 
Prologue.  We  may  note  three  things  especially.  The  French 
merchant  has  business  in  Flanders  (1245,  1490,  etc.);  so  has 
Chaucer's  (272,  277 ;  cf.  p.  146  above).  The  former  says  (1479) : 

' '  We  may  creaunce  whyl  we  have  a  name  " ; 
of  the  latter  Chaucer  says  (279-82)  : 

"  This  worthy  man  ful  wel  his  wit  bisette  ; 
Ther  wiste  no  wight  that  he  was  in  dette, 
So  estatly  was  he  of  his  governaunce, 
With  his  bargaynes,  and  with  his  chevisaunce." 

This  statement  that,  in  spite  of  appearances,  Chaucer's  Merchant  was 
in  debt,  and  his  presence  on  the  pilgrimage,  are  illustrated  by  some 
of  the  other  merchant's  remarks  to  his  wife  (1420-4) : 

"  We  may  wel  make  chere  and  good  visage, 
And  dryve  forth  the  world  as  it  may  be, 
And  kepen  our  estaat  in  privitee, 
Till  we  be  deed,  or  elles  that  we  pleye 
A  pilgrimage,  or  goon  out  of  the  weye." 


CH.  V,  §  8]          THE    WIFE    OF   BATHES   PROLOGUE    AND    TALE,  ETC.         207 

Though  it  would  be  too  much  to  say,  perhaps,  that  the  personality 
of  the  merchant  in  the  tale  is  imitated  from  him  of  the  Prologue, 
in  the  former  Chaucer  certainly  followed  the  type  of  the  latter.1 
My  main  point,  however,  is  that  in  the  Shipman's  Tale  it  is  a 
merchant  who  is  put  in  a  pitiable  and  ridiculous  situation  by  being 
cuckolded  and  cheated  of  his  money.  The  Merchant  on  the  pil 
grimage  therefore  had  as  much  and  the  same  reason  to  take  offence 
at  this  tale  as  the  Eeeve  had  to  take  offence  at  the  Miller's  Tale, 
and  nearly  as  much  as  the  Sumner  had  to  take  offence  at  the 
Friar's. 

What  I  propose  is  that  here  we  have  the  vestiges  of  Chaucer's 
original  design  for  an  exchange  of  hostilities,  a  polite  quarrel, 
between  the  Wife  of  Bath  and  the  Merchant,  somewhat  like  those 
which  we  actually  have  between  the  Miller  and  Eeeve,  and 
between  the  Friar  and  Sumner.  If  the  two  tales  were  a  part  of 
the  same  design — i.  e.,  if  Chaucer  had  not  changed  the  assignment 
of  one  before  he  wrote  the  other,  some  such  explanation  seems 
inevitable.  If  such  a  tiff  was  intended,  there  is  point  in  the 
direct  reference  to  the  Wife  of  Bath  in  the  Merchant's  Tale, 
1685;  what  is  lost  in  dramatic  propriety  within  the  tale  is 
gained  if  we  consider  it  as  a  part  of  a  larger  whole;  the  im 
propriety  of  the  reference  in  Justinus'  mouth  vanishes  before  its 
exquisite  appropriateness  in  the  Merchant's.  If  we  reject  such  an 
explanation  the  passage  becomes  an  extraordinary  aberration.2  And 
I  think  also  that  my  suggestion  helps  to  account  for  the  earnest, 
disagreeable  and  cynical  character  of  the  Merchant's  Tale. 

Chaucer's  procedure,  I  think,  can  be  restored  with  both  plausi 
bility  and  completeness.  He  first  wrote  the  Shipman's  Tale  for 
the  Wife  of  Bath,  following  out  more  or  less  the  characterization 
of  her  which  he  had  given  in  the  Prologue,  and  perhaps  without 
intending  any  particular  allusion  to  the  Merchant.  He  then  went  on 
to  write  a  prologue  for  the  tale ;  and,  becoming  more  interested  in 

1  On  the  whole,  Chaucer  deals  throughout  his  works  in  vivid  types  rather 
than  individuals.     As  another  illustration  of  the  fact,  in  some  points  there  is 
a  resemblance  also  between  the  Monk  on  the  pilgrimage,  and  him  of  the  Sh.  T. 
Though  the  former  is  the  older  man,  stress  is  laid  on  the  good  looks  of  both 
of  them   (A,  165,    167;   B,  1215,    1218);   both  are  "outriders"   (A,   166; 
B,  1255-6),  and  highlivers  (A,  200,  205-6;  B,  1260-4);  both  are  masculine, 
prudent  and  worldly. 

2  As  Lounsbury  deems  it  (Studies,  iii.  435);  but  is  it^not  a  little  too  extra 
ordinary,  like  the  blunders  as  to  Alcestis'   identity  in  the   G-prologue  of 
L.  G.  W.t  to  be  a  mere  slip  produced  in  straightforward  writing? 


208  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  8 

her  personality,  proceeded  to  far  greater  length  and  elaboration 
than  he  had  intended.1  It  then  occurred  to  him,  perhaps  not  im 
mediately,  to  write  a  sort  of  masculine  rejoinder  to  her  prologue ; 
and  the  Merchant's  Tale  is  the  result.  The  whole  gist  of  the  poem, 
when  it  is  read  after  the  Wife's  Prologue,  is  :  "  Now  just  look  at  it 
from  the  man's  point  of  view ;  not  only  are  elderly  widows  untrust 
worthy — even  young  girls  are."2  And  into  whose  mouth  should 
the  retort  be  put  but  his  who  had  suffered  most  from  her  tale  ? 

But  why  did  Chaucer  change  his  plan  1  It  is  natural  that,  in 
the  course  of  time,  he  should  have  come  to  see  that  the  Sliipmarts 
Tale  was  not  wholly  suitable  to  put  into  the  Wife  of  Bath's 
mouth  after  she  had  recited  her  prologue.  Her  tone  in  the  latter 
is  one  of  bold  self -vindication,  it  is  true,  but  she  is  a  little  on  the 
defensive,3  and  was  by  no  means  so  bad  a  woman  as  the  wife  in 
the  Shipman's  Tale.  To  tell  such  a  story  would  have  exposed  her 
to  damaging  retorts.  Chaucer's  change  of  plan  may  have  been 
hastened  by  the  striking  appropriateness  of  the  story  which  he  has 
used  in  her  actual  tale,  the  gist  of  which,  the  sovereignty  of  woman, 
has  often  been  pointed  out  as  exactly  that  of  her  prologue.  There 
was  now  no  longer  any  occasion  for  the  Merchant  to  take  personal 
umbrage  against  her,  and  for  some  reason  Chaucer  gave  up  the  idea 
of  any  direct  answer  to  her  prologue  ;  therefore  the  Merchant-Wife- 
of-Bath  unpleasantness  was  cancelled.  But  the  idea  of  an  exchange 
of  hostilities,  beginning  after  the  Wife's  Prologue  or  Tale,  being 
still  in  Chaucer's  mind,  he  transferred  it  from  her  and  the  Merchant 
to  the  Friar  and  the  Sumner.  The  separately-rubricated  part  of 
her  prologue  (829-56),  containing  this  quarrel,  would  therefore 
be  much  later  than  the  rest  of  it.4  After  cancelling  the  original 

1  The  self-revelation  of  the  Wife  of  Bath  comes  near,  at  times,  to  being  as 
impudent  as  the  Pardoner's;  or  that  of  Placebo  in  Merck.  T.,  1491-505,  or 
the  Friar  in  Sumn.  T.,  2074-8.  May  we  not  regard  this  sort  of  thing  almost 
as  a  conventional  device  to  show  the  speaker's  state  of  mind  and  character, 
like  the  stage  soliloquy,  as,  e.  g.,  those  of  lago  and  Richard  III. ;  and  there 
fore  not  to  be  tested  too  strictly  by  realism  ?  The  source  of  Chaucer's  con 
ception  of  the  Wife  is  discussed  by  Professor  Mead,  in  Publ.  Mod.  Lang. 
Assoc.,  xvi.  388-404.  I  find  that  he  makes  a  remark  similar  to  the  one 
above,  that  W.  B.  P.  and  Pard.  P.  belong  to  a  well-marked  literary  form  ; 
they  "are  alike  in  that  they  are,  in  a  sense,  confessions— a  popular  mediaeval 
type,  by  the  way  "  (p.  388). 

1  Cf.  1393-1468.  3  Cf.,  e.  g.,  229-30,  485,  825. 

4  It  will  be  observed  that  the  Friar's  tolerant  attitude  toward  the  Wife  of 
Bath  and  her  prologue  is  admirably  characteristic,  and  wholly  different  from 
that  which  I  have  postulated  of  the  Merchant.  At  the  beginning  of  the  actual 
W.  B.  T.  (865-81)  she  gets  in  a  little  dig  at  the  friars. 


OH.  V,  §  8]         THE    WIFE   OF   BATH*S   PROLOGUE   AND    TALK,  ETC.         200 

assignment,  he  had  to  transfer  the  SUipmaris  Tale  to  some  other 
of  the  less  refined  pilgrims ;  the  Shipman  is  by  no  means  appro 
priate,  hut  for  the  more  suitable  persons  probably  he  had  made  or 
planned  other  arrangements.1  In  order  to  account  for  the  feeling 
with  which  the  Merchant  speaks  of  woman  and  marriage,  ex  post 
facto  domestic  infelicity  was  manufactured  for  him,  of  which 
there  is  not  a  hint  in  the  General  Prologue.  Chaucer's  failure  to 
adapt  the  tales  to  the  new  conditions2  of  course  agrees  with  his 
general  carelessness  of  such  things  in  the  Canterbury  Tales. 

This  whole  theory  I  advance  quite  tentatively,  as  a  conjecture. 
But  it  seems  to  me  natural,  to  contradict  no  facts,  and  to  explain 
some  things  which  call  for  explanation. 

And  now  what  light  have  we  on  the  dates  of  these  poems  1  The 
early  limit  is  fixed,  with  a  fair  amount  of  positiveness  and  exactness, 
by  the  certainty  that  the  Wife  of  Battis  Prologue  was  written  after 
the  General  Prologue.*  Whatever  antecedent  probability  there  may 
be  in  the  case  is  decidedly  in  favour  of  this  view,  but  there  is  good 
evidence  as  well.  The  Pardoner's  interruption,  164-8,  is  a  clear 
allusion  to  a  passage  in  the  General  Prologue.4  But  besides  this, 
the  Wife  of  Balk's  Prologue  was  surely  developed  and  modified 
from  her  description  in  the  General  Prologue.5  It  is.  rather 
suggestive  that  of  St.  Jerome's  treatise  against  Jovinian,  to  which 
so  much  of  the  Wife's  Prologue  is  due,  there  is  not  a  trace  in  the 
General  Prologue.  One  of  the  bits  derived  from  Le  Roman  tie  la 
Rose  6  is  also  suggestive  ;  in  the  General  Prologue  we  are  told  : 

1  There  is  good  reason  (in  the  so-called  tihipman's  Prologue  in  at  least  five 
MSS. )  to  believe  that  he  meant  at  first  to  reassign  it  to  the  Sumner,  before 
the  Friar-Suraner  quarrel  was  arranged.     See  p.  218  below. 

2  So  the  Shipman  classes  himself  among  women,  and  Justinus  still  makes 
his  strange  reference  to  the  Wife   of  Bath.     Another  revision  neglected  in 
Merck.   T.  is  in  1305-6.     Chaucer  probably  wrote  of  this  couplet  only  the 
words,   "And  if  thou  take  a  wyf,"   and  the  MS.  readings  for  the  rest  are 
all  spurious.     Some  of  the  MS.  readings  are  given  by  Skeat,  V.  354-5  ;   u 
large  number  are  to  be  found  in  some  copies  of  the  Six-Text  (Introd.,  pp.  70  ff., 
between  F   and  G),   but  (oddly)   not  in  others.     Chaucer's  neglect  here  is 
another  illustration  of  his  habit  of  rarely  reading  his  own  works. 

3  I  have  already  mentioned  ten  Blink's  wholly  unsupported  opinion  that  it 
was  written  before  it. 

4  LI.  688-91. 

5  One  or  two  points,  it  is  true,  may  seem  to  suggest  the  opposite  conclusion. 
ProL,  446,  on  her  deafness,  may  seem  to  be  an  allusion  to  the  incident  narrated 
in  W.  B.  P. ,  634-6,  788-810.    But  it  may  equally  well  be  a  casual  and  arbitrary- 
detail,  like  the  Cook's  mormal,  and  not  have  been  developed  till  later ;   if 
Chaucer  had  already  written  W.  B.  P.  this  is  hardly  the  point  with  which  he 
would  have  begun  his  second  description. 

6  The  use  of  Le  Roman  de  la  Rose  in  the  two  poems  is  interesting  (see  on  this 

DEV.  CH.  P 


210  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  8 

"  Housbondes  at  chirche-dore  she  hadde  fyve, 
Withouten  other  companye  in  youthe  ; 
But  therof  nedeth  nat  to  speke  as  nouthe"  (460-2), 

but  in  her  own  discourse  she  pretty  much  contradicts  this : 

"  For  lordinges,  sith  I  twelf  yeer  was  of  age,1 
Thonked  be  God  that  is  eterne  on  lyve, 
Housbondes  at  chirche-dore  I  have  had  fyve  ; 
For  I  so  ofte  have  y-wedded  be  "  (W.  B.  P.,  4-7). 

Obviously  she  could  not  have  had  much  "  companye  in  youthe  " 
before  she  was  married ;  so  probably  the  passages  were  written  in 
this  order.2  Finally,  all  the  proportion  and  emphasis  of  her  per 
sonality  are  other  and  lighter  in  the  General  Prologue  than  in  the 
Wife's  Prologue.  In  the  former  she  is  merely  a  capable  and  ambitious 
housewife,  who  excels  in  making  cloth ;  there  is  no  suggestion  what 
ever  of  her  relations  with  her  husbands,  and  almost  nothing  about  her 
character.  This  description  is  a  little  more  individual  and  less 
typical  than  most  of  those  in  the  Prologue,  but  otherwise  does  not 
differ  from  them.  Can  we  doubt,  then,  that  it  was  written  before  the 
most  vivid  and  detailed  piece  of  character-drawing  that  Chaucer  ever 
did  1  This  gives,  as  the  earliest  possible  date  for  the  Wife  of  Batlis 
Prologue,  1388. 

For  the  later  limit  of  the  Wife  ofBath^  Prologue  the  most  reliable 
evidence  has  been  pointed  out  by  Skeat.  In  Lenvoy  a  Bukton, 
after  warning  his  friend3  of  the  risks  of  matrimony,  Chaucer  says,  in 
words  which  strikingly  resemble  those  in  the  Merchant's  Tale  : 

Skeat's  notes,  Mead  in  Publ.  Mod.  Lang.  Assoc.  of  America,  xvi.  391-404,  and 
Koeppel  in  Anglia,  xiv.  250-5) ;  in  W.  B.  P.  it  is  very  extensive,  and  in 
Gen.  Prol.  two  lines  are  due  to  its  account  of  La  Vieille,  who  guards  Bel-Acueil. 
Line  461,  on  her  "other  companye  in  youthe,"  is  due  to  "Car  j'avoie  autre 
compaignie  "  (13369,  ed.  Pierre  Marteau,  Orleans,  1878  ;  she  is  recalling  her 
youth)  ;  and  476  is  translated  from  "  Qu'el  sect  toute  la  vielle  dance  "  (4078  ; 
the  phrase  also  occurs  in  the  Troilus,  III.  695,  and  in  Phys.  T.,  79).  Chaucer's 
first  conception  of  the  Wife  of  Bath  was  partly  due  to  La  Vieille.  It  was  the 
last  two  lines  of  her  description  in  the  General  Prologue  that  he  took  as  his 
point  of  departure,  almost  his  motto,  for  the  later  and  fuller  portraiture  ; 
they  may  have  led  him  back  to  Le  Roman  de  la  Rose,  whence  he  now  drew 
also  largely  on  its  account  of  Le  Jaloux  (9697  ff.,  Marteau's  edition  ;  cf.  Mead, 
I.e.,  pp.  398-403). 

1  Twelve  was  the  marriageable  age  for  females  according  to  canon  law.     Cf. 
p.  154  above,  note. 

2  On  her  pilgrimages,  cf.  Prol.  463-7  with  W.  B.  P.,  495,  557  ;  and  on  her 
teeth,  468  with  602-4.     The  tone  of  easy  allusion  in  the  passages  in  W.  B.  P. 
rather  suggests  that  they  were  the  later. 

3  Tyrwhitt  was  mistaken  in  identifying  him  (edition  of  1830,  I.  xlviii.)  with 
Peter  de  Buketon ;  among  several  Buktons  of  whom  there  is  word  in  the  re- 


CH.  V,  §  8]          THE    WIFE    OF   BATHES   PROLOGUE   AND    TALE,  ETC.          211 

"  The  Wyf  of  Bathe  I  pray  you  that  ye  rede 
Of  this  matere  that  we  have  on  horide"  (29-30). 

In  his  introduction,  Skeat  declares  the  allusion  to  be  to  her  tale;  in 
his  note,  to  her  prologue.1  We  cannot  doubt  that  the  latter  is  the 
case ;  but  it  will  not  matter,  for  the  tale  we  shall  see  must  be  later 
than  the  prologue.  The  date  of  Buldon  may  be  fixed  with  great 
exactness  and  certainty.  The  reference  in  line  23  to  the  dis 
advantages  in  being  taken  prisoner  "  in  Fryse  "  is  amply  explained 
by  Froissart's  2  account  of  the  expedition  against  Friesland  between 
August  24  and  the  end  of  September,  1396;  therefore  the  poem 
cannot  have  been  written  before  October,  1396.  Nor  later  than 
January,  1397,  since,  as  I  have  shown  in  my  note,  Robert  Bukton 
must  have  been  married  by  that  time.  So  the  date  which  Skeat 
assigns  to  Bukton,  "  about  the  end  of  the  year  1396,"  is  absolutely 
and  exactly  established.  At  latest,  then,  by  the  end  of  1396,  a 
copy  of  the  Wife's  Prologue  was  in  the  hands  of  Chaucer's  friend 
Bukton,  and  may  have  been  sent  as  a  gift  with  the  Envoy. 


cords,  it  is  easy  to  make  a  choice.  Queen  Anne,  by  letters  patent  of  December  1 , 
1391,  granted  for  her  lifetime  "to  her  esquire  Robert  Bucton"  "a  quantity  of 
pasture  and  wood  called  '  Gosewold'  in  her  lordship  of  Eye";  October  6, 1393, 
this  benefaction  was  enlarged  "  into  a  grant  of  the  same  to  him  and  his  heirs 
by  the  yearly  service  of  the  rent  of  a  rose  as  of  the  honor  of  Eye  ;  "  and  Sep 
tember  29,  1394,  a  few  months  after  her  death,  grant  was  made,  "for  life,  to 
the  king's  esquire  Robert  Bucton  of  the  constableship  of  the  castle  of  Eye,  co. 
Suffolk"  (Cal.  Pat.  Rolls,  1391-6,  pp.  324,  495).  He  may  have  been  the  same 
Robert  who  had  been  appointed  in  October,  1390,  one  of  four  king's  justices 
for  South  Wales  (ibid.  1388-92,  p.  435).  The  queen's  grant  of  Goosewold  was 
confirmed  by  Henry  IV.  in  1399,  and  Bukton  was  still  constable  of  Eye  in 
September,  1401  (ibid.,  1399-1401,  pp.  16,  540).  In  July,  1402,  and  Sep 
tember,  1403,  he  was  given  a  Commission  of  Array  for  the  county  of  Suffolk, 
but  his  militia  glories  seem  not  to  have  prevented  his  being  sued  for  debt  in 
1402  or  1403  (ibid.,  1401-5,  pp.  114,  149,  288,  291).  Chaucer  himself  was 
still  called  "king's  esquire  "  in  1394,  and  may  have  frequently  seen  Bukton 
before  the  latter  retired  into  the  provinces.  But  for  our  most  valuable  intelli 
gence  we  must  go  to  the  Calendar  of  Papal  Registers  ;  Papal  Letters,  vol.  v.  (pp. 
57,  63).  March  14,  1397,  indults  were  granted  in  Rome  to  "Robert  Bukton, 
donsel,  noblemau,  and  Anne  his  wife,  noble  woman,  of  the  diocese  of  Norwich," 
in  which  Eye  was,  and  is,  situated,  to  have  a  portable  altar  and  to  have  mass 
celebrated  before  daybreak.  Obviously  the  young  man  cannot  have  been 
married  later  than  January,  1397;  nor  earlier  than  October,  1396,  since  the 
Envoy  was  written  not  earlier  than  that  time,  and  shows  that  he  was  still 
unmarried  then.  It  is  curious  to  see  that,  like  Lord  January,  he  lost  no  time 
in  flouting  Justinus-Chaucer's  advice.  In  spite  of  the  intense  piety  of  the 
Lady  Anne  Bukton,  we  can  imagine  what  kind  of  a  welcome  Chaucer  would 
receive  in  the  castle  of  Eye. 

1  I.  85,  559. 

2  Ed.  by  J. -A.  Buchon  (Chroniques  franpaises,  vol.  xxxvii.  ;  Paris,  1825), 
vol.  xiii.,  376-7  (book  iv.,  ch.  50);  tr.  by  Thomas  Johnes  (J.  Winchester, 
N.  Y.,  n.d.),  p.  585  (bk.  iv.,  ch.  79). 


212  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES.  [cH.  V,  §  8 

But  there  are  also  some  grounds,  rather  ticklish  it  is  true,  for 
dating  it  before  the  G-prologue  of  the  Legend  of  Good  Women, 
which  we  have  found  good  reason  for  putting  about  the  latter  part 
of  1394.  We  have  seen  how  extensively  Qhaucer  uses  Jerome 
against  Jovinian  in  the  Wife  of  Bath's  Prologue,  far  more  than  in 
any  other  of  his  works ;  it  is  not  unnatural  to  infer  that  his  great 
familiarity  with  it  dates  from  his  writing  of  that  poem.  ISTow  the 
manner  in  which  he  refers  to  and  uses  it  in  the  Legend,  G-prol., 
281-304,  implies  great  familiarity;  the  other  five  authors  men 
tioned  in  the  G-prologue  are  dismissed  with  a  word,  and  Jerome's 
work  is  hardly  one  to  be  referred  to  for  laudation  of  women 
except  by  one  who  knew  it  well,  a  fact  which  is  illustrated  by 
the  surprise  of  some  of  Chaucer's  critics  at  its  occurrence  here.1 
We  have  already  seen  that  there  is  no  evidence,  at  any  rate,  that  he 
even  knew  the  work  before  he  wrote  these  poems.2  In  the  absence 
of  contrary  evidence,  this  may  perhaps  justify  us  in  tentatively 
putting  the  Wife  of  Bath's  Prologue  not  later  than  1394. 

But  we  may  be  able  to  push  it  still  further  back,  for  I  think  the 
indications  are  that  it  was  written  before  Melibeus,  which  there  is 
some  slight  reason  for  dating  earlier  than  1394.3  At  first  sight  the 
arguments  seem  weak,  for  they  .are  mainly  exsilentio,  and  not  even, 
some  one  may  at  first  think,  dead  silence.  Between  the  Wife's 
Prologue  and  Melibeus  there  are  two,  and  only  two,  parallel  passages. 

1  Skeat,  Legend  of  Good  Women  (Oxford,  1889),  p.  141  (but  cf.,  of  course, 
his  larger  edition,  III.  302-3)  ;  Koch,  Chronology,  p.  83.     Koch  does  not  seem 
to  see  any  difference  between  writing  against  women  and  against  marriage. 
Neither  did  most  of  Chaucer's  contemporaries,  but  Chaucer  and  the  Fathers 
did.     It  is  worth  noticing,  however,  that  here  in  praising  women  Chaucer 
praises  virginity,  and  that  the  Legend  of  Good   Women  in  general  is  rather 
against  men  than  in  favour  of  women  ;  so  that  its  general  tendency  is  at  least 
as  much  against  love  and  marriage  as  in  favour  of  them.     If  the  comparison 
will  not  be  thought  impious,  Chaucer  here  is  not  free  from  the  fluctuating 
point  and  purpose  which  is   the  main   fault   of    Gower's    Confessio.     That 
characteristic  mediaeval  quality,  incongruity,  is  frequently  present  in  Chaucer, 
as  in  other  mediaeval  poets  ;  the  more,  many  times,  for  the  very  reason  of  his 
literary  greatness.     Often  enough,  too,  it  adds  more  to  his  interest  than  it 
detracts  from  his  perfection.     This  incongruity  is  sometimes  due  to  his  failure 
quite  to  unify  material  of  diverse  origins,  as  here  in  the  Legend  and  in  Dorigen's 
lament  in  the  Franklin's  Tale. 

2  See  pp.  100-1  above.     The  belief  that  he  knew  it  rather  early  depends  on 
the  belief  that  Prologue  G  is  the  earlier  ;  cf.  &  g. ,  Mead  in  Pull.  Mod.  Lanfj. 
Assoc.,  xvi.  401.     See  also  my  article  in  Modern  Philology,  iii.  368-70. 

3  Besides  its  omission  of  the  reference  to  young  kings,  we  may  perhaps  put 
Mel.  before  M.  L.  Proem  and  Tale,  these  about  the  same  time  as  Innocent, 
and  that  certainly  no  later  than  1394,  the  probable  date  of  L.  G.  W.,  G-Prol. 
Of  course  all  this  is  exceedingly  risky. 


CH.  V,  §  8]          THE    WIFE  OF   BATH'S   PROLOGUE   AND    TALE,  ETC.         213 

In  speaking  of  Christ's  precept  of   virginity,  the  Wife  of  Bath 
says  : 

"  He  spak  to  hem  that  wolde  live  parfitly ; 
And  lordings,  by  your  leve,  that  am  nat  I "  (111-12). 

Prudence,  in  her  self-defence,  is  speaking  of  "  jangleresses  " ;  "of 
vvhiche  wommen,  men  seyn  that  'three  thinges  dryven  a  man  out  of 
his  hous ;  that  is  to  seyn,  smoke,  dropping  of  reyn,  and  wikked 
wyves ' ;  and  of  swiche  wommen  seith  Salomon,  that  '  it  were 
bettre  dwelle  in  desert,  than  with  a  womman  that  is  riotous.'  And 
sir,  by  your  leve,  that  am  nat  I;  for  ye  han  ful  ofte  assayed 
my  grete  silence  and  my  gret  pacience  "  (2276-9).  The  French 
original  runs  :  "  femmes  jengleresses  desquelles  on  dit :  trois  choses 
sont  qui  gettent  homme  hors  de  sa  maison,  c'est  assavoir  la  fumee, 
la  goutiere  et  la  femme  mauvaise.  Et  de  telles  femmes  parle 
Salomon  quant  il  dit :  il  vauldroit  mieulx  habiter  en  terre  deserte 
que  avec  femme  rioteuse  et  courrouceuse.  Or  scez-tu  bien  que  tu  ne 
m'as  pas  trouvee  telle,  ains  as  souvent  esprouve  ma  grant  silence  et 
ma  grant  souffrance.  .  .  .'J1  Now  the  indications  are  that  the  phrase 
which  Chaucer  repeats  was  used  for  the  first  time  in  the  Wife's 
Prologue.2  One  noticeable 'point  is  that  in  MeMbeus  it  is  as  nearly 
metrical  as  it  can  be,  and  we  have  seen  that  twice  elsewhere  in 
Melibeus  he  quotes  lines  from  his  own  poetry.3  Secondly,  Chaucer 
quite  wantonly  departs  from  the  French  in  using  it,  a  thing  which 
I  have  said  he  rarely  does;  the  timid  and  literal  character  of  his 
translation,  of  which  any  one  may  soon  convince  himself  by  a 
comparison,  is  well  illustrated  by  the  remainder  of  the  passages 
quoted  above.  His  independence  at  this  point  is  natural  enough. 
The  phrase  which  he  repeats  is  a  neat,  forcible,  and  striking  one  ; 
that  it  stuck  for  some  time  in  his  memory  is  shown  by  its  recurrence 
in  the  Merchant's  Tale,*  and  I  have  known  modern  students  of 
Chaucer  in  whose  memory  it  has  also  strangely  stuck. 

The  other  parallel  passage  in  the  Wife  of  Bath's  Prologue  corre- 

1  LeMfriagier  de  Paris,  p.  195  ;  the  italics,  of  course,  are  mine. 

2  It  is  true  that  it  is  not  quite  as  strictly  grammatical  there  as  in  Mel.,  but 
it  is  perfectly  good  Chaucerian  style. 

3  See  pp.  193-4  above. 

4  Where  it  is  less  apt : 

"  Or  for  that  ech  of  hem  sholde  helpen  other 
In  meschief,  as  a  suster  shal  the  brother  ; 
And  live  in  chastitee  ful  holily. 
But  sires,  by  your  leve,  that  am  nat  I "  (1453-6). 


214  THE   CANTERBURY   TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  8 

spends,  curiously  enough,  to  the  first  part  of  the  passage  just  quoted 
from  Melibeus:1 

"  Thow  seyst  that  dropping  houses,  and  eek  smoke, 
And  chyding  wyves,  maken  men  to  flee 
Out  of  hir  owene  hous  ;  a  !  benedicite  !  "  (278-80). 

This  cannot  be  held  to  prove  a  connection  simply  because  it  is 
an  extremely  common  saying.  Without  the  "  smoke  "  it  occurs  in 
Parson's  Tale,  631,  and  many  other  places;  smoke  and  all,  it 
can  be  found  at  least  in  four  Latin  works  (including  Innocent's 
De  Contemptu),2  two  French  and  one  non-Chaucerian  English 
work.3  Of  these  the  most  likely  source  is  Gower's  Mirour  de 
rOmme,  4117-22  : 

"  Trois  choses  sont,  ce  dist  ly  sage, 
Que  1'omme  boutent  du  cotage 
Par  fine  force  et  par  destresce  : 
Ce  sont  fum£e  et  goute  eauage, 
Mais  plus  encore  fait  le  rage 
Du  male  femme  tenceresse." 

We  know  that  Chaucer  often  quotes  the  Mirour  in  the  General 
Prologue  and  elsewhere.4  Therefore  of  the  two  passages  common 
to  the  Melibeus  and  the  Wife  of  Battis  Prologue,  one  proves 
nothing,  and  the  other  rather  indicates  that  the  latter  is  the 
earlier. 

This  view  is  confirmed  by  the  complete  absence  of  other  parallels. 
The  argument  from  silence  is  strong  because  of  the  frequency  with 
which  Chaucer  borrows  elsewhere  from  Melibeus  and  the  works  of 
Albertano,5  especially  in  the  Merchant's  Tale,  which  we  have  seen 
was  written  about  the  same  time  as  the  Wife's  Prologue  ;  and  by 
the  obviousness  of  quoting  such  a  work  as  Melibeus  in  such  a  work 
as  the  Wife  of  Battis  Prologue.  Would  not  Jankin  have  been 

1  Possibly  his  recollection  of  the  first  passage  in  W.  B.  P.  suggested  the 
use  of  the  second. 

2  Which  is  suggested  as  Chaucer's  source  by  Koeppel,  in  Herrig's  Archiv, 
Ixxxiv.  414  ;  but  cf.  Ixxxvi.  31. 

3  Piers  Plowman,  B,  xvii.  315-22  ;  C,  xx.  297-304.     See  Skeat,  V.  207  ; 
cf.  also  How  the  Wise  Man  Taught  his  Son,  Ritson's  Anc.  Pop.  Poetry  (1833), 
p.  94.     It  is  composed  out  of  several  passages  in  the  Book  of  Proverbs.     There 
is  obviously  not  the  same  reason  for  expecting  the  influence  of  Chaucer's  poetic 
on  his  prose  version  (if  the  second  is  the  later)  which  we  found  in  the  case  of  the 
Man  of  Law's  Tale  and  Melibeus ;  the  passage  is  much  shorter,  and  in  the 
poem  he  is  not  quoting  the  original  sources. 

4  See  Fliigel  in  Anglia,  xxiv.  437-508.      W.  B.  P.  727-32  is  doubtless  from 
St.  Jerome  ;  but  cf.  also  Mirour,  4165-88. 

5  Koeppel  in  Herrig's  Archiv,  Ixxxvi.  29-46, 


CH.  V,  §  8]          THE    WIFE    OF   BATIKS   PROLOGUE    AND    TALE,  ETC.         215 

likely  in  such  a  passage  as  775-87  to  have  shown  the  influence  of 
such  a  passage  as  Melibeus  2245-301,  which  is  several  times 
quoted  in  the  Merchant's  Tale;  and  the  Wife  herself  to  have 
borrowed  at  times  from  Prudence?  The  two  works  must  have 
been  written  near  together ;  I  find  it  hard  to  believe  that  the  more 
original  fails  to  show  the  influence  of  the  translation  for  any  other 
reason  than  that  it  was  written  earlier.  Therefore  it  may  have 
come  even  some  years  before  1396,  when  Bukton  had  a  copy. 

As  to  the  date  of  the  Merchant's  Tale,  the  only  evidence  aside 
from  its  connection  with  the  Wife's  Prologue  is  the  certainty  that 
it  was  written  after  Melibeus,1  probably  just  after.  Of  the  many 
parallel  passages  in  the  two  works,  all  in  the  Merchant's  Tale  are 
poetic  paraphrases  of  Chaucer's  own  prose,  as  Koeppel's  article 
makes  perfectly  clear.2  If  he  had  borrowed  in  the  ppem  directly 
and  only  from  the  original,  his  language  in  the  prose  translation 
would  hardly  agree  with  the  poetic  passages  so  closely,  yet  always 
without  rhythm,  except  where  it  is  inevitable;  in  contrast  with 
the  cases  already  shown  where  he  embalmed  a  bit  of  rhythm  in 
the  very  cloudy  amber  of  his  prose.  But  more  than  this,  though 
curiously  enough  it  seems  never  to  have  been  observed  before, 
Melibeus  has  even  affected  the  plot  and  characterization  of  the 
Merchant's  Tale.  It  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  the  whole  first 
part  of  the  Merchant's  Tale  is  Chaucer's  own  addition  to  the  story ; 
there  is  not  the  least  suggestion  of  it  in  any  of  the  analogues  which 
have  been  found,  and  Professor  Varnhagen,  who  has  investigated 
the  history  of  the  story,  attributes  to  Chaucer  all  but  the  pear-tree 
episode,  the  bare  kernel.3  Now  when  January  has  resolved  to 
marry  he  sends  for  his  friends  (by  no  means  an  obvious  thing  to 
do),  states  the  case,  and  calls  for  their  advice,  but  in  such  a  way 
that  they  know  what  advice  he  desires  (1397-468).  Just  so, 
after  his  family  misfortunes,  Melibeus  called  a  conclave  (2194  ff.), 
"shewed  hem  his  cas"  and  then  "axed  he  hir  conseil  upon  this 

1  If  any  evidence  were  needed  that  Merch.  T.  was  written  after  1378,  we 
should  have  some  little    in  the  fact  that  in  lines   1245-6   Chaucer  tells 
us  that  January  was  a  worthy  knight  born  in  Pavia  and  living  in  Lombardy, 
local  details  which  were  probably  not  in  his  source.     His  first  Italian  journey 
had  not  led  him  at  all  into  those  parts ;  but  his  second  took  him  to  Milan, 
the  capital  of  Lombardy,  and  only  twenty  miles  from  Pavia. 

2  Herrig's  Archiv,  Ixxxvi.  34-43.     It  is  plain,  from  his  article,  that  the 
connection  of  Mel.  with  Merch.   T.  is  far  closer  than  with  any  other  of 
Chaucer's  works. 

?  Anglia,  vii.,  Anzeiger,  p.  163. 


216  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  8 

matere,"  though  "by  the  manere  of  his  speche"  he  showed  what 
counsel  he  wished  (2198-200).  In  the  Merchant's  Tale,  after  other 
speeches,  the  flattering  Placebo1  advises  Lord  January  to  follow  his 
own  wishes,  discoursing  on  the  wisdom  of  "working  by  counsel" 
and,  very  undramatically,  011  the  folly  of  giving  lords  unwelcome 
advice.  Complaisant  advice  similar  to  Placebo's  is  given,  also  after 
others  have  spoken,  by  Melibeus'  flatterers  (2208-10).  Placebo's 
two  specific  points  just  mentioned  are  based  on  Melibeus  2193  and 
2340-3,  and  even  the  idea  of  his  character  is  drawn  from  the 
latter  passage.  The  indebtedness  in  its  plot  of  the  Merchant's  Tale 
to  Melibeus  is  unmistakable.2  Therefore,  considering  the  strong 
influence  of  Melibeus  in  general  and  in  detail,  the  conclusion  is 
irresistible  that  when  he  wrote  the  Merchant's  Tale  he  had  made 
his  translation,  and  probably  just  made  it.  Koeppel  finds  no 
evidence,  it  is  true,  that  Chaucer  used  Albertano's  Latin  at  all  when 
he  wrote  Melibeus ;  while  one  or  two  passages  in  the  Merchant's 
Tale  which  are  taken  from  the  Latin,  and  are  in  neither  the 
French  nor  Melibeus,  show  that  by  that  time  he  had  procured  a 
copy.3  This  does  not  necessarily  imply  that  any  considerable 
time  elapsed  between  Melibeus  and  the  Merchant's  Tale.4  He 
may  have  owned  the  Latin  all  the  time ;  when  he  had  elected  to 
translate  the  shorter  French  version,  there  was  no  reason  why  he 
should  consult  the  original ;  or  it  may  have  been  the  admiration 
which  led  him  to  translate  the  French  version  that  finally  brought 

1  The  name   seems  drawn   from  Pars.    T.    617,    but    Skeat  gives   other 
parallels.     Of  course  it  is  a  joke  on  the  vespers  for  the  dead,  and  may  be 
proverbial.    Placebo's  discourse  recalls  the  similarly  undramatic  self-revelations 
of  Chaucer's  Pardoner  and  of  the  friar  in  the  Sumncr's  Tale. 

2  And  is  so  extensive  that  the  latter  deserves  to  be  called  one  of  its  sources. 
Another  bit  of  the  plot  apparently  borrowed  from  an  earlier  work  of  Chaucer's 
own  is  where  lovelorn  Damian  takes  to  his  bed  and  May  pays  him  a  visit 
(1932-5).     This  strikingly  recalls  the  scene  where  Criseyde  makes  a  similar 
visit  to  Troilus  (III.  64-75),  which  is  Chaucer's  own  addition  to  the  Filostrnto. 
There  is  a  suggestion  of  irony  in  making  January  play  the  part  of  Pandarus. 

l!  See  Herrig's  Areh/r,  Ixxxvi.  29,  38-9.  I  have  shown  conclusive  evidence 
that  when  he  wrote  Prol.  to  Mel.  he  knew  the  Latin  of  Albertano,  and 
expected  that  his  readers  also  would  know  it.  In  lines  2131-42  he  alludes 
to  the  fact  that  two  versions  were  extant  already,  and  in  2143-54  apologizes 
for  diverging  from  his  original — Albertano,  since  he  does  not  diverge  from 
the  French  version.  In  the  same  volume  with  the  Liber  Consilii  was  very 
likely  Albertano's  Liber  de  Amore  Dei,  which  he  also  quotes  in  Merch.  T.  and 
probably  only  there  (Koeppel,  1.  c.,  pp.  40-4  ;  the  parallel  passages  in  T.  C. 
are  from  Solomon  and  Seneca) ;  and  possibly  also  Albertano's  De  Arte 
Loquendi,  used  in  Mane.  T.  This  may  have  a  bearing  on  the  date  of  that 
poem. 

4  Skeat,  for  no  very  visible  or  good  reason,  puts  several  years  between 
(V.  353). 


CH.  V,  §  8]         THE    WIFE   OF   BATIl's   PROLOGUE   AND    TALE,  ETC.        217 

the  original  to  hand,  too  late  to  be  used  in  the  translation.  There 
fore  there  is  nothing  to  contradict  the  obvious  conclusion  that  the 
Merchant's  Tale  was  written  shortly  after  Melibeus,  very  probably 
not  later  than  1394. 

The  theory  which  I  have  advanced  of  course  implies  that  the 
Wife  of  Bath's  Tale  was  written  for  the  "Wife  of  Bath  and  after 
her  prologue.  This  nobody  doubts,  and  the  evidence  for  it  is 
quite  conclusive.  Lines  925-50  and  1258-64  are  full  of  parallels 
to  the  Wife  of  Bath's  Prologue.  Certain  passages  (it  is  true)  in  the 
Shipman's  Tale,  1194-209  and  1363-7,  which  also  parallel  the 
Wife  of  Bath's  Prologue}  yet  wore  written  earlier,  are  a  natural 
enough  comment  on  the  ensuing  tale  and  development  from  the 
characterization  of  the  Wife  of  Bath  in  the  General  Prologue. 
But  these  lines  in  the  Wife's  Tale  are  in  quite  a  different  category  ; 
they  contain  very  numerous  detailed  resemblances  which  show 
that  her  character  was  already  fully  developed.2  As  to  her  Tale 
and  the  Merchant's,  there  is  no  internal  evidence  to  show  which 
came  first.  The  Wife's  Tale  contains,  it  is  true,  no  parallels  to 
Melibeus  ;  but  the  abstract  topics  on  which,  there  is  discourse  in  it, 
gentility  and  the  advantages  of  poverty  and  of  old  and  homely 
wives,  are  not  treated  in  the  prose  work.  Therefore,  especially  if 
it  was  written  some  time  after  Melibeus,  we  should  expect  no 
influence.  There  is  nothing,  accordingly,  against  the  requirement 
of  my  theory  that  the  Wife  of  Bath's  Tale  shall  have  been  written 
after  not  only  her  prologue  but  also  the  Merchant's  Tale.3 

1  Of.  p.  205  above. 

2  We  should  observe  particularly  928,  929-34,  937  (cf.  W.  B.  P.,  662-3), 
950  ( W.  B.  P.,  531-42),  1027,  and  all  of  1258-64. 

3  It  may  be  asked  whether  there  is  any  visible  relation  between  Gower  'stale 
of  Florent  (C.  A.,  I.   1407-861  ;  published  in  1390)  and  W.  B.    Tale,  such 
as  we  have  found  between  the  two  poets'  stories  of  Constance,  which  might 
aid  us  to  date  the  Wife  of  Bath's  Tale.     It  is  quite  clear  that  neither  of  the 
poems  was  the  source  of  the  other  (see  Dr.  G.  H.  Maynardier,  The  Wife  of 
Bath's    Tale,    London,    1901  ;   pp.    128-46).     The    only  verbal  ^resemblance 
which  I  find  describes  the  knight's  distress  over  his  ill-looking  bride  : 

"  Dot  as  an  oule  fleth  be  nyhte 
Out  of  alle  othre  briddes  syhte, 
Riht  so  this  knyht  on  daies  brode 
In  clos  him  hield,  and  schop  his  rode 
On  nyhtes  time"  (G.  A.,  1727-31)  ; 

"For  prively  he  wedded  hir  on  a  morwe, 
And  al  day  after  hidde  him  as  an  oule"  (W.  B.  T.,  1080-1). 

It  seems  to  be  the  general  view  that  Chaucer's  poem  followed  Gower's,  which 
is  confirmed  by  the  probabilities  as  to  its  date.  But  here  there  is  no  reliable 


218  THE    CANTERBURY   TALES.  [CH.  V,  §  8 

The  question  may  now  arise  as  to  the  temporal  relation  of  these 
poems  to  some  of  the  minor  parts  of  the  Canterbury  Tales.  We 
can  squeeze  out  a  few  more  inferences,  though  they  do  not  all 
depend  on  the  foregoing.  The  Prioress'  Prologue  was  not  written 
till  after  the  Shiftman's  and  Merchant's  Tales  and  the  Wife  of  Bath's 
Prologue,  and  after  the  change  of  plan  in  regard  to  them,  since  it 
refers  to  the  tale  of  the  Shipman  as  already  assigned  to  him.  Lines 
829-56  of  the  Wife's  Prologue,  containing  the  beginning  of  the 
Friar-Sumner  squabble,  I  have  shown  would  be  later  than  the 
change.  So,  no  doubt,  with  the  present  Shipman' s  Prologue  ; 1  so 
also  with  the  Merchant's  Prologue  and  Epilogue.'2  The  same  is  pro 
bably  true  of  the  Monk's  Prologue,  since  it  seems  to  have  been 
written 'after  the  Merchant' s  Epilogue.  In  the  latter  the  Host  says 
(2427-30) : 

<:  I  have  a  wyf,  though  that  she  povre  be  ;3 
But  of  hir  tonge  a*  labbing  shrewe  is  she, 
And  yet  she  hath  an  heep  of  vyces  mo ; 
Ther-of  no  fors,  lat  alle  swiche  thinges  go." 

evidence.  W.  B.  T.  offers  another  parallel  to  Gower.  On  the  ubiquity  of 
the  friars,  cf.  W.  B.  T.,  865-81  with  Vox  Clamantis,  IV.,  cap.  x-xiii.  Note 
especially  867-8  (but  cf.  the  whole  contexts) : 

"That  serchen  every  lond  and  every  streem, 
As  thikke  as  motes  in  the  sonne-beem  " ; 

"  ludeos  spersos  fratrum  dispersio  signat. 


Nescio  si  supera  sibi  clauserit  ostia  celum  ; 

Dat  mare,  dant  ampnes,  totaque  terra  viam"  (1113, 1123-4). 

The  Protestant  Pilgrim's  Talc  (ed.  Furnivall,  in  Appendix  to  Thynne's 
Animadversions,  Ch.  Soc.,  1875  ;  see  11.  88-100,  pp.  79-80)  makes  interesting 
quotations  from  this  part  of  the  tale.  A  partial  analogue  to  W.  B.  T.  is 
suggested  by  a  passage  in  Miss  Edgeworth's  Modern  Griselda,  chap.  ix. : 
"...  the  Princess  Rhezzia,  in  the  Persian  Tales;  who  was  blooming  and 
charming,  except  when  her  husband  entered  the  room  .  .  .  doomed  to  this 
fate  by  a  vile  enchanter." 

1  Hence  it  was  probably  later  yet  (see  p.  188)  that  M.  L.  T.  was  assigned 
to  the  Man  of  Law.    Modern  editions  obscure  the  puzzling  problems  connected 
with  Sh.  P.,  which  I  hope  to  treat  more  fully  at  another  time.     The  indica 
tions  are,   I  think,  that  Chaucer  meant  at  first  to  reassign  Sh.   T.  to  the 
Simmer,    to  wliom  it  would   have  been  far  more  appropriate  than  to  the 
Shipman,  and  that  he  wrote  the  present  Sh.  Prol.  for  the  former.     The  read 
ing  "Sompnour"  in  line  1179  found  in  five   MSS.  would  therefore  be  the 
original   one.      The  unification  of   Group  B   made   by  Bradshaw,    modern 
editions  and  MS.  Arch.  Seld.,  I  believe  was  intended  by  Chaucer,  but  never 
actually  accomplished.     To  treat  this  subject  further  would  anticipate  a  future 
book  on  the  evolution  of  the  C.  T. 

2  The  latter  still  maintains  the  allusions  to  W.  B.  Prol. ,  a  work  which  is 
striking  enough,  even  without  the  intended  tiff,  to  be  in  mind  during  the  later 
part  of  the  C.  T. 

:}  Did  Touchstone  remember  this  line  (As  You  Like  It,  V,  iv,  55)  ? 


CH.  V,  §  8]          THE    WIFE    OF   BATH'S   PEOLOGUE   AND    TALE,  ETC.         219 

This  conspicuously  ignores  the  far  more  detailed  and  vivacious 
account  in  the  Montis  Prologue  of  the  manners  and  customs  of 
Mistress  Bailey.  Surely,  therefore,  it  must  have  been  written 
before  it.1 


This  concludes  the  present  discussion  of  the  chronology  and 
development  of  the  Canterbury  Tales.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to 
say  that  the  evidence  presented  has  differed  in  value,  and  the  con 
clusions  accordingly  in  certainty.  They  are  presented  for  what 
they  are  worth,  because  the  publication  of  plausible  conjecture, 
founded  on  investigation  and  recognized  as  conjecture,  leads  in  the 
long  run  to  the  most  fruitful  and  reliable  results.  Up  to  the 
present  time  surprisingly  little  investigation  has  been  done  on  the 
Canterbury  Tales,  considering  that  they  have  been  recognized  for 
five  centuries  as  the  greatest  work  of  our  first  great  poet.  The 
reason,  no  doubt,  is  the  complexity  of  the  problem,  and  the  in 
accessibility  of  much  of  the  evidence.  Chaucer  students  await  with 
deep  interest  the  publication  by  Mr.  George  Stevenson  of  a  full 
description  and  analysis  of  all  the  sixty-odd  MSS.  of  the  Canter 
bury  Tales.  We  may  then  be  in  a  position  to  show  that  the  very 
puzzles  which  make  the  study  of  the  work  perplexing,  such  as  the 
different  readings  in  the  Shopman's  Prologue,  1179,  and  the  presence 
in  some  MSS.  of  the  "Host-stanza"  after  the  Clerk's  Envoy,  help  to 
provide  the  solution  of  the  whole  problem.  In  putting  the  poem 
together,  Chaucer  did  not  cover  his  own  tracks.  By  painstaking 
examination  of  all  the  evidence,  and  by  harmony  among  reasonable 
guesses  as  to  separate  problems,  we  may  hope  to  arrive  at  something 
like  certainty  as  to  the  way  in  which  the  Canterbury  Tales  came 
into  being  and  into  their  present  form.  But  the  time  has  not  quite 
come  yet  for  putting  results  together. 

1  Several  other  parts  of  0.  T.  are  more  or  less  closely  connected  with  Sli.  T., 
W.  B.  P.,  or  Merch.  T.,  either  by  parallel  passages,  by  showing  the  influence 
of  the  same  reading  or  by  some  striking  correspondence  in  subject ;  these  are 
Pard.  Prol.  and  T.,  Mill.  Prol.  and  T.,  Reeve's  Prol.  and  T.,  FranU.  T., 
Swnin.  T.,  Mane.  T.,  Pars.  T.  It  must  be  said,  however,  that  the  evidences 
of  connection  are  much  slighter  than  in  the  cases  which  I  have  discussed.  I 
advance  nothing  as  to  the  dates  of  these  poems ;  I  simply  raise  the  query 
whether  the  connection  means  anything.  Mr.  George  Shipley  (M.  L.  N.,  x. 
275-6)  shows  some  reason  to  believe  that  Frarikl.  T.  directly  alludes  to 
W.  B.  T.,  and  perhaps  even  Cl.  T.  ;  cf.  F  745-7,  751-2,  764-6,  792-3  with 
(«.  0.)  D  1038-41. 


APPENDICES. 

APPENDIX  A. 

The  Date  of  Gower's  Mirour  de  TOmme. 

THE  date  of  Gower's  Mirour  de  TOmme  is  of  no  little  importance 
in  Chaucer  investigation,  for  it  will  aid  in  ascertaining  the  dates 
of  more  than  one  of  Chaucer's  poems,  especially  the  Troilus. 
Professor  Macaulay  determines  it  to  be  about  1 376-9  ,*  but 
the  matter  is  so  important  that  it  is  worth  while  to  discuss  and 
strengthen  his  evidence. 

Macaulay  points  out  that  lines  22801-24  refer  to  the  conditions 
at  the  end  of  Edward  III.'s  reign,  especially  to  the  domination  of 
Alice  Perrers : 

"  Voir  dist  qui  dist  femme  est  puissant, 
Et  ce  voit  om  du  meintenant.  .  .  . 
Qe  femme  in  terre  soit  regnant 
Et  Rois  soubgit  pour  luy  servir. 
Rois  est  des  femmes  trop  decu,  .  .  . 
Dont  laist  honour  pour  foldelit." 

This  implies  a  date  some  time  later  than  August,  1369,  when  Queen 
Philippa  died,  after  which  the  liaison  became  more  open  than 
before ;  2  and  very  likely  a  good  deal  later,  since  things  gradually 
became  worse.  In  1376,  Parliament  had  to  legislate  against  the 
Perrers  woman.3  But  the  passage  may  quite  well  have  been  written 
after  Edward's  death,  June,  1377.  It  may  reasonably  be  doubted 
whether  Gower  would  have  cared  to  express  himself  so  fully  and 
frankly  on  the  king's  shortcomings,  before  the  king's  death,  in  a 
poem  meant  for  publication  ;  his  other  two  great  works  were  clearly 
meant  to  reach  the  royal  eye.  The  passage  simply  expressed 
generally  contemporary  conditions,  and  may  well  denote  a  foregone 
conclusion.  . 

1  Complete  Works,  I.  xlii.-xliii. 

2  Diet,  of  Nat.  Biogr.,  xvii.  66. 

3  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  ii.  431  ;  Th.  Walsingham,  i,  320. 

220 


APP.  A]  THE    DATE   OF   GOWEIl's    MIROUR   DE   L*OMME.  221 

Lines  22225-359  were  almost  certainly  written  by  or  after  1371. 
At  the  very  beginning  of  Gower's  discourse  addressed  to  kings,  he 
devotes  himself  to  a  king's  duties  to  the  Church  and  to  the  prelates 
and  dwells  with  especial  disapproval  on  excessive  taxation  or  pillag 
ing  of  the  Church  (22242-5,  22276-8,  22297-359  ;  here  comes  a 
long  lacuna).  Now  in  1371  the  action  of  Parliament  was  more 
strongly  anti-clerical  than  for  many  years  before  ;  very  heavy  taxes 
were  laid  on  the  Church,  there  was  even  talk  of  confiscation,  and 
several  bishops  were  ousted  from  civil  offices,  a  movement  which, 
according  to  Stubbs,  King  Edward  may  even  have  instigated.1 
There  can  be  little  doubt  that  this  passage  was  written  not  earlier 
than  1371,  and  since  Gower  was  a  strong  and  conservative  supporter 
of  the  Church,  his  feelings  may  well  have  been  keen  for  some  little 
time  after  that  date. 

In  several  passages  it  is  difficult  not  to  see  the  influence  of 
Gower's  friend  Chaucer's  journey  to  Italy,  which  gives  1373  as  the 
earliest  date  possible.  All  are  agreed  that  Gower  knew  no  Italian. 
Yet  lines  3831-4  run  : 

"  Sicomme  ly  sages  la  repute, 
Envie  est  celle  peccatrice, 
Qes  nobles  courtz  de  son  office 
Demoert  et  est  commune  pute," 

which  cannot  be  independent  of  Dante's  words  on  envy  : 

"  La  meretrice,  che  mai  dalF  ospizio 
Di  Cesare  non  torse  gli  occhi  putti, 
Morte  comune,  e  delle  corti  vizio  " 

(7n/.,  XIII.2  64-6). 

The  phrase  ly  sages  Gower  frequently  uses  to  introduce  quotations 
from  various  sources.  We  can  hardly  avoid  believing  that  Chaucer 
read  or  repeated  the  passage  to  Gower.3  Secondly,  the  reference  of 

1  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  ii.  420-4;  Green,  Short  History  (N.Y.,  1890),  234 
(chap,  v.,  sec.  2). 

1  Ufizio,  curiously,  occurs  in  line  62,  and  peccatrici  (the  only  time  in  the 
D.  C.)  in  XIV.  80.  Chaucer  of  course  quoted  the  same  passage,  less  exactly, 
in  L.  G.  W.,  Prol.  F,  358-60.  Gower  quotes  it  again,  far  less  exactly  and 
many  years  later,  in  Conf.  Am.,  II.  3095  ff.  By  this  time  he  had  forgotten  its 
origin,  and  attributed  it  to  "  Senec,"  but  Haase's  exhaustive  index  shows,  as 
indeed  we  should  expect,  that  it  is  not  in  Seneca's  writings  ;  nor  do  Fraticelli, 
Scartazzini,  Moore,  or  Paget  Toynbee  attribute  Dante's  words  to  Seneca  or  to 
any  one  else. 

3  This  is  the  only  clear  case  of  Dante's  influence  on  Gower.  But  M.  0. 
11953-6  sounds  Dantesque.  The  anecdote  of  Dante  in  C.  A.,  VII.  2329* ff., 
seems  more  likely,  to  have  come  through  Chaucer  than  through  a  work  of 
Petrarch's  or  otherwise. 


222  THE    DATE   OF   GOWEK/S   MIROUR  DE    L*OMME.  [APP.  A 

"la  geste  deTroylus  et  de  la  belle  Creseide"  (5253-5)  seems  to  me 
quite  certainly  to  Chaucer's  poem,  and  therefore  postdates  1373, 
presumably  by  some  years.1 

For  lines  2142-8  the  date  of  1377  or  earlier  is  quite  certain, 
as  Macaulay  shows ; 2  for  as  an  example  of  the  sin  of  Inobedience 
Gower  speaks  of  the  French  as  in  rebellion 

' '  A  celluy  qui  de  sa  nescance 
Le  droit  depar  sa  mere  prent." 

This  can  only  refer  to  Edward  III.  and  the  Hundred  Years'  War, 
and  must  have  been  written  before  June,  1377,  when  he  died. 
But  it  may  well  have  been  written  only  shortly  before ;  from  1360,  just 
after  the  Treaty  of  Bretigny,  to  1369  "  peace  was  fairly  preserved," 
but  during  1374  Aquitaine  revolted  from  England  and  joined  France, 
and  during  the  ensuing  years  hostile  relations  were  only  partly 
interrupted.3 

For  lines  18817-40  the  date  1378  or  later  is  equally  certain, 
as  Macaulay  also  shows ;  Gower,  in  addressing  the  Court  of  Rome, 
speaks  of  the  monstrous  birth  in  the  Church  of  one  body  with  two 
heads,  obviously  referring  to  the  Great  Schism,  which  began  in 
September,  1378.4 

This  date  may  seem  inconsistent  with  a  somewhat  later  passage. 
In  discoursing  on  emperors,  and  addressing  Rome  and  speaking  of 
her  spiritual  head,  Gower  says  : 

1  Two  doubtful  points  may  be  added.     In  23233-68  Gower  discourses  on 
the  excesses  and  outrages  of  tyrants  of  Lombardy,  in  a  rather  hearsay  style 
("ascuns  diont,"  "  om  solait  dire  ").     One  thinks  immediately  of  L.  G.  W.t 
Prol.  F,  374,  and  wonders  if  Chaucer  was  not  the  reporter,  in  1373  or  perhaps 
after  his  mission  to  the  Milanese  Visconti  in  1378.    In  18697-732  the  Court  of 
Rome  is  reproached  for  neglecting  to  make  peace  between  England  and  France  ; 
the  reasons  for  its  neglect  are  said  to  be  lack  of  charity  and  of  impartiality, 
and  the  fact  that  it  has  wars  of  its  own  in  Romagna.     The  two  latter  reasons 
would  apply  to  pretty  much  any  of  the  Avignonese  popes  ;  but  Milman  tells  us 
(Lat.    Christianity,  N.Y.,   1862,    vii.   201,   218,    219-220)  that  about  1352, 
1370,  and  1370-77  Innocent  VI.,  Urban  V.,  and  Gregory  XI.  (especially  the 
last)  did  try  more  or  less  sincerely  to  make  peace.    But  the  humiliating  failure 
of  the  negotiations  of  1374-5  might  well  be  attributed  to  the  Roman  Court  by 
an  Englishman  irritated  by  the  diplomatic  victories  of  the  Papacy  over  England 
in  "the  negotiations  which  were  earned  on  at  Bruges  fora  concordat  with  the 
pope,"  under  the  shadow  of  which,  according  to  Stubbs  (Const.  Hist. ,  ii.  427),  the 
peace-conference  met.     There  were  also  unsuccessful  negotiations  for  peace  in 
1376  and  1377,  but  the  war  of  course  lasted  on  for  years. 

2  I.  xlii. 

:5  Thomas  Walsingham,  i.  317-18  ;  Green,  Short  History,  pp.  233-4. 

4  Macaulay  (p.  xlii.)  suggests  that  this  passage  may  be  a  later  addition,  not 
seeing  that  the  passage  about  Alice  Ferrers  may  well  have  been  written  after 
Edward's  death. 


APP.  A]  THE    DATE    OF    GOWER*S    MIROUR    DE   HoMME.  22$ 

"  S'il  avient  qu'il  t'est  prochein, 
Lors  tolt  de  toy  le  flour  et  grein, 
Et  laist  la  paile  deinz  ta  bonde, 
Et  puis  se  tient  de  toy  forein  "  (22195-8). 

This  seems  to  be  an  equally  certain  allusion  to  an  earlier  state  of 
things,  the  Babylonish  Captivity,  1305-1377,  but  stands  more  than 
3000  lines  later  than  the  reference  to  the  Schism.  Yet  it  is  not  at 
all  necessary  to  believe  that  it  was  written  before  the  discourse  on 
the  Roman  Court.  Urban  V.,  elected  in  1362,  had  been  zealous  to 
restore  the  Papal  See  to  Rome,  but  did  not  do  so  till  1367,  and 
returned  to  Avignon  in  1370.  Gregory  XL,  elected  in  1370, 
permanently  restored  the  Papacy  to  Rome  in  January,  1377,  but  at 
his  death  in  1378  he  also  was  meditating  a  return  to  Avignon.1 
For  some  years  the  permanency  of  the  Papacy  in  Rome  must  have 
seemed  highly  doubtful,  and  such  words  as  Gower's  quite  natural- 
This  passage  is  the  only  suggestion  that  the  Papacy  had  ever  been 
anywhere  but  in  Rome,  though  over  600  lines  are  devoted  to  the 
Curia,  and  though  the  abuses  of  the  Avignonese  court  were  particu 
larly  obvious  to  the  English.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  implied  or  stated 
again  and  again  that  the  seat  of  the  Papacy  is  Rome,  and  Avignon 
is  never  mentioned  in  the  poem.  A  bull  conies  "  du  Romanie" 
(18995) ;  of  the  upright  clerk  in  contrast  with  the  simoniacal 
"  provisour  "  it  is  said : 

"  N'a  Rome  s'en  vait  pas  serchant"  (16109)  ;  2 

cf.  3330,  7360,  18450,  18502, 18421-19056  passim,  20349,21445. 
In  many  of  these  cases  the  mention  of  Avignon  would  have  barbed 
the  shaft.  And  in  many  cases  Gower's  omission  to  mention  the 
domination  of  the  Papacy  by  the  Crown  of  France  would  be  strange 
indeed  if  it  was'  so  dominated.  So  there  is  nothing  against  the 
opinion  that  most  of  the  Mir  our  was  written  after  the  termination 
of  the  Babylonish  Captivity. 

At  first  sight,  the  mention  of  "  Innocent "  3  in  18783  suggests  the 
pontificate  of  Innocent  VI.  (1352-62).    Yet  this  passage  stands  but 

1  Milman's  Latin  Christianity,  vii.  209-26. 

2  Cf.  Vox  Clam.,  III.  1551,  1575  ;  he  calls  the  provisors  "Romipeta?." 

3  "  L'estat  du  pape  en  sa  nature 
Ne  porra  faire  forsfaiture 
En  tant  comme  pape,  ainz  Innocent  .  .  . 
Gil  puet  raesfaire  d'aventure." 


224  THE   DATE    OP   GOWER's    MIROUR  DE   L'OMME.  [A PP.  A 

thirty-four  lines  before  the  mention  of  the  Great  Schism.  Macaulay 
is  doubtless  correct  in  thinking  the  name  "  only  a  representative 
one,"  and  this  allusion  may  as  well  denote  a  foregone  conclusion 
as  that  to  Edward  and  Alice  Ferrers,  both  alike  being  used  to 
illustrate  general  truths.  Gower  may  have  meant  some  irony  in  the 
use  of  the  name  Innocent,  he  may  have  thought  it  less  disrespectful 
to  use  the  name  of  a  dead  rather  than  of  a  living  pontiff,  and 
was  doubtless  glad  of  the  rhyme  in  a  stanza  which  requires  six 
of  each. 

So  early  a  date  as  1362  is  contradicted,  and  the  other  evidence 
confirmed,  by  the  fact  that,  as  no  one  who  has  toiled  through  the 
Mirour  needs  to  be  told,  it  cannot  be  the  work  of  a  very  young  man. 
This  is  also  clear  from  specific  internal  evidence;1  formerly,  he 
says  (27337  ff.),  he  abandoned  himself  to  "  foldelit,"  and  wrote 
"  fols  ditz  d'amours,"  but  now  all  is  changed.  He  has  come  late  to 
repentance  (27300).  But  he  lived  till  1408,  and  about  1390  pro 
duced  the  Confessio  Amantis,  the  liveliest  of  his  works.  Macaulay 
conjectures  that  he  was  born  not  far  from  1332,2  which  fits  all  the 
conditions.  So  for  the  Mirour  some  time  about  the  seventies  would 
seem  to  be  indicated. 

Finally,  it  seems  fairly  certain  that  the  poem  was  finished  before 
or  by  1381.  As  Macaulay  points  out,  the  Peasant  Revolt  of  1381 
produced  a  profound  effect  on  Gower's  mind ;  in  the  Vox  Clamantis 
it  forms  the  subject  of  the  whole  first  book,  and  the  rest  of  the  work 
is  devoted  to  ascertaining  the  causes  of  it.  That  Gower  dimly  fore 
saw  such  troubles  is  shown  by  a  number  of  remarkable  passages  in 
the  Mirour,  which  Macaulay  points  out  (p.  xlii.)  ;  but  of  the  events 
of  1381  there  is  not  a  word.  The  arcjUmentum  ex  silentio  seems  to 
me  convincing.3 

Everything  indicates  that  the  composition  of  the  Mirour  must 
have  fallen  wholly  or  almost  wholly  in  the  seventies.  The  effect  of 
all  this  may  be  more  convincing  if  put  in  tabular  form  : 

1  Cf.  Macaulay,  I.  Ixii. 

2  I.    Ixii.     Cf.   Macaulay's    note    in    the    Athenccum,    no.    3856,     p.    385 
(September  21,  1901). 

3  It  is  worthy  of  remark  also  that  there  is  not  a  word  of  the  Bishop  of 
Norwich's  Crusade  against  the  Flemings,  1383,  which  is  dwelt  on  in  the  Vox, 
III.,  cap.  vi. ;  yet  a  mention  of  it  would  have  given  peculiar  point  to  some  of 
the  remarks  in  the  Mirour  on  the  bishops  and  the  regular  clergy.    Another 


eminence. 


APP.   A]  THE    DATE    OF    GOWER'S    MIROUR   DE   L'oMME.  225 

Rebellious  French,  1.  2142 1377  or  earlier. 

Dante  quoted,  3831 1373  or  later. 

Troilus  mentioned,  5254 after  1373. 

*  (Pope's  neglect  to  make  peace,  18700    ...  1374-5  or  later.) 

Great  Schism,  18817   1378  or  later. 

(Bab.  Capt.  alluded  to,  22195    1377  or  thereabouts.) 

Anti-clerical  movements,  22297    1371  or  later. 

Alice  Ferrers,  22807    1369  or  later. 

Gower  not  a  young  man hardly  before  1365. 

Bab.  Capt.  almost  ignored 1377  or  later. 

Peasant  Revolt  ignored 1381  or  earlier. 

If  my  arguments  are  accepted,  it  will  be  seen  how  perfectly 
satisfactory  and  consistent  this  all  is.  Everything  supports  the  two 
crucial  arguments  adduced  by  Macaulay — that  2142  ff.  was  written 
in  1377  or  earlier,  and  18817  ff.  in  1378  or  later;  and  the  practical 
ignoring  of  the  Babylonish  Captivity  indicates  that  the  middle  of 
the  poem  must  have  been  reached  not  earlier  than  1377.  There 
is  not  the  smallest  reason  for  believing  that  the  poem  was  not 
written  in  about  the  order  in  which  we  have  it,  or  for  postulating 
interpolations.  My  conclusion  reaffirms  Macaulay's,  except  that, 
considering  the  great  length  of  the  poem,  I  should  extend  the 
limits  to  about  1375-81. 

The  passage  (5245-56)  in  which  the  Troilus  is  mentioned  must 
have  been  written,  in  all  probability,  by  1377,  since  18817-30000 
was  written  between  1378  and  1381.  If  we  accept  the  reference  as 
being  to  Chaucer's  poem,  we  may,  without  reasoning  in  a  circle, 
declare  that  it  cannot  have  been  made  much  earlier.  So  it  seems 
to  me  that  for  Gower's  reference  to  the  Troilus  the  date  about  1377 
may  be  accepted  with  considerable  confidence.1 

1  A  recent  and  rather  extensive  thesis  on  French  and  Latin  sources  of 
Gower's  treatment  of  the  vices  and  virtues  (unimportant  for  my  purposes) 
is  by  Miss  R.  E.  Fowler,  submitted  for  the  doctorate  of  the  University  of 
Paris  (Macon,  1905).  In  a  MS.  in  the  British  Museum  (Addit.  15606, 
ff.  &•-%&)  is  an  allegory  on  the  Seven  Deadly  Sins  and  the  contrary  virtues, 
which  may  be  worth  mentioning  as  a  parallel  to  Gower's.  The  allegory  is 
military,  based  on  the  siege  of  Jerusalem  by  Nabugodonosor. 


DEV.  CH. 


226  THE  KNIGHT'S  TALE  AND  THE  TESEIDE.  [APP.  B 


APPENDIX   B. 

The  Knight's  Tale  and  the  Teseide  :  A  Table  of  Parallels. 

ON  this  table  is  based  much  of  the  reasoning  in  chapter  III., 
section  1,  which  will  explain  its  peculiar  form;  but  it  is  believed 
that  the  contents  of  it  may  prove  otherwise  useful  to  Chaucer 
students.  Each  column  corresponds  to  one  line  of  the  ottava  rima. 
The  number  .before  the  sign  of  equality  always  indicates  a  line  of 
the  Knight's  Tale,  according  to  the  Chaucer  Society's  numbering ; 
and  the  numbers  after  represent  the  book  and  stanza  of  the 
Teseide,  the  column  indicating  the  line  of  the  stanza.  Parentheses 
show  that  one  English  line  corresponds  to  two  or  more  Italian 
lines,  or  a  considerable  part  of  them,  but  it  has  not  always  seemed 
necessary  to  take  account  of  a  very  trivial  part  of  a  line.  Therefore 
a  line-number  in  parentheses  always  appears  in  at  least  two 
columns.  I  have  meant  to  include  every  Italian  line  to  which  an 
English  line  is  clearly  due,  even  though  there  may  be  no  verbal 
agreement.  Italics  indicate  that  the  translation  is  very  close. 
Where  two  lines  in  the  English  answer  to  one  in  the  Italian, 
occasionally  one  is  a  close  translation  and  the  other  not ;  this  is 
indicated  thus— 2385-b. 

In  preparing  this  table  I  have  been  very  materially  aided  by 
Mr.  Henry  Ward's  marginal  references  to  the  Italian  in  the  Chaucer 
Society's  Six-Text  edition.  It  is  proper  to  say  that  these  notes 
are  somewhat  deficient  in  both  extent  and  accuracy  j  but,  so  far 
from  wishing  to  reflect  on  the  labours  of  their  author,  I  must  add 
that  my  own  may  not  be  faultless,  though  they  have  been  prepared 
with  the  utmost  care,  and  thoroughly  verified.  Very  nice  cases 
constantly  arise,  and  not  only  would  the  tables  of  no  two  men 
agree  perfectly,  but  any  man  would  possibly  revise  his  own  every 
time  he  reviewed  them.  What  errors  there  may  be,  however, 
cannot  be  serious,  for  it  will  be  seen  that  the  question  at  issue  is 
always  one  of  proportion. 


APP.  B 


THE  KNIQHT'S  TALE  AND  THE  TRSEIDK. 


227 


II   H 


.  _J  I  t>.  I  J>-  CO  OS  O  I  CO  t^ 
OS  OS  O  O  O  UT5  O  O  <M  CO  CO  10  t^  \O 


II  11.  II   II  'II   ||   ||   ||   ||   ||   ||   ||   ||   || 

OCNCOC^ 

10  o>  S    i 


1O  CO  CO  Oi  OO  tlQ  t^  05          t^(M          CO  <S  CO  Ui          rH 
(N  <N  00  00  OS  rH  t-  <N  (M         CO  CO  00  00  rH  Oi  OS  Oi         CO 


rH  r^  *H  <^>  <M 


GO  »O  t      O  ^  OO 


II    II    II    II 


O  CO  CO  rH  OO  OS          CO  <M 

•^TjTj>Tiox>o'  tCccT 

II  II  II  II  II  II  II 


CO  00  XO  CO  t^  O  OO 
<N  <N  OO  00  CO  rH  ^- 

oT.c^^c^tN'co'co" 

II  II  II  II  II  II  II 

CO  <M  rn  CO  rH  CO  (N 


00  O  OS  US  (N  rH  O  CO 
CO  •*  O  00  00  rH  rH  OO 


H      H     H      II      II     II      II      II  II      || 

*^Oi2coc°'-|i:c>o 

O  O  "f  o  CO  T*  I  rH 
•^^loiOCOCOt^ 
^^S^^*-** 


CO 


CO  1^*  rH  O  XO  O  rH  |>» 
(NCNCOOCOrHrH-* 

of(N>C<fcNr<N'cO>COXCo" 

II  II  II  II  II  II  II  II 
rHO.COI>.lOOOrt< 
rH  rH  I  CO  O 
OS  OS  IO  OS  O 


^  ^  —  sOO 

OOt^O 

i-H  rH  OS  OS  rH 


II  II  II  II  II 

TtlOOSrHOO 
O 


OO  (M        "o 
COCOOS,^ 


CO  t^  OS  t^ 
OO<MOO 
TJHIOOOOO 


CO  CO  IO  <N 
00  O  O  Tt< 
OS  O  rH  rH 
rH  CM  (M  Ol 


os      ^^     ^-^     ^^     ^       -a 

OrHC<JCO'*tOrHTj<(Ml^.   SJ 
rH  CO  CO  CO  CO  CO  t^  rH  (M  rH   S 


I  OS  (M  Tt<  CO  OO 
CM  OS  O  rH  rH  rH 
CO  rH  <M  CM  (N  <M 

-~~-    OS       ^-^ 


228 


THE    KNIGHTS    TALE   AND    THE    TESEIDE. 


[APP.  B 


»o  o  o 

t—  OS  VO 
rH  T—  i  C^ 
<N  (M  C 


(M  <£>  ^-CO  to 
OS  Q)  ^  CO  VJ. 

(N  <5-J  Q\>  (M  Oj 


^^T-*  co  os  GO 
t^  oo  oo  oo  oo  ^> 


(M  t^  i-H  00  10  »H 
OS  i-i  (N  1  VO  ?^ 
<M  CO  CO  t^  CO  GO 
•*  (N  $4 


to  GO  ot  >^  co 
<^»  ^  so  to  os 


UT5  O  ocorH 


co  03  10  r-i  oo 


(M  !>•  lfl>  «O  to 
OS  i-H  (N  CO  M< 
(M  CO  CO  CO  CO 


OO  OS 

CO  CO  V^>  -*"  O  K3 

<M  (N  »H  (N  -^  (N 


CO  CO  CO  J>.  b>  t-  t>-  1>- 

II  II  II  II  II  II  II  II 


i—  (rHi—  1  C<I  QXf  (N 


t^. 
CM 


GO  O  CM 
C><>  CO  CO 
^i  <N  (N 


®4  (N 


CO  OS  6«5  rH  OS  -<tf 

I       |    >«H  CO     1    rH 

U^  CO  ^h-^  CO  1O 

GO  OS  <^>  tN  CO  (M 

GO  co       '--•*  "—  ' 

©4  <N  (M 


CO  CO  CO  t—  t—  1^  !>. 

II  II  II  II  II  II  II 


(N  O  IO  v^-cO  O 
O  rH  C<J  ^  kO  CO 
CO  CO  CO  <3O  CO  CO 
(N 


OS  rH  OS  -<*< 
OS  CO  O  rH 
CO  Ttf  O  »O 
(N  <N<M  (N 


rH  O  OS  CO  "*  CO 
OS  O  O  rH  (M  »0 
(N  CO  CO  CO  CO  CO 
CN  (N  (N  C<1  (M  C 


iO  CO  OOO  ? 

(M  (N  (N  -T 


OO  OS 

CO  CO  ^  "* 

CN  <N  (N  (N  ^4 


O  CO  ift  ?^.  OS  i-H 


CO  (M  OO  CO  id  OS 
O  (M  (N  vj.io 
(M  (N  (N  SXJ  <M 
(N  <N  (M 


t~-  OO  OS  Q>  "-H  ^4  rH 
CO  CO  CO  ^^  -t-  ^^  1C 
<M  (N  (N  ©4  "^  $4  O 


APP.  B] 


THE  KNIGHT'S  TALE  AND  THE  TESEIDE. 


229 


00 

r- 
« 

r* 

H 

i 

•^ 

IT 

a 

i>I 

H 

,*- 
« 

T— 

1> 

1 

X, 

T— 

IT 

II      II 


Oi  CO  <N  rH 
CO  00  T-I  CO 
OOOOOiO 


OO 
?M 


o 

rH  rH    ^  00 

-<N~ 
t^TtsTC.   rH 


"30  CO  •*  (M  (M 


I  00  Co  Co 
O5  C<1  <?.^  <^> 
00 

_la 


tv.  t>.  t-»  OO  O5  »—  1 

II      II      II      II      II      II 

r-i  _,  o  co  *-•  o 
- 


"~^ 


lO  O  O   O  i£^  r-<  QQ 
rH  CO  CO  ^h  (^  <M  M 


1C  <O  'O  rH  t^  r—  1 


O^r-ti-^t^OqOocOkO 
^^^^^^-^CNO 

J^tv.?^COOOCiO5O5rHrH 


rH  *N  rH  >«i  rH  i— I 


r- IY-HI— (<3\j>»|i— IrHrHrHr 
i— (  >^  rH  ^  ^  rH  rH  rH  rH  rH 

||      ||      II      II      II      II      II      H      H      H 


230 


THE  KNIGHT'S  TALE  AND  THE  TESEIDE. 


[APP.  B 


(H 


Tt<   »O   OcTl-H    CO 

00 

of  CN'  of  CN"  of 

T—  f—  1  i—  i   r—  rH 

K 

g 

II      II      II      II      II          ; 

h? 

O  CO  Oi   -rti  O 
OO  CO  CN  CO  TH 
Oi  Oi  0  0  0 
CN  CN  CO^CO  CO 

<^                        io"?^  oc?i-i 

M 

^                               r—t  "f^i  pH  i—  1 
II                                  II     II     II     II 

3 

?^                    >o  ^~o  co 

eo                    oo  0-5  co  co 

Oi                             Oi  <^>  O  O 
<*>                            CN  ®7,  CO  CO 

x  —  ***—*.^~^CQ 

uz  t^<x>  ao 

1 

rH   i—  I  t—  1  i—  1 
II      II      II      II 

CO  CM  CO  O 
Oi  0  0  ^H 
CN  CO  CO  CO 

s 

IS 

CO                               X-VX-V 

O  6»5  -^  l>.  OO  CS 

2 

»o 

iH^efeCeT^ 

"tf  CO  Oi  CO  OS  Oi. 
iO  ^O  t>-  CM  03  V!^ 
Oi  Oi  O5  O  O  <2> 
<N  ^  (M  CO  CO  ^ 


-    - 

CO  v*.^  OQ  1^1 


O  Oi  2N  CO  O  r-i  co 


CO  t^  CO  r-l 

IO  CO      I    OO  ^  CN   ^-^tl 

(MCNJ^CN^CO^CO 

oi  ^   .  ,^-r, 

<N 


. 
IE; 


03     Tfl 
• 


o  t- 

fl 


APP.  c]  CHAUCER'S  TREATMENT  OF  THE  TESEIDE.  231 


APPENDIX  C. 

CJiaucer's  Treatment  of  the  Teseide. 

EEADING  the  Knight's  Tale  with  the  Teseide,  one  is  frequently 
struck  with  the  preternatural  condensation  of  the  Tale,  and  wonders 
how  Chaucer  could  have  left  out  so  much,  sometimes  such  fine 
touches  and  passages,  of  Boccaccio's  admirable  poem.  In  the 
Teseide  the  portraiture  of  Emily  is  far  more  vivid  and  complete 
than  Chaucer's.  In  book  III.,  for  example,  she  hears  Palamon's 
"Ome!",  becomes  perfectly  aware  that  the  prisoners  are  in  the 
habit  of  watching  her  from  the  window,  and  shows  a  little  harm 
less  coquetry;  when  Arcite  has  returned  to  Athens  (book  IV.) 
Emily  recognizes  him  at  a  feast,  wonders  about  him  but  discreetly 
holds  her  peace.  Emily  is  the  first  to  see  the  cousins  fighting  in 
the  wood,  stands  stordita,  then  cries  to  Theseus  (V.  81).  In  her 
attitude  towards  her  suitors  there  are  many  nice  touches ;  in  spite 
of  her  desire  to  remain  single,  she  feels  a  certain  attraction  towards 
them  (VII.  85),  and  her  soliloquy  during  the  tournament  is  extremely 
good — she  is  not  worthy,  she  says,  of  the  courage  which  is  being  dis 
played  (VIII.  97).  Elsewhere,  too,  Chaucer  omits  good  passages. 
He  manages  less  plausibly  Palamon's  escape  and  meeting  with 
Arcite,  in  books  IV.  and  V.  of  the  Teseide,  where  the  detail  "  by 
helping  of  a  frend "  is  fully  accounted  for ;  he  says  not  a  word 
of  Palamon's  devoted  squire  Panfilo,  and  wholly  omits  Arcite's 
triumphal  procession  after  the  tournament,  which  Boccaccio 
strikingly  portrays,  and  which  we  should  suppose  would  at  least  be 
mentioned — Arcite  has  to  be  carried,  and  for  his  pleasure  the 
vanquished  knights  follow  voluntarily  (IX.  30-4). 

One  characteristic  change,  however,  Chaucer  does  make,  in  the 
treatment  of  the  characters  of  Palamon  and  Arcite.  In  the  Teseide, 
though  Arcite  cuts  slightly  the  better  figure,1  they  are  hardly 
distinguished,  and  both  are  valorous  and  honourable  young  knights 

1  When  he  is  released  from  prison  (III.  74-6),  Arcite  takes  a  tender 
farewell  of  Palamon  ;  and  is  very  pathetic  and  regretful  (V.  45  ff.)  when 
Palamon  demands  a  combat. 


232  CHAUCER'S  TREATMENT  OF  THE  TESEIDE.  [APP.  c 

full  of  all  worthy  emotions.1  But  Chaucer  draws  such  a  sharp 
distinction  between  them  that  it  can  hardly  have  been  unconscious. 
Arcite  is  very  highly  praised  by  the  poet  and  by  his  own  associates 
for  his  physical  development  (1422-5)  and  for  his  character 
(1429-32).  He  is  an  agreeable  spectacle,  like  Chaucer's  own 
Squire,  in  his  cheeriness  and  youthfulness  over  his  ramble  on 
May-day  (1500  ff.),  and  in  his  falling  into  lover's  dumps  (1530). 
He  is  judicious  in  his  retorts  to  Palamon's  reproaches  (1162-86, 
1606) ;  honourable  and  generous  (1608-16),  modest  and  manly 
(2393-9) ;  and  shows  the  last  magnanimity  in  commending 
Palamon  to  Emily  (2783-97).  Palamon,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
more  jealous  and  less  affectionate  toward  his  cousin  (1281-1333) ; 
despairs  readily  when  discovered  by  Theseus  (17 1 5  ff. ) ;  is  ungenerous 
towards  Arcite  (1722-31,  1740  2);  has  no  desire  for  victory,  but 
only  cares  for  the  possession  of  Emily  (2234  ff.) ;  and  cares  no  more 
what  becomes  of  her  after  his  death  than  the  Pardoner  about  the 
souls  of  his  dupes  after  theirs.  With  this  passage  it  is  curious  to 
compare  the  Italian  lines  from  which  it  is  altered  : 

"  Thanne  rekke  I  noght,  whan  I  have  lost  my  lyf, 
Though  that  Arcita  winne  hir  to  his  wyf  "  (2257-8) ; 

"  Che  non  sarebbe  senza  lei  la  vita, 
Vedendola  non  mia,  ma  si  d' Arcita"  (VII.  49). 

Such  a  change  as  this  must  be  the  result  of  a  purpose.  Palamon's 
only  amiable  traits  are  his  courage  (1591-5),  and  his  grief  after 
Arcite's  death,  and  that  seems  to  be  only  conventional  (2882-4, 
3062). 

Yet  it  is  he  who  after  all  wins  Emily.  Here  is  an  example 
of  the  subtle  and  perhaps  only  half -deliberate  satire  which  runs 
through  the  Knight's  Tale.  Poetic  justice  itself  shows  in  a  rather 
ironical  light  where  Chaucer  reverses  Boccaccio's  order  and  gives 
Palamon  the  better  claim  to  Emily  by  letting  him  fall  in  love 
with  her  half-a-minute  before  Arcite.  A  tone  of  levity  and  even 
of  gentle  ridicule  rises  here  and  there  all  through  above  the  state 
and  pathos  of  the  poem,  and  contrasts  with  Boccaccio's  perfect 

1  Kissner,  in  his  excellent  dissertation,  Chaucer  in  seinen  Beziehungen  zur 
italienischen   Literatur   (p.    63),  says  that  Chaucer  misses  the  point  of  the 
Teseide,  which  is  the  conflict  between  friendship  and  love. 

2  In  the  Teseide  (V.  86)   it  is  Arcite  ("Penteo")  who  first  speaks  when 
Theseus  discovers  them  ;    he   does  not  accuse   his  cousin,  as  Palamon  does 
in   Kn.  T. 


A  PP.  c]  CHAUCER'S  TREATMENT  OF  THE  TESEIDE.  233 

gravity.  Satire  is  easier  to  suspect  than  to  prove,  especially  in  a 
poem  written  when  ideas  of  what  is  ludicrous  and  the  connotations 
of  words  were  so  different  from  what  they  are  now.  It  may  perhaps 
be  purely  modern  to  see  a  slight  lack  of  seriousness  in  the  account 
of  Palamon's  tears  wetting  the  fetters  on  his  great  shins,  and  of  the 
tower  resounding  "  of  his  yowling  and  clamour;"  and  in  the 
description,  condensed  yet  exaggerated,  of  the  sylvan  combat.  But 
levity  is  impossible  to  mistake  in  the  passage  about  Emily's  bathing 
(2282-S).1  In  what  Chaucer  says  of  the  experiences  of  Arcite's 
soul  there  is  certainly  a  lack  of  seriousness;  after  the  piercing 
pathos  of  Arcite's  death  there  came  a  reaction.  The  remarks  of  the 
old  Egeus,  who  Professor  Child  used  to  say  was  "  delicious,"  read 
like  a  satire  on  commonplace  consolation,  and  after  his  beautiful 
thought  that  just  as  nobody  dies  without  first  living,  so  nobody 
lives  without  dying,  Chaucer  adds  (it  would  seem  with  a  little 
irony)  "over  al  this  yet  seyde  he  muchel  more  to  this  effect." 
These  are  the  most  striking  passages,  but  they  are  not  the  only 
ones. 

The  light  and  satirical  tone  t»f  the  Knights  Tale  seems  to  me 
to  favour  the  view  that  it  was  written  near  the  time  of  the 
Canterbury  Tales ;  just  as  the  omission  of  so  many  of  Boccaccio's 
good  touches  suggests  that  he  greatly  condensed  from  the  first, 
and  that,  therefore,  the  Knight's  Tale,  as  we  have  it,  is  practically 
identical  with  the  Palamon  and  Ardte. 

1  Dryden  attributes  the  narrator's  hesitation  about  speaking  freely  to  the 
fact  that  the  rites  were  pagan  but  sacred.  This  is  only  one  of  many  cases 
where  Dryden  misses  Chaucer's  point,  and  tries  to  make  more  imposing  what 
Chaucer  meant  to  be  light.  Two  others  are  his  expansions  of  the  two  last 
passages  mentioned  in  the  above  paragraph.  See  Palamon  and  Arcite,  III. 
197-206,  844-53,  883-90. 


THE    END 


RICHARD  CLAY  &  SONS,  LIMITED, 

BREAD   STREET    HILL,    B.C.,    AND 
BDNGAY,   SUFFOLK. 


MAY  15  1953 


Chaucer  Society,   London 
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