1. If, as is probable, this Tale was translated from the French,
the original is not now extant. Tyrwhitt remarks that the scene
“is laid in Italy, but none of the names, except Damian and
Justin, seem to be Italian, but rather made at pleasure; so that I
doubt whether the story be really of Italian growth. The
adventure of the pear-tree I find in a small collection of Latin
fables, written by one Adoiphus, in elegiac verses of his fashion,
in the year 1315. . . . Whatever was the real origin of the Tale,
the machinery of the fairies, which Chaucer has used so happily,
was probably added by himself; and, indeed, I cannot help
thinking that his Pluto and Proserpina were the true progenitors
of Oberon and Titania; or rather, that they themselves have,
once at least, deigned to revisit our poetical system under the
latter names.”
2. Seculeres: of the laity; but perhaps, since the word is of two-
fold meaning, Chaucer intends a hit at the secular clergy, who,
unlike the regular orders, did not live separate from the world,
but shared in all its interests and pleasures — all the more easily
and freely, that they had not the civil restraint of marriage.
3. This and the next eight lines are taken from the “Liber
aureolus Theophrasti de nuptiis,” (“Theophrastus’s Golden
Book of Marriage”) quoted by Hieronymus, “Contra
Jovinianum,” (“Against Jovinian”) and thence again by John of
Salisbury.