CHAUCER'S WORKS
When Chaucer began to write, English literature was at a low ebb. The
Norman Conquest had practically killed the old alliterative poetry, and
the passion and mysticism of Old English epic and lament had given way to
the prim didacticism of interminable homilies in verse, or the jog-trot
respectability of rhymed chronicles. "For a long time before and after
1100," says Professor Ker, "there is a great scarcity of English
production," and the more ambitious attempts at verse which appeared in
the twelfth, thirteenth, and early fourteenth centuries, are entirely
lacking in the charm and dignity of pre-Conquest poetry. "The verse of
Layamon's _Brut_ is unsteady, never to be trusted, changing its pace
without warning in a most uncomfortable way." Nor as a rule is the matter
greatly superior to the manner. Such interest as is possessed by the
majority of the poems of this period (apart from the definitely
historical or philological point of view) arises largely from the
unconscious naïveté and simplicity of their authors. What hard heart could
refuse to be touched by the difficulties which that saintly hermit Richard
Rolle of Hampole had evidently experienced in distinguishing the sex of a
baby, or to share in the triumph with which he suggests a solution of the
difficulty:--
For unethes[29] is a child born fully
That it ne beginnes to yowle and cry;
And by that cry men may know then
Whether it be man or woman,
For when it is born it cries swa;[30]
If it be man it says "a, a."
That the first letter is of the nam(e)
Of our fore-father Adam.
And if the child a woman be,
When it is born it says "e, e,"
E is the first letter and the hede[31]
Of the name of Eve that began our dede.[32]
But delightful as this is, it is not poetry. In the middle of the
fourteenth century come the notable exceptions of _Sir Gawayne_, _The
Pearl_, and _Piers Plowman_, but by this time we are already drawing near
the era of Chaucer himself. His poor Parson dismisses the popular
alliterative verse of the day contemptuously enough:--
I can nat geste--rum, ram, ruf--by lettre--
but perhaps his strictures must not be taken too seriously, as he goes on
to say:--
Ne, God wot, rym holde I but litel bettre--
a sentiment with which we can hardly imagine Chaucer to have been in
sympathy. As a matter of fact, the lyric verse which lightens up the three
hundred years from the Conquest to Chaucer, has a daintiness and grace
which show that the poetic sense of England was by no means dead. _Sumer
is icumen in, Lenten is come with love to toune, Of one that is so fair
and bright_, and numberless other songs with which recent anthologies have
made everyone familiar are sufficient evidence of this. But these are
chance flowers blossoming haphazard beside the dusty highway.
One well-beaten track, it is true, does lead us through green glades and
meadows enamelled with eye-pleasing flowers to the mysterious depths of
enchanted forests haunted by fell enchanters and baleful dragons, but the
metrical romances are for the most part more or less direct translations
from French originals, and show little that is distinctively English,
beyond a tendency to cut the sentiment and come to the story.[33]
To French influence also we owe the development of satire. Old Norse and
Icelandic poetry abound in instances of dry humour, but the Anglo-Saxon
idea of repartee seems--if we may judge by pre-Conquest literature--to
have consisted chiefly in such grim jests as baking the head of your
enemy's son in a pie and inviting the father to dinner. Tenderness,
passion, imagination, are to be found in such poems as _Beowulf_, the
_Husband's Lament_, _Judith_, but it is not until French wit flashes
across English seriousness that we travel to the Land of Cokaygne, where
There are rivers great and fine
Of oil, of milk, honey, and wine.
Water serveth there for nothing
Save to look at, and for washing:
or listen to Hendyng's shrewd comments on human nature:--
Many a man saith, were he rich,
There shoulde none be me y-lyche[34]
To be good and free;
But when he hath ought bygeten[35]
All the freedom is forgeten
And laid under knee.
"He is free of his horse, that never had one,"
Quoth Hendyng.
The prose of the period is still less inspiring than the poetry. Not even
Chaucer discovered that prose-writing is an art. Works of any importance
were written in Latin, and such English prose as there was, consisted in
sermons, lives of the saints, etc. Now and then some author happens upon a
telling phrase or an apt illustration, but such instances are few and
obviously accidental. French influence was too strong for native
literature to put forth any very vigorous shoots of its own, and attempts
to force homilies, scientific treatises, and historical records into
French rhyme forms led to the production of such dreary works as the
_Cursor Mundi_ or Layamon's _Brut_.
By the fourteenth century, however, Normans and Saxons had long since
begun to amalgamate, and the Hundred Years' War did much to foster the
spirit of patriotism, and thus weld together the conflicting elements of
which the nation was composed. Different dialects prevailed in different
parts of the country, but they were at least varieties of English, and
English was the language of the people as a whole. French, whether of
Paris or of Stratford atte Bowe, was learned as a foreign tongue, although
as late as the end of the fourteenth century we still find Gower writing
indifferently in Latin, French, and English. It needed only that there
should arise an author great enough to establish some one dialect--or
combination of dialects--as standard English, and this creation of
language from dialect, we owe--among other things--in large measure to
Chaucer.
London was already the centre of English trade and industry, and the
circumstances of its position, which brought its inhabitants into contact
with both Northerners and Southerners, made its dialect particularly
suitable for the standard language of the country. Chaucer, as we have
seen, was London born and bred, and wrote naturally in the "cokeneye"
dialect, thus helping to establish it as the common speech. The modern
reader who turns over the pages of the _Ayenbite of Inwit_ or the _Ancren
Riwle_ finds himself confronted by what is practically a foreign tongue;
it is excusable if he finds even _Piers Plowman_ baffling in places, and
has difficulty in construing such passages as:--
He was pale as a pelet, in the palsye he semed,
And clothed in a caurimaury, I couthe it noughte discreue;
In kirtel and kourteley, and a knyf bi his syde;
Of a freres frokke were þe forsleues,[36]
but Chaucer's English, full as it may be of old and decayed terms,
presents few serious difficulties to any ordinary intelligence. We may
have to look up a word here and there in the glossary, or find ourselves
puzzled by some astronomical or chemical terms, but these are merely by
the way, and Chaucer fairly lays claim to the title of Father, not only of
English poetry, but of modern English.
In metre his work is no less remarkable. Professor Skeat, in his
introduction to the Oxford edition of Chaucer's works, gives a list of no
less than thirteen metres which he introduced into English poetry,
consisting for the most part of modifications and alterations of French
and Italian models.
The so-called Chaucerian stanza consists of seven lines of iambic verse
rhyming _ababbcc_--_e. g._:
Among thise children was a widwës sonë
A litel clergeon, seven yeer of agë,
That day by day to scolë was his wonë,
And eek also, wher-as he saugh th' imagë
Of Cristes moder, hadde [slur] he in usagë
As him was taught, to knele [slur] adoun and seyë
His _Avé Marie_, [slur] as he goth by the weyë.
It is a modification of a form used by Boccaccio, and was itself possibly
used by Spenser as the basis of his peculiar stanza. Chaucer employs it
very largely for narrative purposes, preventing it from becoming
monotonous by varying the place of the cæsura, and freely adding or
suppressing weak syllables when he so desires. Mr. A. W. Pollard, in his
article on Chaucer in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, declares that the
English poet borrowed both his stanza and his decasyllabic line from
Guillaume de Machault. The point of the whole matter, however, lies, not
in whether Chaucer was indebted to French or Italian sources for his
metres, but in the fact that he revealed the latent possibilities of
English as a poetic medium.
It is usual to divide Chaucer's life into three periods, and to speak of
him as successively under French, Italian, and English influence, and
although, as Professor Ker has pointed out, this method is open to some
objections, it brings out certain critical points of interest and is worth
adhering to for the sake of clearness.
French, as we have seen, had long been the dominant influence in English
literature. To French erotic poetry we owe the elaborate code of duties
owed by husband to wife and lover to mistress, and the whole artificial
convention which prescribed unhappy love affairs and revelled in the
minute analysis of over-strained emotion. "In poetry and life," says Ten
Brink, "fashion required an educated young man, especially one in the
service of the court, to fall in love at the earliest opportunity, and, if
possible, hopelessly." We have already seen Chaucer obeying this
convention in the _Book of the Duchesse_ and the _Parlement of Foules_,
and to these may be added the _Compleinte unto Pitè_, the _Compleint to
his Lady, Merciles Beaute_, _To Rosemounde_, _Against Women Unconstant_,
_An Amorous Compleint_, and Book I, stanza 3 of _Troilus and Criseyde_.
The poet protests so much that it is difficult to believe that he is
describing anything more than a lover bewailing his unhappy lot (in the
French fashion). Evidently French love-poetry appealed strongly to his
imagination, for one of his earliest works is a translation of the famous
_Romance of the Rose_. This long, allegorical poem (the original consists
of over 22,000 lines), falls into two parts. The first, by Guillaume de
Lorris, describes the search of the ideal lover for the mystic rose. The
hero is admitted by the portress Idleness into a fair garden of flowers,
where he finds Sir Mirth, Lady Courtesy, Dame Gladness, and many another
gallant and debonair knight and lady. In this garden is the enchanted Well
of Love, in whose depths the lover beholds the image of the Rose. He tries
to seize it, and finds that a hard struggle lies before him ere he can
hope to win the prize of love. Lorris left the poem unfinished, and the
second part was added by Jean le Meung, a cynic with no very high opinion
of women or of love. He introduces a sceptical friend who has a long
conversation with the lover in which he points out with extreme clearness
the drawbacks of marriage and the frailties of women.
The English version of the poem consists of three fragments, A, B, and C
(it is only 7,696 lines in all), and scholars are divided in opinion as to
how much of the translation is actually by Chaucer himself. Professor
Saintsbury, in the _Cambridge History of Literature_ considers that
Chaucer is probably the author of A, possibly the author of B, and
probably not the author of C. He must, however, have been known as the
translator of the later part, for in the _Prologue to the Legend of Good
Women_ (written about 1385), the god of love scolds the poet severely on
the ground,--
Thou hast translated the Romauns of the Rose
That is an hereyse ageyns my lawe.
Another early work is the A.B.C., a hymn in honour of the Virgin, modelled
upon a similar poem by Guillaume de Deguileville. Deguileville was well
known as a devotional writer at the time, and according to Speght
Chaucer's paraphrase was written "at the request of Blanch Duchesse of
Lancaster, as a praier for her priuat vse, being a woman in her religion
very deuout." There is, however, no evidence of this, and Ten Brink
believes that the A.B.C. dates from a later period when the poet was
passing through a phase of deep religious feeling. Whatever the facts
about this particular poem may be, it is interesting to notice that even
in these early days Chaucer combined some of the qualities of a satirist
with those of an idealist.
His first great original work was produced in 1369, when John of Gaunt's
beautiful and charming young wife died. The _Book of the Duchesse_ makes
no pretence to originality of treatment. The poet, after a conventional
lament over the conventional hard-heartedness of his mistress, falls into
a conventional slumber in the course of which he has a conventional dream
that he is following a conventional hunt in a conventional forest. Here he
meets a handsome young man
Of the age of four and twenty yeer
* * * * *
And he was clothed al in blakke.
The young man is complaining to himself most piteously:--
Hit was gret wonder that nature
Might suffre(n) any creature
To have swich sorwe and be not deed.
The poet is touched by his sorrow, and since they have evidently lost the
hunt, he begs the mourner to tell him of "his sorwes smerte." This opens
the way for a long, rambling lament, full of allusions to classical
mythology. So involved is it, that the poet finds some difficulty in
grasping the point, and cuts into a description of the lady's charms with
a puzzled,--
Sir ... wher is she now?
The brief answer--
I have lost more than thou wenest
* * * *
She is deed--
strikes a note of tragedy which is beyond the scope of the youthful poet
as yet, and the elegy ends abruptly with
Is that your los? by god hit is routhe.[37]
The scheme of the poem is simple, the idea is borrowed from French
laments, and whole passages are translated from de Machault's _Le Dit de
la Fontaine Amoureuse_ and _Remède de la Fortune_, but through all the
stiffness and conventionality, all the obvious immaturity, there flash
unmistakable signs of vigorous and original genius. Every poet of the day
finds himself wandering in a forest, but Chaucer alone meets
A whelp that fauned me as I stood,
That hadde y-followed, and coude no good,
Hit com and creep to me as lowe,
Right as hit hadde me y-knowe,
Hild doun his heed and joyned his eres
And leyde al smothe doun his heres;
or notices with tender amusement the
many squirelles, that sete
Ful hye upon the trees, and ete,
And in hir maner made festes.
The praises of many fair ladies were sung by troubadour and minstrel, but
it would be hard to find another heroine possessed of the gaiety and
vigour and charm of Blanche:--
I saw hir daunce so comlily
Carole and singe so swetely,
Laughe and pleye so womanly,
And loke so debonairly,
So goodly speke and so frendly,
That certes I trow that evermore
Nas seyn so blisful a tresore
* * * *
Therewith hir liste so wel to live,
That dulnesse was of hir a-drad.
Already Chaucer shows that truth to life, that impatience of artificiality
which are to become two of his most striking characteristics.
A number of experiments in verse follow. Chaucer had a habit of
rough-casting a poem, then leaving it for some time, and eventually using
it in a more or less modified form in some later work. The story of _Ceys
and Alcioun_, which forms part of the introduction to the _Book of the
Duchesse_, originally appears to have been written as a separate poem, and
between 1369 and 1379 we find no fewer than seven works, in prose and
poetry, which were afterwards embodied in the _Canterbury Tales_: the _Lyf
of St. Cecyle_ (afterwards used for the _Second Nonnes Tale_); parts of
the _Monkes Tale_; the greater part of the _Clerkes Tale_; _Palamon and
Arcite_ (which forms the basis of the _Knightes Tale_); the _Tale of
Melibeus_; the _Persones Tale_; and the _Man of Lawe's Tale_. In addition
to these come the _Compleint to his Lady_; _An Amorous Compleint_;
_Womanly Noblesse_; _Compleint unto Pitè_; _Anelida and Arcite_
(containing ten stanzas from Palamon); _Of the Wretched Engendring of
Mankind_ (a prose translation of Innocent III's _De Miseria Humanæ
Conditionis_, of which the title alone remains, though fragments of it are
used in the _Man of Lawe's Tale_); a translation of Boëthius's
_Consolations of Philosophy_; the _Complaint of Mars_; _Troilus and
Criseyde_; _Wordes to Adam Scriveyn_; _The Former Age_; _Fortune_. Apart
from _Troilus and Criseyde_ and the poems afterwards used in the
_Canterbury Tales_, none of these works are of any great importance in
themselves, but in them we see a steady development in technical skill.
The verse of the _Book of the Duchesse_ is easy and flowing but not
distinguished. The _Compleint unto Pitè_ shows a freedom and boldness in
the use of the French seven-lined stanza which marks a new departure in
English versification. Chaucer tries his hand at roundels and balades, at
narrative poetry and love laments, and the result is that he attains a
suppleness and melody unknown to his predecessors and unfortunately
ignored by his immediate successors. The music of his verse is not the
least of his contributions to a literature, whose exponents could placidly
remark
And trouthe of metre I sette also a-syde;
For of that art I hadde as tho no guyde
Me to reduce when I went a-wronge:
I toke none hede nouther of shorte nor longe.
Lydgate did not begin to write until after Chaucer's death, but the lines
quoted above from the _Troy Book_ exactly express the point of view of
the majority of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century poets.
In 1372, as we have seen, Chaucer went to Italy, and the influence of
Italian poetry upon him can hardly be exaggerated. Professor Ten Brink
believes that the influence of Dante was largely responsible for a sudden
quickening and deepening of religious feeling in Chaucer, and he
attributes the A.B.C., the _Lyf of St. Cecyle_, and the translation of the
_De Miseria Humanæ Conditionis_ to this period. Whether he is right or
wrong in this respect (and Professor Skeat dates both the A.B.C. and the
_Lyf of St. Cecyle_ before the Italian journey) there can be no question
as to Chaucer's profound admiration for the author of the _Divina
Commedia_. The _Inuocacio ad Mariam_ which prefaces the _Second Nonnes
Tale_ is drawn from the concluding canto of the _Paradiso_, the most
striking of all the Monk's tales
Of him that stood in greet prosperitee
And is y-fallen out of heigh degree
Into miserie, and endeth wrecchedly,
is that of Count Hugo of Pisa, which is drawn direct from Canto XXXIII of
the _Inferno_, and it is impossible not to feel that the intense
reverence for things holy which underlay all Chaucer's shrewdness and
humour, may have been due--at least in part--to the influence of one of
the greatest of all religious poets. Of Petrarch he speaks with admiration
in the preface to the tale which he borrows from him, but except for a
translation of the eighty-eighth sonnet which is inserted in Book I of
_Troilus and Criseyde_, under the heading _Cantus Troili_, there is little
evidence of any direct influence. From Boccaccio he borrowed freely, with
a royal bettering in the borrowing. _Troilus and Criseyde_ is taken bodily
from the _Filostrato_, though with numerous additions, omissions,
alterations, and adaptations: the _Knightes Tale_ is condensed from the
twelve books of the _Teseide_: the idea of the _Canterbury Tales_ is taken
from that of the _Decamerone_, though with the very significant difference
that whereas Boccaccio's story-tellers are all drawn from one class and
are shut off from intercourse with the outer world, Chaucer's range from
knight to miller, from aristocratic prioress to bourgeois wife of Bath,
and the fact of their being on a pilgrimage affords opportunity for
incident on the way and for the introduction of fresh characters, thus
giving scope for far greater variety and keeping far more closely in touch
with actual life.
Between 1377 and 1382 he translated Boëthius's _De Consolatione
Philosophiæ_, a work which evidently produced a deep impression upon him.
In 1382 Chaucer produced another topical poem. So far he had addressed
himself to John of Gaunt--for whom not only the _Book of the Duchesse_,
but the scandalous _Compleint of Mars_ is said to have been written; now
he addresses King Richard, and after the fashion of the day clothes in
allegorical compliment the story of his wooing of Anne of Bohemia, who had
twice before been engaged to other suitors. The wedding festivities lasted
over February 14, when St. Valentine marries every year,
The lyric lark, and the grave whispering dove,
The sparrow that neglects his life for love,
The household bird with the red stomacher;
and the opportunity was too good a one to be lost. Chaucer saluted his
king and queen in the _Parlement of Foules_, which though partially based
on the fabliau of _Hucline and Eglantine_ and containing passages from
Dante and Boccaccio, is in all essentials a thoroughly original work. The
poet, as usual, falls asleep and has a dream. He is taken by Scipio
Africanus (he had just been reading the _Somnium Scipionis_), to the gate
of a park which he is told none but the servants of Love may enter.
Although he himself is but dull and has lost the taste of love he is
permitted to see what passes in order that he may describe it, and is led
into a beautiful garden in which many fair ladies, such as Beautee and
Jolyte, are disporting themselves under the eye of Cupid. A number of
women are dancing round a temple of brass, before whose door
Dame Pees sat with a curteyn in hir hond.
A long description of the temple and its occupants (Venus, Bacchus, Ceres,
etc.) follows, and the poet then passes once more into the open air where
... in a launde[38] upon a hille of floures
he finds the "noble goddesse Nature," who has sent for every bird to come
and choose its mate in honour of St. Valentine. Upon her hand she holds
A formel[39] egle, of shap the gentileste[40]
That ever she among hir werkes fonde.
Nature calls upon the royal eagle to make first choice, and he,
With hed enclyned and with ful humble chere,
at once chooses the bird upon her hand. Before the formel eagle has
summoned up sufficient courage to give her answer,
Another tercel egle spak anoon,
Of lower kinde, and seyde, "that shal not be;
I love hir bet than ye do, by seynt John."
And hardly has he finished when a third eagle puts forward his claim. The
various birds are called upon for their advice, and after a great deal of
chattering and confusion, Nature finally decrees that the choice is to lie
with the formel eagle herself. She modestly begs for a year's respite in
which to make up her mind, and the parliament is adjourned.
But first were chosen foules for to singe
As yeer by yere was always hir usaunce
To singe a roundel at hir departinge
To do Nature honour and pleasunce,
and the whole ends with the charming roundel:--
Now welcom somer with thy sonne softe.
The poem has a freshness and tenderness which its conventional setting
cannot conceal, and the humour of the conversation among the worm-foul,
water-foul, and seed-foul, must have been even more delightful than it is
to-day if--as has been suggested--the "fool cukkow," "the waker goos,"
"the popinjay, ful of delicacy," and the rest were easily recognisable
portraits of contemporary courtiers.
The _Parlement of Foules_ was followed by the _Hous of Fame_. Here again
Chaucer makes use of the conventional stock-in-trade of medieval poets.
We have the dream, the strings of proper names drawn from Ovid and Virgil
and the Bible, the constant moralisations, the temple to which the dreamer
is guided, the use of allegory and symbol, all of which are common
property. The influence of Dante is evident, and shows itself in detail as
well as in the conception of the whole. The method of beginning each book
with an invocation, the exact marking of the date on which the poem was
begun, the steep rock, the description of the house of Rumour, and
numerous other points are borrowed direct from the _Divina Commedia_,
while there is no need to emphasise the obvious resemblance between the
general plan of Dante's great poem and the _Hous of Fame_. Professor Skeat
even goes so far as to suggest that Lydgate is referring to the _Hous of
Fame_ when he speaks of a poem of Chaucer's as "Dant in English."
The poem is divided into three books. Book I opens with a discussion of
dreams in general, what causes them and what weight should be attached to
them:--
Why that is an avisioun
And this a revelacioun.
This is followed by an invocation to the god of sleep, and then comes the
vision itself. The poet falls asleep on the tenth day of December, and
dreams that he is in a temple of glass. On a tablet on the wall is
engraved the history of "daun Eneas," and its recital occupies almost the
whole of the book. When the poet has "seyen al this sighte" he passes out
of the temple and finds himself in a desert place:--
Withouten toun, or hous, or tree
Or bush, or gras, or cred[41] lond.
* * * * *
Ne I no maner creature
That is y-formed by nature
Ne saw.
Terrified by the strangeness and loneliness of the place, he casts his
eyes towards heaven, praying to be saved,
Fro fantom and illusion,
and as he looks upwards he becomes aware of a wonderful eagle with
feathers of gold, flying towards him. Book II opens with further remarks
on dreams, and a declaration that no one, not even Isaiah or Scipio or
Nebuchadnezzar, ever had such a dream as this. The story then continues.
The eagle swoops down upon the poet and catches him up in "his grimme
pawes stronge,"--
Me caryinge in his clawes starke
As lightly as I were a larke.
Dazed and astonished, Chaucer almost loses consciousness, till he is
recalled to life by the eagle, with "mannes voice," bidding him
... Awak
And be not so a-gast for shame!
and adding in a well-meant attempt to cheer him up,--
... Seynte Marie!
Thou art noyous for to carie.[42]
He is then told that as a reward for his long and faithful service of
Cupid--
Withoute guerdon ever yit,
Jove has decreed that he is to be taken to the House of Fame:--
To do thee som disport and game,
In som recompensacioun
Of labour and devocioun.
In Fame's palace he will hear more wonders in two hours than there are
grains of corn in a granary, for every sound made upon earth,--
Thogh hit were pyped of a mouse,
rises up there, multiplied and increased. Having concluded a learned
disquisition on the properties of air, water, and sound--which he
explains, he has kindly simplified in order to bring it within the grasp
of a "lewed[43] man"--the eagle bears the poet through the stars and past
all manner of "eyrish bestes" until they reach the House of Fame. Here
Chaucer is set upon his feet--much to his relief--and is told to enter; he
is further warned that every sound which rises from earth may be not only
heard but seen, since it takes the form of whatever made it. Book III
opens with an invocation to Apollo. The poet then climbs the steep rock of
ice on which the palace stands, noticing as he passes the names of famous
men cut in the ice and rapidly thawing away in the sun. At the summit is a
wonderful castle of beryl stone, and all round it crowd
... alle maner of minstrales
And gestiours,[44] that tellen tales
Bothe of weping and of game,
Of al that longeth unto Fame.
Amongst these are all the famous harpers and singers of old days, and
close by stand
... hem that maken blody soun
In trumpe, beme[45] and clarioun.
A curiously carved gate gives admission to the castle, and entering,
Chaucer finds a large number of knights-at-arms pouring out of a great
hall. The hall itself is
plated half a fote thikke
Of gold ...
and set with precious stones. Here the Lady Fame sits on a throne, her
feet resting on earth and her head touching the heavens. The nine Muses
sing her praises eternally, and on either side of her are pillars on which
stand the historian Josephus and the poets Statius, Homer, Virgil, Ovid,
Lucan, and Claudian:--
The halle was al ful y-wis,
Of hem that writen olde gestes,
As ben on trees rokes nestes.
Suddenly a great noise is heard, and there bursts into the hall a
multitude of people of every race and every condition come to prefer their
requests to Fame. Some beg
"That thou graunte us now good fame,
And lete our werkes han that name;
In ful recompensacioun
Of good werk, give us good renoun;"
others said
"Mercy, lady dere!
To telle certain, as hit is,
We han don neither that ne this
But ydel al our lyf y-be.
But, natheles, yit preye we,
That we mowe han so good a fame
And greet renoun and knowen name,
As they that han don nobel gestes ..."
others--
"But certeyn they were wonder fewe,"
cried
"Certes, lady brighte,
We han don wel with al our mighte;
But we ne kepen have no fame.
Hyd our werkes and our name,
For goddes love! for certes we
Han certeyn doon hit for bountee
And for no maner other thing."
Their requests are granted or refused with absolute capriciousness. Fame
is attended by Eolus, who according to her direction blows a black trumpet
called Sclaunder (Slander) or a golden clarion called Clere Laude (Clear
Praise), and these trumpets are used as the whim takes her. Evil men have
good fame, and good men are slandered, or on the other hand, both receive
their deserts without any reason except Fame's good pleasure. As Chaucer
stands watching the endless procession, a man approaches him and asks if
he too has come to receive fame. The poet hastily protests against any
such desire, and explains that he has come for--
Tydinges, other this or that
Of love, or swiche thinges glade.
The stranger bids him follow him to another place, and leads him to
An hous, that _domus Dedali_,
That _Laborintus_ cleped is.
It is made of sticks and twigs and continually spins round and round:--
And ther-out com so greet a noise
That, had it stonden upon Oise,
Men mighte hit han herd esely
To Rome, I trowe sikerly.
* * * *
And on the roof men may yit seen
A thousand holes, and wel mo,
To leten wel the soun out go.
This is the house of Rumour, to which come tidings
Of werre, of pees, of mariages,
Of reste, of labour of viages,[46]
Of abood[47] of deeth, of lyfe,
Of love, of hate, accorde, of stryfe, etc.
Here Chaucer meets the eagle again, who tells him that he is once more
prepared to become his guide, and without more ado seizes him "bitweene
his toon" and puts him in through the window. The house is full of people
all busy whispering in each other's ears:--
Whan oon had herd a thing, y-wis,
He com forth to another wight,
And gan him tellen, anoon-right,
The same that to him was told,
Or hit a furlong-way was old,
But gan somwhat for to eche
To this tyding in this speche
More than hit ever was.
And nat so sone departed nas
That he fro him, that he ne mette
With the thridde; and or he lette
Any stounde,[48] he tolde him als;
Were the tyding sooth or fals,
Yit wolde he telle hit natheless.
Out of the windows fly lies and truths, jostling each other, and Fame
decides which shall prevail. Shipmen and pilgrims, pardoners and
messengers, crowd into the house with boxes crammed with marvellous
stories. In one corner of the great hall men are telling love stories, the
poet goes to listen to these. Here, just when the climax appears to be in
sight, the poem breaks off in the middle of a sentence. Remarkable as it
is, full of humour and shrewd observation, and with signs of Chaucer's
genius for narrative, it is not in his most characteristic vein. _Troilus
and Criseyde_ had already given promise of genius of a very different
order, and it is possible that Chaucer himself grew weary of the smooth
monotony of his own verse, and felt within him a growing impulse to
produce something more human and more vivid. The _Hous of Fame_ is an
almost perfect example of a type of poem whose popularity was to continue
undiminished for another century and more. It was imitated again and
again, and a comparison between it and such works as Lydgate's _Temple of
Glas_ is sufficient to show the difference between genius and talent even
when genius in working with not wholly congenial material. If Chaucer's
reputation rested upon the _Book of the Duchesse_, the _Parlement of
Foules_, the _Hous of Fame_, and the _Legend of Good Women_, a few
scholars would know and appreciate his work, and anthologies would
probably make the majority of readers acquainted with a few
carefully-chosen extracts, but he would have done little or nothing to
break down the literary conventions of his day. It would need a keen eye
to discern in these the dawn of a new era, without the light thrown upon
them by _Troilus and Criseyde_ and the _Canterbury Tales_.
The _Legend of Good Women_ is said by Lydgate to have been written at the
Queen's request. The general plan is taken from Boccaccio's _De Claris
Mulieribus_, and Chaucer also translates freely from the _Heroides_ and
the _Metamorphoses_ of Ovid. The interest of the poem lies in the
Prologue, which consists of nearly six hundred lines, and of which there
are two distinct versions. The poet describes how in the spring he goes
out into the fields to worship the daisy, and he gives a long and poetical
description of this "emperice and flour of floures alle." That night he
sleeps in a little arbour in his garden, and in a dream he sees the god of
love leading by the hand a queen clothed in green and gold and of
surpassing beauty. Here follows a ballad in her praise. A rout of ladies
now appears, and they all kneel down and sing the praise of their queen.
The poet kneels among them, but presently the god of love catches sight of
him and declares that he is a traitor and heretic for he has translated
the _Romance of the Rose_--
That is an heresye ageyns my lawe,
and has also written of the fickleness of Cressida--
Why noldest thou as wel han seyd goodnesse
Of women, as thou hast seyd wikkednesse?
The queen, who is none other than Alcestis, intercedes for him, reminding
the irate god that the poet is also the author of the _Book of the
Duchesse_, the _Parlement of Foules_, the story of _Palamon and Arcite_,
to say nothing of
"... many an ympne for your haly-dayes."[49]
and the _Lyf of St. Cecyle_. She therefore begs that he may be forgiven,
and in token of true contrition he shall spend the most part of his time
In making of a glorious Legende
Of Gode Women, maidenes and wyves,
That weren trewe in lovinge al hir lyves.
The legends which follow are the result of this command, and the
definition of virtue given above accounts for the inclusion of such "good
women" as Cleopatra and Medea. The plan of the poem necessarily involved
sameness of treatment. Chaucer grew tired of his heroines, and of the
twenty legends which he seems to have planned, only nine were written. The
stories of Cleopatra, Thisbe, Dido, Hypsipyle and Medea, Lucretia,
Ariadne, Philomela, Phyllis, and Hypermnestra, are strung together
somewhat perfunctorily. As the names show, they are all drawn from Latin
authors, but with the usual freedom of a medieval translator Chaucer does
not hesitate to alter the originals to suit his purpose. He wishes to show
the torments and constancy of love's martyrs, and without scruple he
blackens the characters of Jason and Æneas and Theseus, in order to bring
out the virtues of Medea, Dido, and Ariadne. The legends show little of
the humour and freshness of Chaucer's other poems. Occasionally a
description of the lover's passion recalls some similar passage in
_Troilus and Criseyde_, and the mere fact that the interest centres in
emotion rather than action is in itself of importance, but Hercules, in
the legend of Hypsipyle, is a poor substitute for Pandarus, and the
perpetual recurrence of the love _motif_ tends to weaken its effect. The
two versions of the Prologue show many interesting points of difference.
Mention has already been made of the supposed intervention of the Queen,
through which Chaucer obtained permission to appoint a deputy to assist
him in his office work. It is supposed that this incident must have
occurred after the writing of the first prologue and before the writing of
the second, for while the whole poem is written in Queen Anne's honour,
the second prologue contains numerous passages expressing the poet's
gratitude and affection, which are not found in the first. She is
... of alle floures flour,
Fulfilled of al vertu and honour.
* * * * *
She is the clernesse and the verray light
That in this derke worlde me wynt and ledeth,
* * * * *
For as the sonne wol the fyr disteyne[50]
So passeth al my lady sovereyne,
That is so good, so fair, so debonaire;
I prey to god that ever falle hir faire!
Another striking change in the second version is the omission of certain
too explicit lines in which the poet had dared to set forth the duties of
kings towards their subjects. Part of this wise advice still remains, but
evidently Chaucer found it dangerous to call Richard's attention to the
necessity for hearing his people's petitions and complaints, and the later
version contents itself with a more general statement that kings should
... nat be lyk tiraunts of Lumbardye
That han no reward but at tirannye.
It is also noteworthy that several words which appear in their older form
in the first version are modernised in the second (_e. g._ in the first
line _sythes_ becomes _tymes_), so that it is possible to see the language
in actual process of development.
Chaucer's last and greatest work, the _Canterbury Tales_, was begun in
1386--though as has been shown, certain isolated tales, or rough sketches
for tales, were already in existence--and the composition continued till
1389, when it--like so many of his other poems--was left unfinished. A
number of fugitive pieces and lyrics also date from about this time, as
does the prose _Treatise on the Astrolabe_ written for his little son,
Lewis.
The popularity of Chaucer's poetry is shown not only by repeated
references to him as master and teacher, made by his immediate successors,
but by the entire Chaucer apocrypha which soon sprang into being. Some
genuine works of his--such as the _Book of the Lion_ (this very probably
was no more than a translation of Machault's _Le Dit du Lion_), have been
lost, but to make up for this a number of poems have been attributed to
him, some of which were not written until years after his death. Subjoined
is a list of the more important of these, with the names of the real
authors in cases where scholars have succeeded in tracing them.
_The Testament of Love._ Thomas Usk (_d._ 1386).
_La Belle Dame sans Merci._ Sir R. Ros (fifteenth century).
_The Cuckoo and the Nightingale_ (sometimes called _The Book of Cupid
God of Love_). Sir Thomas Clanvowe.
_The Flower and the Leaf_; _The Assembly of Ladies_. Considered by
some scholars to be the work of the same hand. Both purport to be
written by a woman.
_The Court of Love._
_The Second Merchant's Tale_, or _The Tale of Beryn_ (containing a
preliminary account of the Pardoner's adventures in Canterbury).
_The Complaint of the Black Knight._ Lydgate.
_The Tale of Gamelyn._ This poem is included among the MSS. of the
_Canterbury Tales_. Professor Ten Brink suggests that Chaucer may
have intended to work it up into the Yeoman's tale.
_The Letter of Cupid._ Occleve.