CHAUCER'S CHARACTER-DRAWING
Like every other young poet Chaucer had to learn his trade, and in nothing
is the development of his genius more clearly to be traced than in his
treatment of character. The _Book of the Duchesse_ gives us a sort of map
of the character of the good fair White: in his choice of qualities and
method of expression Chaucer shows both observation and originality, but
the plan of the poem precludes anything in the nature of dramatic
self-revelation, and the whole description of Blanche is from the outside.
The _Parlement of Foules_ and the _Hous of Fame_ afford little scope for
character-drawing, and though something more might be expected of the
_Legend of Good Women_, as we have seen, the moral purpose which inspires
it leads to perfunctory and undramatic treatment of the legends.
One only of Chaucer's earlier poems shows the true bent of his genius. The
rough sketches which he afterwards worked up and used in the _Canterbury
Tales_ had given some evidence of his keen interest in human nature, but
not until we come to _Troilus and Criseyde_ do we find him giving full
rein to his invention. The earlier part of Book I, which describes how
Troilus first catches sight of Cressida in the temple and at once falls in
love with her, is taken almost literally from Boccaccio, but the entrance
of Pandarus strikes a new note. Troilus lies languishing in his chamber in
the most approved manner, when Pandarus comes in and hearing him asks what
is the matter:--
Han now thus sone Grekes maad yow lene?[71]
Or hastow som remors of conscience,
And art now falle in som devocioun...?
Troilus replies that he is the "refus of every creature," and that love
has overcome him and brought him to despair. Pandarus heaves a sigh of
relief and says if that is all he will soon put matters right, for though
he knows nothing of such foolishness himself, he can easily arrange the
affair:--
A whetston is no kerving instrument,
And yet it maketh sharpe kerving-tolis.[72]
Troilus still refuses to be comforted and only casts up his eyes and
sighs, whereupon Pandarus grows annoyed as well as anxious:--
And cryde "a-wake" ful wonderly and sharpe;
What? slombrestow as in a lytargye?[73]
Or artow lyk an asse to the harpe,
That hereth soun, when men the strenges plye,
But in his minde of that no melodye
May sinken, him to glade, for that he
So dul is of his bestialitee?
Having at last succeeded in rousing the disconsolate lover and inducing
him once more to take his part in the life of court and camp, Pandarus
hurries off to interview his niece, whom he finds sitting with her maidens
"with-inne a paved parlour" reading the geste of Thebes. The contrast
between the shrewd, elderly man of the world and the love-sick youth has
been admirably brought out in Book I; in Book II a different, but no less
striking contrast is shown between the coarse humour and practical wisdom
of the uncle and the daintiness and charm of the niece. Pandarus angles
for Cressida and plays her as a skilful fisherman plays a trout. It is
obvious that he regards the whole thing as a good-natured grown-up
regards a children's game. It is deadly earnest to them, and since they
take it so seriously he will do his best to help them, but all the while
he considers it a piece of pretty and amusing childishness, though he
takes pleasure in playing it adroitly. His idea of effective appeal is to
poke his niece "ever newe and newe" and his jests when he has succeeded in
bringing the lovers together savour more of the camp than the court. When
the tragedy occurs and Troilus and Cressida are parted for ever, Pandarus
has no better comfort to offer than the platitude:--
That alwey freendes may nought been y-fere,[74]
and he evidently thinks that Troilus is making a most unnecessary fuss
about it, though he is so sincerely distressed at Cressida's treachery
that he offers--lightly enough--to "hate hir evermore":--
If I dide ought that mighte lyken thee,
It is me leef;[75] and of this treson now,
God woot, that it a sorwe is un-to me!
And dredeless, for hertes ese of yow,[76]
Right fayn wolde I amende it, wiste I how
And fro this world, almighty god I preye
Delivere hir sone; I can no-more seye.
At the same time he is a person of some energy and force. When Troilus
rushes about his chamber beating his head against the wall,
And of his deeth roreth in compleyninge,
Pandarus shows some impatience of such weakness and bids him pull himself
together and
... manly set the world on sixe and sevene;
And if thou deye a martir, go to hevene.
Excellently sound advice.
Nowhere is attention ostentatiously called to him; we are never allowed to
feel that he is being dragged in by way of comic relief; but his mere
presence at once removes _Troilus and Criseyde_ from the category of
conventional love-romances, and the very fact that we are left to discover
his significance for ourselves, without comment or explanation shows
Chaucer's confidence in his craftmanship.
But skilfully as Pandarus is drawn, the character of Cressida shows even
greater subtlety of treatment. To the medieval mind faithlessness in love
was the one unforgivable crime. Nearly a hundred years after Chaucer
wrote his _Troilus and Criseyde_, Sir Thomas Malory tells us of Guenever,
"she was a good lover and therefore she made a good end," and again and
again in the medieval romances proper we find the same thought insisted
on. Chaucer had therefore no light task before him when he set out to draw
a heroine at once lovable and fickle, and to enlist the sympathies of his
readers on behalf of one whose name had become a by-word for faithlessness
in love. With consummate skill he insists from the outset on her
gentleness and timidity. When Pandarus declares that the deaths both of
Troilus and himself will lie at her door if she turns a deaf ear to his
pleading, Cressida is simple enough to believe that he means it, and
... wel neigh starf for fere,[77]
So as she was the ferfulleste wight[78]
That might be....
That she is no vulgar coquette is shown by her ignorance of Troilus's
passion. Apparently he spends his whole time in the temple gazing at her,
but there is no mistaking the sincerity of her unselfconsciousness and
surprise when Pandarus tells her of her lover's plight. Nor is she at
first altogether pleased at having one of the handsomest and bravest of
Priam's sons at her feet; indeed Chaucer is at some pains to explain that
she does not suffer herself to be lightly won:--
For I sey nought that she so sodeynly
Yaf him hir love, but that she gan enclyne
To lyk him first, and I have told you why;
And after that, his manhood and his pyne[79]
Made love with-inne hir for to myne,[80]
For which, by process and by good servyse
He gat hir love, and in no sodyn wyse.
Altogether we get the impression of a simple, child-like being who wanders
happily about her garden with Flexippe and Tharbe and Antigone "and othere
of hir wommen," or sits poring over tales of chivalry, without a thought
of marriage. She is woman enough to feel the force of Pandarus's hint that
it is folly to live
... alle proude
Til crowes feet be growe under your yë,
and to like the thought that the hero who rides blushing through the
cheering crowd
... is he
Which that myn uncle swereth he most be deed
But I on him have mercy and pitee,
but she is no Delilah spreading her snares for men. Her uncle, the only
person whom she has to advise her, urges her to listen to Troilus; the
prince himself has everything likely to attract a girl's fancy; and as she
sagely remarks:--
I knowe also, and alday here and see
Men loven wommen al this toun aboute;
Be they the wers? why nay, with-outen doubte.
No wonder she finally yields to her lover's passionate wooing when
Pandarus tricks her into coming to see him:--
"But nathelees, this warne I yow," quod she,
"A kinges sone although ye be, y-wis,
Ye shul na-more have soverainetee
Of me in love, than right that cas is;
Ne I nil forbere, if that ye doon a-mis,
To wrathen[81] yow; and whyl that ye me serve
Cherycen[82] yow right after ye deserve.
And shortly, dere herte and al my knight,
Beth glad, and draweth yow to lustinisse,
And I shal trewely, with al my might,
Your bittre tornen al into swetnesse;
If I be she that may yow do gladnesse,
For every wo ye shal recovre a blisse;
And him in armes took, and gan him kisse."
There is no prettier confession of love in all literature. Then follows
their brief period of rapture, with its mock quarrels and speedy
reconciliations, before the dreadful day when Calkas sends for his
daughter. The news that Cressida is to be delivered up to the Greeks fills
the lovers with despair. Troilus flings himself on his bed railing against
Fortune and abusing Calkas as an
... olde unholsom and mislyved man:
Cressida with tears prepares for her journey. One of the most delightful
pictures in the whole story is that of the worthy women who came to bid
her farewell and take her tears as a delicate compliment to themselves:--
And thilke foles sittinge hir aboute
Wenden that she wepte and syked[83] sore
By-cause that she sholde out of that route
Depart, and never pleye with hem more.
And they that hadde y-knowen hir of yore
Seye hir so wepe, and thoughte it kindenesse,
And eche of hem wepte eek for hir distresse.
Her sorrow is sincere, and her tears do not cease to flow when Troilus is
out of sight. Shakespeare's Cressid, whose one idea is to ingratiate
herself with her new friends, is a very different person from Chaucer's
woebegone heroine. And yet in her very sorrow we see her weakness. When
Pandarus first tried to move her pity she had yielded, not solely out of
compassion but also because she was afraid of what might be said of her if
any harm came to Troilus:--
And if this man slee here himself, allas!
In my presence, it wol be no solas.
What men wolde of hit deme I can nat seye:
It nedeth me ful sleyly for to pley.[84]
The same strain of selfishness manifests itself now. Cressida is incapable
of being swept away by a great passion. She has a cat-like softness and
daintiness and charm, a cat's readiness to attach herself to the person
she is with at the moment, and a cat's adaptability to circumstances. She
is genuinely distressed at being parted from Troilus, she cries till her
eyes have dark rings round them, and even Pandarus is moved at the sight,
but she is incapable of exposing herself to any danger or inconvenience
for her lover's sake. Like the lady in the _Statue and the Bust_ she
hesitates at the thought of difficulty:--
"And if that I me putte in jupartye[85]
To stele awey by nighte, and it befalle
That I be caught, I shal be holde a spye,
Or elles, lo, this drede I most of alle
If in the hondes of som wrecche I falle,
I am but lost, al be myn herte trewe;
Now mighty god, thou on my sorwe rewe!
* * * * *
But natheles, bityde what bityde,
I shal to-morwe at night, by est or weste,
Out of the ost stele on som maner syde,
And go with Troilus wher-as him leste.
This purpos wol I holde, and this is beste.
No fors of wikked tonges janglerye,[86]
For ever on love han wrecches had envye.
To such souls to-morrow never comes, and it is no surprise to find her
before long yielding to Diomede's entreaties, as she had formerly yielded
to those of Troilus. Boccaccio's heroine at once makes up her mind to flee
from the Greek camp, and then is quickly turned from her "high and great
intent" by the advent of a new lover. Chaucer with far greater sublety
prepares us for the change, and makes her very weakness her excuse:--
But trewely, the story telleth us,
Ther made never womman more wo
Than she, whan that she falsed Troilus.
The reason for this excess of sorrow is characteristic:--
She seyde, "Allas! for now is clene a-go
My name of trouthe in love for ever-mo
* * * * *
Allas, of me unto the worldes ende
Shal neither been y-written nor y-songe
No good word, for thise bokes wol me shende,[87]
O, rolled shal I ben on many a tonge,"[88]
and equally characteristic her hasty excuse,
"Al be I not the firste that dide amis,"
and the sublime self-confidence with which in the act of jilting one lover
she announces her unalterable fidelity to the next:--
"And sin I see there is no bettre way,
And that to late is now for me to rewe,
To Diomede algate I wol be trewe."
The whole character is drawn with extraordinary delicacy and insight, and
with a tenderness which marks Chaucer's large-hearted tolerance. It is
comparatively easy for an author to hold up a character to execration, but
only the very greatest can show us the weaknesses of human nature without
for one moment becoming cynical or contemptuous.
In the _Canterbury Tales_ Chaucer's method of character delineation is
more concise. In _Troilus and Criseyde_ he has five books, containing over
8000 lines, at his disposal, and the raptures and anguish of the lovers
are described at considerable length. In the _Canterbury Tales_ he has a
far more complex task before him; he has to present the pilgrims
themselves, in the various prologues and end-links; to make each tale a
dramatic revelation of the character of the teller; and to exhibit the
characters of the personages who play a part in the various stories. The
560 lines of the _Prologue_ in themselves contain a far greater number and
variety of characters than are to be found in the whole of _Troilus and
Criseyde_, and if there is less subtlety of treatment the later prologues
and end-links soon atone for this. Nothing, for instance, would have been
easier than to draw a conventional picture of the self-indulgent,
pleasure-loving monk, and at first sight we might think that Chaucer had
done little more, though even in the _Prologue_ we are conscious of a
sharp distinction between the Monk, who with all his faults is a
gentleman, and such vulgar impostors as the Pardoner and the Somnour. But
further acquaintance soon rectifies this conception. Self-indulgent and
pleasure-loving the Monk undoubtedly is, but he is no hypocrite or
evil-liver. The Host makes one of his few mistakes in tact by treating
him with breezy familiarity, "Ryd forth," he cries:--
Ryd forth, myn owne lord, brek nat our game,
But, by my trouthe, I knowe nat your name,
Wher shal I calle you my lord dan John,
Or dan Thomas, or elles dan Albon?
Of what hous be ye, by your fader kin?
I vow to god, thou hast a ful fair skin,
It is a gentil pasture ther thou goost;
Thou art nat lyk a penaunt[89] or a goost.
The Monk knows better than to rebuke the somewhat coarse pleasantries that
follow; but with quiet dignity he ignores the familiarity and offers to
relate either the life of St. Edward or else a series of tragedies:--
Of whiche I have an hundred in my celle.
The choice of subjects in itself constitutes a delicate but unmistakable
snub. The Host expected some tale of hunting and merriment from
him--tragedy has little in common with his stout, jovial person, and frank
delight in good living--instead of which the pilgrims are regaled with a
series of moral discourses which would have been perfectly in place in the
cloister, but seem strangely ill-suited to the present company. Indeed,
the pilgrims grow restive under so much good advice; they evidently fear
that the worthy Monk means to inflict the whole hundred tragedies on them,
and after listening, with growing impatience, to seventeen tales of woe,
the tender-hearted Knight can bear no more:--
"Ho!" quod the knight, "good sir, na-more of this.
That ye han seyd is right y-nough, y-wis,
And mochel more; for litel hevinesse
Is right y-nough to mochel folk, I gesse.
I seye for me it is a greet disese
Wher-as men han ben in greet welthe and ese
To heren of hir sodyn fal, allas!"
But it is significant that it is the Knight and not the Host who breaks
in, and that it is not until the Knight has spoken that Harry Bailly
informs the narrator of the obvious fact that his tale "anoyeth al this
companye," and courteously begs him to "sey somwhat of hunting." The Monk
refuses, and the turn passes to the Nun's Priest, but never again does the
Host venture to take a liberty with "dan Piers."
The Host's character is drawn with extraordinary skill, and without the
aid of any such introductory description as the _Prologue_ gives us of the
other pilgrims. The knowledge of human nature is part of his trade, and
the success with which he manages the diverse company which chance has
thrown in his way is proof enough that he is passed-master of his
profession. Shrewd, worldly, and unimaginative, we should imagine that the
coarser tales best please his taste, but it is his business to cater for
people of all kinds, and he well understands how to ensure sufficient
variety to suit all listeners. His rough good-humoured air of authority is
sufficient to keep the Friar and the Somnour within bounds. He prevents
the drunken Cook from becoming an intolerable nuisance to the company. He
keeps an eye on every individual pilgrim, and sees that no one is
overlooked. His ready jests smooth over many little roughnesses and
disagreeables, and the one thing that really takes him aback is when the
poor parson rebukes him for the constant oaths which slip off his tongue
so readily. He can only conclude that a person so extraordinary must be a
Lollard. And all the time that he is keeping the pilgrims in a good temper
and preventing them from feeling the journey irksome, he has by no means
lost sight of the fact that the reward of the best story is to be "a soper
at our aller cost," given at the Tabard Inn. The money he expended on the
pilgrimage was probably a good investment--not to mention the chance that
his expenses might very possibly be reduced to nothing, since at the very
beginning he had established it as a law that:--
... who-so wol my judgement withseye
Shal paye al that we spenden by the weye
A very practical person, Harry Bailly!
Chaucer excels in drawing characters of this type. His young men are not
unlike the heroes of Shakespearean comedy. They are real enough, but they
have no very marked individuality. The Squire is by far the best of them.
In him we see the charm and freshness of youth, and it would be ungracious
to ask more of so fair a promise. But Troilus, with his tearfulness and
emotionalism, his readiness to procrastinate and to look to others to help
him out of his difficulties, with something of Bassanio's gallantry and
attractiveness, has also Bassanio's pliability. His is too slight a nature
to form the centre of a tragedy. Palamon and Arcite are as
indistinguishable as Demetrius and Lysander. There are critics who profess
to see subtle differences of character between them, but to the majority
of readers they are mere types of chivalry. Dorigen's husband, Averagus,
is little more than an embodiment of loyal truth, and Griselda's, were one
to regard him as anything but the means of testing wifely patience, would
be a monster of cruelty. Compare with these, the Pardoner, the Friar, the
Somnour, the Canon's Yeoman, the Miller, and all the other commonplace,
practical men whom Chaucer describes. Most of them strike us as elderly;
certainly none of them have any of the freshness or idealism of youth. The
remarkable thing about them is that they are so ordinary and yet so
interesting. The fussy self-importance of Chauntecleer; the garrulous
vulgarity of Pandarus; the senile uxoriousness of January, are all drawn
to the life, without one touch of bitterness or exaggeration. We listen to
the jests and squabbles of the pilgrims on the road to Canterbury, or the
story of some drama of everyday life, and we feel as if we had been made
free of the ale-house and were listening to the village gossips of our own
day.
But if the best drawn of Chaucer's men are confined to one comparatively
narrow class, his women show no such limitation. He draws no great
tragedy-queen, no Guenever or Vittoria Corrombona, but with this great
exception he depicts women of almost every type. Before going on to
discuss his heroines in detail, however, it might, perhaps, be well to say
a few words as to Chaucer's attitude towards women in general.
It must be evident even to the most superficial observer, that Chaucer had
an innate reverence for womanhood. The cult of the Virgin Mary, which had
done so much to exalt woman among all Christian nations, appealed to him
strongly, and, as we have seen, he more than once goes out of his way to
introduce some invocation to the "flour of virgines alle." His love of
children no doubt inclined him to look with tenderness on the relation of
mother and child, and among his most beautiful pictures are those of
Constance, with her baby in her arms, and Griselda bidding farewell to her
"litel yonge mayde":--
And in her barm[90] this litel child she leyde
With ful sad face, and gan the child to kisse
And lulled it, and after gan it blisse.[91]
But he was far too shrewd and honest an observer of life to persuade
himself that all women were angels, or to allow reverence to degenerate
into sentimentality. His attitude towards marriage is characteristic.
Reference has already been made to his acceptance of the comic convention
of the shrewish wife, and certainly both the Host and the Merchant have
but few illusions left concerning wives. The virago whom the Host has
married cannot as much as go to say her prayers without finding some cause
of quarrel:--
And if that any neighebour of myne
Wol nat in chirche to my wyf enclyne,[92]
Or be so hardy to hir to trespace,
Whan she comth hoom, she rampeth in my face
And cryeth, "false coward, wreek[93] thy wyf!"
The Merchant's wife would "overmatch the devil himself" were he foolish
enough to wed her. In the Lenvoy to the _Clerkes Tale_ Chaucer warns
modern husbands to look for no patient Griseldas among their wives, and
gives much satiric advice to "archewyves" to stand no nonsense from their
husbands. In the _Lenvoy a Bukton_ he warns his friend of "the sorwe and
wo that is in mariage":--
I wol nat seyn how that it is the cheyne[94]
Of Sathanas, on which he gnaweth ever,
But I dar seyn, were he out of his peyne,
As by his wille, he wolde be bounne never.
A fair proportion of the _Canterbury Tales_ deal with the tricks by which
a faithless wife imposes on her too credulous husband, and the bitterest
of all the words which Chaucer utters on the subject are those which
preface the _Marchantes Tale_ of January and May, when with biting sarcasm
he rebukes Theophrastus for daring to say that a good servant is of more
value than a wife, and goes on to discuss at length the happiness of
wedded life:--
How mighte a man han any adversitee
That hath a wyf? certes I can nat seye.
The blisse which that is bitwixe hem tweye
Ther may no tonge telle, or herte thinke.
If he be poore, she helpeth him to swinke;[95]
She kepeth his good, and wasteth never a deel;
Al that her housbonde lust,[96] hir lyketh weel;[97]
before relating the shame which a young wife brings upon her doting old
husband. The Shipmann protests with brutal frankness that wives cost more
than they are worth, and tells a tale to prove it. From all this we might
imagine Chaucer a cross-grained misogynist, but a glance for one moment at
the other side of the picture corrects this impression. He is as ready to
say what will amuse his contemporaries as Shakespeare is to tickle the
ears of the groundlings in his generation, but, like Shakespeare, he is
too just to see anything from only one point of view. There certainly are
women who abuse their husbands, and Chaucer's inferiority to Shakespeare
is marked by the fact that he finds the situation amusing; and there are
also shrews and termagants who make their husbands' lives a burden in
other ways. But pecking is not confined to hens. Chaucer realises that for
woman marriage is even more of a lottery than for man, since she is
necessarily so much at her husband's mercy:--
Lo, how a woman doth amis,
To love him that unknowen is!
For, by Crist, lo! thus it fareth;
"Hit is not al gold that glareth."[98]
For, al-so brouke I wel myn heed,[99]
Ther may be under goodliheed
Kevered many a shrewd vyce;
Therefore be no wight so nyce
To take a love only for chere,
For speche, or for frendly manere;
For this shal every woman finde
That som man, of his pure kinde,[100]
Wol shewen outward the faireste,
Til he have caught that what him leste;
And thanne wol he causes finde,
And swere how that she is unkinde,
Or fals, or prevy, or double was.
(_Hous of Fame_, Bk. I, ll. 269-85.)
Husband-hunting is a sport which has roused the laughter of men from time
immemorial; Chaucer is one of the few who has ever portrayed that fierce
shrinking from the thought of matrimony which is no less common among
women. Emily longing to be free to roam in the forest and "noght to been a
wyf," and Constance trembling at the thought of the strange man into whose
hands she is being committed, are as true to life as the Wife of Bath with
her husbands five at the Church door. And this poet, who sees so clearly
the dangers and evils of matrimony, has left us one of the most perfect
pictures of married life at its best. Dorigen and Averagus understand how
to remain lovers all their lives:--
Heer may men seen an humble wys accord;
Thus hath she take hir servant and hir lord,
Servant in love, and lord in mariage;
Then was he bothe in lordship and servage;
Servage? nay, but in lordshipe above
Sith he hath bothe his lady and his love;
His lady, certes, and his wyf also,
The whiche that lawe of love acordeth to.
(_Frankeleyns Tale_, ll. 63-70.)
The passage immediately preceding this, with its beautiful picture of what
love understands by freedom, is too long to quote in full, but it shows
clearly enough Chaucer's conception of the relation of the sexes. To talk
of mastery is absurd:--
Whan maistrie comth, the god of love anon
Beteth his winges, and farewel! he is gon!
True love learns to give and take and does not demand payment for every
wrong:--
Ire, siknesse, or constellacioun,[101]
Wyn, wo, or chaunginge of complexioun[102]
Causeth ful ofte to doon amis or speken.
On every wrong a man may nat be wreken ...
and the great lesson of married life is patience and tender forbearance in
such moments of weakness. The story illustrates the text. Averagus has no
word of reproach for his wife when she tells him what she has done, and
Dorigen, on her part, shows a simple confidence in her husband's honour
which almost makes us forget the impossible absurdity of the situation.
After all, it is in Chaucer's women themselves, rather than in what he
says about woman, that we see his attitude most clearly. In the character
of Blanche the Duchesse he portrays an ideal which differs in many ways
from the conventional standard of the day. Instead of the typical heroine
of romance, whose sole thought is of love and whose sole desire that her
knight may prove the bravest in Christendom, Chaucer draws a lively,
quick-witted girl, whose consciousness of her own power and simple delight
in her own beauty never degenerate into selfish coquetry. The medieval
heroine considered it a point of honour to set her lover impossible tasks
to perform for her sake. Blanche "ne used no such knakkes small." She sees
no sense in sending a man
... into Walayke,[103]
To Pruyse and in-to Tartarye,
To Alisaundre, ne in-to Turkye,
And bidde him faste, annoo that he
Go hoodles to the drye see[104]
And come hoom by the Carrenare;[105]
and telling him to be
... right ware
That I may of yow here seyn[106]
Worship, or that ye come ageyn.
Nor does she use any arts to enhance her beauty. She looks you straight in
the face with those great grey eyes of hers:--
Debonair, goode, gladde, and sadde,
and offers a frank friendship to all "gode folk." She utters no half
truths, and takes no pleasure in deceit, nor was there ever
... through hir tonge
Man ne woman greatly harmed.
There is no touch of pettiness in her nature. One of the most delightful
passages in the poem is that in which the Black Knight declares how ready
she always was to forgive and forget:--
Whan I had wrong and she the right
She wolde alwey so goodely
For-geve me so debonairly.
In alle my youthe in alle chaunce
She took me in hir governaunce.
At the same time she "loved so wel hir owne name" that she suffered no
liberties to be taken with her:--
She wrong do wolde to no wight;
and
No wight might do her no shame.
Through the whole picture there breathes a spirit of vigour and freshness
and gaiety. Once again Chaucer seems to foreshadow Shakespeare: Blanche
might well take her place beside Rosalind and Portia and Beatrice, as a
type of simple unspoiled girlhood. Her frank enjoyment of life, her keen
wit, which knows no touch of malice, her combination of tender-heartedness
and strength remind us more than once of Shakespeare's heroines, and like
them she is no colourless model of propriety, but has all a true woman's
charm and unexpectedness.
No other of Chaucer's portraits is so detailed, but he recurs more than
once to the same type. Emily is drawn with comparatively few strokes, but
she gives us very much the same impression as Blanche. There is the same
sense of the open air, the same simplicity and directness. Nothing better
brings out the peculiar quality of Chaucer's heroine than a comparison
between the Emily of the _Knightes Tale_ and the Emily of _Two Noble
Kinsmen_. The one walks alone in the garden, gathering flowers, and
singing to herself for sheer lightness of heart. The other converses with
her waiting-woman, and her chief interest in nature lies in the hope that
the maid may prove able "to work such flowers in silk." There is no
reason why the second Emily should not wish to have an embroidered gown,
but its introduction here at once destroys the freshness and simplicity of
the picture. Canace, too, delights in wandering in the forest in the early
morning. She is so closely in sympathy with nature that it seems but
natural that she should understand bird-latin, and her quick sympathy with
the unhappy falcon is very characteristic of a Chaucerian heroine, for
again and again he tells us
That pitee renneth sone in gentil heart.
It is a pretty picture which shows the king's daughter gently bandaging
the wounded bird upon her lap, or doing "hir bisiness and al hir might" to
gather herbs for salves.
Constance, Griselda, Dorigen are maturer and more developed. They are
women, not girls, and women who have lived and suffered, but they are just
what we should expect Blanche, or Emily, or Canace to develop into. They
have less gaiety and light-heartedness, less pretty wilfulness than these
younger sisters of theirs, but they have the same frankness and
directness, the same honesty of mind. They meet their fate with grave
serenity and simple courage. Griselda abandons herself to what she
believes to be her duty. Constance and Dorigen when confronted by danger
show perfect readiness to do what in them lies to defend their own honour.
Constance throws the wicked steward into the sea; Dorigen, instead of
indulging in hysterics, is quick-witted enough to hit on a way of escape
which no natural means could have blocked. Through all three stories runs
a vein of tenderness which stirs our sympathy. Griselda, who has borne so
much in patience, gives vent to one passionate cry of reproach when she is
bidden to make way for the new wife, a cry which has in it all a woman's
fond clinging to the memory of a past happiness:--
O gode god! how gentil and how kinde
Ye semed by your speche and your visage
The day that maked was our mariage;
and surely no direct accusation of cruelty could show with equal clearness
how deeply she has suffered. They are great-hearted women, before whose
innate nobility the persecutions and unjust accusations to which they are
subjected drop into nothingness.
When Chaucer deliberately sets out to draw a saint instead of a woman, he
is less successful. Our sympathies are with Blanche, as she sings and
dances so gaily, rather than with the preternaturally pious Virginia, who
at the age of twelve often feigns sickness in order to
... fleen the companye
Wher lykly was to treten of folye,[107]
As is at festes, revels, and at daunces ...
Indeed the whole of the _Phisiciens Tale_ seems curiously cold and
lifeless. There is a touch of nature at the end where the child,
forgetting her piety, flings her arms round her father's neck, and asks if
there is no remedy, and again where she begs him to smite softly, but
these are not enough to atone for the perfunctoriness of the rest. The
story is too essentially tragic for the barest narration of it not to make
some appeal to us, but it is impossible not to feel that Chaucer was
either hurried or working against the grain when he wrote his version.
The _Seconde Nonnes Tale_ contains even less of human interest. Cecilia is
neither more nor less than the mouthpiece of the Christian religion, and
the miracles that she works and the sermons that she preaches leave the
reader unmoved. The music of the verse has a charm of its own, and
Chaucer's most left-handed work is yet the work of a genius, but a
comparison of Cecilia with Constance soon shows the difference between a
real woman and an embodied ideal. The miraculous element, which is
subordinated to the human interest in the _Man of Lawes Tale_, dominates
the whole of the _Seconde Nonnes Tale_, and the inevitable sameness of the
various conversions further detracts from its vividness.
In Cressida Chaucer had painted a woman of the butterfly type. In the
_Canterbury Tales_ he gives us a certain number of actually immoral women,
such as Alisoun and May, but he paints no second picture of pretty
helpless coquettishness. The heroines of the less savoury tales are
coarser in fibre and for the most part lower in the social scale than
Calkas' daughter, and their stories are of mere sensuous self-indulgence
with none of the charm and poetry which marks the tale of Troilus and
Cressida. One character alone recalls Chaucer's earlier heroine. The
Prioress is very much what a fourteenth-century Cressida would have been
if her friends had placed her in a convent instead of finding her a
husband. She has the same daintiness and trimness, the same superficial
tender-heartedness. It is difficult to imagine that her sympathy, like
Canace's, would take the practical form of applying salves or binding up
wounds, but:--
She was so charitable and so pitous,
She wolde wepe if that she sawe a mous
Caught in a trappe, if it were deed or bledde.
Her table manners are excellent, and she wears her veil with an air:--
Ful semely hir wimpel pinched was.
Her silver brooch, with its _Amor vincit omnia_, betrays a naïve interest
in her personal appearance. She is never brought into contact with the
more passionate side of life as Cressida is, and her seclusion from the
world has given her a touch of primness which combines oddly with her
little affectations. The contrast between her worldliness and that of the
Monk is complete. He is gross, jovial, self-indulgent; she is delicate,
mincing, conventional. Like Cressida she would always follow the line of
least resistance, though it would cause her genuine--if but
momentary--distress to give pain to anyone. She is too well-bred ever to
think for herself, and too innocent and simple-minded not to accept life
as it is offered her. She tells her story with real tenderness and
feeling, and it is evident that the atmosphere of the cloister in no wise
irks her. It is impossible to regard her as a pattern nun, but equally
impossible to judge her harshly. Both she and Cressida have something
childlike about them, and it seems out of place to try them by the
ordinary standards.
Of a very different type are Chaucer's practical, bustling housewives,
amongst whom the Wife of Bath and Dame Pertelote stand pre-eminent. The
Wife of Bath is a capable, active, pushing woman, with plenty of courage
and plenty of self-confidence. She is well-to-do and has a fitting sense
of her own dignity and importance, but she has no idea of letting dignity
stand in the way of enjoyment, and is quite ready to take her part in the
rough jests of the company. Comely of face and plump of person, she
dresses well and is quite prepared to make the most of her attractions.
The prologue to her tale shows that she has plenty of shrewd mother-wit.
Her view of matrimony is characteristic. She recognises the "greet
perfeccioun" of celibacy, but since all men and women are not suited to
such a life, she is impatient of the idea that they should marry but once,
and she quotes the Scriptures most aptly for her purpose. Her present
husband is her fifth, and when he dies she has every intention of marrying
again:--
"I nil envye no virginitee;"
she cries,
"Let hem be breed of pured whete-seed,
And lat us wyves hoten barly-breed,"[108]
for barley-bread is by no means to be despised. In fact she is the epitome
of common-sense, and her confidence in her own opinion enables her to bear
contradiction good-humouredly enough. Her methods with her various
husbands were simple: three she bullied and brow-beat, one she paid back
in his own coin. The fifth, who had the sense to beat her, was the only
one for whom she had any respect, and even he had finally yielded her
... the governance of hous and lond
And of his tonge and of his hond also.
It is the picture of a violent, coarse--but not wholly ill-natured--woman,
who despises bookishness and thoroughly enjoys good ale and good company.
She has no morals and no ideals, though she loves to go
To vigiles and to processiouns,
To preching eek, and to thise pilgrimages,
To pleyes of miracles and mariages,
but her genial good-fellowship makes her a pleasant enough companion.
Dame Pertelote is drawn with even greater skill. The impatience with which
she listens to Chauntecleer's account of his dream is just what we should
expect of a sensible, unimaginative, middle-class woman, whose own nerves
and digestion were in excellent order, if her husband came to her with a
long story of a supernatural warning. Dreams, she says, are the natural
consequence of over-eating; the best thing he can do is to take some of
the herbs she recommends, and when he has pecked these up, "right as they
growe" and "ete hem in" he will find all his nervousness and depression
disappear. Chauntecleer is furious at being treated with such scant
respect and proceeds to overwhelm her with examples of dreams that have
come true. His wise wife, who knows when to hold her tongue, makes no
attempt to answer him back, but is evidently only too thankful when at
last, being convinced that he has established his point, he suffers his
attention to be distracted and turns to the pleasanter business of
love-making. Pertelote is in fact typical of the good wives of her class,
as the Wife of Bath is of the bad. She is no more a heroine than the Wife
of Bath is a villainess, but the one studies her husband's comforts and
thoroughly understands how to make him happy, while the other cares for
nothing but her own amusement. Pertelote's lamentations when Chauntecleer
is borne off are in the best taste. Restraint was considered no virtue in
a medieval widow, and Pertelote very properly screams loudly and
persistently. Nor does wifely affection go unrewarded. The "sely widwe"
and her daughters who own the hen-yard
Herden thise hennes cry and maken wo,
And out at dores steten they anoon,
with the result that Chauntecleer is saved.
It is this power of making characters at once typical and individual which
marks true dramatic genius. Browning's men and women reveal their
innermost souls to us, we see them with a passionate vividness which is
almost startling in its brilliancy, but all the while we are conscious of
the intensity of their individuality. The conspicuous thing about them is
that which marks them out from the rest of the world. The commonplace
novelist or dramatist, on the other hand, gives us mere types of vice and
virtue. Mr. Jerome's gallery of Stageland characters--the hero, the
heroine, the comic Irishman, the good old man, and the rest--is scarcely
caricature. It is hardly necessary to give them names, the same types have
been recurring again and again for many a long year, and are likely to
continue to recur as long as there are cheap books and cheap theatres. But
the great masters of character-drawing contrive to show us the individual
at once as a unit and as part of the whole. We see the peculiar
idiosyncrasies of this or that person, and we are conscious, not only of a
subtle bond between ourselves and them which enables us to see things from
their point of view, but of their relation to human nature in general and
to their own class in particular.