CHAUCER'S HUMOUR
Critics may be divided in opinion as to Chaucer's right to be called the
Father of English poetry, but there can be no question that he is the
first great English humorist. As far back as Henry III's reign fabliaux
had been imported from France, but they took no real root in English soil,
and though their coarse jests and indecent situations were fully
appreciated by thirteenth- and fourteenth-century readers, they never rose
above the level of collections of "merrie tales" and made no pretensions
to originality or literary style. The same stories were repeated again and
again, with slight variations, and are often to be found in Indian or
Arabian versions as well as in French and English. Chaucer alone, showed
that it was possible to see in them a revelation of human nature. The
romances, as has been said, were far more French than English, and, even
so, comparatively few of them show any flicker of humour. _Aucassin and
Nicolette_ stands out as a conspicuous exception, but this is pure
French, and the more English romances, such as _Guy of Warwick_ or _Bevis
of Hampton_, take everything with intense seriousness. It is true that the
Continental animal epic had begun to make its influence felt in England,
but it was still the Continental epic: it belonged to the days of literary
free-trade before the national spirit made itself felt in literature.
Satire, it is true, had long since made its appearance in England, but
except for rude popular rhymes and an occasional poem of greater
pretensions--such as the _Land of Cokaygne_--it was in Latin, and had
nothing distinctively English about it. In the Miracle Plays, it is true,
we find that mixture of shrewd common-sense and real feeling, of comedy
and tragedy, which we are accustomed to regard as characteristically
English, but though they had been popular in England for many years before
Chaucer began to write, the best of them date from the fifteenth century,
and the comic element in the earlier plays seems chiefly to have consisted
in rough-and-tumble farce. It was left for Chaucer to show the true
meaning and value of the comic point of view, and at the same time to
embody the characteristics of a nation which had but recently awakened to
the consciousness of its own individuality.
To say that humour is the most subtle and illusive of qualities, is to
utter a truism. Certain situations are in themselves necessarily and
essentially tragic. The slaying of parent by child, or child by parent; a
great shipwreck involving terrible loss of life; any sudden and
overwhelming catastrophe must always bring with it a sense of horror. But
comedy depends on point of view rather than on situation. An absurdity of
dress or manner which would cause us to smile under normal circumstances,
would cease to be amusing if it indicated dangerous insanity: a man
falling off the roof of a house might go into the most ridiculous
attitudes without in the least stirring the spectator's sense of humour.
It is this which makes it difficult to accept Professor Bergson's most
interesting and suggestive theory of the mechanical nature of comedy as
wholly satisfactory. And again, while such tragic incidents as have been
suggested appeal to every normal human being, what amuses one person may
leave another absolutely untouched. We all know the blank sensation of
having our best story received with stony politeness, and the despair of
trying to explain a joke. Certain things, however, do appeal in greater or
less degree to the majority of people, and among these is the element of
unexpectedness. The whole point of the modern musical comedy consists in
making the actor behave as no sane person ever dreamed of behaving in
actual life. If it were the fashion to enter a room in a series of
cart-wheels we should see nothing funny in it. The audience roars with
laughter when the elderly gentleman sits on his hat, because hats are not
intended to be used as cushions. Nor is this element of unexpectedness
confined to mere farce. It constitutes more than half the point of a
brilliant repartee or play upon words. The child's misuse of terms is
amusing because it suggests something which would never have occurred to
us. And it is this which underlies the assertion that humour consists in
incongruity. True humour, however, contains far more than this. If comedy
plays on the surface of life, its greatest exponents bring home to us the
fact that that surface covers a depth. It is no accident that causes
Shakespeare's comedies to deepen in tone until they become well-nigh
indistinguishable from tragedies, or that leads Chaucer to introduce a
Pandarus into the tragedy of _Troilus and Criseyde_. Comedy has a double
value. It is amusing, and it is also a bond which connects us with
everyday life. It keeps tragedy from soaring into worlds peopled
exclusively by heroes and heroines of almost superhuman greatness, and
romance from dwelling wholly in a land of faery. Had the poets of the
Restoration ever dared to view their heroes from the comic point of view
we should have been spared the bombastic grandiloquence of their Almanzors
and Osmyns. Had Rosalind no sense of humour, were Touchstone and Jaques
non-existent, _As You Like It_ might still be a charming forest idyll, but
it would cease to have any hint of realism.
Chaucer's comedy touches both extremes: it includes the most elementary,
and the most subtle forms, and though he never rises to the height of the
great Shakespearean dramas, he does reveal possibilities hitherto
undreamed of in English literature. For the sake of clearness it may be
well to consider his comedy under four heads: farce, wit, satire, humour
proper.
(1) _Farce._--Farce may be defined as that form of comedy which makes
least appeal to the intelligence, which is, in fact, almost wholly
physical. An imbecile may be incapable of realising that there is anything
unusual in wearing straws in one's hair and therefore may not find the
spectacle amusing, but it needs but a very low order of intelligence to
appreciate such physical peculiarity--hence the popularity of costume
songs, and pantomime generally, which call for no mental effort on the
part of the audience. But while farce is undoubtedly the lowest form of
comedy, it does not necessarily follow that it is to be despised. The
greatest authors do not disdain to make use of it, only they keep it
subordinate to other interests. Shakespeare contrives to blend farce with
character-study in a way that is truly marvellous. Falstaff's fatness is
eminently farcical, and yet it is something more--a starveling Sir John
would be a wholly different person. It is farce touched with humour.
Dogberry and Verges are of a different species from the comic policeman of
musical comedy.
In Chaucer we find both forms of farce. The "sely carpenter" of the
_Milleres Tale_ provides plenty of incident well suited to tickle the most
elementary sense of the comic. The picture of the unfortunate John
victualling his tub in readiness for a second edition of Noah's flood,
and sitting in it, slung up to the ceiling, "awaytinge on the reyn," is
irresistibly funny, and it is easy to fancy the delight of the audience
when, thinking the flood has come, he cuts the cord and comes bumping on
to the floor; for the truest farce of all is the practical joke which
makes someone else ridiculous. All the coarser tales are full of such
episodes. It would make no difference if the incidents were transferred
from one tale to another, they have no subtle connection with the
personality of those involved in them; the absurdity lies in the actual
situation, and is exactly on a level with the rough-and-tumble fights
between Noah and his wife, which proved so popular in the Miracle Plays,
or the tossing of Mak in a blanket in the well-known Townley Mystery.
The portrait of the drunken Cook contains farce of a somewhat higher
order. He is a most unattractive person, and from any other point of view
would be merely repulsive. But humour, while it cuts through false
sentiment, not infrequently softens down the harsher lines in a character.
There is no bitterness in true laughter; we cannot wholly despise what
amuses us. In a tract the Cook and the Wife of Bath, the Friar and the
Pardoner, would serve as awful warnings. In the _Canterbury Tales_ they
show an extraordinary power of disarming criticism and worming themselves
into our affections:--
The Cook of London, whyl the Reve spak,
For joye, him thoughte, he clawed him on the bak.
He is a genial rascal after all, and we almost resent his having so
unfortunately appropriate a name as Hogge. When he falls asleep as he
rides and rolls off his horse our sympathies are with him, though we fully
appreciate the force of the Maunciple's plea that he shall not be
permitted to tell his tale. The picture of the rest of the pilgrims
shoving him to and fro in their efforts to mount him again, is farce of
the simplest and most primitive kind, but Roger himself is a live man, not
a mere occasion of mirth in others.
The Wyf of Bath, again, is a foul-mouthed, coarse-grained woman, selfish
and self-indulgent. Her prologue shows an amazing ignorance of the meaning
of clean living, and her piety merely serves as an excuse for seeing the
world. Yet such is the power of the comic point of view that it is quite
impossible to judge her from the conventional moral standpoint. Comedy
lays stress on her good-humour and her sense, and, above all, on her power
of amusing the company. Compare her for one moment with Mrs. Sinclair in
_Clarissa_, or the old hag in _Dombey and Son_, and the effect produced by
comic treatment at once becomes evident. It is not that it dulls our moral
sense, but it gives us a peculiar tolerance of its own. Instead of judging
all men from our own particular plane, we learn to see these illiterate
and common folk as they see each other, and we find them extraordinarily
human after all.
(2) _Wit._--Wit is the intellectual counterpart of farce. Farce at its
lowest is actually physical--the jester trips his victim up, 'Arry and
'Arriet exchange hats--and at its highest consists in physical absurdity.
Wit appeals as much to a blind man as to one who can see. In neither case
has the comic element any necessary connection with the characters of
those concerned. Farce, as we have seen, may be combined with humour, and
wit may gain an added keenness from our knowledge of the witty person, but
in their simplest form neither depends on any such connection. A man
chasing his hat is a funny sight, quite apart from our having any idea of
who he is. Any additional element of humour which may be added by the fact
that it is Mr. So-and-so, who prides himself on his dignified deportment,
is not purely farcical. In like manner, a brilliant repartee is amusing,
though we may have no notion who uttered it: in fact, not infrequently the
same story is told, with equal effect, about two or more different men. At
the same time a remark, witty in itself, often gains additional force from
its context, and in certain cases the chief point depends on the setting.
The wit-traps so beloved by Restoration comedy writers, of which George
Meredith speaks in his _Essay on Comedy_, are typical examples of pure
wit. It does not matter in the least by whom the remark is made: the
actual verbal sword-play is in itself amusing. Frequently such dialogue
does nothing whatever to help on the plot. Its wit is in itself sufficient
to justify its existence. Shakespeare, on the other hand, has
extraordinarily few passages which can be detached from the play in which
they occur, and quoted as essentially amusing. Falstaff's jests without
Falstaff lose all their savour, and the wit of a Rosalind or a Beatrice is
too intimate a part of her personality for the two to be divorced.
Millament's brilliant jests are scintillating jewels of wit. The wit of
Shakespeare's heroines is a facet of their character.
Drama naturally affords more scope for the display of wit than does
narrative poetry. That Chaucer is witty is undeniable, but his wit shows
itself chiefly in sly comments and parentheses, or in the adroit use of an
unexpected simile. His dry comment on the probable fate of Arcite's soul;
the parenthesis which tells us how small is the number of those who having
done well desire to hide their good deeds; the eagle's complaint, in the
_Hous of Fame_, that the poet is "noyous for to carie"; Placebo's
explanation of the reason why he has never yet quarrelled with any lord of
"heigh estaat," are good examples of the former method. Detached from
their context, there is little or nothing in any of them to raise a smile.
They contain no play upon words, nothing intrinsically amusing. But in
their proper setting they cause that pleasant shock which breeds laughter;
they give a sudden whimsical turn to the thought.
The _Nonne Preestes Tale_ illustrates, not only Chaucer's comic use of
simile, but, what is closely allied to this, the comic effect produced by
speaking of one thing in terms of another. The mock-heroic effect produced
by the learning of Chauntecleer and the weight of the illustrations which
he adduces in support of his faith in dreams, is inimitable. This cock
quotes Josephus and Macrobius and Cato with such pompous gravity that he
almost persuades us to share his own sense of his importance. The grave
disquisition on predestination and free-will which prefaces the account of
his untoward fate has an irresistibly comic effect. This is, however, not
purely comic. It is characteristic of Chaucer that he should treat a
matter which was evidently much in his thoughts, in this half-ironic
manner. The comparison of the bereaved Pertelote to "Hasdrubales wyf," and
her sister hens to the wives of the senators of Rome
--whan that Nero brende[109] the citee--
is no less effective. The whole story indeed is treated consistently from
the comic point of view, and while here again there is nothing inherently
funny in detached passages, wit lights up the poem from end to end.
(3) _Satire._--Satire differs from farce or wit in that it has a definite
moral purpose.
It is our purpose, Crites, to correct
And punish with our laughter ...
says Mercury in _Cynthia's Revels_. The satirist deliberately alienates
our sympathies from those whom he describes, and as the true humorist is
apt to pass from comedy to romance, and from romance to tragedy, so the
satirist not infrequently ends by finding rage and disgust overpower his
sense of the ridiculous. Ben Jonson passes from the comedy of _Every Man
in his Humour_ to the bitterness of _Volpone_, Swift from the comparative
lightness of Gulliver in Lilliput, to the savage brutality of the
Hounyhymns. Of satire pure and simple few examples are to be found in
Chaucer. The _Hous of Fame_ is indeed satiric in conception, and certain
of the pictures it contains are decidedly effective. The
fourteenth-century equivalent of the game of Russian Scandal which it
describes, has already been noticed. No less ironic is the account of the
shipmen and pilgrymes
With scrippes bret-ful of lesinges
Entremedled with tydinges,[110]
whom the poet meets in the house of Rumour. But the poem as a whole is so
lengthy and so much of it is occupied with the description of symbols,
references to classical mythology, and other equally serious matters, that
the more witty portions stand out conspicuously, and the reader is apt to
find some difficulty in seeing the various parts in their proper relation.
Successful satire must ever keep its object in view. The _Hous of Fame_ is
too discursive to be really effective as a whole.
The fact is that satire is not Chaucer's natural bent. He is too
quick-witted not to see through sham and humbug, but his interest lies in
portraiture rather than in exposure. His object is to paint life as he
sees it, to hold up the mirror to nature, and, as has justly been said, "a
mirror has no tendency," it reflects, but it does not, or should not,
distort. In two cases only does Chaucer deliberately draw a one-sided
picture, and both are topical skits, too slight to regard as satire
proper. The _Compleint of Mars_, which is not specially witty or amusing
in itself, is said to have been written at the expense of my lady of York
and the Earl of Huntingdon, but any savour which the jest may once have
had, has long since passed away. The rhyme of _Sir Thopas_ has already
been noticed as a good-natured parody of the conventional romance.
But if Chaucer is too tolerant and genial, too little of a preacher and
enthusiast, for a satirist, enough has already been said to show that his
wit has often a satiric turn. The student of the _Canterbury Tales_ is
often reminded of the worth of another great English humorist. Chaucer and
Fielding are alike in a certain air of rollicking good-fellowship, a
certain virility, a determination to paint men and women as they know
them. Neither is particularly squeamish, both enjoy a rough jest, and have
little patience with over-refinement. Both give one a sense of sturdy
honesty and kindliness, and know how to combine tenderness with strength.
Both, with all their tolerance, have a keen eye for hypocrisy or
affectation and a sharp tongue wherewith to chastise and expose it.
Chaucer hates no one, not even the Pardoner, as whole-heartedly as
Fielding hates Master Blifil, but the _Pardoners Tale_ affords the best
instance of the satiric bent of the poet's humour when he is brought face
to face with a scheming rogue.
The Host, who has been much moved by the piteous tale of Virginia, turns
to the Pardoner for something to remove its depressing influence:--
"Or but I here anon a mery tale."
he cries,
"Myn herte is lost for pitee of this mayde.
Thou belamy,[111] thou Pardoner," he seyde,
"Tel us som mirthe or japes[112] right anon."
The Pardoner is ready enough to oblige, as soon as he has called at the
inn they are passing and has eaten and drunk. But it is noteworthy that
the pilgrims, who have listened to the Miller's tale without a murmur, are
nervous as to what the Pardoner's idea of a merry tale may be. With one
voice they protest:--
"Nay! lat him telle us of no ribaudye;[113]
Tell us som moral thing, that we may lere[114]
Som wit, and thanne wol we gladly here."
To the Pardoner it is all one. Practised speaker as he is, a comic story
or a sermon comes equally readily to his lips, and he promises with ready
good-nature, though he begs for a moment for reflection:--
"I graunte, y-wis," quod he, "but I moste thinke
Up-on som honest thing, whyl that I drinke."
Of their insinuations as to the kind of tale he is likely to tell if left
to himself, he takes not the slightest notice. His tongue loosened by the
ale, he begins with a cynical confession of his methods as a popular
preacher.
"Lordings," quod he, "in chirches whan I preche
I peyne me to han an hauteyn[115] speche,
And ringe it out as round as gooth a belle,
For I can al by rote that I telle.[116]
My theme is alwey oon, and ever was--
'_Radix malorum est Cupiditas_.'"
Having thus warned his hearers against the love of money, he proceeds to
show his credentials, sprinkling a few Latin terms here and there in his
speech:--
"To saffron with my predicacioun[117]
And for to stire men to devocioun,"
and then shows his relics, the shoulder-bone of "an holy Jewes shepe," a
miraculous mitten which will cause the crops of the man who wears it to
increase manifold:--
"By this gaude have I wonne, yeer by yeer,
An hundred mark sith I was Pardoner"--
a pillow-case, which he swears is our Lady's veil, etc., etc. After this
he preaches a vehement sermon against avarice, the object of which, he
frankly explains, is
"... for to make hem free
To yeve her pens, and namely unto me.
For my entente is nat but for to winne,
And no-thing for correccioun of sinne.
I rekke never, whan that they ben beried,
Though that her soules goon a-blakeberied."[118]
If anyone has offended him, he takes care so to point at him in what he
says that the reference is unmistakable and the whole congregation
understands who it is that is being denounced:--
"Thus quyte I folk that doon us displeasances."
In fact, the whole object of his preaching is neither more nor less than
the amassing of money:--
"Therfore my theme is yet, and ever was--
'_Radix malorum est Cupiditas_.'
* * * * *
For I wol preche and begge in sondry londes;
I wol not do no labour with myn hondes
* * * * *
I wol have money, wolle, chese, and whete,
Al were it yeven of the poorest page,
Or of the poorest widwe in a village."
No wonder that
Up-on a day he gat him more moneye
Than that the person[119] gat in monthes tweye.
After this shameless confession, the Pardoner offers to relate one of the
moral tales which he has found most efficacious in cajoling money out of
unwilling pockets.
In Flaundres whylom was a companye
Of yonge folk, that haunteden folye[120] ...
thus he begins, and so moved is he with the thought of the folly of these
young people that, with his own lips scarce dry from their last draught of
corny ale, he proceeds to denounce gluttony and drunkenness in no measured
terms. It is an admirable sermon, full of apt illustrations and
appropriate references to the Bible. It enables us to see, at the outset,
how the preacher succeeds in dominating his illiterate audiences when he
speaks in the village churches. Having got well into his stride, the
Pardoner passes on to the promised tale. Among the riotous company are
three young men. One day, as they sit drinking in a tavern, they hear the
bell toll, and sending a servant to inquire the cause, they learn that
Death has carried away one of their companions. With pot-valiant courage
they declare their intention of seeking out and slaying this false traitor
Death, and without more ado set forth on the quest. An old man, whom they
meet by the way, tells them that Death is to be found in a neighbouring
grove, under a tree:--
And everich of thise ryotoures ran
Til he cam to that tree, and ther they founde
Of florins fyne of golde y-coyned rounde
Wel ny an eighte busshels, as hem thoughte.
The sight effectually puts Death out of their minds. They decide that the
treasure must be hidden, and since it will be well to wait for darkness
before venturing to remove it, they draw lots to determine which of them
shall run to the town for meat and drink, while the other two keep guard.
The lot falls on the youngest, but no sooner has he gone than the two who
remain plot to murder him when he comes back, since there will be the more
gold for them if he is out of the way. The youngest also thinks it a pity
to divide such wealth by three, and having reached the town he goes to an
apothecary and demands
Som poyson, that he mighte his rattes quelle.[121]
He then buys three bottles, puts poison in two and reserves the third for
his own use. On his return he is slain by the other two.
And whan that this was doon, thus spak that oon,
"Now lat us sitte and drinke, and make us merie
And afterward we wol his body berie."
Thus all three find Death where they sought him.
The story is told with considerable force. The action moves quickly, and
there is enough grim suggestiveness to stir the hearer's imagination
without the detail being in any way overloaded. The picture of the old man
vainly seeking death as he strikes his staff upon the ground and cries:
"Leve moder, leet me in"; the brief dialogue between the two roisterers in
the wood; the description of the thoughts that chase each other through
the mind of the third as he runs, all show a power of vivid dramatic
presentation. It is not in the least such a tale as the pilgrims expect
from the Pardoner. The poor Parson himself could point no better moral.
And it ends with (of all things!) an impassioned appeal against avarice.
The Pardoner has fallen unconsciously into his professional manner.
Carried away by his own eloquence, he forgets that he began by explaining
the trick of the whole thing. No doubt, as he himself had said, he has
used the tale often enough as a means of extorting money, and with the
most convincing fervour he begs the pilgrims--with his confession fresh in
their minds--to beware of covetousness, and to press forward and make
their offerings to his holy relics. So naturally have we been led on step
by step, so easily has he passed from cynicism to sermon, and from sermon
to application, that it is something of a shock when the Host, instead of
hastening to kiss the relics as he is bidden, responds to the invitation
with a coarse jest. The anger of the Pardoner at this indignity is
explicable only on the ground that he was so consummate an actor that he
had literally forgotten himself in his part. A hypocrite he undoubtedly
is, but not the crude, deliberate hypocrite whom the later satirists of
the Puritans delighted to draw, nor even the Pecksniffian hypocrite who,
while he retains his mask, even in private, never loses consciousness of
the fact that it is a mask; he has something of the artistic temperament,
and his failure to impress the pilgrims gives him a real, though
momentary, jar. The subtle irony with which the whole picture is drawn is
perfect in its restraint. The vulgar rogue is sufficiently represented by
the Friar. The Pardoner is of higher intelligence, and while we condemn
him we recognise his ability.
The suggestion that the various birds in the _Parlement of Foules_
represent courtiers of the day, has already been noticed. If it is true,
the satire is of so genial and playful a kind that even the goose can
scarcely have been hurt by it. More than once Chaucer draws an amusing
picture of a gossiping, foolish crowd, but while it is evident that he has
no very high opinion of the intelligence of people in the mass, there is
no trace of bitterness in his descriptions. The well-meaning busybodies
who come to comfort Criseyde are as helplessly incompetent as "the goos,
the cokkow, and the doke," but though fussy and self-centred, they have
too much real kindliness for it to be possible not to feel a certain
affection for them. Perhaps the best of all Chaucer's crowds is that in
the _Squieres Tale_ which gathers to look at the horse of brass, and the
other magic gifts:--
Diverse folk diversely they demed;
As many hedes, as many wittes ther been.
They murmureden as dooth a swarm of been,[122]
And maden skiles after hir fantasyes,[123]
Rehersinge of thise olde poetryes,
And seyden, it was lyk the Pegasee,
The hors that hadde winges for to flee;
Or elles it was the Grekes hors Synon,[124]
That broghte Troye to destruccion,
As men may in thise olde gestes rede.
"Myn herte," quod oon, "is evermore in drede;
I trowe som men of armes been ther-inne,
That shapen[125] hem this citee for to winne.
It were right good that al swich thing were knowe."
Another rowned[126] to his felawe lowe,
And seyde, "He lyeth, it is rather lyk
An apparance y-maad by som magyk
As jogelours pleyen at thise festes grete."
Of sondry doutes thus they jangle and trete,
As lewed[127] peple demeth comunly
Of thinges that been maad more subtilly,
Than they can in her lewedness comprehende:
They demen gladly to the badder ende.
With equal learning they discuss the mirror and sword and ring, and having
paraded their knowledge of "sondry harding of metal," "fern-asshen glass"
and similar wonderful inventions, come to no conclusion.
(4) _Humour._--If it is difficult to draw a hard-and-fast line round other
elements of comedy, and detach wit from satire, or satire from farce, it
is still harder to attempt to isolate humour and discuss it as a separate
and distinct property. Humour is the sympathetic appreciation of the
comic, the faculty which enables us to love while we laugh, and to love
the better for our laughter. Something has already been said of the
softening influence of comedy. It is humour which enables us to see the
other person's point of view, to distinguish between crimes and
misdemeanours, so that we no more wish to convert Sir Toby from the error
of his ways than to reduce the fat boy's appetite. Above all, it is humour
which points out those endearing peculiarities, those little foibles and
harmless weaknesses which give Parson Adams and the Vicar of Wakefield so
warm a place in our affections. There is no sting in such laughter, no
conscious superiority; on the contrary, it contains an element of
tenderness. Obviously humour is distinct from satire, but it can be
distinguished from farce and wit only by insisting on the externals when
speaking of them. Humour is indeed the soul of all comedy. Satire, being
destructive, not constructive, is in a class apart, but even satire--as we
have seen in Chaucer's picture of a crowd--may become so softened by
humour that it loses the element of caricature and serves only to give a
keener edge to wit.
Chaucer's whole point of view is that of the humorist. To the tragic
writer things apparently trifling in themselves may be fraught with deep
significance. A chance movement, a momentary impulse, may set fire to the
train which brings about the catastrophe, or may reveal some subtle shade
of character which it is essential that we should see. But the tragedian
has no time to waste on trifles for their own sake. If Shakespeare shows
us the sleepy porter unbarring the gate of Macbeth's castle, or the
grave-diggers of Elsinore singing at their work, it is not because he
wants our thoughts to dwell on either the one or the other. They have
their place as part of the tragedy, and it is the sense of tragedy, not
the triviality of the incident which is uppermost in our mind. But the
comic poet saunters gaily through life pausing to notice every trifle as
he passes. He views the world as the unaccustomed traveller views a
foreign country; the old women at their cottage doors, the peasants
plodding behind their patient oxen in the field, the very names above the
shops, all are interesting. There is no such thing as a dull person, the
mere fashion in which a man walks or wears his clothes is worth recording,
not because it throws any subtle light upon his character, but because it
is unusual and therefore quaint, because, in fact, the unexpected is
manifesting itself in these homely details.
Chaucer possesses this faculty of amused observation in a pre-eminent
degree. Again and again he contrives to invest some perfectly trifling and
commonplace incident with an air of whimsicality, and by so doing to make
it at once realistic and remote. We are never wholly absorbed by what
amuses us, in the sense that we are absorbed by what appeals to our tragic
emotions. Laughter implies a certain detachment, whereas in tragedy we
feel with those concerned with an intensity which often causes us to lose
all consciousness of our own individuality. We may be surprised to find
the tears in our eyes, but we are always conscious of our laughter.
This homely, whimsical point of view shows itself in a thousand minute
touches. Friar John, in the _Somnours Tale_, goes to call on friend
Thomas:--
And fro the bench he droof awey the cat,
And leyde adoun his potente[128] and his hat,
And eek his scrippe, and sette him softe adoun....
The rout pursues dan Russel the fox:--
And cryden, "Out! harrow! and weylawey!
Ha, ha, the fox!" and after him they ran,
And eek with staves many another man;
Ran Colle our dogge, and Talbot, and Gerland,
And Malkin, with a distaf in her hand;
Ran cow and calf, and eek the verray hogges
So were they fered for berking of the dogges
And shouting of the men and wimmen eek,
They ronne so, hem thoughte hir herte brekke.
They yelleden as feendes doon in hellë;
The dokes[129] cryden as men wolde hem quelle;[130]
The gees for fere flowen[131] over the trees;
Out of the hyve cam the swarm of bees....
There is nothing wildly farcical in any of this. Friar John does not sit
on the cat; the men and dogs do not tumble over each other. The humour
consists in the point of view which finds such incidents worth recording.
It is not what he says, but the way he says it; not what he sees, but the
way he sees it.
As to the sympathetic quality of humour, that is even more obvious in all
Chaucer's work. It is sympathy that lies at the bottom of a tolerance so
wide that it hardly finds it necessary to forgive. When Chaucer needs a
melodramatic villain or villainess such as Apius, or Alle's mother, he can
depict one, but except when it affords opportunity for comedy he usually
touches an evil character but lightly. His heart lies in the pure poetry
of such women as Constance and Dorigen, or in broadly comic effect: he has
no desire to sound the depths of human nature or to dwell upon the darker
and more terrible side of life. Shakespeare's comedy is often touched with
a suggestion of something faintly tragic. Even Falstaff is by no means a
wholly comic figure, and the wisdom of Jaques, with all its affectation,
contains a truth that goes beneath the surface. Chaucer seldom shows us
the revealing power of comedy, but, like Shakespeare, he is not afraid to
blend gaiety and gravity in the same person. From one point of view the
_Book of the Duchesse_ is surely the most cheerful elegy ever written.
Chaucer does not tell off certain low-class characters for comic effect,
he allows even the noblest and best a sense of humour. When we think of
the serious and lachrymose heroines of romance, we feel that Chaucer's
women owe half their vitality to the fact that they are not afraid to
laugh, that noble and high-minded as they are, they are part and parcel of
the ordinary stuff of human life.