"CANTERBURY TALES"--THE _DRAMATIS PERSONAE_
"Pilgrims and palmers plighted them together
To seek St. James, and saints in Rome.
They went forth in their way with many wise tales,
And had leave to lie all their life after ...
Hermits on an heap, with hooked staves,
Wenten to Walsingham, and their wenches after;
Great lubbers and long, that loth were to labour,
Clothed them in copes to be knowen from other,
And shaped themselves as hermits, their ease to have."
"Piers Plowman," B., Prol. 46
During those twelve years in Aldgate Tower, Chaucer's genius fought its
way through the literary conventions of his time to the full assertion of
its native originality. He had begun with allegory and moralization, after
the model of the "Roman de la Rose"; shreds of these conventions clung to
him even to the end of the Aldgate period; but they were already outworn.
In "Troilus and Cressida" we have real men and women under all the
classical machinery: they think and act as men thought and acted in
Chaucer's time; and Pandarus especially is so lifelike and individual that
Shakespeare will transfer him almost bodily to his own canvas. In the
"House of Fame" and the "Legend of Good Women" the form indeed is again
allegorical, but the poet's individuality breaks through this narrow mask;
his self-revelations are franker and more direct than at any previous
time; and in each case he wearied of the poem and broke off long before
the end. With the humility of a true artist, he had practised his hand for
years to draw carefully after the old acknowledged models; but these now
satisfied him less and less. His mind was stored with images which could
not be forced into the narrow framework of a dream; he must find a canvas
broad enough for all the life of his time; for the cream of all that he
had seen and heard in Flanders and France and Italy, in the streets of
London and on the open highways of a dozen English counties. Boccaccio,
for a similar scheme, had brought together a company of young Florentines
of the upper class, and of both sexes, in a villa-garden. Chaucer's plan
of a pilgrim cavalcade gave him a variety of character as much greater as
the company in a third-class carriage is more various than that in a
West-end club.
[Illustration: A HOSTELRY AT NIGHT
(From a 15th-century MS. of "Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles" in the
Hunterian Library at Glasgow)]
In earlier ages, a pilgrimage had of course been a very solemn matter,
involving the certainty of great labour and heavy privations, and with
very considerable risk to life or limb. The crusades themselves were
pilgrimages _en masse_, as contemporary chroniclers often remind us. At
the commencement of an undertaking so serious, the pilgrims naturally
sought the blessing of the Church; and there was a special service for
their use. It is probable, however, that Chaucer's pilgrims troubled
themselves as little about this service as about the special pilgrim's
dress, the absence of which appears very plainly from his descriptions of
their costume. For a century at least before he wrote, pilgrimages had
been gradually becoming journeys rather of pleasure than of duty, for
those who could afford the necessary expense which they entailed.
Travelling indeed was not always safe; but when the pilgrim went alone and
on foot he could always protect himself from most evil-doers by taking the
traditional scrip and staff and gown which marked him as sacred; and
often, as in Chaucer's case, a caravan was formed which might well defy
all the ordinary perils of the road. The "mire" and "slough," which
Chaucer more than once mentions, had always been as much a matter of
common routine to everybody, even on his journey from farm to farm or
village to village, as a puncture is to the modern cyclist, or occasional
external traction to the motorist.[151] Moreover, though the inns might
not be what we should call luxurious, they offered abundant good cheer and
good fellowship to all who could pay the price. A certain Count of Poitou
went about in disguise to find what class of his subjects led the
happiest life; he judged at last "that the merchants at fair-time, who go
to taverns and find all the delicacies they can desire ready prepared,
would lead the most delightful life of all, but for this one drawback,
that they must at last settle the score for all that they have
consumed."[152] If, at these inns, the pilgrims often found themselves
packed into great dormitories fitted with berths like a ship's cabin, this
was far less of a change from their ordinary habits than are those
hardships to which modern mountain tourists cheerfully submit on
occasion.[153] Any great change from the ordinary routine marks a bright
spot in most men's minds, even in these days of many amusements and much
locomotion; so that, in proportion as the King's peace grew more effectual
in England, and places of pilgrimage multiplied, and the middle classes
could better afford the expense of time or money, it became as natural to
many people to go to Walsingham or Canterbury for the sake of the pleasant
society as it was to choose a church for the sake of gossip or
flirtation.[154] This is already complained of about 1250 A.D. by Berthold
of Regensburg, one of the greatest mission-preachers of the 13th century.
"Men talk nowadays in church as if it were at market.... One tells what he
has seen on his pilgrimage to Palestine or Rome or Compostella: thou mayst
easily say so much in church of these same pilgrimages, that God or St.
James will give thee no reward therefore." Again, "Many a man journeys
hence to St. James of Compostella, and never hears a single mass on the
way out or back, and then they go with sport and laughter, and some seldom
say even their Paternoster! This I say not to turn pilgrims aside from
Compostella; I am not strong enough for that; but thou mightest earn more
grace by a few masses than for all thy journey to Compostella and back.
Now, what dost thou find at Compostella? St. James's head. Well and good:
that is a dead skull: the better part is in heaven. Now, what findest thou
at home, at thy yard-gate? When thou goest to church in the morning, thou
findest the true God and Man, body and soul, as truly as on that day
wherein He was born of our Lady St. Mary, the ever-Virgin, whose holiness
is greater than all saints.... Thou mayst earn more reward at one mass
than another man in his six weeks out to St. Jacob and six weeks back
again: that makes twelve weeks." "Ye run to St. James, and sell so much at
home that sometimes your wives and children must ever be the poorer for
it, or thou thyself in need and debt all thy life long. Such a man crams
himself so that he comes back far fatter than he went, and has much to say
of what he has seen, and lets no man listen to the service or the sermon
in church." Two other great preachers, Cardinal Jacques de Vitry shortly
before Berthold, and Etienne de Bourbon shortly after him, speak of the
debaucheries which were not unusual on pilgrimages: the latter tells how
pilgrims sometimes sang obscene songs in chorus, and joined in dissolute
dances with the lewd village folk over the very graves in the churchyard;
he seems to speak of the German pilgrims as exceptional in singing
religious songs. All this was a century before Chaucer's journey; and
during those hundred years the institution had steadily lost in grace as
it gained in popularity. The author of "Piers Plowman" not only notes how
many rascals were to be found on pilgrimages, but would apparently have
been glad to see them almost entirely superseded. His professional
pilgrim comes hung round with tokens from a hundred shrines; he has been
at Rome, Compostella, Jerusalem, Sinai, Bethlehem, Babylon, and even in
Armenia; but of "Saint Truth" he has never heard, and can give no help to
those who are in real distress about their souls. An ideal society would
be one in which St. James was sought only by the sick-beds of the poor,
and pilgrims resorted no longer to Rome but to "prisons and poor cottages"
instead. Seventeen years before Chaucer's journey, even a prelate of the
Church dared to raise a similar protest. Archbishop Sudbury (then only
Bishop of London) was met by a band of pilgrims on their way to Becket's
Jubilee. They asked for his blessing; he told them plainly that the
promised Plenary Indulgence would be useless to them unless they went in a
more reverent spirit; and many simple souls were rather pained than
surprised when Wat Tyler's mob, eleven years later, hacked off the head of
so free-thinking an Archbishop on Tower Hill.[155] If this was what
orthodox folk said already, then we need not wonder at Wycliffe's
outspoken condemnation, or that a citizen of Nottingham, as early as 1395,
was compelled under pain of the stake to promise (among other articles) "I
shall never more despise pilgrimage."
Ten years after Chaucer, again, the Lollard Thorpe was tried before
Archbishop Arundel, and painted pilgrimages exactly as Chaucer's Poor
Parson would have described them. "Such fond people waste blamefully God's
goods on their vain pilgrimages, spending their goods upon vicious
hostelries, which are oft unclean women of their bodies.... Also, sir, I
knowe well that when divers men and women will goe thus after their own
willes, and finding out one pilgrimage, they will ordaine with them
before, to have with them both men and women that can well sing wanton
songes, and some other pilgrimes will have with them bagge pipes; so that
everie towne that they come through, what with the noise of their singing,
and with the sound of their piping, and with the jangling of their
Canterburie bels, and with the barking out of dogges after them, that they
make more noise, then if the king came there away, with all his clarions,
and many other minstrels. And if these men and women be a moneth out in
their pilgrimage, many of them shall be an halfe yeare after, great
janglers, tale-tellers, and liers."[156] A century later, we find
Archbishop Warham and the Pope negotiating privately about Becket's
Jubilee in a frankly commercial spirit, while Erasmus publicly held up the
Canterbury Pilgrimage to ridicule; and a few years later again St. Thomas
was declared a traitor, his shrine was plundered, and the pilgrimages
ceased. It may indeed be said that the Canterbury Pilgrimage would not
have been so proper for our poet's dramatic purpose but that most of its
religious earnestness had long since evaporated.
But what a canvas it was in 1387, and how frankly Chaucer utilized all its
possibilities! The opportunity of bringing in any tale which lay nearest
to his heart--for what tale in the world was there that might not come
naturally from one or other of this party?--was only a part of all that
this subject offered, as the poet realized from the very first. Even more
delightful than any of the tales told by Chaucer's pilgrims, is the tale
which he tells us about them all: the story of their journey to
Canterbury. Nowhere within so brief a compass can we realize either the
life of the 14th century on one hand, or on the other that dramatic power
in which Chaucer stands second only to Shakespeare among English poets.
Forget for a while the separate tales of the pilgrims--many of which were
patched up by fits and starts during such broken leisure as this man of
the world could afford for indulging his poetical fancies; while many
others (like the Monk's and the Parson's) are tedious to modern readers in
strict proportion to their dramatic propriety at the moment--forget for
once all but the Prologue and the end-links, and read these through at one
sitting, from the first stirrup-cup at Southwark Tabard to that final
crest of Harbledown where the weary travellers look down at last upon the
sacred city of their pilgrimage. There is no such story as this in all
medieval literature; no such wonderful gallery of finished portraits, nor
any drama so true both to common life and to perfect art. The _dramatis
personae_ of the "Decameron" are mere puppets in comparison; their
occasional talk seems to us insipid to the last degree of old-world
fashion; Boccaccio's preface and interludes are as much less dramatic than
Chaucer's as their natural background is more picturesque, with its Great
Plague in Florence and its glimpses of the Val d'Arno from that sweet
hill-garden of cypress and stone-pine and olive. Boccaccio wrote for a
society that was in many ways over-refined already; it is fortunate for us
that Chaucer's public was not yet at that point of literary development at
which art is too often tempted into artifice. He took the living men day
by day, each in his simplest and most striking characteristics; and from
all these motley figures, under the artist's hand, grew a mosaic in which
each stands out with all the glow of his own native colour, and with all
the added glory of the jewelled hues around him. The sharp contrasts of
medieval society gave the poet here a splendid opportunity. In days when
the distinctions of rank were so marked and so unforgettable, even to the
smallest details of costume, the Knight's dignity risked nothing by
unbending to familiar jest with the Host; and the variety of characters
which Chaucer has brought together in this single cavalcade is as probable
in nature as it is artistically effective. All moods, from the most
exalted piety down to the coarsest buffoonery, were possible and natural
on a journey religious indeed in essential conception, but which had by
this time become so common and worldly a function that few pilgrims
dreamed of putting off the old Adam until the white walls of Canterbury
came in sight. The plot has in it all the charm of spring, of open-air
travel, and of passing good-fellowship without afterthought; the rich
fields of Kent, the trees budding into their first green, mine ease in
mine inn at night, and over all the journey a far-off halo of sanctity.
On the evening of Tuesday, April 16, 1387, twenty-nine pilgrims found
themselves together in the Tabard at Southwark.[157] This hostelry lay
almost within a stone's throw of Chaucer's birthplace, and within sight of
many most notable London landmarks. Behind lay the priory of St. Mary
Overy, where Gower was now lodging among the friendly and not too ascetic
monks, and where he still lies carved in stone, with his three great books
for a pillow to his head. A few yards further in the background stood
London Bridge, the eighth marvel of the world, with its twenty arches, its
two chapels, its double row of houses, and its great tower bristling with
rebel skulls. Wat Tyler's head was among the newest there on that spring
evening; and in five years the head of Chaucer's Earl of Worcester was to
attain the same bad eminence. Beyond the bridge rose the walls and
guard-towers of the city, the open quays and nodding wooden houses, and a
hundred and fifty church steeples, seldom indeed of any great
architectural pretensions individually, but most picturesque in their
variety, and dominated by the loftiest of all existing European
structures--the wooden spire of old St. Paul's.[158]
[Illustration:
Short was his gown, with sleeves long and wide.
Well could he sit on horse, and faire ride
THE SQUIRE OF THE "CANTERBURY TALES"
(From the Ellesmere MS. (15th century))]
Nor were the pilgrims themselves less picturesque than the background of
their journey. At the head of the first group the Knight, so fresh from
the holy wars that the grease of his armour still stains his leather
doublet, and that we guess his rank only from the excellence of his steed
and his own high breeding--
And though that he were worthy, he was wise,
And of his port as meek as is a maid.
He never yet no villainy ne said
In all his life, unto no manner wight.
He was a very perfect gentle knight.
Then his son, the Squire, a model of youthful beauty and strength, who had
already struck many a good blow in France for his lady's grace, but who
shows here his gentler side, with yellow curls falling upon the shortest
of fashionable jackets and the longest of sleeves--
Embroidered was he, as it were a mead
All full of freshe flowres, white and red.
Singing he was, or fluting, all the day;
He was as fresh as is the month of May.
And lastly their single attendant, the nut-headed yeoman forester, with
his suit of Lincoln green, his peacock arrows, and his mighty bow.
After chivalry comes the Church; and first the fine black cloth and snowy
linen of Madam Eglantine and her fellow nun, clean and dainty and demure,
like a pair of aristocratic pussy-cats on a drawing-room hearthrug. Their
male escort, the Nuns' Priest, commands no great reverence from mine Host,
who, however, will presently doff his cap before the Prioress, and address
her with a studied deference even beyond the courtesy which he renders to
the Knight. Her dignified reserve, her natural anxiety to set off a fine
person with more elaboration of costume than the strict Rule permitted,
her French of Stratford atte Bowe, her tenderness to lapdogs and even to
marauding mice, her faultless refinement of behaviour under the ticklish
conditions of a 14th-century dinner-table--all these pardonable luxuries
of a fastidious nature are described with Chaucer's most delicate irony,
and stand in artistic contrast to the grosser indiscipline of the Monk.
This "manly man, to be an abbot able," contemptuously repudiated the
traditional restraints of the cloister, and even the comparatively mild
discipline of those smaller and therefore less rigorous "cells" which the
fiery zeal of St. Bernard stigmatized as "Synagogues of Satan."[159] He
scoffed at the Benedictine prohibition of field sports and of extravagant
dress, and at the old-fashioned theory of subduing the flesh by hard
brainwork or field labour; yet at bottom he seems to have been a good
fellow enough, with a certain real dignity of character; and the
discipline which he so unceremoniously rejected had by this time (as we
may see from the official records of his Order) grown very generally
obsolete. But still more strange to the earlier ideals of his Order was
the next cleric on Chaucer's list, the Friar. Father Hubert is one of
those jovial sinners for whom old Adam has always a lurking sympathy even
when the new Adam feels most bound to condemn them. Essentially
irreligious even in his most effective religious discourse; greedy,
unabashed, as ubiquitous and intrusive as a bluebottle fly, he is yet
always supple and ingratiating; a favourite boon-companion of the country
squires, but still more popular with many women; equally free and easy
with barmaids at a tavern or with wife and daughter in a citizen's hall.
The Summoner and the Pardoner, parasites that crawled on the skirts of the
Church and plied under her broad mantle their dubious trade in sacred
things, had not even the Friar's redeeming features; yet we see at a
glance their common humanity, and even recognize in our modern world many
of the follies on which they were tempted to trade. Two figures alone
among this company go far to redeem the Church--the Scholar and the Poor
Parson. The former's disinterested devotion to scholarship has passed into
a proverb: "gladly would he learn, and gladly teach"--an ideal which then,
as always, went too often hand in hand with leanness and poverty. The
Parson, contentedly poor himself and full of compassion for his still
poorer neighbours, equally ready at time of need to help the struggling
sinner or to "snib" the impenitent rich man, has often tempted earlier
commentators to read their own religious prepossessions into Chaucer's
verse. One party has assumed that so good a priest must have been a
Lollard, or Wycliffe himself; while others have contended (with even less
show of evidence, as we shall presently see) that he represents the
typical orthodox rector or vicar of Chaucer's time. The one thing of which
we may be certain is that Chaucer knew and reverenced goodness when he saw
it, and that he would willingly have subscribed to Thackeray's humble
words, "For myself, I am a heathen and a publican, but I can't help
thinking that those men are in the right." In the Tales themselves, as on
the pilgrimage, a multitude of sins are covered by this ploughman's
brother, of whom it is written that--
Christes lore, and His apostles' twelve,
He taught, and first he followed it him-selve.
[Illustration: A PARTY OF PILGRIMS
(FROM MS. ROY. 18. D. ii. f. 148)]
To summarize even briefly the appearance and character of the remaining
eighteen pilgrims would be too long a task; but it must be noticed how
infallible an eye Chaucer had for just the touch which makes a portrait
live. The Country Squire, looking like a daisy with his fiery face and
white beard; the Sailor, embarrassed with his horse; the Wife of Bath,
"somedeal deaf," and therefore as loud in her voice as in her dress; the
Summoner's scurvy eczema under his thick black eyebrows; the Pardoner's
smooth yellow hair and eyes starting out of his head; the thick-set
Miller, with a red-bristled wart on the end of his nose, and a bullet head
with which he could burst in a door at one charge; and his rival the
slender, choleric Reeve--
Full longe were his legges and full lean,
Y-like a staff; there was no calf y-seen!
A goodly company, indeed, and much to the taste of Harry Bailey, mine host
of the Tabard, whom we may pretty safely identify with an actual
contemporary and fellow M.P. of Chaucer's.[160] He proposes, therefore,
to be their guide and master of the ceremonies on the road to Canterbury
and back. The pilgrims themselves shall tell tales to shorten the journey,
"drawing cut" for their order; and the teller of the best tale shall, on
their return, enjoy a supper at the expense of the rest--
By one assent
We be accorded to his judgement;
And thereupon the wine was set anon;
We drunken, and to reste went each one
Withouten any longer tarrying.
A-morrow, when the day began to spring,
Up rose the host, and was our aller cock, [for all of us
And gathered us together in a flock....
[Illustration:
A white coat and a blue hood weared he,
A bagpipe well coulde he blow and sound,
And therewithal he brought us out of town.
THE MILLER
(From the Ellesmere MS.)]