THE GAY SCIENCE
"Madame, whilom I was one
That to my father had a king;
But I was slow, and for nothing
Me liste not to Love obey;
And that I now full sore abey....
Among the gentle nation
Love is an occupation
Which, for to keep his lustes save,
Should every gentle hearte have."
GOWER, "Confessio Amantis," Bk. IV
The facts given in the foregoing chapter may explain a good deal in the
Wife of Bath's Prologue that might otherwise be ascribed to wide poetical
licence; but they may seem strangely at variance with the "Knight's Tale"
or the "Book of the Duchess." The contradiction, however, lies only on the
surface. Neither flesh nor spirit can suffer extreme starvation. When the
facts of life are particularly sordid, then that "large and liberal
discontent," which is more or less rooted in every human breast, builds
itself an ideal world out of those very materials which are most
conspicuously and most painfully lacking in the ungrateful reality. The
conventional platonism and self-sacrifice of love, according to the
knightly theory, was in strict proportion to its rarity in knightly
practice. We must, of course, beware of the facile assumption that these
medieval _mariages de convenance_ were so much less happy than ours;
nothing in human nature is more marvellous than its adaptability; and
Richard II., for instance, seems to have bought himself with hard cash as
great a treasure as that which Tennyson's Lord of Burleigh won with more
subtle discrimination. But at least the conditions of actual marriage were
generally far less romantic then than now; and, at a time when the
supposed formal judgment of a Court of Love, "that no married pair can
really be in love with each other," was accepted even as _ben trovato_, it
was natural that highly imaginative pictures of love _par amours_ should
be extremely popular.
Let us consider again for a moment the conditions of life in a medieval
castle. In spite of a good deal of ceremonial which has long gone out of
fashion, the actual daily intercourse between man and woman was closer
there than at present, in proportion as artificial distances were greater.
The lady might stand as high above the squire as the heaven is in
comparison with the earth; but she had scarcely more privacy than on board
a modern ship. They were constantly in each other's sight, yet could never
by any possibility exchange a couple of confidential sentences except by a
secret and dangerous rendezvous in some private room, or by such stray
chances as some meeting on the stairs, some accident which dispersed the
hunting-party and left them alone in the forest, or similar incidents
consecrated to romance. The three great excitements of man's life--war,
physical exercise, and carousing--touched the ladies far less nearly, and
left them ordinarily to a life which their modern sisters would condemn as
hopelessly dull. The daily-suppressed craving for excitement, the nervous
irritability generated by artificial constraint, explain many contrasts
which are conspicuous in medieval manners. Moreover, there were men always
at hand, and always on the watch to seize the smallest chance. The Knight
of La Tour Landry is not the only medieval writer who describes his own
society in very much the same downright words as the Prophet Jeremiah (ch.
v., v. 8). The very _raison d'etre_ of his book was the recollection how,
in younger days, "my fellows communed with ladies and gentlewomen, the
which [fellows] prayed them of love; for there was none of them that they
might find, lady or gentlewoman, but they would pray her; and if that one
would not intend to that, other would anon pray. And whether they had good
answer or evil, they recked never, for they had in them no shame nor dread
by the cause that they were so used. And thereto they had fair language
and words; for in every place they would have had their sports and their
might. And so they did both deceive ladies and gentlewomen, and bear forth
divers languages on them, some true and some false, of the which there
came to divers great defames and slanders without cause and reason.... And
I asked them why they foreswore them, saying that they loved every woman
best that they spake to: for I said unto them, 'Sirs, ye should love nor
be about to have but one.' But what I said unto them, it was never the
better. And therefore because I saw at that time the governance of them,
the which I doubted that time yet reigneth, and there be such fellows now
or worse, and therefore I purposed to make a little book ... to the intent
that my daughters should take ensample of fair continuance and good
manners." The tenor of the whole book more than bears out the promise of
this introduction: and the good knight significantly recommends his
daughters to fast thrice a week as a sovereign specific against such
dangers (pp. 2, 10, 14).
[Illustration: WISE AND UNWISE VIRGINS]
We have seen how often women were forbidden attendance at all sorts of
public dances, and even weddings; and how demurely they were bidden to
pace the streets. The accompanying illustration from a 15th-century
miniature given by Thomas Wright ("Womankind in Western Europe," p. 157)
shows on the one hand the formal way in which girls were expected to cross
their hands on their laps as they sat, and on the other hand the licence
which naturally followed by reaction from so much formality. Both sides
come out fully in the Knight's book. We see a girl losing a husband
through a freedom of speech with her prospective fiance which seems to us
most natural and innocent; while the coarsest words and actions were
permitted to patterns of chivalry in the presence of ladies. A stifling
conventionality oppressed the model young lady, while the less wise virgin
rushed into the other extreme of "rere-suppers" after bedtime with
like-minded companions of both sexes, and other liberties more startling
still.[216] In every generation moralists noted with pain the gradual
emancipation of ladies from a restraint which had always been excessive,
and had often been merely theoretical, though those who regretted this
most bitterly in their own time believed also most implicitly in the
strict virtues of a golden past. Guibert of Nogent contrasts the charming
picture of his own chaste mother with what he sees (or thinks he sees)
around him in St. Bernard's days. "Lord, thou knowest how hardly--nay,
almost how impossibly--that virtue [of chastity] is kept by women of our
time: whereas of old there was such modesty that scarce any marriage was
branded even by common gossip! Alas, how miserably, between those days and
ours, maidenly modesty and honour have fallen off, and the mother's
guardianship has decayed both in appearance and in fact; so that in all
their behaviour nothing can be noted but unseemly mirth, wherein are no
sounds but of jest, with winking eyes and babbling tongues, and wanton
gait.... Each thinks that she has touched the lowest step of misery if she
lack the regard of lovers; and she measures her glory of nobility and
courtliness by the ampler numbers of such suitors." Men were more modest
of old than women are now: the present man can talk of nothing but his
_bonnes fortunes_. "By these modern fashions, and others like them, this
age of ours is corrupted and spreads further corruption." In short, it is
the familiar philippic of well-meaning orators in every age against the
sins of society, and the familiar regret of the good old times. The Knight
of La Tour Landry, again, would place the age of real modesty about the
time of his own and Chaucer's father, a date by which, according to
Guibert's calculations, the growing shamelessness of the world ought long
ago to have worn God's patience threadbare.
Each was of course so far right that he lived (as we all do) in a time of
transition, and that he saw, as we too see, much that might certainly be
changed for the better. These things were even more glaring in the Middle
Ages than now. We must not look for too much refinement of outward manners
at this early date; but even in essential morality the girl-heroines of
medieval romance must be placed, on the whole, even below those of the
average French novel.[217] In both cases we must, of course, make the
same allowance; it would be equally unfair to judge Chaucer's
contemporaries and modern Parisian society strictly according to the
novelist's or the poet's pictures. But in either case the popularity of
the type points to a real underlying truth; and we should err less in
taking the early romances literally than in accepting Ivanhoe, for
instance, as a typical picture of medieval love. No one poet represents
that love so fully as Chaucer, in both its aspects. I say in _both_, and
not in _all_, for such love as lent itself to picturesque treatment had
then practically only two aspects, the most ideal and the most material.
The maiden whose purity of heart and freedom of manners are equally
natural was not only non-existent at that stage of society, but
inconceivable. Emelye is, within her limits, as beautiful and touching a
figure as any in poetry; but her limits are those of a figure in a
stained-glass window compared with a portrait of Titian's. Chaucer himself
could not have made her a Die Vernon or an Ethel Newcome; with fuller
modelling and more freedom of action in the story, she could at best have
become a sort of Beatrix Esmond. But of heavenly love and earthly love, as
they were understood in his time, our poet gives us ample choice. It has
long ago been noted how large a proportion of his whole work turns on this
one passion.[218] As he said of himself, he had "told of lovers up and
down more than Ovid maketh of mention": he was "Love's clerk." His earthly
love we may here neglect, only remembering that it is never merely wicked,
but always relieved by wit and humour--indeed, by wit and humour of his
very best. But his heavenly love, the ideal service of chivalry, deserves
looking into more closely; the more so as his notions are so exactly those
of his time, except so far as they are chastened by his rare sense of
humour.
_Amor, che al gentil cuor ratto s'apprende_--so sings Francesca in Dante's
"Inferno." Love is to every "gentle" heart--to any one who has not a mere
money-bag or clod of clay in his breast--not only an unavoidable fate but
a paramount duty. As Chaucer's Arcite says, "A man must needes love,
maugre his head; he may not flee it, though he should be dead." Troilus,
again, who had come to years of discretion, and earned great distinction
in war without ever having felt the tender passion, is so far justly
treated as a heathen and a publican even by the frivolous Pandarus, who
welcomes his conversion as unctuously as Mr. Stiggins might have accepted
Mr. Weller's--
Love, of his goodness,
Hath thee converted out of wickedness.
But perhaps the best instance is that afforded by the famous medieval
romance of "Petit Jean de Saintre" (chaps, i.-iv.). Jean, at the age of
thirteen, became page to the chivalrous King John of France; as nearly as
possible at the same time as Chaucer was serving the Duchess of Clarence
in the same capacity. One of the ladies-in-waiting at the same Court was a
young widow, who for her own amusement brought Petit Jean formally into
her room. "Madame, seated at the foot of the little bed, made him stand
between her and her women, and then laid it on his faith to tell her the
truth of whatsoever she should ask. The poor boy, who little guessed her
drift, gave the promise, thinking 'Alas, what have I done? what can this
mean?' And while he thus wondered, Madame said, smiling upon her women,
'Tell me, master, upon the faith which you have pledged me; tell me first
of all how long it is since you saw your lady _par amours_?' So when he
heard speech of _lady par amours_, as one who had never thought thereon,
the tears came to his eyes, and his heart beat and his face grew pale, for
he knew not how to speak a single word.... And they pressed him so hard
that he said, 'Madam, I have none.' 'What, you have none!' said the lady:
'ha! how happy would she be who had such a lover! It may well be that you
have none, and well I believe it; but tell me, how long is it since you
saw her whom you most love, and would fain have for your lady?'" The poor
boy could say nothing, but knelt there twisting the end of his belt
between his fingers until the waiting-women pitied him and advised him to
answer the lady's question. "'Tell without more ado' (said they), 'whom
you love best.' 'Whom I love best?' (said he), 'that is my lady mother,
and then my sister Jacqueline.' Then said the lady, 'Sir boy, I intend not
of your mother or sister, for the love of mother and sister and kinsfolk
is utterly different from that of lady _par amours_; but I ask you of such
ladies as are none of your kin.' 'Of them?' (said he), 'by my faith, lady,
I love none.' Then said the lady, 'What! you love none? Ha! craven
gentleman, you say that you love none? Thereby know I well that you will
never be worth a straw.... Whence came the great valiance and exploits of
Lancelot, Gawayne, Tristram, Biron the Courteous, and other Champions of
the Round Table?...'" The sermon was unmercifully long, and it left the
culprit in helpless tears; at the women's intercession, he was granted
another day's respite. Boylike, he succeeded in shirking day after day
until he hoped he was forgotten. But the inexorable lady caught him soon
after, and tormented him until "as he thought within himself whom he
should name, then (as nature desires and attracts like to like), he
bethought himself of a little maiden of the court who was ten years of
age. Then he said, 'Lady, it is Matheline de Coucy.' And when the lady
heard this name, she thought well that this was but childish fondness
and ignorance; yet she made more ado than before, and said, 'Now I see
well that you are a most craven squire to have chosen Matheline for your
service; not but that she is a most comely maiden, and of good house and
better lineage than your own; but what good, what profit, what honour,
what gain, what advantage, what comfort, what help, and what counsel can
come therefrom to your own person, to make you a valiant man? What are the
advantages which you can draw from Matheline, who is yet but a child? Sir,
you should choose a Lady who....'" In short, the lady whom she finally
commends to his notice is her own self. Little by little she teaches the
stripling all that she knows of love; and later on, when she is cloyed
with possession and weary of his absence at the wars, much that he had
never guessed before of falsehood. The story is an admirable commentary on
the well-known lines in Chaucer's "Book of the Duchess," where the Black
Knight says of himself--
... since first I couth
Have any manner wit from youth
Or kindely understanding [natural
To comprehend in any thing
What love was in mine owne wit,
Dreadeless I have ever yet [certainly
Been tributary and given rent
To love, wholly with good intent,
And through pleasaunce become his thrall
With good will--body, heart, and all.
All this I put in his servage
As to my lord, and did homage,
And full devoutly prayed him-to,
He should beset mine hearte so
That it plesaunce to him were,
And worship to my lady dear.
And this was long, and many a year
Ere that mine heart was set aught-where,
That I did thus, and knew not why;
I trow, it came me kindely.
[Illustration: WILLIAM OF HATFIELD, SON OF EDWARD III AND PHILIPPA, FROM
HIS TOMB IN YORK MINSTER (1336)
SHOWING THE DRESS OF A NOBLE YOUTH IN THE MIDDLE OF THE 14TH CENTURY]
If death comes at this moment, then "J'aurai passe par la terre, n'ayant
rien aime que l'amour." But instead of death comes something not less
sudden and overmastering. To the Black Knight, as to Dante, the Lady of
his Life is revealed between two throbs of the heart--
It happed that I came on a day
Into a place where I say [saw
Truly the fairest company
Of ladies, that ever man with eye
Had seen together in one place ...
Sooth to sayen, I saw one
That was like none of the rout ...
I saw her dance so comelily,
Carol and sing so sweetely,
Laugh and play so womanly,
And look so debonairely,
So goodly speak, and so friendly,
That certes, I trow that nevermore
Was seen so blissful a tresore.
Here at last the goddess of his hopes is revealed in the flesh; no longer
the vague _Not Impossible She_, but henceforward _She of the Golden Hair_.
The revelation commands the gratitude of a lifetime. Having crystallized
upon herself his fluid and floating worship, she is henceforth
conventionally divine; he demands no more than to be allowed to gaze on
her, and in gazing he swoons.
As yet, then, she is his idol, his goddess, on an unapproachable pedestal.
She may be pretty patently the work of his own hands--he has gone about
dreaming of love until his dreams have taken sufficient consistency to be
visible and tangible--but as yet his worship must be as far-off as
Pygmalion's, and he thirsts in vain for a word or a look. Then comes the
second clause of Francesca's creed--_Amor, che a nullo amato amar
perdona_: true love must needs beget love in return. The statue warms to
life; the goddess steps down from her pedestal; the lover forgets now that
he had meant to subsist for life on half a dozen kind looks and kind
words; and at this point the matter would end nowadays--or at least would
have ended a generation ago--in mere prosaic marriage. But here, in the
Middle Ages, it is fifty to one that the fortunes of the pair are not
exactly suitable; or he, or she, or both may be married already. Then
comes the final clause: _Amor condusse noi ad una morte_. Seldom indeed
could the course of true love run smooth in an age of business-marriages;
and the poet found his grandest material in the wreckage of tender
passions and high hopes upon that iron-bound shore.
The large majority of medieval romances, as has long ago been noted,
celebrate illicit love. Therefore the first commandment of the code is
secrecy, absolute secrecy; and in the songs of the Troubadors and
Minnesingers, a personage almost as prominent as the two lovers
themselves, is the "envious," the "spier"--the person from whom it is
impossible to escape for more than a minute at a time, amid the
cheek-by-jowl of castle intercourse--a disappointed rival perhaps, or a
mere malicious busybody, but, in any case, a perpetual skeleton at the
feast. "Troilus and Criseyde," for instance, is full of such allusions,
and perhaps no poem exemplifies more clearly the common divorce between
romantic love and marriage in medieval literature. It is a comparatively
small thing that the first three books of the poem should contain no hint
of matrimony, though Criseyde is a widow, and of noble blood. It would,
after all, have been less of a _mesalliance_ than John of Gaunt's
marriage; but of course it was perfectly natural for Chaucer to take the
line of least poetical resistance, and make Troilus enjoy her love in
secret, without thought of consecration by the rites of the Church. So
far, the poem runs parallel with Goethe's "Faust." But when we come to the
last two books, the behaviour of the pair is absolutely inexplicable to
any one who has not realized the usual conventions of medieval romance.
The Trojan prince Antenor is taken prisoner by the Greeks, who offer to
exchange him against Criseyde--a fighting man against a mere woman.
Hector does indeed protest in open Parliament--
But on my part ye may eft-soon them tell
We usen here no women for to sell.
But the political utility of the exchange is so obvious that Parliament
determines to send the unwilling Criseyde away. What, it may be asked, is
Troilus doing all this time? As Priam's son, he would have had a voice in
the council second only to Hector's, and he "well-nigh died" to hear the
proposition. Yet all through this critical discussion he kept silence,
"lest men should his affection espy!" The separation, he knows, will kill
him; but among all the measures he debates with Criseyde or Pandarus--even
among the desperate acts which he threatens to commit--nothing so
desperate as plain marriage seems to occur to any of the three. The first
thought of Troilus is "how to save her honour," but only in the technical
sense of medieval chivalry, by feigning indifference to her. He sheds
floods of tears; he tells Fortune that if only he may keep his lady, he is
reckless of all else in the world; but, when for a moment he thinks of
begging Criseyde's freedom from the King his father, it is only to thrust
the thought aside at once. The step would be not only useless, but
necessarily involve "slander to her name."[219] And all this was written
for readers who knew very well that the parties had only to swear, first
that they had plighted troth before witnesses, and secondly, that they had
lived together as man and wife, in order to prove an indissoluble marriage
contract. Nor can we ascribe this to any failure in Chaucer's art. In the
delineation of feelings, their natural development and their finer shades,
he is second to no medieval poet, and these qualities come out especially
in the "Troilus." But, while he boldly changed so much in Boccaccio's
conception of the poem, he saw no reason to change this particular point,
for it was thoroughly in accord with those conventions of his time for
which he kept some respect even through his frequent irony.
To show clearly how the fault here is not in the poet but in the false
_point d'honneur_ of the chivalric love-code, let us compare it with a
romance in real life from the "Paston Letters." Sir John Paston's steward,
Richard Calle, fell in love with his master's sister Margery. The Pastons,
who not only were great gentlefolk in a small way, but were struggling
hard also to become great gentlefolk in a big way, took up the natural
position that "he should never have my good will for to make my sister
sell candle and mustard in Framlingham." But the pair had already plighted
their mutual troth; and, therefore, though not yet absolutely married,
they were so far engaged that neither could marry any one else without a
Papal dispensation. Calle urged Margery to acknowledge this openly to her
family: "I suppose, an ye tell them sadly the truth, they would not damn
their souls for us." She at last confessed, and the matter came up before
the Bishop of Norwich for judgment. In spite of all the bullying of the
family, and the flagrant partiality of the Bishop, the girl's mother has
to write and tell Sir John how "Your sister ... rehearsed what she had
said [when she plighted her troth to Calle], and said, if those words made
it not sure, she said boldly that she would make that surer ere that she
went thence, for she said she thought in her conscience she was bound,
whatsoever the words weren. These lewd words grieved me and her grandam as
much as all the remnant." The Bishop still delayed judgment on the chance
of finding "other things against [Calle] that might cause the letting
thereof;" and meanwhile the mother turned Margery out into the street; so
that the Bishop himself had to find her a decent lodging while he kept her
waiting for his decision. But to annul this plain contract needed grosser
methods of injustice than the Pastons had influence to compass, and Calle
not only got his wife at last, but was taken back into the family
service.[220] Troilus and Criseyde, having political forces arrayed
against them, might indeed have failed tragically of their marriage in the
end; but there was at least no reason why they should not fight for it as
stoutly as the prosaic Norfolk bailiff did--if only the idea had ever
entered into one or other of their heads!
Another tacit assumption of the chivalric love-code comes out clearly in
the Knight's Tale, and even goes some way to explain the Franklin's;
though this latter evidently recounts an old Breton lay in which the
perspective is as frankly fantastic as the landscape of a miniature. The
honest commentator Benvenuto da Imola is at great pains to assure us that
Dante's _amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona_ was not an exhaustive
statement of actual fact; and that even the kindest ladies sometimes
remained obdurate to the prayers of the most meritorious suitors. What is
to happen, then? The hero may, of course, sometimes die; but not always;
that would be too monotonous. The solution here, as in so many other
cases, lies in a poetic paraphrase of too prosaic facts. The Duc de Berri,
who was a great connoisseur and a man of the most refined tastes, bought
at an immense sacrifice of money the most delicate little countess in the
market: she, of course, had no choice at all in the matter. At an equal
sacrifice of blood, first Arcite and then Palamon won the equally passive
Emelye, who, when Theseus had set her up as a prize to the better fighter,
could only pray that she might either avoid them both, or at least fall to
him who loved her best in his inmost heart. At a cost of equal suffering,
though in a different way, Aurelius won the unwilling Dorigen--for his
subsequent generosity is beside the present purpose. The reader's
sympathy, in medieval romance, is nearly always enlisted for the pursuing
man. If only he can show sufficient valour, or suffer long enough, he must
have the prize, and the lady is sure to shake down comfortably enough
sooner or later.[221] The idea is not, of course, peculiar to medieval
poetry, but the frequency with which it there occurs supplies another
answer to the main question of this chapter. Why, if medieval marriages
were really so business-like, is medieval love-poetry so transcendental?
It is not, in fact, by any means so transcendental as it seems on the
surface; neither Palamon nor Arcite, at the bottom of all his extravagant
protestations of humble worship, feels the least scruple in making Emelye
the prize of a series of swashing blows at best, and possibly of a single
lucky prod. The chance of Shakespeare's caskets does at least give Portia
to the man whom her heart had already chosen; but the similar chances and
counter-chances of the Knight's Tale simply play shuttlecock with a
helpless and unwilling girl. Under the spell of Chaucer's art, we know
quite well that Palamon and Emelye lived very happily ever afterwards; but
the Knight's Tale gives us no reason to doubt the overwhelming evidence
that, while heroes in poetry conquered their wives with their right arm,
plain men in prose openly bargained for them.