1153. _Thou shalt be._ Chaucer occasionally uses _shall_ in the sense of
_owe_, so that the true sense of _I shall_ is _I owe_ (Lat. _debeo_); it
expresses a strong obligation. So here it is not so much the sign of a
future tense as a separate verb, and the sense is 'Thou art sure to be
false sooner than I am.'
1155. _par amour_, with love, in the way of love. To love _par amour_ is an
old phrase for to love excessively. Cf. Bruce, xiii. 485; and see A. 2112,
below; Troil. v. 158, 332.
1158. _affeccioun of holinesse_, a sacred affection, or aspiration after.
1162. _I pose_, I put the case, I will suppose.
1163. 'Knowest thou not well the old writer's saying?' The _olde clerk_ is
Boethius, from whose book, De Consolatione Philosophiae, Chaucer has
borrowed largely in many places. The passage alluded to is in lib. iii.
met. 12:--
'Quis legem det amantibus?
Maior lex amor est sibi.'
Chaucer's translation (vol. ii. p. 92, l. 37) has--'But what is he that may
yive a lawe to loveres? Love is a gretter lawe ... than any lawe that men
may yeven.' And see Troil. iv. 618.
1167. _and swich decree_, and (all) such ordinances.
1168. _in ech degree_, in every rank of life.
1172. _And eek it is_, &c., 'and moreover it is not likely that ever in all
thy life thou wilt stand in her favour.'
1177. This fable, in this particular form, is not in any of the usual
collections; but it is, practically, the same as that called 'The Lion, the
Tiger, and the Fox' in Croxall's Æsop. Sometimes it is 'the Lion, the Bear,
and the Fox'; the Fox subtracts the prey for which the others fight. It is
no. 247 in Halm's edition of the 'Fabulae Æsopicae,' Lips., Teubner, 1852,
with the moral:--[Greek: ho muthos dêloi, hoti allôn kopiôntôn alloi
kerdainousin.] In La Fontaine's Fables, it appears as Les Voleurs et l'Âne.
Thynne coolly altered _kyte_ to _cur_, and then had to insert _so_ after
_were_ to fill up the line.
1186. _everich of us_, each of us, every one of us.
1189. _to theffect_, to the result, or end.
1196. From the Legend of Good Women, 2282.
1200. _in helle._ An allusion to Theseus accompanying Pirithous in his
expedition to carry off Proserpina, daughter of Aidoneus, king of the
Molossians, when both were taken prisoner, and Pirithous torn in pieces by
the dog Cerberus. At least, such is the story in Plutarch; see
Shakespeare's Plutarch, ed. Skeat, p. 289. Chaucer found the mention of
Pirithous' visit to Athens in Boccaccio's Teseide, iii. 47-51. The rest he
found in Le Roman de la Rose, 8186--
'Si cum vesquist, ce dist l'istoire,
Pyrithous apres sa mort,
Que Theseus tant ama mort.
Tant le queroit, tant le sivoit ...
Que vis en enfer l'ala querre.'
[68]
1201. Observe the expression _to wryte_, which shews that this story was
not originally meant to be _told_. (Anglia, viii. 453.)
1212. Most MSS. read _or stounde_, i. e. or at any hour. MS. Dd. has _o
stound_, one moment, any short interval of time.
'The storme sesed within a stounde.'
Ywaine and Gawin, l. 384.
On this slight authority, Tyrwhitt altered the reading, and is followed by
Wright and Bell, though MS. Hl. really has _or_ like the rest, and the
black-letter editions have the same.
1218. _his nekke lyth to wedde_, his neck is in jeopardy; lit. lies in
pledge or in pawn.
1222. _To sleen himself he wayteth prively_, he watches for an opportunity
to slay himself unperceived.
1223. This line, slightly altered, occurs also in the Legend of Good Women,
658.
1225. _Now is me shape_, now I am destined; literally, now is it _shapen_
(or appointed) for me.
1247. It was supposed that all things were made of the four elements
mentioned in l. 1246. 'Does not our life consist of the four
elements?'--Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, ii. 3. 10.
1255. Cf. P. Plowman, C. xiii. 236.