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:—
Chaucer and His Times Page 8