Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 355, May 1845
Let him speak, justifying his eulogist, and showing us, as well as may be by his words, what his deeds showed the world, that —
"He was a veray parfit gentil knight!"The first transaction that is related with some full process, is the chivalrous enterprise of Theseus against Creon; King of Thebes. This dispiteous and abominable tyrant prohibits the bodies of the warriors fallen in the celebrated siege of that city from burial. The widows of the slain princes and nobles move Theseus for vengeance and redress, which he instantly undertakes, and forthwith executes. And now mark the admixture of times and manners. In the first place, the heinousness of the crime, and even the imagination of such an impiety, are purely antique, as, in truth, the fact itself is on classical record in the "Antigone" of Sophocles. Again, the suppliant, bereaved, and woebegone wives have awaited Theseus's coming "in the temple of the goddess Clemency," than which nothing can be more classical; and the manner in which, at his return home from his victorious war upon the "Amasones," the sorrowful company receive him, kneeling by two and two clothed in black, along the highway, might persuade you that Sir Matheu had read the Œdipus Tyrannus, and successfully imitated Œdipus's dolorous and picturesque reception in the streets of Thebes, by the kneeling, plague-smitten population of the city.
On the other hand, the claim of redress at the hand of the warrior carries your imagination to the interesting volumes of St Palaye; and clearly refers to the obligation by which the knight, at his investiture, bound himself to redress all wrongs, especially those of the ladies. And Theseus is nothing slack in acknowledging the obligation. He dismounts, takes them each and all up in his arms,
"And swore his oth, as he was trewe knight,"that he will do his endeavour that the world shall applaud the chastising of the "false king." – Again, when the one day's demolishing fight has given Creon to death, and his Land into Theseus's hand, and the two right Heroes of the Tale, the Theban cousins, Palamon and Arcite, are dragged out, half-alive and half-dead, from the heap of the slain, the "herauds" know them, by the "cote-armoure," to be of the blood-royal. Of course, they are designated "knights." – Again: Theseus will take no ransom for them. That is perhaps, indifferently, ancient or modern; but it sounds to our ears rather modern, that he shuts them up in a high tower, which overlooks the Garden of his Palace.
But now we plunge into the bosom of our own Heroic times. To do observance to the May is a rite that we find continually occurring in the poetry of the middle ages. It is on May morning that Emelie, going into the garden to gather flowers, and wreathe for herself a coronal, is first seen by the two captive Theban kinsmen. Again, when Arcite, liberated by the intervention of Pirithous, has returned, and is living unrecognized in the service of Theseus, it is precisely upon the same occasion of going into the wood to gather "grenes" for May morning, that he falls in with Palamon, who has the night before broken prison, and hides himself during the day in the forest – which encounter leads to their set encounter in arms the next day, and so to the interruption of their duel by Theseus himself, and so to all the consequent course of events. Whatever the true rites of returning May may have been, in classical antiquity, the observance comes into this tale from the manners of mediæval Europe, not of ancient Greece.
With what glad and light ritual, the Athenians, in the first years after the war of the Seven Chiefs against Thebes, did homage to their king and queen of the May, we do not remember to have seen distinctly described. At this day the young folk of old Hellas parade the streets, shouting the classical χελιδωνισμα, or song of the swallow, on the 1st of March. The Romans held their Floralia from the 28th of April to the 1st of May, danced and sang, and had games, and crowned themselves with garlands and with flowers. Nevertheless, you instinctively feel that the singularly graceful picture of Emelie, called up from slumber by the dawning May morning, and proceeding to pluck in the royal garden the dew-fresh and bright materials of her own coronal, owes nothing to the lore of books, but is breathingly imaged from some gracious original of our own good fourteenth century. You remain assured, that the trustworthy poet records his own proper love-experience in adjusting the occasion that is to vivify with a new passion the dolorous prison of the two Thebans, and turn the sworn brothers-in-arms into rivals at deadly feud with each other. That rougher age of the world – rude the day was not that produced and cherished Chaucer – had this virtue, that the grown-up men and women were still, by a part of their heart, children. The welcoming-in of the May is described by the old poets in different countries of Europe as a passion – seizing upon young and old, high and low. All were for the hour children – children of nature. When, therefore, that love at first sight, which immediately becomes a destiny to the two kinsmen, governing their whole after-life, is in this manner attached by our poet to the visit made upon this occasion by Emelie to the garden which their tower overlooks, the reader is entitled to understand that the poet does for him the very best thing any poet can do, that he infuses into his poetical dream his own pulsating life-blood.
The immense joy and universal jubilee of nature, called out by the annual renewing of warmth, light, life, and beauty, and the share and the sympathy of man in the diffusive and exuberant benediction, fix themselves and take form in stated and ordered celebrations all the world over. It seems hard to deny to any nation the rejoicing on the return of summer. All have it. Yet certainly Chaucer paints from his own experience, and not from erudition. The poem of "The Cuckou and the Nightingale" is a mere extolling of love and the May. The exordium is a sort of incidental hymn to the Love-god, and runs into affirming and arguing at some length the peculiar energy of his dominion in this month.
"And most his might he shedeth ever in May."The Complaint of the Black Knight – love is his complaint – falls in May. The unhappy lover has built himself a lodge or bower in the greenwood, whether with returning May he withdraws himself from all feasts, societies, and throngs of men, to dedicate himself to love-mourning, and where, under the trees, whilst the month of love lasts, he remains abandoned to his love-martyrdom. That 'Dreme of Chaucer,' which has been supposed, although Tyrwhitt thinks fancifully, to refer to the marriage of John of Gaunt with the Lady Blanche, happens as he lay alone on a night of May thinking of his lady. The opening of the Flower and Leaf puts you in doubt whether you are not rather in April than in May; but by and by you find that the nightingale has been all the day long singing the service of May. All this amorous and poetical caressing of the May discovers, in the twice resting the process of events in "The Knight's Tale" upon the observance of May-day, a significancy otherwise perhaps less evident. Shakspeare, in the verse —
"As full of spirits as the month of May,"expresses the natural ground which ceremony and eulogy, solemn or quaint, have artificially displayed in the usages of old times, and in the poetry of Chaucer.
But to return to our two knights. They are brothers-in-arms– by the by, rather a romantic, than a classical institution – and so pledged to help one another in love; and the question arises, as the ground of a long argument, which is traitor to the other. Yet here, too, is intermixed the classical with the romantic. For Palamon, who first sees Emelie, takes her for the goddess Venus; on which Arcite ingeniously founds his own plea, that he first loved her as a woman, and so is entitled to the help of the other. Their silent arming of one another, for mortal duel, in the forest, each
"As frendly as he were his owen brother,"reminds you of chivalrous loyalty and faith; although it would be hard to deny that the antique warriors might have been as honest. But the truth is, that in Homer every knight arms himself, and the two Thebans must have worn modern armour to need this help. And yet here what a classical relief in the simile of the hunter! Of all transplantation from the modern to the ancient, tempered nevertheless with antiquity, their great listed Duel stands foremost. Take it, with all the circumstances that introduce it. Whilst the kinsmen are fighting, Theseus rides up, "pulled out a sword, and cried, Ho!" This is the language of the 14th century, and the western side of Europe. But he swears by "mighty Mars," that the first who strikes another stroke shall lose his head. Both are liable to death. Palamon for having broken prison, and Arcite, because his avoiding Athenian ground on pain of death was an original condition of his liberation. Theseus' challenge to them, "Tell me who ye are that are so bold as to fight here without judge or officer," is the manner of the poet's day. In the time of Theseus, fighting in a wood near Athens was free to all the world.
What saves them? The interposition of the ladies! Queen, princess, court and all, who think it a pity two gallant young "gentil men" of "gret estat" shall die, and all for love. The duke is moved; for pity soon melts in a "gentil herte." And he appoints a regular Tournament – that at the year's end they shall meet, each bringing a hundred knights, and fight it out. He pledges himself 'upon his troth, and as he is a knight,' that he who shall slay his adversary, or 'out of listes him drive,' shall have Emelie to wife.
The lists are – from the hint of antiquity – a regular Amphitheatre, a mile about – walled, and the seats in steps to the height of sixty paces. Art and wealth have been lavished in making the field worthy of the fight. Over the Eastern gate is an altar and an "Oratorie" to Venus – over the Western, to Mars – on the North side is one to Diana. The description of the three Fanes is of surpassing power. Among the portraitures in that of Mars is the Suicide, for whom the relater, poet or knight, forgets himself in his vivid conception, and says that he saw it.
The allies of the two knights are both classically and romantically chosen. With Palamon comes "Licurge, the grete king of Trace." That is classical. With Arcite "the grete Emetrius, the king of Inde." That is romantic. The persons of the two kings are described at large, with great strength and fecundity of painting. And here again, in the way of art, the contrast is admirably sustained and effective. Licurge is the older, more uncouth, and giant-like. The youthful Emetrius is more splendid and knightly. Both are thoroughly regal and formidable. Licurge is black-bearded, for the sake of more savage effect; wherefore the monarch of Inde, contrariwise to the actual distribution of races over the earth, or more properly speaking to the known influence of climate, is fair. His crisp and ringed locks are yellow, and glitter like the sun. His complexion may trouble the physiologists; but is not likely to discompose the poetical reader under the tuition of Christopher North. The "foure white bolles" that draw the 'char of gold' upon which the Thracian stands, are as antique as you can devise. The tamed eagle as any lily white, which Emetrius carries "for his deduit" – therefore, in lieu of a hawk upon his hand, is of manners that are almost our own.
Each king brings his own hundred knights. They arrive "on the Sonday abouten prime." The tilting will be next day. The three persons principally interested in the issue of the impending combat perform, in the interval, their devotions at the three several shrines, which have been aptly provided for them in the building of the lists. Each of them obtains an answer from the respective deity. Two hours ere the day, Palamon visits the oratory of Venus. He prays that he may win Emelie, although he should lose what comparatively he regards with indifference, the palm of the conflict. The statue of the goddess renders, after a long delay, the signal of acceptance. Emelie, at sunrise, worships Diana. Her first prayer is, that she may remain till death the virgin servant, herself a huntress, of the divine huntress; and if that may not be, that he may win her who best loves her. Upon the altar she kindles two fires, which burn ominously. One goes out and revives again. Then the other is wholly quenched – drops of blood falling out from the hissing and burning brands. All this the process of the combat and its consequences afterwards elucidate; as the appearing goddess forewarns her chaste worshipper. The 'nexte hour of Marte' – whereof anon – Arcite offers prayer and incense to the God of War. He is accepted, and victory promised; but the oracular voice murmurs the words faintly and hollowly.
All this intricate omination comes forcibly out in the sequence of events; and is in itself, as you feel, at all events right classical. The treatment of the Hours lies deeper. It is astrological. For the twelve now longer and now shorter hours, into which the time from sunrise to sunset – and the twelve now shorter and now longer, into which the time from sunset to sunrise was divided, belonged to the Seven Planets, in the order Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sol, Venus, Mercury, Luna – by following out which order, you will discover that, since the first hour of Sunday belongs to the Sun, giving name to the day – the twenty-third hour, or the second before sunrise of the following day, will belong to Venus, to whom Palamon then prays – and the hour of sunrise, next day, belongs to the Moon, or Diana, to whom Emelie then addresses herself. Following the circle, you find that the fourth hour of Monday belongs to Mars. This is Arcite's hour. And if you wonder how such Chaldaic and Egyptian lore should come into your tale of chivalry, you will be relieved by understanding that these dedications had, in our poetical ages, due popularity for infusing into them a poetical efficiency; forasmuch as an old French "Shepherds' Calendar," cited by Tyrwhitt, alleges the very rule which we have given, for the instruction of him "who will weet how the Shepherds do wit which planet reigneth every hour of the day and of the night." This timing, therefore, of sacrifice and orison to the planetary hours, is pertinently and speakingly feigned by Chaucer.
The Tournament follows, which is mediæval enough. Arcite, according to the promise of Mars, is victorious. Palamon is taken and bound. But here is the difficulty. Venus has promised Emelie to Palamon. Saturn, the αγχυλομητις, finds a remedy, and gratifies his grand-daughter. As Arcite, the victor, having taken off his helmet, rides along the lists to show himself to all, and especially to Emelie, Pluto, at the request of Saturn, sends an infernal fury who starts up out of the ground before him. The scared horse plunges and stumbles; Arcite is thrown upon his head, and taken up for dead. He is not dead; but he dies, and is burned, after the fashion of Patroclus and Hector; and twelve months after, his virgin widow is by Theseus given in marriage to Palamon.
What is the real effect of all this commixture? The truth is, that under such circumstances, after a little resistance and struggling, you give in, and let the poet have his own way, provided that he is a poet. There is but one condition – that the poet put, into whatever manners, true life. Then you willingly give up your own dull book-learning, and accept his painting for the authentic record of reality. You are, in fact, gradually conducted to this pass, that you look upon history as useful for ministering materials to poetry, not upon poetry as bound to teach history. But Chaucer has wonderfully put life into the classical part of the poem, so that you can hardly say that he seems more at home in giving the manners which he had seen, than in reviving the manners which he had only read. He has this in common with Shakspeare. In common with Shakspeare he has, too, the apology for the confusion of manners – of having lived before we were as critical in the costume of ages and nations as we now are.
The 'Knight's Tale,' after the requisition usually laid upon an epic fable, makes use, and skilfully, of preternatural machinery. And here we will venture a vindication against an illustrious critic. The first suggestion to the banished Arcite of returning to Athens, comes to him in sleep. There is a slight invoking of the supernatural – at least of the fabulous. He dreams that Mercury appears, and announces to him an end of his woe at Athens. On awaking, he casts his eyes on a mirror, and sees that he is so changed with love-pining that he no longer knows himself – goes in disguise to Athens, offers himself to serve in the household of Emelie, and is accepted. Sir W. Scott blames this introduction of Mercury as needless, but let it be remembered: —
First, That this is introductory to far more important divine interpositions, is in keeping with them, and prepares the imagination for them.
Secondly, That, so managed, it is the least violent intervention of a god; the apparition being ambiguous between a natural dream and a real divine manifestation: an ambiguity which, by the by, is quite after the antique. So, Mercury appears to Æneas in a dream in the Fifth Book of the Æneid: and compare Hector's Ghost, &c.
Thirdly, That a psychological fact may be understood as here "lively shadowed: " – namely, that active purposes have often their birth during the mystery of sleep; and it would be a very felicitous poetical expression of this phenomenon to turn the oracular suggestion of the soul into a deity —Sua cuique DEUS fit dira cupido.
Fourthly, It is completely probable, that the fancy of a believer in Mercury would actually shape his own dreaming thought into the suitable deity. – The vision is lightly touched by Chaucer, and gracefully translated by Dryden. The classical inventions throughout appear to be very much from Boccaccio; but the poetry of the relation Chaucer's own.
Do you wish to see Dryden in his majesty? Look here: —
"But in the dome of mighty Mars the red,With different figures all the sides were spread.This temple, less in form, with equal grace,Was imitative of the first in Thrace:For that cold region was the loved abode,And sovereign mansion of the warrior god.The landscape was a forest wide and bare,Where neither beast nor human kind repair;The fowl that scent afar, the borders fly,And shun the bitter blast, and wheel about the sky.A cake of scurf lies baking on the ground,And prickly stubs, instead of trees, are found;Or woods with knots and knares deform'd and old,Headless the most, and hideous to behold;A rattling tempest through the branches went,That stripp'd them bare, and one sole way they bent.Heaven froze above severe, the clouds congeal,And through the crystal vault appear'd the standing hail.Such was the face without; a mountain stoodThreat'ning from high, and overlook'd the wood;Beneath the lowering brow, and on a bent,The temple stood of Mars armipotent;The frame of burning steel, that cast a glareFrom far, and seem'd to thaw the freezing air.A straight long entry to the temple led,Blind with high walls, and horror overhead;Thence issued such a blast and hollow roar,As threaten'd from the hinge to heave the door;In through that door, a northern light there shone;'Twas all it had, for windows there were none.The gate was adamant, eternal frame!Which, hew'd by Mars himself, from Indian quarries came,The labour of a God; and all alongTough iron plates were clench'd to make it strong.A ton about was every pillar there;A polish'd mirror shone not half so clear;There saw I how the secret felon wrought,And treason labouring in the traitor's thought,And midwife Time the ripen'd plot to murder brought.There the red Anger dared the pallid Fear;Next stood Hypocrisy, with holy leer;Soft-smiling, and demurely looking down,But hid the dagger underneath the gown;The assassinating wife, the household fiend;And, far the blackest there, the traitor-friend.On t'other side, there stood Destruction bare,Unpunish'd Rapine, and a waste of war;Contest, with sharpen'd knives, in cloisters drawn,And all with blood bespread the holy lawn.Loud menaces were heard, and foul disgrace,And bawling infamy in language base,Till sense was lost in sound, and silence fled the place.The slayer of himself yet saw I there,The gore congeal'd was clotted in his hair,With eyes half closed, and gaping mouth he lay,And grim, as when he breathed his sullen soul away.In midst of all the dome Misfortune sate,And gloomy Discontent, and fell Debate,And Madness laughing in his ireful mood;And arm'd complaint on theft, and cries of blood.There was the murder'd corpse in covert laid,And violent death in thousand shapes display'd,The city to the soldiers' rage resign'd,Successless wars, and poverty behind:Ships burnt in fight, or forced on rocky shores,And the rash hunter strangled by the boars;The new-born babe by nurses overlaid;And the cook caught within the raging fire he made.All ills of Mars his nature, flame and steel;The gasping charioteer beneath the wheelOf his own car; the ruin'd house that fallsAnd intercepts her lord betwixt the walls.The whole division that to Mars pertains,All trades of death that deal in steel for gains,Were there; the butcher, armourer, and smith,Who forges sharpen'd faulchions, or the scythe.The scarlet conquest on a tower was placedWith shouts, and soldiers' acclamations graced;A pointed sword hung threat'ning o'er his head,Sustain'd but by a slender twine of thread.There saw I Mars his Ides, the Capitol,The seer in vain foretelling Cæsar's fall;The last Triumvirs, and the wars they move,And Antony, who lost the world for love:These, and a thousand more, the Fane adorn,Their fates were painted ere the men were born;All copied from the heavens, and ruling forceOf the red star, in his revolving course.The form of Mars high on a chariot stood,All sheathed in arms, and gruffly look'd the God:Two geomantic figures were display'dAbove his head, a warrior and a maid,One when direct, and one when retrograde.""The Knight's Tale, the longest and most laboured of Chaucer's stories, possesses a degree of regularity which might satisfy the most severe critic. It is true that the honour arising from thence must be assigned to the more ancient bard, who had himself drawn his subject from an Italian model; but the high and decided preference which Dryden has given to this story, although somewhat censured by Trapp, enables us to judge how much the poet held an accurate combination of parts, and coherence of narrative, essentials of epic poetry." This is in Sir Walter's happiest natural vein; not so the astounding passage that follows it. "That a classic scholar like Trapp should think the plan of the Knight's Tale equal to that of the Iliad, is a degree of candour not to be hoped for; but surely to an unprejudiced reader, a story which exhausts in its conclusion all the interest which it has excited in its progress; which, when terminated, leaves no question to be asked, no personage undisposed of, and no curiosity unsatisfied, is abstractedly considered more gratifying than the history of a few weeks of a ten years' war, commenced long after the siege had begun, and ending long before the city was taken!" Why, is not this the true and magnificent praise of the Iliad, that from the heart of the immense war it has taken out a story of individual interest, which begins where your curiosity asks, and where your sympathy finds repose? Achilles – his quarrel with Agamemnon – his loss of Patrocles – his vengeance on Hector – accomplished when he willingly relinquishes the body to burial? That is the integrity of an epic fable, which employs the Ten Years' War, not for its subject, but for the illimitable field in which its gigantic subject moves. He was the greatest of the poets, who knew how to make the storms, rising and falling, in the single breast of the goddess-born more to you, his hearer, than the war which has encamped a hundred thousand Greeks in siege before the imperial city of Priam. From a great poet, the most Homeric of modern poets – what a judgment on the Iliad! Trapp's words are – "Novimus judicium Drydeni de poemate quodam Chauceri pulchro sane illo, et admodum laudando, nimirum quod non modo vere epicum sit, sed Iliada etiam atque Æneada æquet, imo superet. Sed novimus eodem tempore viri illius maximi non semper accuratissimas esse censuras, nec ad severississimam critices normam exactas: illo judice, id plerumque optimum est, quod nunc præ manibus habet, et in quo nunc occupatur." Perfectly true. What says Dryden? "It is of the epic kind, and perhaps not much inferior to the 'Ilias' or the 'Æneid.' The story is more pleasing than either of them, the manners as perfect, the diction as poetical, the learning as deep and various, and the disposition full as artful, only it includes a greater length of time, as taking up seven years at least." Godwin says truly, "This eulogium must be acknowledged to be written in a spirit of ridiculous and impertinent exaggeration." And he then says as truly, that it is "full of novelty and surprise, is every where alive, comprises the most powerful portrait of chivalry that was perhaps ever believed, and possesses every thing in splendour and in action that can most conspicuously point out the scenes of the narrative to the eye of the reader." Dryden's version is indeed what Warton has pronounced it to be – "the most animated and harmonious piece of versification in the English language."
