INTRODUCTION ΤΟ THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN. § 1. DATE OF THE POEM: A.D. 1385. The Legend of Good Women presents several points of peculiar, I might almost say of unique interest. It is the immediate precursor of the Canterbury Tales, and enables us to see how the poet was led on towards the composition of that immortal poem. This is easily seen, upon consideration of the date at which it was composed. The question of the date has been well investigated by Ten Brink; but it may be observed beforehand that the allusion to the queen' in 1. 496 has long ago been noticed, and it has been thence inferred, by Tyrwhitt, that the Prologue must have been written after 1382, the year when Richard II. married his first wife, the 'good queen Anne.' But Ten Brink's remarks enable us to look at the question much more closely. He shows that Chaucer's work can be clearly divided into three chief periods, the chronology of which he presents in the following form 1. FIRST PERIOD. 1366 (at latest). The Romaunt of the Rose. 1369. The Book of the Duchesse. 1372. (end of the period).. 1 I do not here endorse all Ten Brink's dates. I give his scheme for what it is worth, as it is certainly deserving of consideration. SECOND PERIOD. 1373. The Lyf of Seint Cecile. The Assembly of Foules. Palamon and Arcite. Translation of Boethius. 19 Troilus and Creseide. 1384. The House of Fame. THIRD PERIOD. 1385. Legend of Good Women. Canterbury Tales. 1391. Treatise on the Astrolabe. It is unnecessary for our present purpose to insert the conjectured dates of the Minor Poems not here mentioned. According to Ten Brink, the poems of the First Period were composed, before Chaucer set out on his Italian travels, i. e. before December, 1372, and contain no allusions to writings by Italian authors. In them, the influence of French authors is very strongly marked. The poems of the Second Period (he tells us) were composed after that date. The Life of Seint Cecile already marks the author's acquaintance with Dante's Divina Commedia ; lines 36-51 are, in fact, a free translation from the Paradiso, canto xxxiii. ll. 1-21. See my note to this passage, and the remarks on the Second Nun's Tale' in vol. v. 6 The Parlement of Foules contains references to Dante and a long passage translated from Boccaccio's Teseide; see my notes to that poem in vol. i. The original Palamon and Arcite was also taken from the Teseide; for even the revised version of it (now known as the Knightes Tale, and containing, doubtless, much more of Chaucer's own work) is founded upon that poem, and occasionally presents verbal imitations of it. Troilus is similarly dependent upon Boccaccio's Filostrato. The close connexion between Troilus and the translation of Boethius is seen from several considerations, of which it may suffice here to mention two. The former is the asssociation of these two works in Chaucer's lines to Adam 'Adam scriveyn, if ever it thee befalle Minor Poems; see vol. i. p. 379. And the latter is, the fact that Chaucer inserts in Troilus (book iv. stanzas 140-154) a long passage on predestination and free-will, taken from Boethius, book v. proses 2, 3; which he would appear to have still fresh in his mind. It is probable that his Boethius preceded Troilus almost immediately; indeed, it is conceivable that, for a short season, both may have been in hand at the same time. There is also a close connexion between Troilus and the House of Fame, the latter of which shows the influence of Dante in a high degree; see p. vii. This connexion will appear from comparing Troil. v. stt. 52-55 with Ho. Fame, 2−54; and Troil. i. st. 74 (l. 517-8) with Ho. Fame, 639, 640. See Ten Brink, Studien, p. 121. It would seem that the House of Fame followed Troilus almost immediately. At the same time, we cannot put the date of the House of Fame later than 1384, because of Chaucer's complaint in it of the hardship of his official duties, from much of which he was released (as we shall see) early in 1385. Further, the 10th of December is especially mentioned as being the date on which the House of Fame was commenced (1. 111), the year being probably 1383 (see Note to that line). It would appear, further, that the Legend was begun soon after the House of Fame was suddenly abandoned, in the very middle of a sentence. That it was written later than Troilus and the House of Fame is obvious, from the mention of these poems in the Prologue; ll. 332, 417, 441. That it was written at no great interval after Troilus appears from the fact that, even while writing Troilus, Chaucer had already been meditating upon the goodness of Alcestis, of which the Prologue to the Legend says so much. Observe the following passages (cited by Ten Brink, Studien, p. 120) from Troilus, bk. v. stt. 219, 254: 'As wel thou mightest lyen on Alceste Besechinge every lady bright of hewe, Ye may hir gilt in othere bokes see; There is also a striking similarity between the argument in Troilus, bk. iv. st. 3, and 11. 369-372 (B-text) of the Prologue to the Legend. The stanza runs thus : : 'For how Criseyde Troilus forsook, Or at the leste, how that she was unkinde, To speke hir harm; and, if they on hir lye, I will here also note the fact that the first line of the above stanza is quoted, almost unaltered, in the earlier version of the Prologue, viz. at 1. 265 of the A-text, on p. 88. From the above considerations we may already infer that the House of Fame was begun, probably, in December, 1383, and continued in 1384; and that the Legend of Good Women, which almost immediately succeeded it, may be dated about 1384 or 1385; certainly after 1382, when King Richard was first married. But now that we have come so near to the date, it is possible to come still nearer; for it can hardly be doubted that the extremely grateful way in which Chaucer speaks of the queen may fairly be connected with the stroke of good fortune which happened to him just at this very period. In the House of Fame we find him groaning about the troublesomeness of his official duties; and the one object of his life, just then, was to obtain greater leisure, especially if it could be had without serious loss of income. Now we know that, on the 17th of February, 1385, he obtained the indulgence of being allowed to nominate a permanent deputy for his Controllership of the Customs and Subsidies; see Furnivall's Trial Forewords to the Minor Poems, p. 25. If with our knowledge of this fact we combine these considerations, viz. that Chaucer expresses himself gratefully to the queen, that he says nothing more of his troublesome duties, and that Richard II. is known to have been a patron of letters (as we learn from Gower), we may well conclude that the poet's release from his burden was brought about by the queen's intercession with the king on his behalf. We may here notice Lydgate's remarks in the following stanza, which occurs in the Prologue to the Fall of Princes 1: 1 'This poete wrote, at the request of the quene, A Legende, of perfite holynesse, Of Good Women, to fynd out nynetene Was importable, his wittes to encombre, In all this world to fynd so gret a nombre ".' Lydgate can hardly be correct in his statement that Chaucer wrote 'at the request' of the queen: for, had our author done so, he would have let us know it. Still, he has seized the right idea, viz. that the queen was, so to speak, the moving cause which effected the production of the poem. It is, moreover, much to the point to observe that Chaucer's state of delightful freedom did not last long. Owing to a sudden change in the government we find that, on Dec. 4, 1386, he lost his Controllership of the Customs and Subsidies; and, only ten days later, also lost his Controllership of the Petty Customs. Something certainly went wrong, but we have no proof that Chaucer abused his privilege. On the whole we may interpret ll. 496, 7 (p. 101), viz. 'And whan this book is maad, yive hit the quene, 3 On my behalfe, at Eltham or at Shene,' as giving us a date but little later than Feb. 17, 1385, and certainly before Dec. 4, 1386. The mention of the month of May in 11. 36, 45, 108, 176, is probably conventional; still, the other frequent references to spring-time, as in ll. 40-66, 130– 147, 171-174, 206, &c., may mean something; and in particular we may note the reference to St. Valentine's day as being past, in ll. 145, 146; seeing that chees (chose) occurs in the past tense. We can hardly resist the conviction that the right date 1 It is the stanza next following the last one quoted in vol. i. p. 23. I quote it from the Aldine edition of Chaucer, ed. Morris, i. 80. 2 Of course Lydgate knew the work was unfinished; so he offers a humorous excuse for its incompleteness. I may here note that Hoccleve refers to the Legend in his poem entitled the Letter of Cupid, where Cupid is made to speak of my Legende of Martres'; see Hoccleve's Works, ed. Furnivall, p. 85, 1. 316. 3 In December, 1384, Richard II. 'held his Christmas' at Eltham (Fabyan). |