The Canterbury Tales

6. Compare Spenser's account of Phaedria's barque, in "The
Faerie Queen," canto vi. book ii.; and, mutatis mutandis,
Chaucer's description of the wondrous horse, in The Squire's
Tale.

7. Salad: a small helmet; french, "salade."

8. Gardebrace: French, "garde-bras," an arm-shield; probably
resembling the "gay bracer" which the Yeoman, in the Prologue
to The Canterbury Tales, wears on his arm.

9. Confession and prayer were the usual preliminaries of any
enterprise in those superstitious days; and in these days of
enlightenment the fashion yet lingers among the most
superstitious class -- the fisher-folk.

10. The knights resolved that they would quit their castles and
houses of stone for humble huts.

11. The knight and lady were buried without music, although
the office for the dead was generally sung.

12. Avisand: considering; present participle from "avise" or
"advise."

13. Treacle; corrupted from Latin, "therisca," an antidote. The
word is used for medicine in general.

14. The abbess made diligence: i.e. to administer the grain to
the dead ladies.



THE PROLOGUE TO THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN.


[SOME difference of opinion exists as to the date at
which Chaucer wrote "The Legend of Good
Women." Those who would fix that date at a
period not long before the poet's death -- who
would place the poem, indeed, among his closing
labours -- support their opinion by the fact that the
Prologue recites most of Chaucer's principal
works, and glances, besides, at a long array of
other productions, too many to be fully catalogued.
But, on the other hand, it is objected that the
"Legend" makes no mention of "The Canterbury
Tales" as such; while two of those Tales -- the
Knight's and the Second Nun's -- are enumerated
by the titles which they bore as separate
compositions, before they were incorporated in the
great collection: "The Love of Palamon and
Arcite," and "The Life of Saint Cecile" (see note 1
to the Second Nun's tale). Tyrwhitt seems perfectly
justified in placing the composition of the poem
immediately before that of Chaucer's magnum
opus, and after the marriage of Richard II to his
first queen, Anne of Bohemia. That event took
place in 1382; and since it is to Anne that the poet
refers when he makes Alcestis bid him give his
poem to the queen "at Eltham or at Sheen," the
"Legend" could not have been written earlier. The
old editions tell us that "several ladies in the Court
took offence at Chaucer's large speeches against
the untruth of women; therefore the queen enjoin'd
him to compile this book in the commendation of
sundry maidens and wives, who show'd themselves
faithful to faithless men. This seems to have been
written after The Flower and the Leaf." Evidently it
was, for distinct references to that poem are to be
found in the Prologue; but more interesting is the
indication which it furnishes, that "Troilus and
Cressida" was the work, not of the poet's youth,
but of his maturer age. We could hardly expect the
queen -- whether of Love or of England -- to
demand seriously from Chaucer a retractation of
sentiments which he had expressed a full
generation before, and for which he had made
atonement by the splendid praises of true love sung
in "The Court of Love," "The Cuckoo and the
Nightingale," and other poems of youth and middle
life. But "Troilus and Cressida" is coupled with
"The Romance of the Rose," as one of the poems
which had given offence to the servants and the
God of Love; therefore we may suppose it to have
more prominently engaged courtly notice at a later
period of the poet's life, than even its undoubted
popularity could explain. At whatever date, or in
whatever circumstances, undertaken, "The Legend
of Good Women" is a fragment. There are several
signs that it was designed to contain the stories of
twenty-five ladies, although the number of the
good women is in the poem itself set down at
nineteen; but nine legends only were actually
composed, or have come down to us. They are,
those of Cleopatra Queen of Egypt (126 lines),
Thisbe of Babylon (218), Dido Queen of Carthage
(442), Hypsipyle and Medea (312), Lucrece of
Rome (206), Ariadne of Athens (340), Phiomela