Book VII

. of Boccaccio's Teseide, it would be easy to miss even their general resemblance.

Lastly, we find that the lines in Troilus, v. 1807-27, are really imitated from the Teseide, xi. stt. 1-3, where they refer to the death of Arcite. In the Knightes Tale, all that answers to the same passage is a part of lines A 2809-15; and all the resemblance is in the following expressions.

(1) From TROILUS, v. 1808, &c.:--

His lighte goost ful blisfully is went Up to the holownesse of the seventh spere.... And forth he wente, shortly for to telle, Theras Mercurie sorted him to dwelle.

(2) From the KNIGHTES TALE; A 2809:--

His spirit chaunged hous, and wente ther, As I cam never, I can nat tellen wher.... ... wher they dwelle; Arcite is cold, ther Mars his soule gye.

The change from _Mercury_, as the conductor of souls in general, to _Mars_, as the conductor of the martial soul of Arcite, is well worth notice.

§ 19. These specimens furnish good examples of Chaucer's method. Palemon and Arcite was, at first, a reasonably close imitation of Boccaccio's poem of the Teseide, which took its name from the hero Theseus. But in its second form, it was so much altered as to become, to all intents, a truly original poem. Thanks to the patient labour of Mr. Henry Ward, who collated the Teseide and the Knightes Tale throughout, line by line, we can now tell that 'out of 2250 of Chaucer's lines, he has only translated 270 (less than one-eighth); that only 374 more lines bear a general likeness to Boccaccio's, and only 132 more, a slight likeness; [so that] any talk of the Knightes Tale being a "translation only," or "taken bodily from the Teseide" (of 9054 lines), is of course absurd. Chaucer's work is an _adaptation_ of his original.'--F. J. Furnivall, A Temporary Preface of the Six-text Edition of the Canterbury Tales, p. 104.

A table shewing the general resemblance between certain lines in the Knightes Tale and lines in the Teseide, is given in the Notes; to which I must refer the reader for further information. I will merely add here that Chaucer also consulted the Thebais of Statius, which was one of Boccaccio's authorities.

§ 20. In order to give a clear idea of the general contents of Boccaccio's poem, I here quote in full the analysis of it made by Tyrwhitt, and printed in his Introductory Discourse:--

'The Teseide is distributed into twelve Books or Cantoes.

'Bk. i. Contains the war of Theseus with the Amazons, their submission to him, and his marriage with Hippolyta.

'Bk. ii. Theseus, having spent two years in Scythia, is reproached by Perithous in a vision, and immediately returns to Athens with Hippolyta and her sister Emilia. He enters the city in triumph; finds the Grecian ladies in the temple of Clemenzia; marches to Thebes; kills Creon, &c., and brings home Palemone and Arcita who are "Damnati--ad eterna presone."

'Bk. iii. Emilia, walking in a garden and singing, is heard and seen first by Arcita[98], who calls Palemone. They are both equally enamoured of her, but without any jealousy or rivalship. Emilia is supposed to see them at the window, and to be not displeased with their admiration. Arcita is released at the request of Perithous; takes his leave of Palemone, with embraces, &c.

'Bk. iv. Arcita, having changed his name to _Pentheo_, goes into the service of Menelaus at Mycenae, and afterwards of Peleus at Aegina. From thence he returns to Athens and becomes a *favourite servant of Theseus, being known to Emilia, though to nobody else; till after some time he is overheard making his complaint in a wood, to which he usually resorted for that purpose, by Pamphilo, a servant of Palemone.

'Bk. v. Upon the report of Pamphilo, Palemone _begins_ to be jealous of Arcita, and is desirous to get out of prison in order to fight with him. This he accomplishes with the assistance of Pamphilo, by changing clothes with Alimeto, a physician. He goes armed to the wood in quest of Arcita, whom he finds sleeping. At first, they are very civil and friendly to each other. Then Palemone calls upon Arcita to renounce his pretensions to Emilia, or to fight with him. After many long expostulations on the part of Arcita, they fight, and are discovered first by Emilia, who sends for Theseus. When he finds who they are, and the cause of their difference, he forgives them, and proposes the method of deciding their claim to Emilia by a combat of a hundred on each side, to which they gladly agree.

'Bk. vi. Palemone and Arcita live splendidly at Athens, and send out messengers to summon their friends, who arrive; and the principal of them are severally described, viz. Lycurgus, Peleus, Phocus, Telamon, &c.; Agamemnon, Menelaus, Castor and Pollux, &c.; Nestor, Evander, Perithous, Ulysses, Diomedes, &c.; with a great display of ancient history and mythology.

'Bk. vii. Theseus declares the laws of the combat, and the two parties of a hundred on each side are formed. The day before the combat, Arcita, after having visited the temples of all the gods, makes a formal prayer to Mars. The prayer, _being personified_, is said to go and find Mars in his temple in Thrace, which is described; and Mars, upon understanding the message, causes favourable signs to be given to Arcita. In the same manner Palemone closes his religious observances with a prayer to Venus. His prayer, _being also personified_, sets out for the temple of Venus on Mount Citherone, which is also described; and the petition is granted. Then the sacrifice of Emilia to Diana is described, her prayer, the appearance of the goddess, and the signs of the two fires. In the morning they proceed to the theatre with their respective troops and prepare for the action. Arcita puts up a private prayer to Emilia, and harangues his troop publickly; and Palemone does the same.

'Bk. viii. Contains a description of the battle, in which Palemone is taken prisoner.

'Bk. ix. The horse of Arcita, being frighted by a Fury, sent from Hell at the desire of Venus, throws him. However, he is carried to Athens in a triumphal chariot with Emilia by his side; is put to bed dangerously ill; and there by his own desire espouses Emilia.

'Bk. x. The funeral of the persons killed in the combat. Arcita, being given over by his physicians, makes his will, in discourse with Theseus, and desires that Palemone may inherit all his possessions and also Emilia. He then takes leave of Palemone and Emilia, to whom he repeats the same request. Their lamentations. Arcita orders a sacrifice to Mercury, which Palemone performs for him, and dies.

'Bk. xi. Opens with the passage of Arcita's soul to heaven, imitated from the Ninth Book of Lucan. The funeral of Arcita. Description of the wood felled takes up six stanzas. Palemone builds a temple in honour of him, in which his whole history is painted. The description of this painting is an abridgement of the preceding part of the Poem.

'Bk. xii. Theseus proposes to carry into execution Arcita's will by the marriage of Palemone and Emilia. This they both decline for some time in formal speeches, but at last are persuaded and married. The kings, &c. take their leave, and Palemone remains--in gioia e in diporto con la sua dona nobile e cortese.'

§ 21. It is remarkable how many expressions that occur in the Knightes Tale are repeated from Troilus. Examples are: A 925, from Tr. iv. 2; A 1010, from Tr. iv. 627; A 1101, from Tr. i. 425; 1133, cf. Tr. i. 674; 1155, cf. Tr. v. 332; 1163, cf. Tr. iv. 618; 1401, from Tr. iv. 865; 1500, from Tr. ii. 112; 1509, from Tr. ii. 920; 1566, from Tr. iii. 733; 1838, from Tr. v. 1433; 2449, from Tr. iv. 1456. Besides this, l. 301 of the Prologue is from Tr. iv. 1174. This tends to shew that the Knightes Tale (rather than the original Palamon and Arcite) was written not very long after Troilus; rather in 1386 or 1387 than in 1388.

I also note that ll. 1035-6, 1196, and 1502, are echoes of ll. 2425-6, 2282, and 1204, of the Legend of Good Women.

§ 22. An early play called 'Palamon and Arcite,' by Richard Edwards, was produced at Oxford in 1566 before Queen Elizabeth; and Henslowe mentions a play with the same name in 1594. Hence also the play of 'The Two Noble Kinsmen,' printed in 1634, with a title-page in which it was attributed to Shakespeare and Fletcher; see my edition, published for the Cambridge University Press in 1875. Dryden's fine poem of Palamon and Arcite is well known; we need not compare it with Chaucer's work very closely. Though inferior to the original, it has a certain excellence of its own. A modernisation of the Knightes Tale by Lord Thurlow appeared in 1822; concerning which nothing need be said. For further remarks on this Tale, consult Warton, History of Eng. Poetry, sect. xii, who, by the way, characterises the description of Lycurgus as being 'very great in the gothic style of painting'; where it is charitable to suppose that by 'gothic' he meant 'English,' but lacked the courage to use the word. And see Morley, Eng. Writers, v. 312; Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer; an essay by Dr. J. Koch, in Essays on Chaucer, p. 359 (Chaucer Society); and remarks by Ten Brink, in his Chaucer Studien, p. 62, and Geschichte der englischen Litteratur,