Chaucer And His Times Part 10

but her genial good-fellowship makes her a pleasant enough companion.

Dame Pertelote is drawn with even greater skill. The impatience with which she listens to Chauntecleer's account of his dream is just what we should expect of a sensible, unimaginative, middle-cla.s.s woman, whose own nerves and digestion were in excellent order, if her husband came to her with a long story of a supernatural warning. Dreams, she says, are the natural consequence of over-eating; the best thing he can do is to take some of the herbs she recommends, and when he has pecked these up, "right as they growe" and "ete hem in" he will find all his nervousness and depression disappear. Chauntecleer is furious at being treated with such scant respect and proceeds to overwhelm her with examples of dreams that have come true. His wise wife, who knows when to hold her tongue, makes no attempt to answer him back, but is evidently only too thankful when at last, being convinced that he has established his point, he suffers his attention to be distracted and turns to the pleasanter business of love-making. Pertelote is in fact typical of the good wives of her cla.s.s, as the Wife of Bath is of the bad. She is no more a heroine than the Wife of Bath is a villainess, but the one studies her husband's comforts and thoroughly understands how to make him happy, while the other cares for nothing but her own amus.e.m.e.nt. Pertelote's lamentations when Chauntecleer is borne off are in the best taste. Restraint was considered no virtue in a medieval widow, and Pertelote very properly screams loudly and persistently. Nor does wifely affection go unrewarded. The "sely widwe"

and her daughters who own the hen-yard

Herden thise hennes cry and maken wo, And out at dores steten they anoon,

with the result that Chauntecleer is saved.

It is this power of making characters at once typical and individual which marks true dramatic genius. Browning's men and women reveal their innermost souls to us, we see them with a pa.s.sionate vividness which is almost startling in its brilliancy, but all the while we are conscious of the intensity of their individuality. The conspicuous thing about them is that which marks them out from the rest of the world. The commonplace novelist or dramatist, on the other hand, gives us mere types of vice and virtue. Mr. Jerome's gallery of Stageland characters--the hero, the heroine, the comic Irishman, the good old man, and the rest--is scarcely caricature. It is hardly necessary to give them names, the same types have been recurring again and again for many a long year, and are likely to continue to recur as long as there are cheap books and cheap theatres. But the great masters of character-drawing contrive to show us the individual at once as a unit and as part of the whole. We see the peculiar idiosyncrasies of this or that person, and we are conscious, not only of a subtle bond between ourselves and them which enables us to see things from their point of view, but of their relation to human nature in general and to their own cla.s.s in particular.

CHAPTER V

CHAUCER'S HUMOUR

Critics may be divided in opinion as to Chaucer's right to be called the Father of English poetry, but there can be no question that he is the first great English humorist. As far back as Henry III's reign fabliaux had been imported from France, but they took no real root in English soil, and though their coa.r.s.e jests and indecent situations were fully appreciated by thirteenth- and fourteenth-century readers, they never rose above the level of collections of "merrie tales" and made no pretensions to originality or literary style. The same stories were repeated again and again, with slight variations, and are often to be found in Indian or Arabian versions as well as in French and English. Chaucer alone, showed that it was possible to see in them a revelation of human nature. The romances, as has been said, were far more French than English, and, even so, comparatively few of them show any flicker of humour. _Auca.s.sin and Nicolette_ stands out as a conspicuous exception, but this is pure French, and the more English romances, such as _Guy of Warwick_ or _Bevis of Hampton_, take everything with intense seriousness. It is true that the Continental animal epic had begun to make its influence felt in England, but it was still the Continental epic: it belonged to the days of literary free-trade before the national spirit made itself felt in literature.

Satire, it is true, had long since made its appearance in England, but except for rude popular rhymes and an occasional poem of greater pretensions--such as the _Land of c.o.kaygne_--it was in Latin, and had nothing distinctively English about it. In the Miracle Plays, it is true, we find that mixture of shrewd common-sense and real feeling, of comedy and tragedy, which we are accustomed to regard as characteristically English, but though they had been popular in England for many years before Chaucer began to write, the best of them date from the fifteenth century, and the comic element in the earlier plays seems chiefly to have consisted in rough-and-tumble farce. It was left for Chaucer to show the true meaning and value of the comic point of view, and at the same time to embody the characteristics of a nation which had but recently awakened to the consciousness of its own individuality.

To say that humour is the most subtle and illusive of qualities, is to utter a truism. Certain situations are in themselves necessarily and essentially tragic. The slaying of parent by child, or child by parent; a great shipwreck involving terrible loss of life; any sudden and overwhelming catastrophe must always bring with it a sense of horror. But comedy depends on point of view rather than on situation. An absurdity of dress or manner which would cause us to smile under normal circ.u.mstances, would cease to be amusing if it indicated dangerous insanity: a man falling off the roof of a house might go into the most ridiculous att.i.tudes without in the least stirring the spectator's sense of humour.

It is this which makes it difficult to accept Professor Bergson's most interesting and suggestive theory of the mechanical nature of comedy as wholly satisfactory. And again, while such tragic incidents as have been suggested appeal to every normal human being, what amuses one person may leave another absolutely untouched. We all know the blank sensation of having our best story received with stony politeness, and the despair of trying to explain a joke. Certain things, however, do appeal in greater or less degree to the majority of people, and among these is the element of unexpectedness. The whole point of the modern musical comedy consists in making the actor behave as no sane person ever dreamed of behaving in actual life. If it were the fashion to enter a room in a series of cart-wheels we should see nothing funny in it. The audience roars with laughter when the elderly gentleman sits on his hat, because hats are not intended to be used as cushions. Nor is this element of unexpectedness confined to mere farce. It const.i.tutes more than half the point of a brilliant repartee or play upon words. The child's misuse of terms is amusing because it suggests something which would never have occurred to us. And it is this which underlies the a.s.sertion that humour consists in incongruity. True humour, however, contains far more than this. If comedy plays on the surface of life, its greatest exponents bring home to us the fact that that surface covers a depth. It is no accident that causes Shakespeare's comedies to deepen in tone until they become well-nigh indistinguishable from tragedies, or that leads Chaucer to introduce a Pandarus into the tragedy of _Troilus and Criseyde_. Comedy has a double value. It is amusing, and it is also a bond which connects us with everyday life. It keeps tragedy from soaring into worlds peopled exclusively by heroes and heroines of almost superhuman greatness, and romance from dwelling wholly in a land of faery. Had the poets of the Restoration ever dared to view their heroes from the comic point of view we should have been spared the bombastic grandiloquence of their Almanzors and Osmyns. Had Rosalind no sense of humour, were Touchstone and Jaques non-existent, _As You Like It_ might still be a charming forest idyll, but it would cease to have any hint of realism.

Chaucer's comedy touches both extremes: it includes the most elementary, and the most subtle forms, and though he never rises to the height of the great Shakespearean dramas, he does reveal possibilities. .h.i.therto undreamed of in English literature. For the sake of clearness it may be well to consider his comedy under four heads: farce, wit, satire, humour proper.

(1) _Farce._--Farce may be defined as that form of comedy which makes least appeal to the intelligence, which is, in fact, almost wholly physical. An imbecile may be incapable of realising that there is anything unusual in wearing straws in one's hair and therefore may not find the spectacle amusing, but it needs but a very low order of intelligence to appreciate such physical peculiarity--hence the popularity of costume songs, and pantomime generally, which call for no mental effort on the part of the audience. But while farce is undoubtedly the lowest form of comedy, it does not necessarily follow that it is to be despised. The greatest authors do not disdain to make use of it, only they keep it subordinate to other interests. Shakespeare contrives to blend farce with character-study in a way that is truly marvellous. Falstaff's fatness is eminently farcical, and yet it is something more--a starveling Sir John would be a wholly different person. It is farce touched with humour.

Dogberry and Verges are of a different species from the comic policeman of musical comedy.

In Chaucer we find both forms of farce. The "sely carpenter" of the _Milleres Tale_ provides plenty of incident well suited to tickle the most elementary sense of the comic. The picture of the unfortunate John victualling his tub in readiness for a second edition of Noah's flood, and sitting in it, slung up to the ceiling, "awaytinge on the reyn," is irresistibly funny, and it is easy to fancy the delight of the audience when, thinking the flood has come, he cuts the cord and comes b.u.mping on to the floor; for the truest farce of all is the practical joke which makes someone else ridiculous. All the coa.r.s.er tales are full of such episodes. It would make no difference if the incidents were transferred from one tale to another, they have no subtle connection with the personality of those involved in them; the absurdity lies in the actual situation, and is exactly on a level with the rough-and-tumble fights between Noah and his wife, which proved so popular in the Miracle Plays, or the tossing of Mak in a blanket in the well-known Townley Mystery.

The portrait of the drunken Cook contains farce of a somewhat higher order. He is a most unattractive person, and from any other point of view would be merely repulsive. But humour, while it cuts through false sentiment, not infrequently softens down the harsher lines in a character.

There is no bitterness in true laughter; we cannot wholly despise what amuses us. In a tract the Cook and the Wife of Bath, the Friar and the Pardoner, would serve as awful warnings. In the _Canterbury Tales_ they show an extraordinary power of disarming criticism and worming themselves into our affections:--

The Cook of London, whyl the Reve spak, For joye, him thoughte, he clawed him on the bak.

He is a genial rascal after all, and we almost resent his having so unfortunately appropriate a name as Hogge. When he falls asleep as he rides and rolls off his horse our sympathies are with him, though we fully appreciate the force of the Maunciple's plea that he shall not be permitted to tell his tale. The picture of the rest of the pilgrims shoving him to and fro in their efforts to mount him again, is farce of the simplest and most primitive kind, but Roger himself is a live man, not a mere occasion of mirth in others.

The Wyf of Bath, again, is a foul-mouthed, coa.r.s.e-grained woman, selfish and self-indulgent. Her prologue shows an amazing ignorance of the meaning of clean living, and her piety merely serves as an excuse for seeing the world. Yet such is the power of the comic point of view that it is quite impossible to judge her from the conventional moral standpoint. Comedy lays stress on her good-humour and her sense, and, above all, on her power of amusing the company. Compare her for one moment with Mrs. Sinclair in _Clarissa_, or the old hag in _Dombey and Son_, and the effect produced by comic treatment at once becomes evident. It is not that it dulls our moral sense, but it gives us a peculiar tolerance of its own. Instead of judging all men from our own particular plane, we learn to see these illiterate and common folk as they see each other, and we find them extraordinarily human after all.

(2) _Wit._--Wit is the intellectual counterpart of farce. Farce at its lowest is actually physical--the jester trips his victim up, 'Arry and 'Arriet exchange hats--and at its highest consists in physical absurdity.

Wit appeals as much to a blind man as to one who can see. In neither case has the comic element any necessary connection with the characters of those concerned. Farce, as we have seen, may be combined with humour, and wit may gain an added keenness from our knowledge of the witty person, but in their simplest form neither depends on any such connection. A man chasing his hat is a funny sight, quite apart from our having any idea of who he is. Any additional element of humour which may be added by the fact that it is Mr. So-and-so, who prides himself on his dignified deportment, is not purely farcical. In like manner, a brilliant repartee is amusing, though we may have no notion who uttered it: in fact, not infrequently the same story is told, with equal effect, about two or more different men. At the same time a remark, witty in itself, often gains additional force from its context, and in certain cases the chief point depends on the setting.

The wit-traps so beloved by Restoration comedy writers, of which George Meredith speaks in his _Essay on Comedy_, are typical examples of pure wit. It does not matter in the least by whom the remark is made: the actual verbal sword-play is in itself amusing. Frequently such dialogue does nothing whatever to help on the plot. Its wit is in itself sufficient to justify its existence. Shakespeare, on the other hand, has extraordinarily few pa.s.sages which can be detached from the play in which they occur, and quoted as essentially amusing. Falstaff's jests without Falstaff lose all their savour, and the wit of a Rosalind or a Beatrice is too intimate a part of her personality for the two to be divorced.

Millament's brilliant jests are scintillating jewels of wit. The wit of Shakespeare's heroines is a facet of their character.

Drama naturally affords more scope for the display of wit than does narrative poetry. That Chaucer is witty is undeniable, but his wit shows itself chiefly in sly comments and parentheses, or in the adroit use of an unexpected simile. His dry comment on the probable fate of Arcite's soul; the parenthesis which tells us how small is the number of those who having done well desire to hide their good deeds; the eagle's complaint, in the _Hous of Fame_, that the poet is "noyous for to carie"; Placebo's explanation of the reason why he has never yet quarrelled with any lord of "heigh estaat," are good examples of the former method. Detached from their context, there is little or nothing in any of them to raise a smile.

They contain no play upon words, nothing intrinsically amusing. But in their proper setting they cause that pleasant shock which breeds laughter; they give a sudden whimsical turn to the thought.

The _Nonne Preestes Tale_ ill.u.s.trates, not only Chaucer's comic use of simile, but, what is closely allied to this, the comic effect produced by speaking of one thing in terms of another. The mock-heroic effect produced by the learning of Chauntecleer and the weight of the ill.u.s.trations which he adduces in support of his faith in dreams, is inimitable. This c.o.c.k quotes Josephus and Macrobius and Cato with such pompous gravity that he almost persuades us to share his own sense of his importance. The grave disquisition on predestination and free-will which prefaces the account of his untoward fate has an irresistibly comic effect. This is, however, not purely comic. It is characteristic of Chaucer that he should treat a matter which was evidently much in his thoughts, in this half-ironic manner. The comparison of the bereaved Pertelote to "Hasdrubales wyf," and her sister hens to the wives of the senators of Rome

--whan that Nero brende[109] the citee--

is no less effective. The whole story indeed is treated consistently from the comic point of view, and while here again there is nothing inherently funny in detached pa.s.sages, wit lights up the poem from end to end.

(3) _Satire._--Satire differs from farce or wit in that it has a definite moral purpose.

It is our purpose, Crites, to correct And punish with our laughter ...

says Mercury in _Cynthia's Revels_. The satirist deliberately alienates our sympathies from those whom he describes, and as the true humorist is apt to pa.s.s from comedy to romance, and from romance to tragedy, so the satirist not infrequently ends by finding rage and disgust overpower his sense of the ridiculous. Ben Jonson pa.s.ses from the comedy of _Every Man in his Humour_ to the bitterness of _Volpone_, Swift from the comparative lightness of Gulliver in Lilliput, to the savage brutality of the Hounyhymns. Of satire pure and simple few examples are to be found in Chaucer. The _Hous of Fame_ is indeed satiric in conception, and certain of the pictures it contains are decidedly effective. The fourteenth-century equivalent of the game of Russian Scandal which it describes, has already been noticed. No less ironic is the account of the

shipmen and pilgrymes With scrippes bret-ful of lesinges Entremedled with tydinges,[110]

whom the poet meets in the house of Rumour. But the poem as a whole is so lengthy and so much of it is occupied with the description of symbols, references to cla.s.sical mythology, and other equally serious matters, that the more witty portions stand out conspicuously, and the reader is apt to find some difficulty in seeing the various parts in their proper relation.

Successful satire must ever keep its object in view. The _Hous of Fame_ is too discursive to be really effective as a whole.

The fact is that satire is not Chaucer's natural bent. He is too quick-witted not to see through sham and humbug, but his interest lies in portraiture rather than in exposure. His object is to paint life as he sees it, to hold up the mirror to nature, and, as has justly been said, "a mirror has no tendency," it reflects, but it does not, or should not, distort. In two cases only does Chaucer deliberately draw a one-sided picture, and both are topical skits, too slight to regard as satire proper. The _Compleint of Mars_, which is not specially witty or amusing in itself, is said to have been written at the expense of my lady of York and the Earl of Huntingdon, but any savour which the jest may once have had, has long since pa.s.sed away. The rhyme of _Sir Thopas_ has already been noticed as a good-natured parody of the conventional romance.

But if Chaucer is too tolerant and genial, too little of a preacher and enthusiast, for a satirist, enough has already been said to show that his wit has often a satiric turn. The student of the _Canterbury Tales_ is often reminded of the worth of another great English humorist. Chaucer and Fielding are alike in a certain air of rollicking good-fellowship, a certain virility, a determination to paint men and women as they know them. Neither is particularly squeamish, both enjoy a rough jest, and have little patience with over-refinement. Both give one a sense of st.u.r.dy honesty and kindliness, and know how to combine tenderness with strength.

Both, with all their tolerance, have a keen eye for hypocrisy or affectation and a sharp tongue wherewith to chastise and expose it.

Chaucer hates no one, not even the Pardoner, as whole-heartedly as Fielding hates Master Blifil, but the _Pardoners Tale_ affords the best instance of the satiric bent of the poet's humour when he is brought face to face with a scheming rogue.

The Host, who has been much moved by the piteous tale of Virginia, turns to the Pardoner for something to remove its depressing influence:--

"Or but I here anon a mery tale."

he cries,

"Myn herte is lost for pitee of this mayde.

Thou belamy,[111] thou Pardoner," he seyde, "Tel us som mirthe or j.a.pes[112] right anon."

The Pardoner is ready enough to oblige, as soon as he has called at the inn they are pa.s.sing and has eaten and drunk. But it is noteworthy that the pilgrims, who have listened to the Miller's tale without a murmur, are nervous as to what the Pardoner's idea of a merry tale may be. With one voice they protest:--

"Nay! lat him telle us of no ribaudye;[113]

Tell us som moral thing, that we may lere[114]

Som wit, and thanne wol we gladly here."

To the Pardoner it is all one. Practised speaker as he is, a comic story or a sermon comes equally readily to his lips, and he promises with ready good-nature, though he begs for a moment for reflection:--

"I graunte, y-wis," quod he, "but I moste thinke Up-on som honest thing, whyl that I drinke."

Of their insinuations as to the kind of tale he is likely to tell if left to himself, he takes not the slightest notice. His tongue loosened by the ale, he begins with a cynical confession of his methods as a popular preacher.

"Lordings," quod he, "in chirches whan I preche I peyne me to han an hauteyn[115] speche, And ringe it out as round as gooth a belle, For I can al by rote that I telle.[116]

My theme is alwey oon, and ever was-- '_Radix malorum est Cupiditas_.'"

Having thus warned his hearers against the love of money, he proceeds to show his credentials, sprinkling a few Latin terms here and there in his speech:--

"To saffron with my predicacioun[117]