Chaucer And His Times Part 11

And for to stire men to devocioun,"

and then shows his relics, the shoulder-bone of "an holy Jewes shepe," a miraculous mitten which will cause the crops of the man who wears it to increase manifold:--

"By this gaude have I wonne, yeer by yeer, An hundred mark sith I was Pardoner"--

a pillow-case, which he swears is our Lady's veil, etc., etc. After this he preaches a vehement sermon against avarice, the object of which, he frankly explains, is

"... for to make hem free To yeve her pens, and namely unto me.

For my entente is nat but for to winne, And no-thing for correccioun of sinne.

I rekke never, whan that they ben beried, Though that her soules goon a-blakeberied."[118]

If anyone has offended him, he takes care so to point at him in what he says that the reference is unmistakable and the whole congregation understands who it is that is being denounced:--

"Thus quyte I folk that doon us displeasances."

In fact, the whole object of his preaching is neither more nor less than the ama.s.sing of money:--

"Therfore my theme is yet, and ever was-- '_Radix malorum est Cupiditas_.'

For I wol preche and begge in sondry londes; I wol not do no labour with myn hondes

I wol have money, wolle, chese, and whete, Al were it yeven of the poorest page, Or of the poorest widwe in a village."

No wonder that

Up-on a day he gat him more moneye Than that the person[119] gat in monthes tweye.

After this shameless confession, the Pardoner offers to relate one of the moral tales which he has found most efficacious in cajoling money out of unwilling pockets.

In Flaundres whylom was a companye Of yonge folk, that haunteden folye[120] ...

thus he begins, and so moved is he with the thought of the folly of these young people that, with his own lips scarce dry from their last draught of corny ale, he proceeds to denounce gluttony and drunkenness in no measured terms. It is an admirable sermon, full of apt ill.u.s.trations and appropriate references to the Bible. It enables us to see, at the outset, how the preacher succeeds in dominating his illiterate audiences when he speaks in the village churches. Having got well into his stride, the Pardoner pa.s.ses on to the promised tale. Among the riotous company are three young men. One day, as they sit drinking in a tavern, they hear the bell toll, and sending a servant to inquire the cause, they learn that Death has carried away one of their companions. With pot-valiant courage they declare their intention of seeking out and slaying this false traitor Death, and without more ado set forth on the quest. An old man, whom they meet by the way, tells them that Death is to be found in a neighbouring grove, under a tree:--

And everich of thise ryotoures ran Til he cam to that tree, and ther they founde Of florins fyne of golde y-coyned rounde Wel ny an eighte busshels, as hem thoughte.

The sight effectually puts Death out of their minds. They decide that the treasure must be hidden, and since it will be well to wait for darkness before venturing to remove it, they draw lots to determine which of them shall run to the town for meat and drink, while the other two keep guard.

The lot falls on the youngest, but no sooner has he gone than the two who remain plot to murder him when he comes back, since there will be the more gold for them if he is out of the way. The youngest also thinks it a pity to divide such wealth by three, and having reached the town he goes to an apothecary and demands

Som poyson, that he mighte his rattes quelle.[121]

He then buys three bottles, puts poison in two and reserves the third for his own use. On his return he is slain by the other two.

And whan that this was doon, thus spak that oon, "Now lat us sitte and drinke, and make us merie And afterward we wol his body berie."

Thus all three find Death where they sought him.

The story is told with considerable force. The action moves quickly, and there is enough grim suggestiveness to stir the hearer's imagination without the detail being in any way overloaded. The picture of the old man vainly seeking death as he strikes his staff upon the ground and cries: "Leve moder, leet me in"; the brief dialogue between the two roisterers in the wood; the description of the thoughts that chase each other through the mind of the third as he runs, all show a power of vivid dramatic presentation. It is not in the least such a tale as the pilgrims expect from the Pardoner. The poor Parson himself could point no better moral.

And it ends with (of all things!) an impa.s.sioned appeal against avarice.

The Pardoner has fallen unconsciously into his professional manner.

Carried away by his own eloquence, he forgets that he began by explaining the trick of the whole thing. No doubt, as he himself had said, he has used the tale often enough as a means of extorting money, and with the most convincing fervour he begs the pilgrims--with his confession fresh in their minds--to beware of covetousness, and to press forward and make their offerings to his holy relics. So naturally have we been led on step by step, so easily has he pa.s.sed from cynicism to sermon, and from sermon to application, that it is something of a shock when the Host, instead of hastening to kiss the relics as he is bidden, responds to the invitation with a coa.r.s.e jest. The anger of the Pardoner at this indignity is explicable only on the ground that he was so consummate an actor that he had literally forgotten himself in his part. A hypocrite he undoubtedly is, but not the crude, deliberate hypocrite whom the later satirists of the Puritans delighted to draw, nor even the Pecksniffian hypocrite who, while he retains his mask, even in private, never loses consciousness of the fact that it is a mask; he has something of the artistic temperament, and his failure to impress the pilgrims gives him a real, though momentary, jar. The subtle irony with which the whole picture is drawn is perfect in its restraint. The vulgar rogue is sufficiently represented by the Friar. The Pardoner is of higher intelligence, and while we condemn him we recognise his ability.

The suggestion that the various birds in the _Parlement of Foules_ represent courtiers of the day, has already been noticed. If it is true, the satire is of so genial and playful a kind that even the goose can scarcely have been hurt by it. More than once Chaucer draws an amusing picture of a gossiping, foolish crowd, but while it is evident that he has no very high opinion of the intelligence of people in the ma.s.s, there is no trace of bitterness in his descriptions. The well-meaning busybodies who come to comfort Criseyde are as helplessly incompetent as "the goos, the c.o.kkow, and the doke," but though fussy and self-centred, they have too much real kindliness for it to be possible not to feel a certain affection for them. Perhaps the best of all Chaucer's crowds is that in the _Squieres Tale_ which gathers to look at the horse of bra.s.s, and the other magic gifts:--

Diverse folk diversely they demed; As many hedes, as many wittes ther been.

They murmureden as dooth a swarm of been,[122]

And maden skiles after hir fantasyes,[123]

Rehersinge of thise olde poetryes, And seyden, it was lyk the Pegasee, The hors that hadde winges for to flee; Or elles it was the Grekes hors Synon,[124]

That broghte Troye to destruccion, As men may in thise olde gestes rede.

"Myn herte," quod oon, "is evermore in drede; I trowe som men of armes been ther-inne, That shapen[125] hem this citee for to winne.

It were right good that al swich thing were knowe."

Another rowned[126] to his felawe lowe, And seyde, "He lyeth, it is rather lyk An apparance y-maad by som magyk As jogelours pleyen at thise festes grete."

Of sondry doutes thus they jangle and trete, As lewed[127] peple demeth comunly Of thinges that been maad more subtilly, Than they can in her lewedness comprehende: They demen gladly to the badder ende.

With equal learning they discuss the mirror and sword and ring, and having paraded their knowledge of "sondry harding of metal," "fern-a.s.shen gla.s.s"

and similar wonderful inventions, come to no conclusion.

(4) _Humour._--If it is difficult to draw a hard-and-fast line round other elements of comedy, and detach wit from satire, or satire from farce, it is still harder to attempt to isolate humour and discuss it as a separate and distinct property. Humour is the sympathetic appreciation of the comic, the faculty which enables us to love while we laugh, and to love the better for our laughter. Something has already been said of the softening influence of comedy. It is humour which enables us to see the other person's point of view, to distinguish between crimes and misdemeanours, so that we no more wish to convert Sir Toby from the error of his ways than to reduce the fat boy's appet.i.te. Above all, it is humour which points out those endearing peculiarities, those little foibles and harmless weaknesses which give Parson Adams and the Vicar of Wakefield so warm a place in our affections. There is no sting in such laughter, no conscious superiority; on the contrary, it contains an element of tenderness. Obviously humour is distinct from satire, but it can be distinguished from farce and wit only by insisting on the externals when speaking of them. Humour is indeed the soul of all comedy. Satire, being destructive, not constructive, is in a cla.s.s apart, but even satire--as we have seen in Chaucer's picture of a crowd--may become so softened by humour that it loses the element of caricature and serves only to give a keener edge to wit.

Chaucer's whole point of view is that of the humorist. To the tragic writer things apparently trifling in themselves may be fraught with deep significance. A chance movement, a momentary impulse, may set fire to the train which brings about the catastrophe, or may reveal some subtle shade of character which it is essential that we should see. But the tragedian has no time to waste on trifles for their own sake. If Shakespeare shows us the sleepy porter unbarring the gate of Macbeth's castle, or the grave-diggers of Elsinore singing at their work, it is not because he wants our thoughts to dwell on either the one or the other. They have their place as part of the tragedy, and it is the sense of tragedy, not the triviality of the incident which is uppermost in our mind. But the comic poet saunters gaily through life pausing to notice every trifle as he pa.s.ses. He views the world as the unaccustomed traveller views a foreign country; the old women at their cottage doors, the peasants plodding behind their patient oxen in the field, the very names above the shops, all are interesting. There is no such thing as a dull person, the mere fashion in which a man walks or wears his clothes is worth recording, not because it throws any subtle light upon his character, but because it is unusual and therefore quaint, because, in fact, the unexpected is manifesting itself in these homely details.

Chaucer possesses this faculty of amused observation in a pre-eminent degree. Again and again he contrives to invest some perfectly trifling and commonplace incident with an air of whimsicality, and by so doing to make it at once realistic and remote. We are never wholly absorbed by what amuses us, in the sense that we are absorbed by what appeals to our tragic emotions. Laughter implies a certain detachment, whereas in tragedy we feel with those concerned with an intensity which often causes us to lose all consciousness of our own individuality. We may be surprised to find the tears in our eyes, but we are always conscious of our laughter.

This homely, whimsical point of view shows itself in a thousand minute touches. Friar John, in the _Somnours Tale_, goes to call on friend Thomas:--

And fro the bench he droof awey the cat, And leyde adoun his potente[128] and his hat, And eek his scrippe, and sette him softe adoun....

The rout pursues dan Russel the fox:--

And cryden, "Out! harrow! and weylawey!

Ha, ha, the fox!" and after him they ran, And eek with staves many another man; Ran Colle our dogge, and Talbot, and Gerland, And Malkin, with a distaf in her hand; Ran cow and calf, and eek the verray hogges So were they fered for berking of the dogges And shouting of the men and wimmen eek, They ronne so, hem thoughte hir herte brekke.

They yelleden as feendes doon in h.e.l.le; The dokes[129] cryden as men wolde hem quelle;[130]

The gees for fere flowen[131] over the trees; Out of the hyve cam the swarm of bees....

There is nothing wildly farcical in any of this. Friar John does not sit on the cat; the men and dogs do not tumble over each other. The humour consists in the point of view which finds such incidents worth recording.

It is not what he says, but the way he says it; not what he sees, but the way he sees it.

As to the sympathetic quality of humour, that is even more obvious in all Chaucer's work. It is sympathy that lies at the bottom of a tolerance so wide that it hardly finds it necessary to forgive. When Chaucer needs a melodramatic villain or villainess such as Apius, or Alle's mother, he can depict one, but except when it affords opportunity for comedy he usually touches an evil character but lightly. His heart lies in the pure poetry of such women as Constance and Dorigen, or in broadly comic effect: he has no desire to sound the depths of human nature or to dwell upon the darker and more terrible side of life. Shakespeare's comedy is often touched with a suggestion of something faintly tragic. Even Falstaff is by no means a wholly comic figure, and the wisdom of Jaques, with all its affectation, contains a truth that goes beneath the surface. Chaucer seldom shows us the revealing power of comedy, but, like Shakespeare, he is not afraid to blend gaiety and gravity in the same person. From one point of view the _Book of the d.u.c.h.esse_ is surely the most cheerful elegy ever written.

Chaucer does not tell off certain low-cla.s.s characters for comic effect, he allows even the n.o.blest and best a sense of humour. When we think of the serious and lachrymose heroines of romance, we feel that Chaucer's women owe half their vitality to the fact that they are not afraid to laugh, that n.o.ble and high-minded as they are, they are part and parcel of the ordinary stuff of human life.

CHAPTER VI

CHAUCER'S DESCRIPTIVE POWER