Chaucer's Works, Volume 1 — Romaunt of the Rose; Minor Poems

by Geoffrey Chaucer

XXII. An Amorous Compleint (Compleint Damours).

There are three MS. copies of this poem, viz. in MSS. F., B., and Harl. 7333. See remarks upon these in the Introduction, p. [89].

1. In Troil. iv. 516, the parallel line is—'Of me, that am the wofulleste wight'; where wofullest-e has four syllables. Chaucer constantly employs sorwe or sorw so as to occupy the time of a monosyllable; hence the right reading in this case is sorw'fullest-e, with final -e. See also Troil. ii. 450—'So as she was the ferfulleste wight.' And 'Bicomen is the sorwefulleste man'; Cant. Tales, E 2098.

3. Recoverer, recovery, cure; answering to O.F. recovrier, sb. succour, aid, cure, recovery; see examples in La Langue et la Littérature Française, by Bartsch and Horning, 1887. Gower uses recoverir in a like sense; ed. Pauli, i. 265. In Specimens of English, ed. Morris and Skeat, pt. ii. p. 156, l. 394, recouerer may likewise mean 'succour'; and the whole line may mean, 'they each of them cried for succour (to be obtained) from the Creator.'

6. Cf. Sect. VI. l. 53:—'So litel rewthe hath she upon my peyne.'

7. Cf. Sect. VI. l. 33:—'That, for I love hir, sleeth me giltelees.' So also Frank. Ta. F 1322:—'Er ye me sleen bycause that I yow love.'

12. Spitous, hateful. The word in Chaucer is usually despitous; see Prol. 516, Cant. Ta. A 1596, D 761, Troil. ii. 435, v. 199; but spitously occurs in the Cant. Tales, D 223. Trevisa translates ignominiosa seruitute by 'in a dispitous bondage'; Higden's Polychron. v. 87. The sense is—'You have banished me to that hateful island whence no man may escape alive.' The allusion is to the isle of Naxos, here used as a synonym for a state of hopeless despair. It was the island in which Ariadne was left, when deserted by Theseus; and Chaucer alludes to it at least thrice in a similar way: see C. T. Group B, 68, Ho. of Fame, 416, Legend of Good Women, 2163.

14. This have I, such is my reward. For, because.

16. Another reading is—'If that it were a thing possible to do.' In that case, we must read possíbl', with the accent on i.