Chaucer's Works, Volume 3 — The House of Fame; The Legend of Good Women; The Treatise on the Astrolabe; The Sources of the Canterbury Tales

by Geoffrey Chaucer

[20]

I.e. with the exception of the stanzas which were transferred from that work to the Man of Lawes Prologue and Tale; see the 'Account of the Sources,' &c. p. [407], and the last note on p. [307] of the present volume.

[21]

I omit 'Marcia Catoun'; like Esther, she is hardly to be ranked with the heroines of olden fables. Indeed, even Cleopatra comes in rather strangely.

[22]

See De Claris Mulieribus:—Cleopatra, cap. 86. Thisbe, cap. 12. Dido, cap. 40. Hypsipyle and Medea, capp. 15, 16. Lucretia, cap. 46. Hypermnestra cap. 13. And see Morley's English Writers, v. 241 (1890).

[23]

It will be seen below that Chaucer certainly made use of this work for the Legend of Hypermnestra; see p. [xl].

[24]

Court of Love (original edition, 1561), stanzas 15, 16. I substitute 'ninetene' for the 'xix' of the original.