2. Both works relate chiefly to tales of olden time.
3. In both, the tales follow each other without any intermediate matter.
4. Both are compacted into a whole by means of an introductory Prologue.
5. Both writers wish to dedicate their works to a queen, but effect this modestly and indirectly. Boccaccio addresses his Prologue to a countess, telling her that he wishes to dedicate his book to Joanna, queen of Jerusalem and Sicily; whilst Chaucer veils his address to queen Anne under the guise of allegory.
6. Both record the fact of their writing in a time of comparative leisure. Boccaccio uses the words: 'paululum ab inerti uulgo semotus et a ceteris fere solutus curis.'
7. Had Chaucer finished his work, his last Legend would have related to Alcestis, i.e. to the queen herself. Boccaccio actually concludes his work with a chapter 'De Iohanna Hierusalem et Sicilie regina.'
See further in Bech, who quotes Boccaccio's 'Prologue' in full.
To this comparison should be added (as Bech remarks) an accidental coincidence which is even more striking, viz. that the work 'De Claris Mulieribus' bears much the same relation to the more famous one entitled 'Il Decamerone,' that the Legend of Good Women does to the Canterbury Tales.
Boccaccio has all of Chaucer's finished tales, except those of Ariadne, Philomela, and Phyllis[[22]]; he also gives the stories of some whom Chaucer only mentions, such as the stories of Deianira (cap. 22), Polyxena (cap. 31), Helena (cap. 35), Penelope (cap. 38); and others. To Ovid our author is much more indebted, and frequently translates passages from his Heroides (or Epistles) and from the Metamorphoses. The former of these works contains the Epistles of Phyllis, Hypsipyle, Medea, Dido, Ariadne, and Hypermnestra, whose stories Chaucer relates, as well as the letters of most of those whom Chaucer merely mentions, viz. of Penelope, Briseis, Hermione, Deianira, Laodamia, Helena, and Hero. It is evident that our poet was chiefly guided by Ovid in selecting stories from the much larger collection in Boccaccio. At the same time it is remarkable that neither Boccaccio (in the above work) nor Ovid gives the story of Alcestis, and it is not quite certain whence Chaucer obtained it. It is briefly told in the 51st of the Fabulae of Hyginus, but it is much more likely that Chaucer borrowed it from another work by Boccaccio, entitled De Genealogia Deorum[[23]], where it appears amongst the fifty-one labours of Hercules, in the following words:—
'Alcestem Admeti regis Thessaliae coniugem retraxit [Hercules] ad uirum. Dicunt enim, quod cum infirmaretur Admetus, implorassetque Apollinis auxilium, sibi ab Apolline dictum mortem euadere non posse, nisi illam aliquis ex affinibus atque necessariis subiret. Quod cum audisset Alcestis coniunx, non dubitauit suam pro salute uiri concedere, et sic ea mortua Admetus liberatus est, qui plurimum uxori compatiens Herculem orauit, vt ad inferos uadens illius animam reuocaret ad superos, quod et factum est.'— Lib. xiii. c. 1 (ed. 1532).