to be uttered by the sober and discreet part of the population; see l. 1002.
1031. lyketh thee, pleases thee. The marquis addresses her as thou, because all suppose her to be a menial.
1039. mo, lit. more; but also used in the sense of others, or, as here, another. The modern phrase would be, 'as you did somebody else.' The extreme delicacy of the hint is admirable. This use of mo is common in Chaucer; see the Glossary. So also, in Specimens of English, ed. Morris and Skeat, we have, at p. 47, l. 51—
'Y sike for vnsete;
Ant mourne ase men doþ mo';
i. e. I sigh for unrest, and mourn as other men do. And on the next page, p. 48, l. 22, we have
'Mody meneþ so doþ mo,
Ichot ycham on of þo';
i. e. 'The moody moan as others do; I wot I am one of them.' In l. 240 of How the Good Wife taught her Daughter, pr. with Barbour's Bruce, ed. Skeat, we find—'And slanderit folk vald euir haue ma,' i. e. would ever have others like themselves. Somewhat similar is the expression oþer mo, where we should now say others as well; Piers Plowman, C. v. 10, xxii. 54. A somewhat similar use of mo occurs in Tudor English. 'It fortuned Diogenes to ... make one among the moo at a dyner.'—Udall, tr. of Erasmus' Apophthegmes (1564), bk. i. § 91. So also:—'that he also, emong the mo [i. e. the rest] might haue his pleasure'; id. bk. ii. § 13. Tyrwhitt's suggestion that Chaucer has licentiously turned me into mo for the mere sake of getting a rime, in which he has hitherto been followed by nearly every editor, is only to be repudiated. It may well have been with the very purpose of guarding against this error that, in the Ellesmere and Hengwrt MSS., the original Latin text is here quoted in the margin—'unum bona fide te precor ac moneo: ne hanc illis aculeis agites, quibus alteram agitasti.' Chaucer, who throughout surpasses his original in delicacy of treatment, did not permit himself to be outdone here; and Boccaccio also has the word altra. The use of me would have been a direct charge of unkindness, spoiling the whole story. See l. 1045 and l. 449.
1049. gan his herte dresse, addressed his heart, i. e. prepared it, schooled it. The M. E. dresse is our modern direct; both being from Lat. dirigere.