The peculiar characteristic of the English version is its all-pervading sense of humour, the gravity with which we are led on step by step until we find ourselves accepting the most ridiculous situations, and the extraordinary skill with which the characters of Chauntecleer and Pertelote are drawn.
In the Monkes Tale Chaucer draws his stories of the falls of illustrious men from all kinds of sources. The heroes range from Lucifer to Pedro the Cruel, and the worthy monk chooses his illustrations apparently at random, now from sacred history, now from the classics, now from contemporary life. No great dramatic skill is to be expected of the narrator, and for the most part the tragedies succeed one another with placid regularity, the occasional comments made by the monk himself showing no particular insight or intelligence. Having described the fall of Sampson, for instance, no more inspiring reflection occurs to him than
That no men telle hir conseil til hir wyves
Of swich thing as they wolde han secree fayn,
If that it touche hir limmes or hir lyves.
One tale, however, stands out conspicuously above the rest. In the Inferno (Canto XXXIII) Dante had told the story of Count Hugo of Pisa, who was locked up in a tower with his sons and starved to death. In a few grim words he describes the father’s despair and the slow death of the wretched sons:—
When we came
To the fourth day, then Gaddo at my feet
Outstretch’d did fling him, crying, “Hast no help
For me, my father?” There he died; and e’en
Plainly as thou seest me, saw I the three
Fall one by one ’twixt the fifth day and sixth:
Whence I betook me, now grown blind, to grope
Over them all, and for three days aloud
Call’d on them who were dead. Then, fasting got
The mastery of grief.
(Carey’s translation.)
Chaucer takes this and uses it as the basis of one of his tragedies. In Dante the actual story occupies fifty-nine lines, in Chaucer it occupies fifty-six, so in this case there is little in the way either of condensation or expansion. The changes which Chaucer makes are, however, very significant. Dante simply says that the three sons of Count Hugo suffer with their father. Chaucer enhances the pathos by telling us that
The eldeste scarsly fyf yeer was of age.
Allas, fortune! it was greet crueltee
Swiche briddes for to putte in swiche a cage!
When Dante’s Count Hugo hears
... at its outlet underneath lock’d up
The horrible tower ...
he is so turned to stone that he can find no relief in tears. Chaucer’s cries,