“Allas! ... that I was wrought.”
Therewith the teres fillen from his yën.[70]
Chaucer gives us a moving picture of the little three-year-old looking up and asking
“Fader, why do ye wepe!
Whan wol the gayler bringen our potage,
Is ther no morsel breed that ye do kepe?
I am so hungry that I may nat slepe ...”
and finally lying down in his father’s lap, and kissing him, and dying. The stern horror of Dante’s story is too terrible to admit of pathos such as this. Chaucer’s version is infinitely touching, but it has nothing in it that chills our blood as does the picture of the father, grown blind with hunger, groping over the dead bodies of his children till fasting gets the mastery of grief. He can depict innocent suffering, he can arouse our sympathy and stir our pity, but he never strikes the note of real tragedy. It is not only that no one of his many heroes and heroines experiences any tragic conflict of soul, but in the simple presentation of suffering Chaucer shows little of that power of grim suggestion, of appeal to the imagination, which are among the most essential characteristics of the tragic poet. Cressida’s hesitation has nothing grand or tragic about it. She is simply uncertain which course will bring her most happiness. And her repentance—if such it can be called—is no more than a momentary discomfort at the thought that she has caused Troilus pain and that unkind things are likely to be said of her. Troilus suffers, but, in Professor Bradley’s phrase, it is suffering that merely befalls him, the whole tragedy is external, and his abandonment of passion has none of the dignity and restraint of a great emotion. Othello’s cry of “Desdemona, Desdemona dead!” contains more poignancy of suffering than all the outbursts of Troilus put together. Constance, and Griselda, and Dorigen all know the meaning of sorrow, but their simple acceptance of their fate is pathetic rather than tragic, and in the cases of Constance and Griselda, as in the case of Count Hugo, the tragedy is further softened by the part played by the children. The monk’s definition of tragedy—though it need not necessarily be Chaucer’s own—sufficiently explains the medieval conception:—
Tragedie is to seyn a certeyn storie,
As olde bokes maken us memorie,
Of him that stood in greet prosperitee
And is y-fallen out of heigh degree
Into miserie, and endeth wrecchedly.
To Chaucer the interest lies in the study of normal men and women, and in comparing his narratives with their originals nothing is more striking than the air of homeliness and naturalness with which he contrives to invest the most amazing incidents. Dorigen and her husband strike one as simple, natural folk whose nice sense of honour leads them to keep their word though it were to their own hindrance. We hardly notice the absurdity of the situation itself, and are little troubled by the magic arts which enable her persecutor to remove all rocks from the coast of Brittany. Constance is no tragedy-queen, but a true-hearted, simple woman; and the fact that she lives in a world of miracles never obtrudes itself. We accept her adventures without a qualm since our interest lies in her personality, and the odd thing is that her personality, attractive as it is, strikes one as so little out of the common. Writers of the day, as a rule, desired either to point a moral or to thrill their readers by sheer force of adventure. Chaucer took the accepted conventions of his day, and pierced through them to the human nature underneath.
CHAPTER IV
CHAUCER’S CHARACTER-DRAWING