Chaucer and His Times

by Grace E. Hadow

(2) Wit.—Wit is the intellectual counterpart of farce. Farce at its lowest is actually physical—the jester trips his victim up, ’Arry and ’Arriet exchange hats—and at its highest consists in physical absurdity. Wit appeals as much to a blind man as to one who can see. In neither case has the comic element any necessary connection with the characters of those concerned. Farce, as we have seen, may be combined with humour, and wit may gain an added keenness from our knowledge of the witty person, but in their simplest form neither depends on any such connection. A man chasing his hat is a funny sight, quite apart from our having any idea of who he is. Any additional element of humour which may be added by the fact that it is Mr. So-and-so, who prides himself on his dignified deportment, is not purely farcical. In like manner, a brilliant repartee is amusing, though we may have no notion who uttered it: in fact, not infrequently the same story is told, with equal effect, about two or more different men. At the same time a remark, witty in itself, often gains additional force from its context, and in certain cases the chief point depends on the setting. The wit-traps so beloved by Restoration comedy writers, of which George Meredith speaks in his Essay on Comedy, are typical examples of pure wit. It does not matter in the least by whom the remark is made: the actual verbal sword-play is in itself amusing. Frequently such dialogue does nothing whatever to help on the plot. Its wit is in itself sufficient to justify its existence. Shakespeare, on the other hand, has extraordinarily few passages which can be detached from the play in which they occur, and quoted as essentially amusing. Falstaff’s jests without Falstaff lose all their savour, and the wit of a Rosalind or a Beatrice is too intimate a part of her personality for the two to be divorced. Millament’s brilliant jests are scintillating jewels of wit. The wit of Shakespeare’s heroines is a facet of their character.

Drama naturally affords more scope for the display of wit than does narrative poetry. That Chaucer is witty is undeniable, but his wit shows itself chiefly in sly comments and parentheses, or in the adroit use of an unexpected simile. His dry comment on the probable fate of Arcite’s soul; the parenthesis which tells us how small is the number of those who having done well desire to hide their good deeds; the eagle’s complaint, in the Hous of Fame, that the poet is “noyous for to carie”; Placebo’s explanation of the reason why he has never yet quarrelled with any lord of “heigh estaat,” are good examples of the former method. Detached from their context, there is little or nothing in any of them to raise a smile. They contain no play upon words, nothing intrinsically amusing. But in their proper setting they cause that pleasant shock which breeds laughter; they give a sudden whimsical turn to the thought.

The Nonne Preestes Tale illustrates, not only Chaucer’s comic use of simile, but, what is closely allied to this, the comic effect produced by speaking of one thing in terms of another. The mock-heroic effect produced by the learning of Chauntecleer and the weight of the illustrations which he adduces in support of his faith in dreams, is inimitable. This cock quotes Josephus and Macrobius and Cato with such pompous gravity that he almost persuades us to share his own sense of his importance. The grave disquisition on predestination and free-will which prefaces the account of his untoward fate has an irresistibly comic effect. This is, however, not purely comic. It is characteristic of Chaucer that he should treat a matter which was evidently much in his thoughts, in this half-ironic manner. The comparison of the bereaved Pertelote to “Hasdrubales wyf,” and her sister hens to the wives of the senators of Rome

—whan that Nero brende[109] the citee—

is no less effective. The whole story indeed is treated consistently from the comic point of view, and while here again there is nothing inherently funny in detached passages, wit lights up the poem from end to end.

(3) Satire.—Satire differs from farce or wit in that it has a definite moral purpose.

It is our purpose, Crites, to correct
And punish with our laughter ...

says Mercury in Cynthia’s Revels. The satirist deliberately alienates our sympathies from those whom he describes, and as the true humorist is apt to pass from comedy to romance, and from romance to tragedy, so the satirist not infrequently ends by finding rage and disgust overpower his sense of the ridiculous. Ben Jonson passes from the comedy of Every Man in his Humour to the bitterness of Volpone, Swift from the comparative lightness of Gulliver in Lilliput, to the savage brutality of the Hounyhymns. Of satire pure and simple few examples are to be found in Chaucer. The Hous of Fame is indeed satiric in conception, and certain of the pictures it contains are decidedly effective. The fourteenth-century equivalent of the game of Russian Scandal which it describes, has already been noticed. No less ironic is the account of the

shipmen and pilgrymes
With scrippes bret-ful of lesinges
Entremedled with tydinges,[110]

whom the poet meets in the house of Rumour. But the poem as a whole is so lengthy and so much of it is occupied with the description of symbols, references to classical mythology, and other equally serious matters, that the more witty portions stand out conspicuously, and the reader is apt to find some difficulty in seeing the various parts in their proper relation. Successful satire must ever keep its object in view. The Hous of Fame is too discursive to be really effective as a whole.