and in his "Legend of Ariadne," one of his minor poems, we read (line 125, etc.):
"This wepen shal the gayler, on that tyde,
Ful privily within the prison hyde;
And, for the hous is krinkeled to and fro,
And hath so queinte weyes for to go—
For hit is shapen as the mase is wroght—
Thereto have I a remedie in my thought,
That, by a clewe of twyne, as he hath goon,
The same way he may returne anoon,
Folwing alway the thread, as he hath come."
Seeing that the "hous" here referred to is the Cretan labyrinth itself, the "mase" with which it is compared must be something sufficiently familiar to Chaucer's audience to furnish them with a ready illustration of the nature of the legendary structure which he is describing and which elsewhere he calls The Labyrinth or the House of Daedalus.
From very early times the classic authors used the word "labyrinth" metaphorically, and the mediaeval writers followed them. For instance Walter, a canon of St. Victor, towards the end of the twelfth century wrote a work which he called "A Treatise Against the Four Labyrinths of France," in reference to the great theological work in four books, known as the "Book of Sentences," a long and very metaphysical compendium of divinity, by Peter, Bishop of Paris.
In Renaissance times we find the word commonly used as a simile for the difficulties of life or the vagaries of love.
In Shakespeare's "King Henry VI" (Pt. I, V, Sc. 3) the Earl of Suffolk, after the exit of the gentle Margaret of Anjou, whose hand he has been soliciting on behalf of his royal master, exclaims:
"O, wert thou for myself!—But, Suffolk, stay;
Thou mayst not wander in that labyrinth:
There Minotaurs and ugly treasons lurk."
We will notice further examples of this use of the word a little later, in connection with book-titles.
In "Troilus and Cressida" (Act II, Sc. 3) Thersites bursts into soliloquy before the tent of Achilles with:
"How now, Thersites! What, lost in the labyrinth of thy fury!"