In Chauser I am sped,
His tales I have red;
His mater is delectable,
Solacious, and commendable;
His Englysh well alowed,
So as it is enprowed,
For as it is enployd,
There is no Englysh voyd,
At those days moch commended;
And now men wold have amended
His Englyssh, whereat they barke
And mar all they warke.
Chaucer, that famus clerke,
His termes were not darke,
But pleasaunt, easy and playne;
Ne worde he wrote in vayne.
JOHN SKELTON: Phyllyp Sparowe (?1505)
The Canterbury Tales were most probably written – in Middle English – during the final twenty years of Chaucer’s life; in other words, it had taken more than 300 years after the Norman Conquest of 1066 for the English tongue to evolve into the language that we can still read today without the trappings of scholarship – which cannot be said of Gawain and the Green Knight, for example, a work which used the more archaic West Midlands dialect. When Lord Harewood interviewed Benjamin Britten in the series People Today (23 June 1960, BBC Home Service), the composer reminisced on how Auden had introduced him to Chaucer for the first time: ‘I’d always imagined that was a kind of foreign language, but as he [Auden] read it, which was very well, I understood almost immediately what it meant, and I find now that it isn’t so difficult to read – one must just have confidence and read ahead and then the meaning comes very strongly, very easily.’ A glance at the language of Vaughan Williams’s Merciles Beaute reveals how accessible Chaucer’s East Midlands language is to the modern eye and ear. The manuscript of these poems, attributed to Chaucer, is held by Magdalene College, Cambridge, and printed by the Chaucer Society. The work is subtitled ‘A Triple Roundel’, which reminds us that it was Chaucer who introduced the rondel into England from France, though his form of the genre differs from that used by Charles d’Orléans, in that six of the thirteen lines are used as refrains.
Very little is known of Chaucer’s life between 1360 and 1367, although he married in 1366 and had two sons: Lewis (to whom he dedicated A Treatise on the Astrolabe) and Thomas. Edward III offered him a pension in 1367. He spent much time abroad on diplomatic missions between about 1368 and 1378, and during the same decade probably received the patronage of John of Gaunt. He was given a house in Aldgate in 1374 and lived there for just over ten years. It was in 1374 that he became Controller of the Customs for wool, a post he held for some ten years, before he left the Custom House in 1385 and moved to Kent, which he represented in Parliament and where he was a Justice of the Peace. It was during those years that he translated Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, wrote Troilus and Criseyde and The Parliament of Fowles and drafted the first stories that were later to appear in The Canterbury Tales. He seems to have begun the Prologue in 1387. In 1389 he was appointed, perhaps by Richard II himself, Clerk of the King’s Works, a post he resigned in 1391, to become Deputy Forester in the royal forest of Petherton in Somerset. Despite receiving a number of grants from Richard II, he was continually in debt during the final decade of his life. He died in late October 1400 in a house that he had leased in the gardens of Westminster Abbey, where he is buried. Chaucer’s career as a courtier, diplomat and civil servant enabled him to observe a huge variety of human kind; and he had the privilege of writing for an aristocratic audience who, he knew, would both understand and accept him.
Your yen2 two wol slee3 me sodenly:
I may the beauté of hem not sustene,
So woundeth hit thurghout my herte kene.
And but your word wol helen4 hastily
My hertës wounde, while that hit is grene,
Your yen two wol slee me sodenly:
I may the beautee of hem not sustene.
Upon my trouthe I sey you feithfully,
That ye ben of my lyf and deeth the quene,
For with my deeth the trouthe shal be sene:
Your yen two wol slee me sodenly;
I may the beauté of hem not sustene,
So woundeth it thrurghout my herte kene.
(Bax, Finzi, Gurney)
So hath your beautee fro your herte chaced
Pitee, that me ne availeth not to pleyne;
For Daunger halt your mercy in his cheyne.
Giltles my deeth thus han ye me purchaced;
I sey you sooth, me nedeth not to feyne5:
So hath your beautee fro your herte chased
Pitee, that me ne availeth not to pleyne.
Allas! that Nature hath in you compassed
So greet beautee, that no man may atteyne
To mercy, though he sterve for the peyne!
So hath your beautee fro your herte chaced
Pitee, that me ne availeth not to pleyne;
For Daunger halt your mercy in his cheyne.
(Bax, Rubbra)
Syn I fro Love escaped am so fat,6
I never thenk to ben in his prison lene;
Syn I am free, I counte him not a beane.
He may answere, and seye this or that;
I do no fors,7 I speke right as I mene:
Syn I fro Love escaped am so fat,
I never thenk to be in his prison lene.
Love hath my name ystrike out of his sclat8,
And he is strike out of my bokes clene
For evermo; this is non other mene9.
Syn I fro Love escaped am so fat,
I never thenk to ben in his prison lene;
Syn I am free, I counte him not a bene.
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote2
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veine in swich licour3
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;4
Whan Zephirus5 eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes6, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram7 his halve cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodie,
That slepen al the night with open ye
(So priketh hem nature in hir corages);8
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres9 for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;10
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,11
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke12.
Bifil13 that in that seson on a day,
In Southwerk at the Tabard14 as I lay
Redy to wenden on my pilgrimage
To Caunterbury with ful devout corage,
At night was come into that hostelrie
Wel nine and twenty in a compaignie,
Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle15
In felaweshipe, and pilgrimes were they alle,
That toward Caunterbury wolden ride.
The chambres and the stables weren wide,
And wel we weren esed atte beste16.
And shortly, whan the sonne was to reste,
So hadde I spoken with hem everichon
That I was of hir felaweshipe anon,
And made forward erly for to rise,
To take oure wey ther as I yow devise.
But nathelees, whil I have time and space,
Er that I ferther in this tale pace,
Me thinketh it acordaunt to resoun17
To telle yow al the condicioun
Of ech of hem, so as it semed me,
And whiche they weren, and of what degree,
And eek in what array that they were inne;
And at a knight than wol I first biginne.