I' III. CHAUCER AND SHAKESPEARE. (From the Quarterly Review, January, 1873.) T is now about a century since the study of Chaucer began to revive. Between the time of Verstegan and Tyrwhitt the Restitution of Decayed Intelligence was published in 1605, Tyrwhitt's memorable work in 1775-he had, by slow degrees, fallen nearly altogether out of the general knowledge of men. He, whom Spenser called "the well of English undefiled," was vulgarly accused of having poisoned and corrupted the springs of his native tongue. He whom that same Spenser-the sweetest melodist of our literature -looked up to as his verse-master and exemplar, was stigmatized as a very metrical cripple and idiot. And what little acquaintance there was maintained with him was due to versions of certain of his poems made by the facile pens of Dryden and of Pope; so completely had he fallen on what were for him "evil days" and "evil tongues." To Tyrwhitt belongs the honour of first reinstating the old poet on the pedestal from which he had been so rudely deposed so long a time. Proper consideration being made for the age in which that admirable scholar lived, his edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales must be pronounced a wonder of erudition and of faithful labour. Certainly the figure of Chaucer which he presented to the eyes of his time is not a quite genuine thing; there are traces on it of the whitewash or the paint with which the eighteenth century thought it well to "touch up" ancestral images; but yet it is not easy to overstate the importance or the merit of the service he performed. From the publication of his volumes may be dated the renewal of the critical and the appreciative study of the greatest literary productions of the English Middle Ages. The impulse they gave has been perpetually strengthened and multiplied by various tendencies and movements, both of a general and a particular character. At the present time a Chaucer Society has been formed, and under the zealous leadership of Mr. Furnivall, its founder and organizer and almost sole worker, is doing excellent service1 in bringing within common reach the original texts of the great poet. Of various other ways in which in the course of this century, and especially in our own generation, some popular, as well as scholarly, familiarity with one of our greatest minds has been encouraged and promoted, it is not our purpose now to speak. Let it suffice to say that Chaucer has never been known since his own day more intelligently and more admiringly than he seems likely to be during the last quarter of this nineteenth century. It is certain that this Chaucerian revival is not the result of any mere antiquarianism, but of a genuine poetic vitality. There can be no better testimony to the true greatness of the old poet than that half a thousand years after the age in which he wrote he is held in higher estimation than ever; that, whatever intermissions of his popularity there may have been in times that cared nothing for, as they knew little of, the great Romantic School to which he belonged, and that were wholly incapable of understanding the very language in which he expressed and transcribed his genius, he this day speaks with increasing force and power. Through all the obsoletenesses of his language, and all the lets and impedi 1 So far as its funds, which, we are sorry to say, are by no means flourishing, allow it. ments to a full enjoyment of his melody caused by our ignorance of fourteenth-century English, through all the conventional and social differences which separate his time from ours, we yet recognize a profoundly human soul, with a marvellous power of speech. We are discovering that he is not only a great poet, but one of our greatest. It is not too much to say that the better acquaintance with Chaucer's transcendent merits is gradually establishing the conviction that not one among all poets deserves so well as he the second place. Chaucer and Shakespeare have much in common. However diverse the form of their greatest works, yet in spirit there is a remarkable likeness and sympathy. Their geniuses differ rather in degree than in kind. Chaucer is in many respects a lesser Shakespeare. Chaucer lived generations before the dramatic form was ripe for the use of genius. In his day it had scarcely yet advanced beyond the rude dialogue and grotesque portraiture of the Miracle-play.' In fact at that time that rare growth, which two centuries later was to put forth such exquisite imperishable flowers, had hardly yet emerged from its 1 Absalon of the Milleres Tale : "Sometime to shew his lightnesse and maistrie In the Elizabethan age this part of Herod had become a proverb of rant; so that Hamlet uses the name as the very superlative of noise (act iii., scene 2). The Miller himself cries out "in Pilate's voice." The wife of Bath, with Clerk Jankin and her gossip dame Ales, goes to Playes of Miracles. Shakespeare laughs at the rough amateurs of the old stage in the by-play of the Midsummer Night's Dream. In Chaucer's age perhaps Bottom would have been regarded as a very Roscius, and that interlude of Pyramus and Thisbe might have drawn genuine tears down medieval cheeks. native earth; it was yet only embryonic. Chaucer stands in relation to the supreme Dramatic Age in a correspondent position to that held by Scott. Chaucer lived in the morning twilight of it, Scott in the evening. There can be little doubt that both would have added to its lustre that England would have boasted one more, and Scotland at least one great dramatist-had they been born later and earlier respectively; but Chaucer could not even descry it in the future, so far off was it, and it was Scott's fortune to look back upon it in the swiftly receding distance. But although the form which was to receive such splendid usage from Shakespeare, and to prove the very amplest and fittest and noblest body for the highest dramatic spirit, was not yet ready for wear in the culminating epoch of the Middle Ages, yet that dramatic energy which blazed out so brilliantly at a later period was already at work, and insisting on some representation. It worked with vehemence in Chaucer. He is pre-eminently the dramatic genius, not only of mediæval England, but of medieval Europe. The great Italians of the bright dawn of modern literature were not of the dramatic order. Much as Chaucer undoubtedly owed to them, they furnished him with no sort of dramatic precedent or example. He is the first in time of modern dramatical spirits; and one must travel far back into the ancient times before one meets with anybody worthy of comparison with him. Certainly if, as has been remarked, it was in Dante that Nature showed that the higher imagination had not perished altogether with Virgil, it was in Chaucer that she showed that dramatic power had not breathed its last with Plautus and Terence. In respect of means of expression Chaucer was placed in a much more unprovided and destitute position than was Shakespeare. We have already seen that neither Tragedy nor Comedy,1 in the strict sense of those terms, was known in his day; whereas nothing can be falser than to make Shakespeare say, as Dryden makes him say, "I found not, but created first the stage.", The stage was already not only in existence, but occupied by wits of no contemptible rank, when Shakespeare appeared in Town. Shakespeare had in Marlowe a dramatic master. The pupil presently outshone the master; but of the influence of that master there can be no doubt, though perhaps it has not been, and is not, as adequately recognized and acknowledged as it should be by Shakespearian critics and commentators. And Marlowe did not stand alone; he was one, certainly the most eminent one, of a group, whose starry lights it is not easy to see in the intense brightness flowing from the great sun that uprose amongst them; but there they were and are, of no faint brilliancy, so long as they had the firmament to themselves, unsuffused by an overpowering glory. But for Chaucer there were no such predecessors at home or abroad. Naturally enough, it would seem that it was not till comparatively late in life that he discovered the best vehicle of self-expression. For many years his genius struggled for a fitting language. Like all 1 See the prologue to Monkes Tale: "Tragedis is to seyn a certyn storie, In metre eek, in mony a sondry wise." As to the term Comedy, observe, for instance, Dante's use of it. |