Notes to The prologue to The Legend of Good Women
1. Bernard, the Monke, saw not all, pardie!: a proverbial saying, signifying that even the wisest, or those who claim to be the wisest, cannot know everything. Saint Bernard, who was the last, or among the last, of the Fathers, lived in the first half of the twelfth century.
2. Compare Chaucer's account of his habits, in "The House of Fame."
3. See introductory note to "The Flower and the Leaf."
4. "ye have herebefore
Of making ropen, and led away the corn"
The meaning is, that the "lovers" have long ago said all that can be said, by way of poetry, or "making" on the subject. See note 89 to "Troilus and Cressida" for the etymology of "making" meaning "writing poetry."
5. The poet glides here into an address to his lady.
6. Europa was the daughter of Agenores, king of Phrygia. She was carried away to Crete by Jupiter, disguised as a lovely and tame bull, on whose back Europa mounted as she was sporting with her maidens by the sea-shore. The story is beautifully told in Horace, Odes, iii. 27.
7. See "The Assembly of Fowls," which was supposed to happen on St. Valentine's day.
8. The tidife: The titmouse, or any other small bird, which sometimes brings up the cuckoo's young when its own have been destroyed. See note 44 to "The Assembly of Fowls."
9. Ethic: the "Ethics" of Aristotle.
10. "For as to me is lever none nor lother,
I n'am withholden yet with neither n'other."
i.e For as neither is more liked or disliked by me, I am not bound by, holden to, either the one or the other.
11. All of another tun i.e. wine of another tun -- a quite different matter.
12. Compare the description of the arbour in "The Flower and the Leaf."
13. Flowrons: florets; little flowers on the disk of the main flower; French "fleuron."
14. Mr Bell thinks that Chaucer here praises the complaisance of Marcia, the wife of Cato, in complying with his will when he made her over to his friend Hortensius. It would be in better keeping with the spirit of the poet's praise, to believe that we should read "Porcia Catoun" -- Porcia the daughter of Cato, who was married to Brutus, and whose perfect wifehood has been celebrated in The Franklin's Tale. See note 25 to the Franklin's Tale.
15. Isoude: See note 21 to "The Assembly of Fowls".
16. Lavine: Lavinia, the heroine of the Aeneid, who became the
wife of Aeneas.
17. Polyxena, daughter of Priam, king of Troy, fell in
love with Achilles, and, when he was killed, she fled to the
Greek camp, and slew herself on the tomb of her hero-lover.
18. Mountance: extent, duration. See note 84 to "The House of Fame".
19. Relic: emblem; or cherished treasure; like the relics at the shrines of saints.
20. Losengeour: deceiver. See note 31 to the Nun's Priest's Tale.
21. "Toteler" is an old form of the word "tatler," from the Anglo-Saxon, "totaelan," to talk much, to tattle.
22. Envy is lavender of the court alway: a "lavender" is a washerwoman or laundress; the word represents "meretrice"in Dante's original -- meaning a courtezan; but we can well understand that Chaucer thought it prudent, and at the same time more true to the moral state of the English Court, to change the character assigned to Envy. He means that Envy is perpetually at Court, like some garrulous, bitter old woman employed there in the most servile offices, who remains at her post through all the changes among the courtiers. The passage cited from Dante will be found in the "Inferno," canto xiii. 64 -- 69.
23. Chaucer says that the usurping lords who seized on the government of the free Lombard cities, had no regard for any rule of government save sheer tyranny -- but a natural lord, and no usurper, ought not to be a tyrant.
24. Farmer: one who merely farms power or revenue for his own purposes and his own gain.
25. This was the first version of the Knight's tale. See the introductory note, above
26. Boece: Boethius' "De Consolatione Philosophiae;" to which frequent reference is made in The Canterbury Tales. See, for instances, note 91 to the Knight's Tale; and note 34 to the Squire's Tale.
27. A poem entitled "The Lamentation of Mary Magdalene," said to have been "taken out of St Origen," is included in the editions of Chaucer; but its authenticity, and consequently its identity with the poem here mentioned, are doubted.
28. For the story of Alcestis, see note 11 to "The Court of Love."
29. "For he who gives a gift, or doth a grace,
Do it betimes, his thank is well the more"
A paraphrase of the well-known proverb, "Bis dat qui cito dat."
("He gives twice who gives promptly")
30. The same prohibition occurs in the Fifteenth Statute of "The Court of Love."
31. Chaucer is always careful to allege his abstinence from the pursuits of gallantry; he does so prominently in "The Court of Love," "The Assembly of Fowls," and "The House of Fame."
32. Pity runneth soon in gentle heart: the same is said of Theseus, in The Knight's Tale, and of Canace, by the falcon, in The Squire's Tale.
33. Stellify: assign to a place among the stars; as Jupiter did to Andromeda and Cassiopeia.
34. Agathon: there was an Athenian dramatist of this name, who might have made the virtues and fortunes of Alcestis his theme; but the reference is too vague for the author to be identified with any confidence.
-THE END-
Geoffrey Chaucer's poem: The prologue to The Legend of Good Women