SOURCE: McGalliard, John C. “Chaucerian Comedy: The Merchant's Tale, Jonson, and Molière.” Philological Quarterly 25, no. 4 (October 1946): 343-70.

[In the following essay, McGalliard maintains that Chaucer's characterization in The Merchant's Tale anticipates techniques of humors comedy used by Molière.]

I

The Merchant's Tale is neither an allegory (despite the names of its major characters) nor a débat (notwithstanding a few passages that fit the genre) nor a psychomachy (though it includes much psychography).¹ It is not, further, merely or primarily a fabliau, although the latter part of it employs a fabliau plot. It is unique among Chaucer's works. There are, however, approaches or approximations.

John, the old carpenter of the Miller's Tale, not familiar with Cato's instruction that like should wed like, had married a young wife. We are told that, being jealous, he kept her “narwe in cage.” (His jealousy could not have been too extreme, however, or he would scarcely have had the bright young Oxford student as a lodger.) He is doubtless uxorious—if the term be not too pretentious—as well as credulous. But it is the credulity, unconnected or only incidentally connected with the uxoriousness or the jealousy, that leads him to act on Nicholas's prediction of the flood. In this tale stupidity is punished, or, rather, ignorance is exploited by the devices of the student slicker. The latter, too, receives the retribution of his comic hybris at the hands of a rival, who is likewise punished for his folly. John remains, however, primarily a fabliau dupe, despite the careful adjustment of motives, incidents, and characters in this double-triangle plot.

In the Reeve's Tale we come closer to a central nexus between comic character and comic consequences. With his portable arsenal (carefully listed by the poet), his self-conceit and general arrogance, his pride of family covering a well grounded inferiority complex, Deynous Symkin is a “humor” character. It is his domineering nature, more than his dishonesty, that seeks satisfaction in parrying the naive cleverness of the Cambridge students, driving their horse away, stealing their flour, and, doubtless, making a pretty penny out of their supper and night's lodging. The armored artisan is beaten, the smart rascal is outwitted, the absurdly proud husband and father loses all grounds for family pride. And in a sense he brought it all on himself: his tricks delayed the students and made it necessary for them to stay the night. Yet the sequence of events was, in a way, external and accidental. There is hardly an inner, character-determined inevitability about the outcome—not to go into the question of the severity of the punishment or the involvement of other persons.

Similar elements in these tales and the Merchant's narrative are manifest. In each a dupe, fully characterized in the course of the story, pays the penalty of his folly. But the differences in concentration, in mood, and in manner set January apart from the carpenter and the miller. This distinction is partly a matter of emphasis and thoroughness in carrying out a pattern of characterization; partly it consists in deriving the plot, really, from the implications of the characterization. Now when an author does this with the material of the Merchant's narrative, it might seem that we should reach the literary pattern of Ben Jonson's humor comedy.²

Jonson gives us his theory of comic characterization in a familiar passage of the Induction to Every Man Out of his Humour. After stating the traditional physiological basis of humor, dependent on the distribution of choler, melancholy, blood, and phlegm, he goes on to say of the term:

                                                                      Now thus far
It may, by metaphor, apply itself
Unto the general disposition:
As when some one peculiar quality
Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
All his affects, his spirits, and his powers,
In their confluctions, all to run one way,
This may be truly said to be a humour.

This extension of the term to include aberration of personality and abnormality of attitude furnished Jonson a mode for the portrayal of comic character. Every Man Out is a whole gallery of eccentrics. The dramatist's method is relentless in its thoroughness. Each figure is first characterized in a Shavian preliminary note (in prose); most are suggestively named; their consistency of behavior is often pointed out by Asper and Cordatus, who serve as a sort of chorus; and the eccentricity in each case is indulged to the point of revulsion and “cure.” Thus Puntarvolo is a fantastically anachronistic knight; Fastidious Brisk an empty-headed courtier devoted to the lady Saviolina, his match as lightweight and lightwit; Deliro is blindly infatuated with his wife, Fallace, equally deceitful and deceived; etc.

Like January, these characters are primarily self-deceived. They are their own dupes, although other persons may—and do—exploit their aberrations for ulterior purposes and so bring the eccentrics to grief or to revelation, or both. This is true also of the central figures in The Silent Woman and The Alchemist, who are presented with a scope comparable to Chaucer's treatment of January. Thus the whole life of Morose, in the former play, is organized around the effort to avoid noise. He lives on a street too narrow for carriages; he has bought off innumerable fishwives, orange women, and chimneysweeps; he has built a sound-proof room to which he retires to escape the week-end symphony of church bells. He would like to marry and leave an heir, chiefly to cut off his nephew, whom he dislikes. The problem, naturally, is to find a wife who talks as little as possible, and then in a soft voice. It is at this point that Morose's peculiarity exposes him to the devices of others—just as January's unquestioning conviction of the excellence of marriage as such, combined with his determination to have a young wife, exposes him to the intrigue of May and Damyan. Morose's nephew dresses up a boy as a “silent woman” and presents “her” to his uncle as a bride. After the ceremony the silence, of course, is violently broken; and Morose's agony and consequent surrender to his nephew (the price of his release) follow in due course.

Sir Epicure Mammon, dupe of Subtle and Face in The Alchemist, comes closer to January in the enthusiasm and extravagance of his self-deceit. For, though the two rascals may have given him the bug initially, he has raised an enormous fever on his own account. At the opening of the play the worthy knight has been contributing money and plate for a month or more to the alchemist's manufacture of the philosopher's stone and universal elixir. At last the promised day has come, and Sir Epicure has brought his sceptical friend, Surly, to see the wonder.

                                        Now, you set your foot on shore
In Novo Orbe; here's the rich Peru:
And there within, sir, are the golden mines, …
This is the day, wherein, to all my friends,
I will pronounce the happy word, BE RICH.

(II, i)

The marvelous elixir of course confers also honor, love, respect, and long life, as well as preserving health. There is no doubt about its power to transmute baser metals into gold; the only difficulty is that there may not be enough metals to transmute! And here, early in the presentation of Sir Epicure, Jonson makes him take seriously Face's suggestion that he buy the roofs of churches—they can be re-covered with thatch! This is the measure of his delusion. But his imagination is extensive; it justifies his first as well as his last name. Anticipating the modern air mattress, he will have beds blown up, not stuffed; paintings like Tiberius', and better than Aretine's; after bathing, he will roll himself dry in gossamer and roses; his mistresses will be the wives of gravest citizens, and they shall be as numerous as the wives and concubines of Solomon, who also had the philosopher's stone. With dishes of agate set in gold he will dine on tongues of carp and dormice served in Indian shells, while his foot-boy is free to regale himself on pheasants and lampreys. All of this is repeated, in still more extreme form, in the knight's gallant addresses to Dol Common, who has been presented to him as the sister of a lord who visits the alchemist to be cured of a sporadic form of insanity. Dol, who is, of course, in league with the trickers, is his undoing. He had been warned that the slightest deviation from an austere morality in the alchemist's house would ruin the experiment. Hence it comes about—by arrangement—that his courtship of Dol is followed by an explosion which destroys all, though Sir Epicure hopes for another trial.

Sir Epicure's friend Surly is incredulous from the outset, ridicules his faith, and undertakes to refute the whole theory of alchemy. He represents the author, or the intelligent part of the audience. One passage especially marks his function in the play.

                                                                                Heart! can it be,
That a grave sir, a rich, that has no need,
A wise sir, too, at other times, should thus,
With his own oaths, and arguments, make hard means
To gull himself?

(II, i)

Surly obviously has somewhat the same relationship to Sir Epicure as Justinus bears to January. But, though a loyal friend, Surly is all his name implies. He is the harsh, scolding voice of Jonson the satirist; he has little or no variety of tone, and he seldom or never lets up. In this he is representative of his creator. For Jonson the comic dramatist vigorously lashes the naked follies of the time. The fact is that his characters are just about that—“walking humours,” they have been called. They are not quite three-dimensional human beings, though each may be a complete canvas of his particular kind of folly. The characters, though realistic enough in specific words and acts, do not live either in a family or in a milieu of society. We learn nothing of Sir Epicure's background. Morose, despite his nephew, has neither family nor normal associates. (Volpone presents exceptions; but there the central figure is the trickster, not the dupes; and we are concerned, moreover, with crime as well as folly.)

With the Merchant's Tale it is otherwise, both as to characters and as to mood and tone. Although it is apparent that Jonson approaches Chaucer here in structure, design, and scope, the dramatist's formula for comedy is not quite the pattern of the fourteenth century poet. For that we shall have to turn to Molière.

II

In attempting to identify the pattern of characterization in the Merchant's Tale with that of Molière I am not aiming at a merely plausible comparison. There would, perhaps, be little point in that. Nor, of course, do I mean to suggest that Chaucer could have exerted any influence upon Molière; that I should regard as wholly impossible. My purpose is simply to show, if I can, that the fourteenth century poet, in the insight and the method of this tale, did, nevertheless, anticipate the great comedy of character of the seventeenth century dramatist. The English poet's more or less close approach to the pattern can be seen in the Miller's Tale and the Reeve's Tale, which have been noted above. I can see no a priori reason why he should not have taken the final step in the tale of January. The structural original of the latter, besides—the Franc Vouloir of Deschamps' Miroir de mariage—is a rich and skilful psychograph, however unlike January.³ Now full and vivid mental and temperamental portraiture of men—men in aberration—is the foundation of Molière's comedy.

The identity of pattern, if I can establish it as internal and organic, should be of some use. It should indicate to us what the Merchant's Tale really is, and hence how it should be read. It should throw light on certain questions of intention, tone, and irony.

Molière's most notable characters differ from Jonson's chiefly in their greater humanity. They are whole men, not merely animated aspects or humors of men. They act and move and live in society. We see them as husbands, fathers, brothers, citizens, heads of a household. Their aberrations are not presented to us as comic caricatures on a flat surface, seen in isolation. Instead, we are shown their impact upon the milieu of the central figure and his reaction to this impact. The aberration necessarily makes important differences in the man's relations to his family and associates and in theirs to him. This symmetrical presentation of the man and the setting of which he forms a part produces at once comedy of character and comedy of manners. The deviation from a rational norm is delineated throughout the action and characterization. It is sharply contrasted with the norm by means of opposition to the attitude and conduct of the protagonist, opposition arising quite naturally from the setting and voiced by members of the milieu—wives, brothers, friends. In order to reveal the aberration in the clearest and most unmistakable light, the protests against it are generally put in the most moderate and objective terms. The protagonist, in addition to the delusion which principally distinguishes him, may be impatient and “unreasonable” in the manner in which he acts upon his singular views; the opposition is seldom so deflected by motives of temperament or crude self-interest. The protagonist hears but does not heed the voice of reason. Instead, he goes resolutely on his own way. The plot is so constructed as to rescue those whose happiness is threatened by his blind intransigence; in other words, his error does not lead to tragedy. The endings are various, but only in Le Tartuffe is the dupe really undeceived or “re-educated.” The object is not the reformation of the particular individual but the delineation of comic error in full and concrete representation. Hence the dupe is the central character; he receives by far the fullest portrayal; and plot and action derive from his characterization.

Now, if this is Molière's method in comedy,⁴ is it also an accurate account of Chaucer's procedure in the Merchant's Tale? In rebuilding Deschamps' twelve thousand line psychomachy as a comic narrative in twelve hundred, his first step is to make the principal character a wealthy knight of sixty, never yet married, with his seat in Lombardy.⁵ His life has been pretty dissolute, but now,

Were it for hoolynesse or for dotage,

(E. 1253)

he has resolved to take a wife. He is busily looking about for one and praying God to enable him to “knowe of thilke blisful lyf.” His mind is already made up, at the beginning of the tale. This is an important point in the whole question of characterization. The old knight's exact words are quoted by the narrator. They leave no doubt as to his views, or the firmness with which he holds them, or their extreme form.

“Noon oother lyf,” seyde he, “is worth a bene;
For wedlock is so esy and so clene,
That in this world it is a paradys.”
Thus seyde this olde knyght, that was so wys.

(E. 1263-6)

Noting incidentally the unobtrusive irony of “that was so wys,” let us leave in abeyance, for the moment, the 124-line eulogy of marriage which immediately follows and about which there is some question, and go on to the next passage. This is January's announcement to his friends. The unconscious baldness of his opening statement is remarkable, particularly the juxtapositions. He is, by his own assertion, on the edge of the grave, and he has lived a dissolute life; but thank God! all shall be amended quickly: he is going to marry a young girl right away.

… Freendes, I am hoor and oold,
And almoost, God woot, on my pittes brynke;
Upon my soule somwhat moste I thynke.
I have my body folily despended;
Blessed be God that it shal been amended!
For I wol be, certeyn, a wedded man,
And that anoon in al the haste I kan.
Unto som mayde fair and tendre of age,
I prey yow, shapeth for my mariage
Al sodeynly, for I wol nat abyde.

(E. 1400-7)

The concern for his spiritual condition, though a normal aspect of mediaeval man, is doubtless specifically a reflection of Franc Vouloir's attitude in the Miroir. The old age and the previous dissipation are Chaucerian additions. Thus January not only chooses a cure of souls deliberately rejected by his prototype; he does so despite two additional circumstances which would doubtless carry weight with most readers of any period.

Next, he develops at length his fixed decision to marry a young woman. She must not be over twenty; thirty is far too old for him; women of that age or older are too experienced and clever. Though these views may have been emphasized for the sake of a dramatic attack on the Wife of Bath, the succeeding lines show January cherishing a frequent hope of expectant husbands—including the numerous Sganarelles and Arnolphes in the whole pre-twentieth century world. He will mold a young wife to his own model:

          But certeynly, a yong thyng may men gye,
Right as men may warm wex with handes plye.

(E. 1429-30)

In this way, also, he will avoid temptation to adultery and will be surer of an heir. Running through the standard reasons for marriage, he asserts, with repetitious gusto—and here he reminds us of the Wife of Bath, though she must be much younger—that the recommendation of merely spiritual companionship in matrimony will not suit his case. In modern proverbial phrase—similar in tone to January's—there may be snow on his roof, but there is fire in the furnace, indeed, in all the rest of him. Then, just as he had begun his statement to his friends by announcing his intention to marry, so he concludes by asking, not for their advice but their agreement:

          And syn that ye han herd al myn entente,
I prey yow to my wyl ye wole assente.

(E. 1467-8)

Chaucer thus presents January to us from the first as a man with an idée fixe, namely, that marriage is an unmixed blessing and exactly what he personally requires. He is not an old man in love with a young girl. That will come later, as a consequence of his earlier condition. At the beginning he is infatuated with the institution of matrimony. He holds the idée quite uncritically and without reservation—in short, in absolute form. The absurdity of the idea, in the setting and under the circumstances involved, is made clear by the careful, objective presentation. It is thus revealed as an obsession, an aberration in the character. His consequent isolation from his associates is evident in his desire only for acquiescence, not deliberation or advice.

Our first sight of Molière's dupes is altogether similar. Monsieur Jourdain is hard at work on his lessons with his dancing master and his music master (Le bourgeois gentilhomme, I, ii). He is determined to be a gentleman regardless of the lack of sympathy in his household. When Orgon returns from a visit to the country, the servant tries repeatedly to tell him about his wife's illness; but Orgon is interested exclusively in the health of Tartuffe, which is uniformly reported as excellent (Le Tartuffe, I, iv). Argan is shown going over an interminable pile of prescriptions from his doctor, whom he regards as indispensable to his well-being, or, rather, his incurable ill state of being (Le malade imaginaire, I, i).

We must now take account of the long eulogy of marriage near the beginning of the Merchant's Tale (E. 1267-1392). If this passage is assigned to the narrator (whether the Merchant or other hypothetical “original”), it must be regarded as bitterly ironical. As such, it is perhaps in harmony with the Merchant's attitude and experience as indicated in his Prologue. Koch, however, regards the discourse as a continuation, or resumption, of January's remarks quoted just before (See Robinson, 818). And, in fact, it could be so represented by no more elaborate device than the insertion of quotation marks.⁶ The transitions would be about as smooth as they otherwise are. The only possibly serious inconsistency would arise from making January say—as an isolated remark, itself out of tune with the rest of the passage—that a wife may last longer than one wishes (E. 1317-18). But in view of the well recognized fact that Chaucer did not give the tale careful final revision,⁷ this discrepancy seems of minor importance. And it might be argued that the violent invective against Theophrastus (E. 1295-1310) is more credible as an element of January's absolutist attitude than of the narrator's bitterness. The motivation at any rate involves less—or rather no—ironic reversal.

But whether the eulogy should be printed as the narrator's or as January's, there can be no question that it represents the thoughts and attitudes of the latter.⁸ His undoubted words, both before and after, are entirely in harmony with it. Thus his immediately preceding remark declares the unmarried state wholly worthless and wedlock a paradise in this world. And the eulogy is immediately followed by a brief summary statement saying that these were the considerations which led to January's decision to take a wife.⁹ Then follows at once his announcement to his friends, stated in equally unqualified terms. Finally, his later question about happiness on earth and in heaven is more extravagant than anything in the eulogy.

It is, therefore, in no way necessary to my interpretation that the eulogy should be assigned to January. Nothing is lost of the essential irony, however, if this is done. Instead, it becomes formally internal and thus a more organic part of the characterization. For it is better to have January unconsciously reveal his own self-deception—as, of course, he does in his admitted monologues—than to have its content described externally and imputed to him. The eulogy, moreover, corresponds essentially to the arguments of Folie and her companions in the Miroir, as I have previously indicated.¹⁰ When these were first presented to Franc Vouloir, he delayed his decision in order to obtain a critical opinion from Repertoire de Science. Then he asked his original advisers for a re-statement of their case in the form of an answer to Repertoire. Only then did he make a decision. January, in contrast to this, is a man who has heard or considered only one side of the case,¹¹ has been entirely persuaded, to the point of total, uncritical, and exuberant championship; and who therefore summons his counselors only to hear the statement of his already fixed plans.

Chaucer's enthusiastic apologia pro matrimonio is thus a mental portrait of January at the outset of the narrative. As such, it is an important element in his characterization. The eulogy, extensively indebted to the Miroir in general pattern and in specific statement, is wholly assimilated to Chaucer's spirit and purpose in the tale. I have not space for a detailed comparison of the texts, already cited and printed by Lowes and Brown.¹² But an examination would show that Chaucer has not only reduced the statement of the case in bulk. As in January's later announcement, the old age of the man and the youth and beauty of the wife are here juxtaposed and emphasized (E. 1268-71), an arrangement not found in the numerous arguments of the Miroir. Then, the advantages of marriage are expressed in more exaggerated and unqualified terms than in the French poem. Ever since God gave Eve to Adam, woman has been man's earthly paradise (E. 1325-32). Like the association of age and youth, this argument—at least for the mediaeval reader—powerfully implied its own refutation in the very allusion. Equally unsound, and comic in its rhapsodic exuberance, is this sweeping generalization:

A wyf! a, Seinte Marie, benedicite!
How myghte a man han any adversitee
That hath a wyf? Certes, I kan nat seye.

(E. 1337-9)¹³

Hard upon this follows the hilariously comic vignette of the wholly subservient, automatically obedient wife, implied as the universal type:

Al that hire housbonde lust, hire liketh weel;
She seith nat ones “nay,” whan he seith “ye.”
“Do this,” seith he; “Al redy, sire,” seith she.

(E. 1344-6)

This leads immediately into an enthusiastic apostrophe to the “blisful ordre of wedlok precious,” which every man ought to thank or pray God for all his life on bare knees. This security of the matrimonial state sets off an extended citation of famous women, based on the Miroir and other sources, who have acted or ruled well, to the greater glory of husband or country. There is nothing inherently absurd about the examples; it is the categorical framework in which they are introduced that is distorted and hence comic.

Thus, taking the eulogy in conjunction with January's announcement, we see that Chaucer has lavished abundant effort upon the delineation of an attitude or state of mind. This full and rich psychological characterization is the prelude to overt action. It is accomplished by objective description and by self-revelation. There is no need of the satirist's lash. The attitude does not call for attack; full statement is far better; for then it is seen as absurd and laughable on the face of it.

In the same way Molière makes us well acquainted with his dupes before the important action gets under way. We learn the extent of Tartuffe's grip on Orgon from the remarks of Madame Pernelle (Le Tartuffe, I, i), who admires that paragon of virtue, and from those of Dorine and Cléante, who see through him (I, ii). But it is the victim himself who reveals the situation most clearly, happy in his delusion. His acceptance of Tartuffe is complete and without reservation or possibility of re-consideration—like January's conviction about marriage. He is delighted that Tartuffe has taught him to disregard all the obligations and responsibilities of life:

Oui, je deviens tout autre avec son entretien:
Il m'enseigne à n'avoir affection pour rien,
De toutes amitiés il détache mon âme,
Et je verrois mourir frère, enfants, mère et femme,
Que je m'en soucierois autant que de cela.(14)

Cléante's one-line rejoinder to this is virtually unnoticed by Orgon, who continues his forty-line eulogy of Tartuffe (I, v). Likewise Arnolphe, in L'école des femmes, and Sganarelle, in L'école des maris, are the proudest and hence the best expositors of their deviations from good sense. Arnolphe explains how, to avoid the risk of infidelity, he has had his intended wife (whose guardian he is) brought up in complete ignorance of the world and the ways of society (L'école des femmes, I, i). Sganarelle is no less firmly convinced that absolute strictness is the only rule for the upbringing of girls, and is thus contrasted with his moderate older brother, who represents the author's views (L'école des maris, I, i, iii).

L'école des femmes, indeed, presents a continuous series of exposition (III, ii-iii) wholly comparable in length and in the extreme nature of the ideas to the eulogy in the Merchant's Tale. First telling Agnès to give him her full attention, Arnolphe instructs her for seventy-two lines in the proper conduct of a wife. Perpetually grateful to him for raising her from obscurity to the proud position of his consort, she must never forget the seriousness of her obligations to her husband. She owes him complete subservience, obedience more absolute than a soldier owes his commander or a valet his master. She will lower her eyes respectfully before his glance—save when he is disposed to a special benignity. She must never give ear to any temptation to err; wicked wives are plunged into boiling cauldrons on earth and their souls suffer the same punishment after death. At the end of the lecture he gives her a book entitled Les maximes du mariage, ou Les devoirs de la femme mariée, which versifies these principles and dictates a narrow domesticity as well. Agnès reads off ten of the maxims, and is then told to con the rest for herself. Arnolphe, in the soliloquy which follows immediately, has recourse to the identical metaphor of woman as wax that had appealed to January:

Je ne puis faire mieux que d'en faire ma femme.
Ainsi que je voudrai, je tournerai cette âme:
Comme un morceau de cire entre mes mains elle est,
Et je lui puis donner la forme qui me plaît.

(III, iii)

Chaucer tells us that January's request for approval of his plan was received with varying comments, but he gives us only the advice offered by the old knight's two brothers, Placebo and Justinus. I have tried to show elsewhere¹⁵ that they do not really debate the question of marriage. We must now ask what, then, is their function in the tale? Placebo, of course, is the completely acquiescent courtier. He is in favor of anything his lord wishes and opposed to anything he opposes. But Chaucer does not merely tell us this, or let us see it from the manner and content of Placebo's speech. Instead, he makes him go out of his way to tell January that this is his fixed policy as a lord's counselor. Any mere adviser who ever disagrees with or opposes his master—when asked for advice, apparently!—is a great fool. This is so gross and palpable, and so unctuously repeated, that we have no excuse for missing the point (E. 1493-1505). The point is that January evinces not the slightest resentment of this insult to his intelligence. He is not even aware of it, though it must be perfectly evident to the reader. On the contrary, when January is displeased with Justinus' suggestions, he turns back to Placebo for a second approbation of his project (E. 1569-73). Of course he is not disappointed. Thus Placebo, who is incidentally a parody of the type of obsequious courtier, is primarily an instrument for the characterization of January. The episode sounds one of the depths of his sottishness. He is so far sunk in what the Elizabethans called self-conceit that agreement with him is evidence of wisdom, while the least hint of dissent is proof of the opposite.

It happens that Chaucer in a passage of the Summoner's Tale presents us with a parallel to this situation—but with a significant difference. The hypocritical friar of that tale, also an oppressively unctuous individual, is rebuking his long-suffering victim, Thomas, for his supposedly numerous shortcomings. His firm adjurations are liberally illustrated by anecdotes, one of which tells of a counselor who warned his king of the debilitating effects of drink, whereupon the king called for his bow and arrow and shot the counselor's son dead on the spot—just to refute the advice. From this incident the friar draws the moral embodied in Placebo's policy. Then in his gratuitous arrogance he goes on to explain to Thomas:

To a povre man men sholde his vices telle,
But nat to a lord, thogh he sholde go to helle.

(D. 2077-8)

The remark is doubtless not lost on Thomas; he sees to it that the worthy friar is in bad odor at the end of the tale. A sycophant who flaunts his vice before a man in his senses does not escape unpunished.

Placebo, though he adds a telling stroke in the presentation of January, is incidental (rather than basic, as is Justinus) in the pattern of comedy followed, as I think, by Molière generally and by Chaucer in the Merchant's Tale. The pattern does not demand unscrupulous flatterers not in league with the people who seek to exploit the dupe. Yet L'avare offers a striking parallel to Placebo—again with a difference. Valère, in love with Elise, the daughter of Harpagon, the miser, has attached himself to the latter in the capacity of aide or assistant. In the opening scene he explains his method to Elise. It is clear and definite: he pretends to agree with everything Harpagon says. In a somewhat cynical passage, Valère sets forth the infallibility of this procedure:

… j'éprouve que pour gagner les hommes, il n'est point de meilleure voie que de se parer à leurs yeux de leurs inclinations, que de donner dans leurs maximes, encenser leurs défauts, et applaudir à ce qu 'ils font. On n'a que faire d'avoir peur de trop charger la complaisance; et la manière dont on les joue a beau être visible, les plus fins toujours sont de grandes dupes du coté de la flatterie; et il n'y a rien de si impertinent et de si ridicule qu'on ne fasse avaler lorsqu'on l'assaisonne en louange.

(I, i)

This arrangement is responsible for much of the fun of the play. In the scene in which Harpagon wants Valère's help in persuading Elise to marry a wealthy old man, the young lover is very amusingly at cross purposes with himself. Yet Molière employs this scene primarily to disclose the extent of the miser's obsession with money. The elderly suitor will take his daughter sans dot, which becomes the key phrase and the key idea with Harpagon. Valère is obliged to agree with him that this is, indeed, a decisive feature of the situation. But in doing so he constantly points out that there are people who would say that affection, suitability, the inclinations of the girl, etc., etc., are considerations that ought to be taken into account. The dialogue thus serves admirably as characterization of Harpagon (I, v).

The content of Justinus' advice to January I have summarized elsewhere.¹⁶ It is an eminently reasonable set of remarks. Justinus does not deny that marriage may be a good thing, either for mankind or for January. If it is to be undertaken, however, it should be with deliberation and forethought. Marriage cannot be assumed to be good on the basis of outer appearances; Justinus' own experience indicates that. It is difficult enough for a young man to make a complete success of it; January can scarcely hope to succeed with a young woman (the only kind he has said he wished). It is to be noted that Justinus does not ridicule the folly of January, already made fully manifest to the reader. Nor does he denounce the dishonesty of Placebo, which has been equally disclosed. He is, in fact, a model of restraint, in view of the obvious temptations. He leans over backward to avoid giving offense. He confines himself carefully within the limits of sane, practical, “constructive” advice in keeping with the concrete realities of the situation. His fundamental tact will not escape the careful reader. Altogether, Justinus represents a rather element version of the attitude implied in his name. Contrasted, as he is, with unscrupulous flattery, he stands for good sense and reason in not unattractive guise.

In this portrayal Chaucer shows himself a sound psychologist. A man's true friends do not, in his presence, laugh boisterously at his deeply entrenched folly or hurl it in his face. Outsiders, such as readers, will laugh heartily enough, because they are outsiders, mere spectators. But friends will be concerned to remedy the situation, or at least check its extravagance. To them the aberration of the dupe is not, predominantly, amusing; it is distressing.

This effort to recall the infatuated protagonist to the path of reason and sense is an important part of Molière's usual method in comedy. It suitably motivates a friend or relative as a more or less prominent figure in the plot. And the consequent dialogue with the protagonist serves to reveal the full extent of the obsession and the intransigence with which he clings to it. Some of these friends or relatives are more outspoken than is Justinus on his first appearance. But his two speeches—the second of which will be noticed later, in another connection—just about cover the range of attitude represented by corresponding characters in Molière. In both Chaucer and the French poet, the primary attitude is not raillery or ridicule or denunciation. Instead of these, the friend offers kindly, dispassionate advice. He does not, as a rule, try to destroy the basic conviction of the protagonist, root and branch. He tries to make the latter see his pet notion in something like perspective and due proportion; implicitly or explicitly, he appeals to reason. Bluntly and repeatedly repulsed, he may, like Justinus in his second passage, be driven to satirical rejoinder to the more flagrant extravagances of the dupe.

Thus Cléante, brother-in-law of Orgon, endeavors to distinguish between hypocrisy and true piety in such a way that Orgon will see the difference, and to indicate the unreasonable domination of the latter by Tartuffe, whether he is genuine or not (Le Tartuffe, I, v). Béralde undertakes to persuade his brother, Argan, successively that he should not compel his daughter to marry a physician simply because Argan thinks he needs a doctor around for himself; that, in fact, he is not ill and does not require any such constant treatment; and finally that, if he must have a doctor, another will do as well as Monsieur Purgon. (Le mal. imag., III, iii-vi). From the beginning to the end of Le misanthrope, Philinte gently but perseveringly seeks to convince Alceste that his policy of universal and unqualified candor is impossible in this world. The wife and servant of Monsieur Jourdain, in more forthright but still friendly tone, voice the criticism of common sense anent his blundering social aspirations (Le bour. gent., III, iii-vi). In words, as in action, Ariste is a total contrast to his strict and eccentric brother, both of whom wish to marry the girls for whose education they have been responsible as guardians (L'école des maris). And Chrysalde is a sceptical—and questioning—auditor while Arnolphe explains the theory of seclusion by which he has had Agnès reared (L'école des femmes, I, i).

Now, how is this friendly interest, this thoughtful reasoning, received by the dupes? The response is practically uniform, in Molière and in Chaucer. They reject it outright. Often they get angry, and cast slurs upon the friend; invariably they re-affirm or persist in their previous attitude. January does all of these, in a very few lines. This is his reply to Justinus' restrained words of caution:

“Wel,” quod this Januarie, “and hastow sayd?
Straw for thy Senek, and for thy proverbes!
I counte nat a panyer ful of herbes
Of scole-termes. Wyser men than thow,
As thou hast herd, assenteden right now
To my purpos. Placebo, what sey ye?”

(E. 1566-71)

Placebo of course says what January wants to hear, and with that the discussion is closed. To Cléante's long and earnest plea Orgon replies in just one line: “Monsieur mon cher beau-frère, avez-vous tout dit?” (Le Tartuffe, I, v). When Cléante says yes, Orgon bids him good-bye and starts to leave. Argan, having agreed not to get excited, loses his temper as soon as Béralde asks about his surprising plan to send his daughter to a convent:

BéR.:
D'où vient, mon frère, qu'ayant le bien que vous avez, et n'ayant d'enfants qu'une fille, car je ne compte pas la petite, d'où vient, dis-je, que vous parlez de la mettre dans un couvent?
ARG.:
D'où vient, mon frère, que je suis maître dans ma famille pour faire ce que bon me semble?

(Le mal. imag., III, iii)

And when Béralde has explained his grounds for doubting the universal wisdom of the doctors, Argan becomes sarcastic:

ARG.:
C'est-à-dire que toute la science du monde est renfermée dans votre tête, et vous voulez en savoir plus que tous les grands médecins de notre siècle.

Monsieur Jourdain makes it plain that he considers his wife too stupid and ignorant to form an intelligent judgment about his undertaking to become a gentleman (Le bourg. gent., III, iii-vi). Alceste is incredibly rude and violent toward Philinte, his best friend; the play begins, indeed, with his decision to dismiss Philinte because of what Alceste considers his excessive cordiality to a mere acquaintance (Le misanthrope). And Sganarelle insults the mildmannered Ariste with a freedom and frequency that only a brother could tolerate (L'école des maris).

At the end of the conversation it is agreed—necessarily!—that January shall be married “whanne hym liste, and where he wolde” (E. 1576). He reviews in his mind all the young women round about, checks them off one by one, and finally fixes his choice—on a youthful beauty but not a fortune. Chaucer tells us how he

… chees hire of his owene auctoritee;
For love is blynd alday, and may nat see.

(E. 1597-8)

Thereafter he spends his nights imagining her charms of body and bearing; that is, until the wedding can be arranged. January's complete confidence in his own judgment is emphasized:

And whan that he on hire was condescended,
Hym thoughte his choys myghte nat ben amended.
For whan that he hymself concluded hadde,
Hym thoughte ech oother mannes wit so badde
That inpossible it were to repplye
Agayn his choys, this was his fantasye.

(E. 1605-10)

He now summons his friends again. “Alderfirst,” he asks them not to offer any arguments against his purpose, which he says is pleasant to God and the basis of his future happiness (E. 1618-22). Instead, they will please arrange the match as soon as possible.

January himself, however, delays them for a moment. This is the point at which he asks—in twenty lines—a remarkable question. I do not think it necessary to quote this reiterative and fatuous speech. Nevertheless, it is the climax of Chaucer's (preliminary) characterization of January. His portrait is now complete, and Chaucer is ready to show him in direct action vis-à-vis with May. Nothing that January will do henceforth can surprise us, though it will all entertain us. For we have sounded the depth of his folly.

The problem, which he propounds in unquestionable earnest, is this. No man, he has heard, can have perfect happiness both on earth and in heaven. But there is no doubt of the perfect happiness of husbands on earth. If he marries, therefore, will he lose heaven? (E. 1634-54). This crowning absurdity moves Justinus to reply, Chaucer says, rather lightly (“right in his japerye”) and offhandedly; he does not think it necessary to cite authorities! (E. 1655-8). He is, nevertheless, only mildly satirical, and his reply concludes with kind and sober counsel to moderation (E. 1678ff.).

Molière makes at least a partially similar use of this type of incident in his characterization. Often, perhaps usually, one piece of extraordinary nonsense (but not nonsense to the protagonist) stands out amid many of the same general kind—like the willingness of Jonson's Sir Epicure Mammon to buy up the roofs of churches and turn the metal into gold (The Alchemist, II, i). Everyone remembers Monsieur Jourdain's discovery that he has been using prose all his life (Le bourg. gent., II, iv). Argan, we may not recall so readily, wonders whether in exercising he should walk up and down or across the area (Le mal. imag., II, ii). Harpagon, the miser, declares that it is foolish to give people a “Good morning”; one should lend it instead (L'avare, II, iv). Arnolphe tells Chrysalde about the innocent question of Agnès: whether babies are begotten through the ear (L'école des femmes, I, i). Arnolphe is amused at this; but he does not suspect that such ignorance in his ward illustrates the absurdity of his system of education. As evidence of Tartuffe's piety, Orgon tells Cléante the story of that paragon's self-reproach because he had killed a louse in church with excessive anger (Le Tartuffe, I, v).

Such incidents are calculated to make the reader throw back his head and roar with laughter; and say to himself: “Now I know the man's crazy!” They give the measure of the delusion. If the dupe is capable of that, we know where we are with him. Sometimes, indeed, a character in the play voices the reader's reaction. Very soon after Arnolphe has related the anecdote about Agnès to Chrysalde, he has occasion to remind his forgetful friend that he has changed his name from Arnolphe to Monsieur de la Souche. Chrysalde, left alone a moment later, exclaims: “Good heavens, I think he's crazy every way!”¹⁷ This is Cléante's answer to the story of the louse:

Parbleu! vous êtes fou, mon frère, que je croi.
Avec de tels discours vous moquez-vous de moi?

(Le Tartuffe, I, v)

And Orgon's conduct throughout the play justifies the description of him put in the mouth of Tartuffe, scoundrel though he is:

C'est un homme, entre nous, à mener par le nez;
De tous nos entretiens il est pour faire gloire,
Et je l'ai mis au point de voir tout sans rien croire.

(IV, v)

The last line is validated by Orgon's previous refusal to believe his wife and son, both of whom tell him that Tartuffe has tried to seduce the former. (This line, as it happens, would be an exact statement of the condition of January at the end of the tale.) When Argan is in a state of distraction for fear of the diseases which he believes his offended physician may bring upon him, Béralde at last breaks out:

Le simple homme que vous êtes!

(Le mal. imag., III, vi)

Thus, although Molière's method consists predominantly in objective revelation of the aberrations of his protagonists, extreme situations sometimes evoke labeling as well. This is a momentary occurrence, however; it never develops, or degenerates, into vituperation or denunciation. Now, does Chaucer, who portrays January's folly in its completeness, ever name it in so many words? At the very beginning of the tale, he refrains from saying whether the decision to marry was taken “for hoolynesse or for dotage” (E. 1253). After the announcement of his plan, “heigh fantasye” and eager attention occupy January in the project (E. 1577). When he has made his choice, exclusively on his own authority and information (or lack of it), Chaucer sets beside the fact the unobtrusive but ironical and suggestive line:

For love is blynd alday, and may nat see.

(E. 1598)

The conviction that no one could possibly demur at his selection—“this was his fantasye” (E. 1608). When he asks the question about happiness on earth and in heaven, we are told that Justinus “hated his folye” (E. 1655). In describing the wedding, the poet remarks that it is impossible to write adequately of the mirth when tender youth weds stooping age (E. 1738-9). On this occasion, whenever January looks at May he is “ravysshed in a traunce” (E. 1750). The fullest statement is in the poet's comment on the irrelevance of January's blindness to his deception:

O Januarie, what myghte it thee availle,
Thogh thou myghte se as fer as shippes saille?
For as good is blynd deceyved be
As to be deceyved whan a man may se.

(E. 2107-10)

These brief phrases, words, casual remarks, and incidental allusions, scattered through the leisurely narrative, quietly support and corroborate the objective characterization. Chaucer stands at a certain distance from his character; his camera shoots from about the same range as Molière's.

III

I have tried to demonstrate the close similarity in method of characterization between Molière and Chaucer in the Merchant's Tale. This similarity is based on an identical insight into the nature of the comic character. No such relationship, however, is to be expected in the plots of the two poets. Aside from the fact that one was writing a narrative poem and the other a group of plays, no character in Molière is, of course, quite like January. And both in the Merchant's Tale and Molière the plot derives essentially from the characterization; that is part of their fundamental likeness. The number and the closeness of analogous events and situations is, nevertheless, remarkable. We can deal rather summarily with some of these.

The foundation of Chaucer's descriptive method in the episode of the wedding feast is the “superlative” manner, familiar to us in the general Prologue, the Knight's Tale, and elsewhere. But in the Merchant's Tale, as in the Nun's Priest's Tale, this is raised to the mock-heroic level. Neither Orpheus, nor Amphion and Theodomas of Thebes, nor Joab in the Bible played such music or blew their trumpets so loudly. Venus and Bacchus (doubtless represented by costumed figures, according to the fashion of the time) rejoice at the feast. Hymen never saw so merry a bridegroom as January. Martianus Capella, who is famed for his account of the wedding of Mercury and Philology, would be quite unequal to this occasion. There is not a little in common between January's wedding—as Chaucer presents it—and Monsieur Jourdain's ennoblement as a Turkish mamamouchi or Argan's reception into the College of Physicians. Molière, to be sure, uses these devices as dénouements (whereas Chaucer is only midway in his story), and doubtless employed them because he had instructions in each case to produce a comédie-ballet. But the resemblance is none the less genuine. The three protagonists are all in a state of half-knowledge and half-deception. They know what appears to be happening and, of course, heartily approve. But none of them has a gleam of the irony and absurdity so manifest to authors and readers alike. Their insensitivity derives from the aberrations which make them fundamentally comic characters.

January obligingly arranges the first rendezvous of May and Damyan when he sends his wife to visit the allegedly ill squire. Monsieur Jourdain, besides lending money freely to the marquis, Dorante, entrusts him with gifts of jewelry for the noble lady to whom he thinks he is paying court through that intermediary. Actually, Dorante, besides giving the lady a supper at Jourdain's house (and expense), presents the jewelry as his gift and persuades her to marry him, all before the eyes of the bon bourgeois.

January as lover is treated in the mock-heroic vein of Cervantes, with an alternation of aphrodisiacs and aubades based on the Song of Songs; “skyn of houndfyssh” contrasts with singing of turtle doves. In the course of the tale January moves through definite phases. At the outset he is in love with matrimony as an institution. When he has selected May, among a number of candidates, his infatuation is fixed on her. When he goes blind, but not before, he becomes intensely jealous, and scarcely allows her out of literal reach. But the blindness and the jealousy, both in the forefront of his consciousness, bring about a change in his treatment of May. The confident and self-sufficient lord who summoned his court to hear the announcement of his plan to wed a young woman whom he can mold like wax is scarcely recognizable in the anxious and helpless old man who—just before the consummation in the pear tree—begs May to be faithful to him. As the two walk—alone, he thinks—in the garden, January makes a declaration of love and dependence:

“Now wyf,” quod he, “heere nys but thou and I,
That art the creature that I best love.
For by that Lord that sit in hevene above,
Levere ich hadde to dyen on a knyf,
Than thee offende, trewe deere wyf!”

(E. 2160-4)

He chose her for love, not for her fortune. If she will be true to him she will win the love of Christ, keep her reputation unspotted, and receive all his possessions. Indeed, the papers conveying the property shall be executed before to-morrow night. He is jealous, it is true, but that is because of his love:

… whan that I considere youre beautee,
And therwithal the unlikly elde of me,
I may nat, certes, though I sholde dye,
Forbere to been out of youre compaignye
For verray love …

(E. 2179-83)

And his frantic eagerness to please May is evident in the language in which he agrees to her suggestion that she climb on his back in ascending the pear tree:

“Certes,” quod he, “theron shal be no lak,
Mighte I yow helpen with myn herte blood.”

(E. 2346-7)

Dr. Dempster thinks Chaucer assigns this suggestion to May in order to give “his Merchant an additional chance to portray women as almost repulsively cynical.”¹⁸ It will be best to quote consecutively her further comment on the conclusion of the story.

For a superficial reader, the tale ends in the classical manner of the “women's wiles” fabliaux, i.e., by a charitable and successful lulling into sleep of the one spark of clearsightedness betrayed by the dupe in the course of the tale … But the impression is not that of comedy. In the last few pages, what little sympathy the reader can feel has been enlisted on the side of January, so that all the bitterness and resentment stirred up against women in the first part of the tale come back to us and make that last touch of irony almost as different in feeling from the usual dénouement of a fabliau as the Merchant's Tale on the whole differs from La borgoise d'Orliens or Des tresces.¹⁹

Dr. Dempster's good nature has got the better of her here, as has happened to some modern critics of Shakespeare and Molière.

January's plea, of which excerpts have been quoted above, is in itself wholly sincere and wholly abject. If Chaucer had had any intention of “redeeming” him, of arousing sympathy for and with him—in short, of making him a tragic character—this would have been a proper place at which to start. But if that were the author's purpose, neither the entreaty to May nor the rapidly following denouement would be a proper or a possible place at which to end. For this is the first occasion on which January manifests any consideration for the feelings or attitude of anyone who might conceivably have a point of view different from his own.²⁰ Here, indeed, he recognizes that his old age must be unattractive and that his jealousy may be irritating to May. But it is too late in the day to win either her loyalty or the reader's sympathy. Nor is this all, by any means. May proposes that he put his arms around the tree while she climbs up simply because that is the only possible way of allaying his universal suspicion. The line,

For wel I woot that ye mystruste me,

(E. 2343)

which is a part of her suggestion, makes this quite clear. How onerous and vexing this jealousy was to her has been fully indicated earlier, in the account of January's change after he became blind:

                                                            … he may nat forgoon
That he nas jalous everemoore in oon;
Which jalousye it was so outrageous,
That neither in halle, n'yn noon oother hous,
Ne in noon oother place, neverthemo,
He nolde suffre hire for to ryde or go,
But if that he had hond on hire alway …

Chaucer employs seven negatives to express the completeness of this list—probably a record. In the next line he reports the effect on the young and beautiful wife:

For which ful ofte wepeth fresshe May. …

(E. 2085-92)

What woman would not?

The contradiction in January's behavior when he begs May to be faithful is thus plainly apparent. It is a fundamentally comic conflict. He does not trust her away from him for a moment in time or a yard in space, but he offers to give her everything he owns; and that not after his death but next day! Of course he is perfectly “sincere” in both attitudes; he has no inkling of their inconsistency. No real rapport, no mutual affection has grown up between the pair. January is unaware of its absence because he has never been aware of the possibility of its presence. His infatuation with May is wholly self-centered. When he fears that he may lose her the only thing he can think of is to try to buy her. He is constitutionally unable to treat a wife as a person. To him she is a thing—to be enjoyed and controlled (if at all possible)—but still a thing. In this egoistic isolation which renders him incapable of the normal human relationship January is analogous to the Wife of Bath. To her, domination of the husband is the exclusive goal, at least until it is attained. She has made a career of husband-taming; she has five trophies duly laid away—under (inexpensive) tombstones; she is ready to do battle with a sixth. Whatever the modern psychoanalyst may make of her, she was a comic character to her creator and his age in two primary ways. She set out energetically to reverse the traditional hierarchy, in which the wife was not, indeed, a slave, but a partner of definitely junior status. And in order to accomplish this she obviously destroyed a considerable part of the usual human relationship between marital partners. January is comic, at first, because of his ignorance of the realities of matrimony, his enthusiastic assumption of complete control and complete happiness. He is comic in the plea for May's fidelity because, although he has learned nothing in the meantime, he has been driven into an impossible position. He tries to maintain and to reverse the traditional rôles, both in extreme form and both at the same time. He is comic at the end of the tale because the reversal has now been made complete. Suddenly restored to normal vision, he at first acts normally and realistically: he denounces the iniquity of May and Damyan. But when she has talked to him a bit (under the inspiration of Proserpine, to be sure, but that is incidental—his sudden return to vision and rationality is equally miraculous), he relapses into a deeper depth than before. He is led to accept the fantastically absurd account of the cure for blindness and, at the same time, to reject, on the flimsiest pretext, the evidence of his fully restored sight. At the outset he was his own dupe; at the end he is May's as well.

Molière, in L'école des femmes, presents Arnolphe in a closely analogous reversal of position. First he shows the self-selected fiancé of Agnès enjoining a complete set of tyrannical precepts upon his intended bride.²¹ But despite his vigilance she has fallen in love with Horace. In the desperate effort to win her for himself, the former absolute monarch is driven to enact the rôle of abject lover (V, iv). Of this the playwright makes a delightfully amusing situation. Arnolphe is unable to throw off his former rôle entirely, and the contradiction is similar to that which makes January hold May by the arm while he pleads with her.

Our sympathy with Agnès, charming and brilliant ingénue deprived of a normal education by Arnolphe's fantastic selfishness, is complete. This is also true of Isabelle in L'école des maris, who outwits and escapes her tyrant, Sganarelle, to marry her lover Valère. But what about May? Doubtless many mediaeval readers shuddered and, like the Host, dismissed her as merely another deceitful woman:

“Ey! Goddes mercy!” seyde oure Hooste tho,
“Now swich a wyf I pray God kepe me fro!
Lo, whiche sleightes and subtilitees
in wommen been! …”

(E. 2419-22)

But May is, in fact, a provokingly interesting character. Chaucer, who employs her as January's nemesis, does not choose to satisfy our curiosity entirely. Her personality must be inferred, if it is not ignored. She is, of course, a consummate actress, adroit at tears and deft at tricks. She replies to January's entreaty in just the right tone of pitiful protest—while she signals to Damyan to climb the tree; she is exactly bold and confident enough to put her husband on the defensive after the discovery. But all this is, or may be, a mask. January chose her in the first place (among other reasons, of course, and at long range) for what he took to be

Hir wise governaunce, hir gentillesse,
Hir wommanly berynge, and hire sadnesse.

(E. 1603-4)

At the wedding feast, she sits

                    … with so benyngne a chiere,
Hire to biholde it semed fayerye.
Queene Ester looked nevere with swich an ye
On Assuer, so meke a look hath she.

(E. 1742-5)

The picture is one of demure acquiescence. Chaucer deliberately makes May “a deep one.” Her silence throughout the early part of her participation in the story is phenomenal. We do not know what she thought of the wedding; and the author tells us that God knows what she thought of January's love-making (E. 1851). Her first words are the soliloquy on the day of her first visit to Damyan; she has fallen in love with him promptly and unreservedly (E. 1982-5). As Chaucer narrates the affair ironically and in mock-heroic vein, it follows that May has his dramatic sympathy (of this there is no doubt) rather than his moral approval. His attitude is not exactly that of Molière toward Agnès and Isabelle.

In this respect, then, the parallel between Chaucer's pattern and Molière's is imperfect. Chaucer does not include a character or characters who must be—honorably—rescued from the aberration of the protagonist. January's folly injures only himself and his wife—hence only himself if we cannot grant May our full sympathy. But setting, background, and milieu are as full and rich as in the seventeenth-century dramatist. January is a wealthy knight with a numerous court; his brothers, who advise him on this occasion, are only the most prominent among the many of his retinue. All of the action takes place on his estate, which includes a palace, with a large hall and a dais, the scene of the magnificent wedding celebration. Then there is the splendid garden, fine enough to attract Pluto and Proserpine. May, likewise, is a great lady. When she visits Damyan's quarters, presumably also in the palace, she is accompanied by a train of female attendants—like Criseyde when she calls on Troilus. This milieu of gentility is a different world from that of Alisoun in the Miller's Tale or even the merchant's wife in the Shipman's Tale. We are given here a comedy of manners as well as character. We know the daily life of these gentlefolk as intimately as we know that of Molière's prosperous bourgeois.

The plot is essentially simple. Interest is concentrated around the central figure. First he receives full and careful characterization; the plot is a logical and probable presentation of the protagonist in action. The other characters are presented with sufficient fullness to make their relation to him entirely clear, but they are not developed for their own sake. The pace is smooth and leisurely; successive episodes are presented with a comfortable fullness. The tale is more than half as long as the Knight's Tale. About twice the length of the Miller's Tale and three times that of the Reeve's Tale, it has fewer characters, a much simpler plot, and hence far greater concentration than these, its closest analogues in Chaucer. The elements just mentioned are, of course, typical of Molière's comedies. Perhaps the mock-heroic vein in Chaucer's narrative may be considered as conveying a quality dependent chiefly on the directing and the acting in a play.

The tone is one of rich and mellow irony.²² The narrator's mood is that of detachment and serenity.²³ If we regard the eulogy of marriage at the beginning as representing January's thoughts—and I have argued that we must—there is no direct or fierce satire at all. The entire tale is then of a piece. Surely Chaucer, in the period of the later Canterbury Tales, would scarcely have conceived it or executed it otherwise. To have done so would have been to mix the mood and mode of Jonson with those of Molière. I know no reason to think the mature Chaucer capable of such a psychological confusion.

Some, who see Molière as represented in Meredith's Essay on Comedy and the Comic Spirit, rather than in the theatre, may think that the final incident in the pear tree throws my whole argument out of court. That scene itself is, of course, out of the question on any stage at any time. Farcical elements, however, have been prominent among the ingredients of great comedy from Aristophanes through Shakespeare to Shaw. In Le médecin malgré lui, Molière qualifies an unwilling candidate for the doctorate by having him given a flogging on the stage. Slaps, successful and unsuccessful, are common stage business in the plays. Having listened to Tartuffe's urgent effort to seduce his wife, Orgon crawls out from under a table in the best manner of the bedroom farce of vaudeville. Argan's conversation is interrupted by a visit to the bathroom, duly noted; and Monsieur Purgon's assistant brings a huge syringe upon the stage to be used in Argan's treatment. In other words, the pear tree incident—handled as Chaucer handles it, without over-emphasis—is in the spirit of Molière, though not within his practical range as a playwright. Both poets evoke the thoughtful laughter of the Comic Spirit. But those silvery tones unite, not in dissonance, but in harmonious symphony with the earthy guffaws of the multitude.

Notes

1. The present article is a continuation of a study the first part of which appeared under the title, “Chaucer's Merchant's Tale and Deschamps' Miroir de Mariage,” PQ, XXV (1946).

2. My analysis had been worked out, as set forth below, before I noticed Professor Root's remark about the Merchant's Tale: “… it is conceived from beginning to end in the spirit of a ‘humor’ comedy of Ben Jonson.” Root, Robert Kilburn, The Poetry of Chaucer, revised edn. (N. Y., 1922), p. 266. Root does not develop the topic.

3. See my article, “Chaucer's Merchant's Tale and Deschamps' Miroir de Mariage,” PQ, loc. cit. XXV (1946), 193-220.

4. The reader may wish to compare my account with Faguet, Emile, En lisant Molière (Paris, 1914), pp. 92ff., 131ff., and 179ff.; or with Lancaster, Henry Carrington, A History of French Dramatic Literature in the Seventeenth Century, Part V (Baltimore, 1942), pp. 102ff.

5. It may be noted, in connection with Franc Vouloir in the Miroir, that January is not named until the 147th line of the tale.

6. Line E. 1266 would then be a momentary break in the monologue.

7. E.g., Manly and Rickert say, in a note on E. 1305-6: “This is one of the most striking instances of the fact that the CT had not received Chaucer's final touches” (Manly, John M. and Rickert, Edith, The Text of the Canterbury Tales [Chicago, 1940], III, 474).

8. Dempster thinks the transitional passage (E. 1393-4) “half suggests that at least the words immediately preceding [E. 1391-2] should be considered not only as the teller's ironical blow, but at the same time as his phrasing of January's thought” (Dempster, Germaine, Dramatic Irony in Chaucer, Stanford University Publications, University Series, Vol. IV, No. 3 [Stanford University, Cal., 1932], p. 49, fn. 90).

9. E. 1393-8:

   For which this Januarie, of whom I tolde,
   Considered hath, inwith his dayes olde,
   The lusty lyf, the vertuous quyete,
   That is in mariage hony-sweete;
   And for his freendes on a day he sente,
   To tellen hem th'effect of his entente.

10. PQ, XXV (1946), 193-220.

11. The denunciation of Theophrastus implies that January has identified himself with one side so completely as to express the partisan view of the opposition in an extreme form.

12. See Lowes, John Livingston, “Chaucer and the Miroir de Mariage,” MP, VIII (1910), 165ff.; and Brown, Carleton, “The Evolution of the Canterbury ‘Marriage Group’,” PMLA, XLVIII (1933), 1046 for list.

13. In this context, the immediately following lines are also comic:

    The blisse which that is betwixe hem tweye
    Ther may no tonge telle, or herte thynke.

    But when echoed in a wholly different context in the Franklin's Tale (F. 803-5), they become the serious utterance of a noble sentiment:

    Who koude telle, but he hadde wedded be,
    The joye, the ese, and the prosperitee
    That is bitwixe an housebonde and his wyf?

14. Ibid., I, v. This scene immediately follows that in which Orgon is shown inquiring repeatedly about Tartuffe's health.

15. PQ, XXV (1946), 193-220.

16. PQ, XXV (1946), 193-220.

17. L'école des femmes, I, i. Ma foi, je le tiens fou de toutes les manières.

18. Dramatic Irony in Chaucer, p. 57.

19. Ibid.

20. I am unable to regard January's talk in E. 1755-61 and 1828ff., as expressing any genuine “scruples and delicate feelings toward May” (Dempster, Dramatic Irony in Chaucer, p. 54). I think he is trying to assure himself of his capacities.

21. See above.

22. Although I disagree with Dr. Dempster about the mood of the tale, I gladly pay tribute to her full study of the instances of irony in it, as well as in Chaucer generally (op. cit.).

23. Cf. Manly, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1928), p. 596.