And perhaps there is no better way of studying the general character of Chaucer's pathos, than a comparison of the "Monk's Tale" from which this passage is taken, and the "Clerk's Tale," with their originals. In the former, for instance, the prayer of Constance, when condemned through Domegild's guilt to be cast adrift once more on the waters, her piteous words and tenderness to her little child, as it lies weeping in her arm, and her touching leave-taking from the land of the husband who has condemned her,--all these are Chaucer's own. So also are parts of one of the most affecting passages in the "Clerk's Tale"--Griseldis' farewell to her daughter. But it is as unnecessary to lay a finger upon lines and passages illustrating Chaucer's pathos, as upon others illustrating his humour.
Thus, then, Chaucer was a born dramatist; but fate willed it, that the branch of our literature which might probably have of all been the best suited to his genius was not to spring into life till he and several generations after him had passed away. To be sure, during the fourteenth century, the so-called miracle-plays flourished abundantly in England, and were, as there is every reason to believe, already largely performed by the trading-companies of London and the towns. The allusions in Chaucer to these beginnings of our English drama are, however, remarkably scanty.
The "Wife of Bath" mentions plays of miracles among the other occasions of religious sensation haunted by her, clad in her gay scarlet gown,--including vigils, processions, preaching, pilgrimages, and marriages. And the jolly parish-clerk of the "Miller's Tale," we are informed, at times, in order to show his lightness and his skill, played "Herod on a scaffold high"--thus, by the bye, emulating the parish clerks of London, who are known to have been among the performers of miracles in the Middle Ages.
The allusion to Pilate's voice in the "Miller's Prologue," and that in the "Tale" to The sorrow of Noah with his fellowship That he had ere he got his wife to ship, seem likewise dramatic reminiscences; and the occurrence of these three allusions in a single "Tale" and its "Prologue" would incline one to think that Chaucer had recently amused himself at one of these performances.
But plays are not mentioned among the entertainments enumerated at the opening of the "Pardoner's Tale"; and it would in any case have been unlikely that Chaucer should have paid much attention to diversions which were long chiefly "visited" by the classes with which he could have no personal connexion, and even at a much later date were dissociated in men's minds from poetry and literature. Had he ever written anything remotely partaking of the nature of a dramatic piece, it could at the most have been the words of the songs in some congratulatory royal pageant such as Lydgate probably wrote on the return of Henry V after Agincourt; though there is not the least reason for supposing Chaucer to have taken so much interest in the "ridings" through the City which occupied many a morning of the idle apprentice of the "Cook's Tale,"Perkyn Revellour. It is perhaps more surprising to find Chaucer, who was a reader of several Latin poets, and who had heard of more, both Latin and Greek, show no knowledge whatever of the ancient classical drama, with which he may accordingly be fairly concluded to have been wholly unacquainted.
To one further aspect of Chaucer's realism as a poet reference has already been made; but a final mention of it may most appropriately conclude this sketch of his poetical characteristics. His descriptions of nature are as true as his sketches of human character; and incidental touches in him reveal his love of the one as unmistakeably as his unflagging interest in the study of the other. Even these May-morning exordia, in which he was but following a fashion--faithfully observed both by the French trouveres and by the English romances translated from their productions, and not forgotten by the author of the earlier part of the "Roman de la Rose"--always come from his hands with the freshness of natural truth. They cannot be called original in conception, and it would be difficult to point out in them anything strikingly original in execution; yet they cannot be included among those matter-of-course notices of morning and evening, sunrise and sunset, to which so many poets have accustomed us since (be it said with reverence) Homer himself. In Chaucer these passages make his page "as fresh as is the month of May." When he went forth on these April and May mornings, it was not solely with the intent of composing a roundelay or a marguerite; but we may be well assured, he allowed the song of the little birds, the perfume of the flowers, and the fresh verdure of the English landscape, to sink into his very soul. For nowhere does he seem, and nowhere could he have been, more open to the influence which he received into himself, and which in his turn he exercised, and exercises, upon others, than when he was in fresh contact with nature. In this influence lies the secret of his genius; in his poetry there is LIFE.
