The Works of Alexander Pope Part 32

[Footnote 24: No Englishwoman would talk of laying her husband in his urn, not to mention that the phrase is a mixture of incongruous ideas, the "laid" being applicable to burial, and the "urn" to burning. When the wife of Bath speaks of her departed husband she says,

He is now in his grave and in his chest.]

[Footnote 25: This couplet is an exaggeration of the original:

I followed ay my dames lore, As well of that as of other thinges more.]

[Footnote 26: Tearing garments, and throwing dust upon the head was a custom with some ancient nations, but was not an English habit, and there is no allusion to it in the text of Chaucer:

When that my fourthe husband was on bier, I wept algate, and made a sorry cheer, As wives musten for it is usage; And with my kerchief covered my visage; But, for that I was purveyed of a mate, I wept but small, and that I undertake.

The hard-hearted selfishness which does not bestow a thought upon the dead, being solely intent upon enjoying existence with the living, comes out in a yet more odious light when she narrates her feelings at the funeral. Her mind is entirely taken up with the young clerk, and mainly with admiration of his figure:

When that I saw him go After the bier, methought he had a pair Of legges and of feet so clean and fair That all my heart I gave unto his hold.]

[Footnote 27: She does not in the original profess "to repent it still,"

and for the excellent reason that, after a period of rebellion on the part of the clerk, he had become a puppet in her hands, and had rendered up both himself and his chattels to her undisputed management.]

[Footnote 28: The wife of Bath says she insisted upon going from house to house, according to her former custom, and the clerk set his face against the practice. His instances from Roman story were directed against this special failing, and were not general declamations on the virtue of Roman matrons and Gracchus' mother. The clerk told the gossiping, intriguing dame that Simplicius Gallus left his wife for ever, merely because he caught her looking out of the door with her head uncovered. He told her of another Roman that in the same manner deserted his wife because she one day went to see a game without his knowledge.

His quotation from Holy Writ is not "some grave sentence," but the particular sentence of Ecclesiasticus which says, "Give the water no pa.s.sage; neither a wicked woman liberty to gad abroad." When the context has been generalised the lines which follow have not the acc.u.mulative sting of the original, where they are an additional example of the evil consequences of suffering women to rove about. Pope has further weakened their force by supposing them to have no higher authority than the opinion of the clerk. In Chaucer they are given as a proverb, and the husband urges them with triumph because they convey the general experience of mankind. The language is stronger than in Pope. Instead of mildly p.r.o.nouncing that the man who suffers his wife to visit "halwes"

or the shrines of saints "deserves a fool's cap," the proverb declares that he "is worthy to be hanged on the galwes."]

[Footnote 29: The clerk in the original reads with greater a.s.siduity than "oft at evening."

He had a book that gladly night and day, For his desport he woulde read alway.

After describing the contents of the book the wife of Bath adds,

And alle these were bound in one volume; And every night and day was his custume, When he had leisure and vacatioun From other worldes occupation, To reden in this book of wicked wives.

This portion of the narrative in Chaucer is exceedingly pleasant and natural. The wife says that she paid no regard to the clerk's Roman precedents, his quotations from Scripture, his old saws and proverbs.

Ne I would not of him corrected be; I hate him that my vices telleth me.

The contempt with which she treated his exhortations drove him utterly mad, and it was then that he betook himself to reading all the literature he could find that bore upon the vices and frailties of women. The evidence of their general perversity with which his studies supplied him consoled him for the ungovernable disposition of his own wife, and he used "to laugh away full fast" over the record of their obstinacy and evil doings. He had the sweeter satisfaction of revenge.

His mirth galled his imperious, froward wife, and when he read aloud the endless detail of female iniquities, backed up by the authority of great names, she could restrain her rage no longer, and the storm burst forth under which the wretched clerk succ.u.mbed.]

[Footnote 30: Pope has omitted a stroke of humour; for in the original, she naturally mistakes the rank and age of St. Jerome.

And eke there was a clerk sometime in Rome A _cardinal,_ that highten St. Jerome.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 31: This pa.s.sage acquaints us with the writers who were popular in the days of Chaucer.--WARTON.

Warton takes no account of the fact that Chaucer was only enumerating the authors which furnished arguments against women. Valerius is a tract by Walter Mapes, which bears the t.i.tle "Epistola Valerii ad Rufinum."

St. Jerome's denunciations of matrimony are in his treatise "Contra Jovinianum." Tertullian wrote strongly against second marriages; and severe animadversions upon female vices or weaknesses have a large place in his works. "Who is meant by Chrysippus," says Tyrwhitt, "I cannot guess." Ovid's Art of Love, and the Letters of Eloisa and Abelard are known by name to all the world.]

[Footnote 32: This line is not in Chaucer.]

[Footnote 33: If Pope intended to follow the original, "good" means "good legends."]

[Footnote 34: The wife of Bath, having laid down the maxim that it is impossible for any clerk to speak well of women, except it be of the saints, indignantly inquires,

Who painted the lion, tell me, who?

and with an oath she adds,

If women hadde written stories, As clerkes have within their oratories, They would have writ of men more wickedness, Than all the mark of Adam may redress.

"Than all the mark" is than all that bear the mark or image of Adam.

Pope's version, in which the wife asks the question and tamely answers it, is flat in comparison with the scornful repet.i.tion of the emphatic "who?" Yet he has employed this reduplication of a predominant word at ver. 397, where it has much less effect. Judiciously used, there is force and beauty in the turn, as in the couplet from Addison's translation of Ovid:

Her sisters often, as 'tis said, would cry Fie, Salmacis, what always idle, fie:]

[Footnote 35: Pope, misapplying the original, has adopted an image which is astronomically false. Chaucer spoke the language of astrology, and said that each of these planets fell in the exaltation of the other; for a planet was in its exaltation when it was in the sign of the zodiac, where it was supposed to exercise its greatest influence, and fell, or was in its dejection, in the sign where it exercised the least. Mercury, the G.o.d of science, was in his exaltation in Virgo, where Venus, the G.o.ddess of love, had no sway. Venus was in her exaltation in Pisces, and there Mercury was in his dejection. A man could not be under the government of incompatible planetary powers, and since scholars served Mercury,

Therefore no woman is of clerkes praised.]

[Footnote 36: This line was followed by a poor couplet, which Pope afterwards omitted:

How Sampson's heart false Delilah did move, His strength, his sight, his life were lost for love.

Then how Aleides died whom Dejanire, &c.]

[Footnote 37: Eryphile, bribed by a necklace, prevailed upon her husband Amphiaraus to join the expedition against Thebes, although he a.s.sured her it would be fatal to him. Clytemnestra lived in adultery during the absence of her husband, Agamemnon, at the siege of Troy, and, on his return, she and her paramour entrapped and murdered him.]

[Footnote 38: Some writers have pretended that Lucilia, the wife of Lucretius, the poet, gave him a love potion which drove him mad.]

[Footnote 39: Chaucer says nothing of the blushes of the wife of Bath, which were not at all in her character.]

[Footnote 40: Who, exclaims the wife of Bath, could imagine

The woe that in mine hearte was and pine?

And when I saw he nolde never fine To reden on this cursed book all night, All suddenly three leaves have I plight Out of this booke that he had, and eke I with my fist so took him on the cheek, That in our fire he fell backward adown.

And he upstert as doth a wood leoun, And with his fist he smote me on the head That in the floor I lay as I were dead.

And when he saw so stille that I lay He was aghast, and would have fled away.

Till atte last out of my swoon I braide; O hastow slain me, false thief I said, And for my land thus hastow murdered me?

Ere I be dead, yet will I kisse thee.

"Pine" is pain; "fine" is cease; "plight" is plucked; "wood" is mad; and "braide" is awoke. Pope has dropped the natural circ.u.mstance of the clerk's terror when he fancies he has killed his wife. This alarm brings out more strongly the hypocrisy of his virulent dame in pretending that the blow he gave her on the head, after she had torn the leaves out of his book and knocked him backwards into the fire, was with the deliberate design of murdering her to get possession of her property.]

[Footnote 41: Pope's translation is mawkish, and his "adieu, my dear, adieu!" destroys the point of the story. The wife of Bath seconds the blow with reproaches instead of with terms of endearment, nor does she consent to be pacified until the clerk surrenders at discretion. Had she relaxed before her conquest was complete, she would have lost the opportunity of establis.h.i.+ng her dominion. After the line, "Ere I be dead, yet will I kisse thee," Chaucer thus continues:

And near he came, and kneeleth fairadown, And saide, Deare sister Alisoun, As help me G.o.d, I shall thee never smite; That I have done it is thyself to wite; Forgive it me, and that I thee beseke; And yet oftsoon I hit him on the cheek, And saide, Thief thus muchel I me wreke Now will I die, I may no longer speak.

But atte last, with muchel care and woe We fell accorded by ourselven two; He gave me all the bridle in mine hand To have the governance of house and land, And of his tongue, and of his hand also, And made him burn his book anon right tho.

"To wite" is to blame; "I me wreke" is "I revenge myself;" and "tho" is then. As soon as the poor clerk consented to have no will of his own, and to be governed like a school-boy by his master, the dame declares,

G.o.d help me so, I was to him as kind As any wife from Denmark unto Inde.