The Merchant, the Clerk, and the
Man of Law
The Merchant, the Clerk, and the Man of Law represent three professional
types. Though the narrator valiantly keeps up the pretense of praising
everybody, the Merchant evidently taxes his ability to do so. The Merchant
is in debt, apparently a regular occurrence, and his supposed cleverness
at hiding his indebtedness is undermined by the fact that even the naïve
narrator knows about it. Though the narrator would like to praise him,
the Merchant hasn’t even told the company his name.
Sandwiched between two characters who are clearly devoted to money,
the threadbare Clerk appears strikingly oblivious to worldly concerns.
However, the ultimate purpose of his study is unclear. The Man of Law
contrasts sharply with the Clerk in that he has used his studies for
monetary gain.
The Pardoner
The Pardoner rides in the very back of the party in the General Prologue
and is fittingly the most marginalized character in the company. His
profession is somewhat dubious—pardoners offered indulgences, or previously
written pardons for particular sins, to people who repented of the sin
they had committed. Along with receiving the indulgence, the penitent
would make a donation to the Church by giving money to the pardoner.
Eventually, this “charitable” donation became a necessary part of
receiving an indulgence. Paid by the Church to offer these indulgences,
the Pardoner was not supposed to pocket the penitents’ charitable
donations. That said, the practice of offering indulgences came under
critique by quite a few churchmen, since once the charitable donation
became a practice allied to receiving an indulgence, it began to look
like one could cleanse oneself of sin by simply paying off the Church.
Additionally, widespread suspicion held that pardoners counterfeited
the pope’s signature on illegitimate indulgences and pocketed the
“charitable donations” themselves.
Chaucer’s Pardoner is a highly untrustworthy character. He sings
a ballad—“Com hider, love, to me!” (General Prologue, 672)—with
the hypocritical Summoner, undermining the already challenged virtue
of his profession as one who works for the Church. He presents himself
as someone of ambiguous gender and sexual orientation, further challenging
social norms. The narrator is not sure whether the Pardoner is an effeminate
homosexual or a eunuch (castrated male). Like the other pilgrims, the
Pardoner carries with him to Canterbury the tools of his trade—in
his case, freshly signed papal indulgences and a sack of false relics,
including a brass cross filled with stones to make it seem as heavy
as gold and a glass jar full of pig’s bones, which he passes off as
saints’ relics. Since visiting relics on pilgrimage had become a tourist
industry, the Pardoner wants to cash in on religion in any way he can,
and he does this by selling tangible, material objects—whether slips
of paper that promise forgiveness of sins or animal bones that people
can string around their necks as charms against the devil. After telling
the group how he gulls people into indulging his own avarice through
a sermon he preaches on greed, the Pardoner tells of a tale that exemplifies
the vice decried in his sermon. Furthermore, he attempts to sell pardons
to the group—in effect plying his trade in clear violation of the
rules outlined by the host.
The Wife of Bath
One of two female storytellers (the other is the Prioress), the Wife
has a lot of experience under her belt. She has traveled all over the
world on pilgrimages, so Canterbury is a jaunt compared to other perilous
journeys she has endured. Not only has she seen many lands, she has
lived with five husbands. She is worldly in both senses of the word:
she has seen the world and has experience in the ways of the world,
that is, in love and sex.
Rich and tasteful, the Wife’s clothes veer a bit toward extravagance:
her face is wreathed in heavy cloth, her stockings are a fine scarlet
color, and the leather on her shoes is soft, fresh, and brand new—all
of which demonstrate how wealthy she has become. Scarlet was a particularly
costly dye, since it was made from individual red beetles found only
in some parts of the world. The fact that she hails from Bath, a major
English cloth-making town in the Middle Ages, is reflected in both her
talent as a seamstress and her stylish garments. Bath at this time was
fighting for a place among the great European exporters of cloth, which
were mostly in the Netherlands and Belgium. So the fact that the Wife’s
sewing surpasses that of the cloth makers of “Ipres and of Gaunt”
(Ypres and Ghent) speaks well of Bath’s (and England’s) attempt
to outdo its overseas competitors.
Although she is argumentative and enjoys talking, the Wife is intelligent
in a commonsense, rather than intellectual, way. Through her experiences
with her husbands, she has learned how to provide for herself in a world
where women had little independence or power. The chief manner in which
she has gained control over her husbands has been in her control over
their use of her body. The Wife uses her body as a bargaining tool,
withholding sexual pleasure until her husbands give her what she demands.
9. General characteristics of the
Renaissance.
"Renaissance" literally means "rebirth."
It refers especially to the rebirth of learning that began in Italy
in the fourteenth century, spread to the north, including England, by
the sixteenth century, and ended in the north in the mid-seventeenth
century (earlier in Italy). During this period, there was an enormous
renewal of interest in and study of classical antiquity.
Yet the Renaissance was more than a "rebirth."
It was also an age of new discoveries, both geographical (exploration
of the New World) and intellectual. Both kinds of discovery resulted
in changes of tremendous import for Western civilization. In science,
for example, Copernicus (1473-1543) attempted to prove that the sun
rather than the earth was at the center of the planetary system, thus
radically altering the cosmic world view that had dominated antiquity
and the Middle Ages. In religion, Martin Luther (1483-1546) challenged
and ultimately caused the division of one of the major institutions
that had united Europe throughout the Middle Ages--the Church. In fact,
Renaissance thinkers often thought of themselves as ushering in the
modern age, as distinct from the ancient and medieval eras.
Study of the Renaissance might well center on five
interrelated issues. First, although Renaissance thinkers often tried
to associate themselves with classical antiquity and to dissociate themselves
from the Middle Ages, important continuities with their recent past,
such as belief in the Great Chain of Being, were still much in evidence.
Second, during this period, certain significant political changes were
taking place. Third, some of the noblest ideals of the period were best
expressed by the movement known as Humanism. Fourth, and connected to
Humanist ideals, was the literary doctrine of "imitation,"
important for its ideas about how literary works should be created.
Finally, what later probably became an even more far-reaching influence,
both on literary creation and on modern life in general, was the religious
movement known as the Reformation.
Renaissance thinkers strongly associated themselves
with the values of classical antiquity, particularly as expressed in
the newly rediscovered classics of literature, history, and moral philosophy.
Conversely, they tended to dissociate themselves from works written
in the Middle Ages, a historical period they looked upon rather negatively.
According to them, the Middle Ages were set in the "middle"
of two much more valuable historical periods, antiquity and their own.
Nevertheless, as modern scholars have noted, extremely important continuities
with the previous age still existed.
10. Two periods
of English Renaissance literature.
1. Pre-Renaissance (The 15th century)
The 15 century was the time of flourishing of popular
forms in poetry and drama. It was then that the ballad became one of
the most popular poetic forms. There were heroic, historical, lyric,
humorous ballads, etc. The ballad is that popular kind of verse which
flourished mainly on the border between England & Scotland. Ballads
were passed down orally, and hence, cannot be assigned to any author
or authors. A good deal of this poetry has power & beauty -qualities
which seem to come from the conciseness of the technique. There is never
a word wasted. A ballad usually tells a simple story, sometimes about
war, sometimes about love, sometimes about the world of the supernatural.
There is never any lack of art in the telling of the story, and one
would willingly trade all the poetry of some mediocre poets for a single
ballad like that of "Sir Patrick Spens ".
Some of the best of these ballads may be read in
the Oxford Book of English Verse. Most of them seem to belong to a later
age than the 15th century, but that
century can certainly claim the finest of all, "The Nut-brown Maid",
which is a long dialogue between a man and a woman.
Yet the most popular ballads were those about Robin
Hood. They made up separate cycles: "The Little Geste of Robin
Good", "A Geste ofRobin Hood". These cycles were being
published throughout the 15 - 16th centuries. Sometimes
they tended to unite separate ballads in one epic work. Besides the
cycles many other separate ballads about Robin Hood existed. One of
the examples of a humorous ballad can be the one "Get up and Bar
the Door".
Popular drama developed in the 15 century, too. There
were no permanent playhouses yet. At first the plays (because of their
religious contents and messages) were composed and performed by monks,
priests in or near churches on some religious occasions. Then professional
guilds began to stage plays, performing plays on special platforms which
could be moved from one place to another. Besides, there appeared strolling
actors who travelled from one town to another, performing for money.
New theatres began to appear in the courts of the nobles. Drama gained
more and more popularity.
The plays were composed by anonymous authors (at
least in the 15th a). And they were
all mostly with religious contents. There were 4 types of early plays,
popular in the 15thcentury:
1) the Mystery plays or Mysteries were about some
events described in the Old and New Testaments: the stories of
Cain and Abel, Noah, the original sin, the creation of the world, the
scene of the Last Supper, etc.;
2) the Miracle plays or Miracles told about the lives
and deeds of various saints and apostles (апостолов);
3) the Morality plays or Moralities were allegorical
plays, didactic and moralizing. They had abstract notions for their
characters such as Lie, Truth, Good, Evil, etc.;
4) the Interludes were a bit like moralities. Perhaps
they were performed during the intervals of some other plays, because
the Latin words "inter" and "1udus " mean "between"
and "theatrical performance" - "between the theatrical
performance".
As it has already been mentioned, the first English
plays told religious stories and were performed in or near churches.
Many events of religious history were suitable subjects for drama. These
early plays, called Miracle or Mystery p1ауs, are in for main groups,
according to the city where they were performed: Chester, Coventry,
York and Wakefield.
As it has already been mentioned the Miracles were
the plays which told about the lives of saints, apostles, etc. Such
a play could be staged in a church on some saint's day and could describe
the events from his life.
The subjects of the Mystery plays are various: the
disobedience of Adam and Eve; Noah and the Great Flood; Abraham and
Isaac; events in the life of Christ; and so on. At first these plays
were acted in churches. But gradually Mysteries became more elaborate,
demanded more "stage managing" and eventually they turned
into complete presentations divorced from the ritual of the Church.
In 1264 Pope Urban instituted the feast of Corpus
Christi (Body of Christ). This feast was never observed until 1311,
when a Church Council decreed that it should be celebrated with all
due ceremony. This day - the longest day of the northern summer - was
chosen by the trade-guilds of the towns of England for the presentation
of a cycle of plays based on incidents from the Bible, plays which we
can call Mysteries or Mystery plays (the term "mystery" means
"a craft, skill, trade"). The trade-guilds or craft-guilds
were organizations of skilled men, men banded together for the protection
of their crafts, for the promotion of their welfare, and for social
purposes. This presentation of plays on the feast of Corpus Christi
became one of the most important of their social activities.
Each guild would choose an episode from the Bible,
and the episode would usually be appropriate to the craft or the trade
practiced (so, brick - layers were likely to show the creation of the
world, etc.). How appropriate - sometimes amusingly so - can be seen
from the following list of plays presented by the Chester guild:
The Fall of Lucifer - by the Tanners.
The Creation [of the world] - by the Drapers.
The Deluge - by the Dyers.
The Three Kings - by the Wine Merchants.
The Last Supper - by the Bakers.
The Passion and Crucifixion of Christ - by the Arrow-makers,
the Coopers and Ironmongers.
The Descent into Hell - by the Cooks.
That is just a selection from the total catalogue;
the total number of plays amounts to 24. Wakefield guilds presented
33; Coventry - 42; York - 54. The actors and audience needed the long
daylight of Corpus Christi to get through such a formidable schedule.
Each guild had its own decorated cart, called a "pageant",a
sort of portable stage to be dragged through the town, set up at different
spots, and at the end of the long day's acting, dragged back to its
shed for another year. The upper part of the pageant was a kind of stage
"in the round" - the audience in the street would be able
to surround it and see the action from any angle. The plays were presented
in strict chronological order - starting with the Fall ofLucifer or
the Creation of the World, ending with the Day of Judgement.
These plays were taken very seriously by the guilds,
who have left us detailed inventories of dress, make-up and money spent.
Although the Mystery plays were serious and religious
in intention, English comedy was born in them. There was a natural tendency
for the characters in the play to become recognizably human in their
behaviour. However serious the main story might be, neither actors nor
audience could resist the temptation to enjoy the possibilities of a
funny situation, such as that in which Noah's wife needs a great deal
of persuasion to make her go on board the Ark (ковчег). Noah's
wife refuses to board the Arc, despite Noah's appeal and warning that
the flood is about to commence; she wants to bring her women-friends
on board the Arc too. And if Noah refuses to let her do it, she proposes,
flood or no flood, to stay with the friends. Noah with his sons manages
to get her on board. He sarcastically says: "Welcome, wife, into
this boat", to which his wife replies, "And have them that
for thy note!" accompanying the words with a slap on his place.
Well in such episodes we see the gradual drawing away of the drama from
a purely religious content.
Other plays, in some respects not very different
from the Miracles, were the Morality plays. This was a new kind of religious
or semi-religious play. The Morality was not a guild play and it did
not take as its subject a story from the Bible. Instead, it tried to
teach a moral lesson through allegory. The characters in these plays
were not people (such as Adam or Eve or Noah), but some abstract personages
- good or bad qualities (Truth, Greed, Reven ge, Lie, etc). For this
reason we find these plays duller today, but this does not mean that
the original audience found them dull. The plays presented moral truths
in a new and effective way.
One of the best-known fifteenth-century Moralities
is "Everyman", which was translated from the Dutch. It is
the story of the end of Everyman's life (Everyman stands for each one
of us), when Death calls him away form the world. Everyman calls on
certain friends to accompany him to the next world - Beauty, Five-wits,
Strength, Discretion - but they will not go with him. So, when Everyman
has to go to face D e a t h, all his friends leave him except Knowledge
and Good Deeds, who says finely:
Everyman, I will go with thee and be thy guide, In
thy most need to be by thy side.
Knowledge and Good Deeds are ready to travel in Everyman's
company to his grave. Everyman learns that the pleasures, friends and
faculties of this world avail a man nothing when death comes. Only spiritual
strength can sustain him at this last hour. This is a simple moral,
but it is made extremely forceful by being given dramatic form: the
play, in fact, seems to be telling us something that we did not know
before. This is always a sign of good art. And "Everyman"
is a good art.
Gradually such Morality plays began to be staged
by groups of strolling players who travelled form one place to another,
from one town to another. They set up their scenes as a modern circus
sets up its tents and cages, performing for money. In other words, we
can begin to associate morality plays with professional companies.
Another kind of play, the Interlude, was common in
the 15 and 16 centuries. The origin of this name is uncertain; perhaps
the Interludes were played between the acts of long Moralities, perhaps
in the middle of meals, or perhaps the name means a play by two or three
performers. They are often funny, and were performed away from churches,
in colleges or rich men's houses or gardens. So in the last days of
the 15th century we find
it rather difficult to distinguish between the Morality play and the
Interlude. The main difference seems to lie not in the theme, but in
the place and occasion of performance. We now see two dramatic traditions,
an aristocratic one and a plebeian or lower class one. We can think
of the great lords in their castles, or rich men in their fine houses,
watching a kind of a refined "morality play" - the Interlude.
We can also think of the common people watching - in the streets and
inn-yards; or in the village green - a rather cruder kind of Morality
play.
One of the Interludes of that time is "The Four
P's". In one part of this play, a prize is offered for the greatest
lie; and the prize is won by a man who says that he never saw and never
knew any woman out of patience.
The writers of these early plays are unknown until
we come to the beginning of the 16th century. JohnHeywood
(1497 - 1580) wrote "The Four P's" (printed in 1545) and "The
Play ofthe Weather" (1533), in which Jupiter (not the Christian
God!), the King of the Gods, asks various people what kind of weather
they would prefer to be granted all the time. But the various requests
are contradictory - the laundress wants perpetual sun to dry and bleach
her linen, the schoolboy wants perpetual winter so he could play with
snowballs, the man who runs a water-mill wants nothing but rain and
so on. No two people can agree, and so the things are left as they are.
Heywood wrote other Interludes and was alive in Shakespeare's time.
So we can sum up the raw materials for the appearance
of Elizabethan drama: the noble houses have their groups of interlude-players,
wearing the livery of their master - these are going to turn into the
Elizabethan companies with names like the Lord Admiral's Men, the King's
Men, and so on. The wandering players of moralities, playing in inn-yards,
are soon to take over these inn-yards as permanent theatres.
2. The Renaissance or Elizabethan age in English literature
(the end of the 15th century – the beginning of the 17th century) (The Poetry)
Politically the 16th century in England was the time of centralization of royal power.
The long period of feudal or internecine wars came to an end. And in
1485 the War of the White and Red Roses ended with the victory of Henry
Tudor over Richard II I. This war was a civil one between the houses
of York (the White Rose) and Lancaster (the Red Rose), both of whom
claimed the throne. The new king Henry VII tried to put down the resistance
of the feudals and to unite the country under his power. And his son
Henry VIII and his granddaughter Elizabeth I completed this process
of the centralization of royal power. So, by the end of the 16th century an absolute monarchy was established in England. But the reign
of these monarchs was full of political intrigues and riots. This turbulent
atmosphere was naturally reflected in the literature of that time.