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The description, for instance, of his country coquette 'Wincing she was, as is a wanton colt, Sweet as a flower, and upright as a bolt. Then, again, for pathos, where will you mend the dying scene of Arcite? 'Alas, my heart's queen! alas, my wife! Giver at once, and ender of my life. What is this world? What axen men to have?
Why cannot Palamon and Arcite love each other as they used to do long ago, and leave me free?" On the morning of the tournament Duke Theseus and his queen sat with Emelia on a high seat overlooking the lists. When the trumpet sounded, Arcite and his knights rode in through the western gate. His red banner shone bright against the white marble pillars.
"Alas," he groaned, "Arcite, my cousin, thou hast borne off the prize in this strife of ours! Thou walkest now at liberty in Thebes. Little thou thinkest of me and of my sorrow! Strong thou art, and wise. Doubtless thou art even now gathering together the people of Thebes to invade this land and win the sister of the Duke for thy wife, while I die here in this prison like a caged lion.
Not by chance is the all-but-Quixotic romance of "Palamon and Arcite," taken by Chaucer from Boccaccio's "Teseide," related by the "Knight"; not by chance does the "Clerk," following Petrarch's Latin version of a story related by the same author, tell the even more improbable, but, in the plainness of its moral, infinitely more fructuous tale of patient Griseldis.
Now, it so happened that at this time the Duke Perotheus came to visit his old playfellow and friend Theseus, and at his intercession Arcite was liberated, on the condition that on pain of death he should never again be found in the Athenian dominions. Then the two knights grieved in their hearts. 'What matters liberty? said Arcite, 'I am a banished man!
Such comradeship, though instances of it are to be found everywhere, is still especially a classical motive; Chaucer expressing the sentiment of it so strongly in an antique tale, that one knows not whether the love of both Palamon and Arcite for Emelya, or of those two for each other, is the chiefer subject of the Knight's Tale
Also I will bring armor and weapons for thee and me, and thou shalt choose of them what thou wilt, ere I arm myself! Food and drink will I bring to thee this night into the grove. If so be that thou slay me here to-morrow, then indeed thou mayest win thy lady if thou canst!" Then Palamon answered, "Let it be so." Next morning Arcite rode to the wood alone.
"She did, but never me: she could not love me; she would not love, she hated, more, she scorned me; and in so a poor and base a way abused me for all my services, for all my bounties, so bold neglects flung on me." One more passage strikes my eye from B. and F.'s "Palamon and Arcite."
The knight, with armor battered in "mortal battailles" with the Infidel, describes the adventures of Palamon and Arcite, a tale of chivalry. The lusty young squire, bearing himself well, "in hope to stonden in his lady grace," tells an Eastern tale of love and romance.
Dryden translated only a few of the Canterbury Tales, and the one he liked best was the knight's tale of Palamon and Arcite. He published it in a book which he called Fables, and it is, I think, as a narrative or story-telling poet in these fables, and in his translations, that he keeps most interest for the young people of to-day.
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