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Updated: May 24, 2025
Its array of shields, its swords and mail kept their counsel. The figures in the singular tapestry of Troilus went through their aping unadmired, and the grey dawn found them at it. Then you might see how idle Cresseide, peering askance at Maulfry with her sly eyes, watched the black pool drown her hair. Prosper broke the silence there was between them. "Whither should we go?" he said.
Adhelmar read to her of divers ancient queens and of the love-business wherein each took part, relating the histories of the Lady Heleine and of her sweethearting with Duke Paris, the Emperor of Troy's son, and of the Lady Melior that loved Parthenopex of Blois, and of the Lady Aude, for love of whom Sieur Roland slew the pagan Angoulaffre, and of the Lady Cresseide that betrayed love, and of the Lady Morgaine la Fee, whose Danish lover should yet come from Avalon to save France in her black hour of need.
For the philosopher which it seemed she was, the subject of the piece was very pleasant. Diomede was an apple-cheeked school- boy, Troilus had a tunic and bare legs, Cresseide in her spare moments dandled a doll. Calchas, for his part, kept a dame-school in this piece, which for the rest was treated with a singular freedom.
If my memory does not betray me, this charming out-door fancy-scene was Keats's first introduction to Chaucer. Certain I am that the "Troilus and Cresseide" was an after-acquaintance; and clearly do I remember his approbation of the favorite passages that I had marked.
At this time Chaucer was a handsome, witty, modest, dignified man of letters, in easy circumstances, moving in the higher ranks of society, and already known for his "Troilus and Cresseide," which was then doubtless the best poem in the language.
There are suggestions from Dante, for example, in the Parlament of Foules and the Hous of Fame, and Troilus and Cresseide is a free handling rather than a translation of Boccaccio's Filostrato. In all of these there are passages of great beauty and force.
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