How's your Middle English? Here's an opportunity to brush it up as we dip into an empty purse belonging to Geoffrey Chaucer.
"Fortunately," says Kathryn L Lynch, the editor of Dream Visions and Other Poems (Norton, 2007), my source for the text, "Middle English can be understood without comprehensive grammatical instruction." Chaucer used the London dialect, she explains, which evolved into and became, after c1500, Modern English, so it's really not too difficult, even without the glossary that our kindly editor adds, and which I have abridged below.
The Complaint of Chaucer to His Purse is probably the last poem Chaucer wrote. Framed initially as a love-poem to the purse in question, its purpose is to persuade King Henry IV (1367-1413) to renew the poet's annuity. The highly unified rhyme-scheme lends an appropriately sing-song insistence to the beseeching voice.
Chaucer was in fact the first English poet known to have worked in Rime Royal, and he did so widely, in his longer poems as well as his lyrics. The form is probably Italian in origin. The interlocked version of the rhyme-scheme, as used here, is not easy to sustain in English, even with the flexibility poets of Chaucer's time allowed themselves. Each stanza of the Complaint picks up the same rhyme-sounds, allowing for what are, one may guess, eye-rhymes:- companye and curtesye. The form also demands a refrain-line, woven in syntactically to create the last line of each stanza. Here, it's the repeated plea, "Beth (be) hevy ageyn or elles mot (must) I dye."
Chaucer's touch is light and so, in part, is his tone. The witty word-play and enjoyment of paradox prefigure the Metaphysicals. Even the refrain-line asks to be read as hyperbole – after all, the addressee is merely a purse, who has no agency at all to become heavy by itself and save its owner from starvation.
It's in the envoi ("Lenvoy de Chaucer") that the poem acquires a more solid, earnest tone. Chaucer seems to want to display his learning, perhaps as a sound basis for his flattery. Directly addressing the King, he praises him as the descendent of Brutus (legendary founder of Britain), and rightful and true ("verray") occupant of the throne. "Have minde upon (consider) my supplicacioun" is the humble final plea. It's as if the poet had dropped to his knee and bowed his head. The joke's over, he really needs the dosh. Most of us can sympathise with that at the present time, can't we? Happily for Chaucer, his Complaint did the trick.
Of course, this is a minor, occasional poem, for all its dexterity and grace. We need to go to the long poems, The Canterbury Tales, in particular, to appreciate the full multi-coloured, poly-vocal glory of Chaucer's genius. It's many years since I read the whole Tales from cover to cover. The fact that it's an A-level set text, I am sure, has something to do with this, though, let's be honest, linguistic laziness might also be involved. So, if you're in the same boat, limber up for the epic marathon by reading aloud the short poems like the Complaint. The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Creseide and The Book of the Duchess, are great medieval works of fiction. Add them to that list of novels to read before you die.
****
The Complaint of Chaucer to his Purse
To yow, my purse, and to noon other wight
Complaine I, for ye be my lady dere.
I am so sory now that ye be light,
For certes but if ye make me hevy chere,
Me were as leef be leyd upon my bere,
For which unto your mercy thus I crye
Beth hevy ageyn or elles mot I dye.
Now voucheth-sauf this day er it be night
That I of yow the blisful soun may here,
Or see your colour lyke the sonne bright
That of yelownesse hadde never pere.
Ye be my lyf, ye be myn hertes stere,
Quene of comfort and of good companye,
Beth hevy ageyn or elles mot I dye.
Now purse that been to me my lyves lyght
And saveour as doun in this worlde here
Out of this toune help me thurgh your might
Sin that ye wole nat been my tresorere
For I am shave as nye as any frere;
But yet I prey unto your curtesye,
Beth hevy ageyn or elles mot I dye.
Lenvoy de Chaucer
O conquerour of Brutes Albyoun
Which that by line and free eleccioun
Been verray king, this song to yow I sende,
And ye that mowen alle oure harmes amende
Have minde upon my supplicacioun.
Abridged glossary
"Me were as leef" = "I'd just as soon"
Pere = peer, equal
Stere = rudder
Toune = town, "probably Westminster, where Chaucer had taken refuge (perhaps from his creditors) in a house in the abbey grounds." (KLL).
Tresorere = treasurer
Frere = friar (Chaucer is saying that he has as little money as a tonsured friar has hair).
Mowen = May