Balade (Chaucer)

Hyd, Absolon, thy gilte tresses clere;
Ester, ley thou thy mekness al a-doun;
Hyd, Jonathas, al thy frendly manere;
Penalopee, and Marcia Cacoun,
Mak of your wyfhod no comparisoun;
Hyde ye your beautes, Isoude and Eleyne,
Alceste is here, that al that may desteyne.

Thy faire bodye, lat hit nat appere,
Lavyne; and thou, Lucresse of Rome toun,
And Polixene, that boghte love so dere,
Eek Cleopatre, with al thy passioun,
Hyde ye your trouthe in love and your renoun;
And thou, Tisbe, that hast for love swich peyne:
Alceste is here, that al that may desteyne.

Herro, Dido, Laudomia, alle in-fere,
Eek Phyllis, hanging for thy Demophoun,
And Canace, espyed by thy chere,
Ysiphile, betrayed with Jasoun,
Mak of your trouthe in love no bost ne soun;
Nor Ypermistre or Adriane, ne pleyne;
Alceste is here, that al that may desteyne.

Let's talk about what the words mean. Here are the notes on the poem in the Riverside edition (the Riverside is the best and most important version of Chaucer's poems):

Absolon: Absolom, son of David, noted for his beauty
Ester: Esther, a Biblical model of meekness
Penalopee: Penelope, faithful wife of Ulysses
Marcia Catoun: a faithful Roman wife
Ysoude: the celebrated lover of Tristan

Are you noticing a pattern? Who are all these people? They are faithful or beautiful heroes and heroines. Let's keep going:

disteyne: make pale (by comparison)
Lavyne: Lavinia, wife of Aeneas
Lucress: Lucretia
Polixene: Polyxena, famous lover of Achilles
Cleopatre: Cleopatra's legend...[is] told below. [Cleopatra's legend comes later in a long poem.]
Herro: hero, beloved of Leander
Laudomia: Laodamia, faithful wife of Protesilaus
Canace: Canacee, the incestuous lover of her brother (ewww).
espied by they chere: disclosed by your demeanor
apperen: be equal to

Okay. This poem is by Geoffrey Chaucer. You remember Chaucer! :) You also know how this poem should sound. Why don't you take a moment and read it aloud?

Did you learn the name of this metrical scheme? It's called "rhyme royale." It has seven lines of iambic pentameter (you remember iambic pentameter, yes?) rhyming ababbcc. Chaucer made it up, and he used it throughout a number of his poems, including The Canterbury Tales. During the century after he died, lots of other people in England also used it in imitation of him. Many years later, Shakespeare wrote a long poem using this scheme. Any time you see a seven-line stanza rhyming ababbcc, you should think of Chaucer. But it's not a very common rhyme scheme anymore.

This short poem is part of a long poem called "The Legend of Good Women." The long poem has kind of a funny story behind it. Earlier, Chaucer had written a wonderful long narrative poem about two lovers called Troilus and Criseyde. In that long poem, the woman (Criseyde) betrayed the man (Troilus). But then, Chaucer claims, Queen Alceste got angry with him for writing a poem that made women look bad. So now he is going to write a new long poem about how wonderful women are in order to make Queen Alceste forgive him. "The Legend of Good Women" is that poem.

The funny thing about the short poem you and I have just read together, of course, is that it's written in praise of the Queen whom Chaucer is trying to placate (or so he says). So there's a little bit of humor behind it: one of its functions is to suck up to someone important.

Q: What do you call the figure of speech that begins the poem? Do you remember?

A: It's an apostrophe. The first stanza is full of apostrophes.

Q: Why does Chaucer list all these famous women?

A: To make Alceste seem more wonderful by comparison. This device--comparing one's love to something splendid, worthy, or beautiful--shows up very often in love poems. There might be other answers to the question too.

Q: What kind of person is Alceste?

A: She is supposed to be beautiful, to have "mekness," to be "frendly," to have "passioun," and so on. Do you see how all of the comparison are accumulating into a single praise-portrait of Alceste?

Q: What in the poem is unexpected? Are there any features that are something other than we would expect?

A: You may have your own answer to this question! But I find it initially surprising that the first person in this long list of desirable people is a man, not a woman. There's another man in this list: Jonathas. (I think Jonathas is "Jonathan" from the Bible, but I'm guessing, because he's not in the Riverside notes.) It seems odd to me that we would have two men in a long list of beautiful women. Also, they are both in the first stanza. I wonder why? They are both from the BIble, and Esther (in line 3) is from the Bible, too. Maybe Chaucer wants to start his poem with three BIblical figures. He puts all of the BIblical figures at the very beginning.

I don't know why he does this. I would have to think some more about it, and I would try to look it up. But it's interesting!

The basic pattern of development of all three stanzas is the same: Chaucer begins by apostrophizing famous people, primarily women, then he warns them not to bother competing with Alceste. But Chaucer varies the pattern sometimes by grouping the people: in line 4, for instance, he refers to "Penelope and Marcia Catoun" in one line, then gives a warning to both of them in the next line. Do you see how that creates some suspension? It makes us a little curious. It also creates a little more drama that he addresses both of them at once. Lastly, it unifies that couplet.

This pattern grows, becoming most dramatic in the third stanza: we get a pile-up of six women in a row, all listed one after the other, and only after Chaucer has created this long, dramatic list does he address them all at once: "Maketh of your trouthe neither boost ne soun" (Don't brag!) By first addressing only heroines one and two at a time, then addressing a whole host of them altogether, Chaucer introduces a little bit of climax into his poem. It's almost as if he is saying, "All of you all together are still not as impressive as Queen Alceste."

Another thing to notice (if you have the background knowledge) is that all of the qualities which Chaucer praises here belong to the tradition of courtly love, which you have already encountered in The Canterbury Tales and in the lays of Marie de France. Chaucer's inclusion of wives and wifehood in the tradition of courtly love is kind of unique, but that's a topic for another day.

This type of splendid list is sometimes called a "catalog," and it is often found in medieval poetry. If we want to think more deeply about the poem, we might think more deeply about the catalog: who did Chaucer choose to include? Why? What order did he put them in? Why?

I notice that a lot of the people throughout the poem suffered horribly for love. This is especially true in the final stanza. The people in the first stanza are identified by their attractive features ("meknesse, frendly manere," etc.) but the people in the final stanza are identified by their suffering. Do you see how Chaucer's use of adjective phrases has changed? He writes "Phillis, hanging for thy Demophoun,/...Ysiphile, betrayed with Jasoun." Instead of talking about beauty and charm, he talks about violence and harm. It's also worth noticing that Hero, Dido, and Laodamia all committed suicide because of a tragic love. When Chaucer writes, "Herro, Dido, Laudomia, alle yfere," putting these women in an explicit group, he is bringing to his reader's mind the idea of the love suicide. So we could say that another source of poetic climax is the gradual placement of violence at the foreground of these heroic descriptions. It's also true that Chaucer is writing about the "legends" of good women--about the famous stories of good women. Usually, you don't become famous as a faithful lover by living a quiet life in the suburbs. You have to do something really dramatic for love, as all of the women in the third stanza did.

To notice these patterns, you would have to take the time to look up the women in the poem. But if you were writing about this poem for a class, that would be the appropriate step to take.

Okay! Those are some of my thoughts. They are not necessarily the most important things about this poem; just what I notice this afternoon. As you can tell, I am not finished interpreting the poem: if I wanted to understand it fully, I would have to look it up in other places, figure out for sure who "Jonathas" is, and decide why on earth there are men in this catalog, among other things. What are your thoughts? Do you have questions or ideas about my thoughts?

Illustration of Canace from the William Morris edition of The Canterbury Tales at Yale's Beinecke Library.