|
Title and Introduction to the Chaucer Shakespeare Knew Studies of Chaucer's influence on Shakespeare have been limited hitherto to tracing individual lines or plots to Chaucer--treating him, in effect, as one influence among many. This is due in large part to the specialization-by period-approach that is all but universal in English departments. As a result, though Shakespeare scholars have usually read Chaucer, very few of them have LIVED in him the way, I believe, the young Shakespeare did. This book will argue that Geoffrey Chaucer was a formative influence on Shakespeare from his early years, and that Chaucer had more influence on Shakespeare's creative processes than the classical or contemporary influences that he later borrowed from. Brief Description of the Chaucer Shakespeare Knew This is a major project, designed to show that Chaucer was a far greater influence on Shakespeare than is recognized in standard summaries of Shakespeare's sources. Kenneth Muir's The Sources of Shakespeare's Plays, for instance, is widely used in graduate classrooms, yet it pays little attention to domestic English sources, and says little of Chaucer. Ann Thompson (l978) and E Talbot Donaldson (l985) paved the way for this study--the former by collecting lines Shakespeare borrowed from Chaucer, and the latter by doing a more thorough influence study of Chaucer's influence on three plays, two of which also borrow plots from Chaucer. This study, I hope, will go much further, showing the way Chaucer influenced Shakespeare's focus, characterization and conceptions. On my first grant, in Spring 2001, I was able to finish the research and some 200 single-spaced pages of notes. I had been collecting textual evidence during most of the preceding year, while seeing my book, Marriage from Chaucer to the Renaissance Stage through the press. This book has just been nominated for an MLA book prize (a fact which, I hope, testifies to the quality of the work I am doing, and the attention it is getting in my field). During the following summer, by taking a vow of poverty (I was not funded), I managed to finish two lengthy chapters: "Shakespeare's Warriors: Chaucer's Legacy," and "How Shakespeare Read Chaucer's Lyrics." Together, these equaled over 100 pages. These are available for examination upon request. Long Description of the Chaucer Shakespeare Knew When this project is completed I anticipate an introduction and eight chapters. I call the first part of the introduction a "Reconstruction," since it will describe and illustrate the effect I think Chaucer had upon the young Shakespeare, and the lasting influence Chaucer left on him. I will include examples, so that by the end of this section readers will be in no doubt that I am trying to prove something different in nature from the limited source studies that have preceded me. I will then follow this up with a very different section that details the methods (i.e. both internal and external evidence) that I will use to make my case, the chief ideas he took from Chaucer and how he adapted them. This concluding section will provide the hard expository prose to balance the reconstruction. The second chapter, "Early Adaptations," will focus on the relatively crude way Shakespeare both borrowed from and mocked Chaucer in early works: i.e. the Henry VI plays, "Midsummer Night's Dream, etc. The third chapter, "How Shakespeare Read Chaucer's Lyrics," was completed last summer. It includes evidence that Shakespeare's fascination with "the Golden Age" was based on Chaucer, and several famous passages from his plays (notably from the Tempest) were written with poems like Chaucer's "The Former Age" firmly in mind. The fourth chapter, "Shakespeare's Warriors, Chaucer's Legacy" was completed last summer, and focuses on the lasting influence on Chaucer of Arcite and Palamon from Chaucer's Knight's Tale. I tie Shakespeare's warriors to Chaucer's with passages clearly borrowed from him, and then go on to show that Shakespeare's doomed warriors (Hotspur, Coriolanus, etc) are all projections based on what would happen to an Arcite in the world Shakespeare knew. The fifth chapter, "Magnanimity in Chaucer and Shakespeare" focuses principally but not exclusively on the influence of Chaucer's Franklin's Tale, a tale which celebrates that virtue, and includes the question, "who was the moste fre?" [who was the most liberal, generous?] The influence of this tale, both on Shakespeare's imagery and underlying conception is, I think, far reaching. One portion in particular from this tale imagines "plays" (outdoor scenes presented inside). The parallels between what Chaucer imagines here, and Shakespeare's own opus, are striking. The sixth chapter, "Chaucer figures in Shakespeare" is some 40 pages towards completion now. It suggests that Falstaff is Shakespeare's revision of the fat, comic, hoary-headed Chaucer Persona developed by Chaucer in poems such as "Lenvoy to Scogan," and the House of Fame. Since Shakespeare actually refers to the House of Fame in his play Titus Andronicus, it astonishes me that no one has noticed this already, but I can find nothing published on the subject. The Seventh chapter will begin with external evidence of influence. Shakespeare's fellow playwright Ben Jonson mocks Shakespeare in several of his forwards and introductions. These have been noted before by scholars, but no one in print has picked up on the references to Chaucer's Pandarus and other, more minor Chaucer references, and then drawn the natural conclusion: Jonson is mocking Shakespeare for reliance Chaucer (Jonson was a classical scholar, and it was more prestigious to borrow from Latin and Greek during this period). I will include other evidence, internal and external, that Shakespeare looked upon Chaucer as a literary father, and that at times, the anxiety of influence was strong. I will conclude with a look at other Chaucer figures in Shakespeare's plays. I call my last chapter "Shakespeare's Tribute to Chaucer." It is noteworthy that, by his later plays, Shakespeare is much less mocking of Chaucer and more inclined to present sympathetic (though still sometimes comic) portrayals of his Chaucer figures. Two plays will particularly figure in this chapter: Hamlet (Polonius is a Chaucer figure) and The Tempest (Gonzalo also serves this function). I will contrast Shakespeare's treatment of these figures to demonstrate his own changing attitude towards his great literary father. Hamlet also makes heavy use of Chaucer's translation of Boethius. I will then conclude the book with an overview of what has been done, and a glance at other possibilities for which the evidence is less clear. |
|