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The Chaucerian Proverbs
by
George B. Pace
The so-called Proverbs of Chaucer constitute a trouble-some puzzle to anyone interested in the totality of Chaucer's work, for they may well be authentic but are unlike any of Chaucer's unquestioned writings. Robinson, the latest editor (1957), places the Proverbs in a group of five "doubtful" poems which he feels cannot be proved not to be by Chaucer and which he accordingly prints.[1] But Robinson's opinion is not the only one. For example, the Brown-Robbins Index labels the Proverbs "pseudo Chaucerian"; Brusendorff asserts that they are genuine beyond "serious doubt"; the Globe Chaucer includes the Proverbs among the undisputed writings; and Skeat is of two minds, finding the Proverbs authentic in his Chaucer Canon but doubting their authorship in the Oxford Chaucer.[2] Only one thing seems really certain about the Proverbs: either they are by Chaucer or they are not.
The present paper offers a detailed textual analysis of the Proverbs, partly because no such study seems to exist but also because this fundamental aspect, the textual, has a bearing upon the question of authenticity. Specifically, the paper reclassifies the textual authorities in the light of a previously ignored copy of the Proverbs, gives the text which results from the reclassification, and explores the matter of authenticity as it is modified both by the reclassification and by the new text. The paper does not settle the authorship of the Proverbs, but it does, I believe, alter the grounds upon which any opinion may be based.
I
Robinson classifies the three texts he considers as follows:[3]
The shortness of the Proverbs and the small number of authorities permits giving the text of the MSS in full, arranged comparatively:[7]
- A Prouerbe
- F Proverbe of Chaucer
- H Prouerbe of Chaucers
- S A prouerbe agaynst couitise and negligence
- 1 A What shal þees cloþes þus many fold
- F What shul these clothes / thus manyfolde
- H What shulde these clothes thus manyfolde
- S What shal these clothes thus manifolde
- 2 A Loo þis hoote / somers day
- F Loo / this hoote somers day
- H lo this hote somers day (written as part of l. 1)
- S Lo this hote somers daye
- 3 A Affter heet / komeþe cold
- F After grete hete / cometh colde
- H After greet hete cometh colde
- S After grete heate cometh colde
- 4 A No man cast his pilchche away /
- F No man caste / his pilch away
- H no man kaste his pilche away (written as part of l. 2)
- S No man caste his pilche away
- 5 A Of þis worlde / þe wyde compas /
- F Of al this worlde / the large compace
- H Off alle this worlde the large compas /
- S Of al this world the large compasse
- 6 A Hit wol not / in myn armes tweyne /
- F Yt wil not / in my Armes tweyne
- H it will not in my armes tweyne (written as part of l. 3)
- S It will not in myne armes tweine
- 7 A Who so mychel wol embrace /
- F Whoo so mochel wol / embrace
- H Who mekel wille enbrace
- S Who so mokel wol embrace
- 8 A Lytel þer of he shal distreyne /
- F litel therof he shal distreyne
- H litel therof he shal distreyne (written as part of l. 4)
- S Litell cher of he shall distreine (followed by Explicit)
The differences between these texts are expressed by the table below, which gives every variant reading. Readings found in only one text (unique readings) are italicized.
| A | F | H | S | |
| Prouerbe | Proverbe of | Prouerbe of | A prouerbe agaynst | |
| Chaucer | Chaucers | couitise and negligence | ||
| 1 | shal | shul | shulde | shal |
| 3 | heet | grete hete | grete hete | grete heate |
| 5 | þis | al this | alle this | al this |
| wyde | large | large | large | |
| 6 | wol | wil | wil | will |
| myn armes | my Armes | my armes | myne armes | |
| 7 | Who so | Whoo so | Who | Who so |
| mychel | mochel | mekel | mokel | |
| wol | wol | wille | wol | |
| 8 | þer | ther | ther | cher |
I shall comment on certain of the variants:
Shal, shul, shulde, line 1; wol, wil, line 6. These are all possible Chaucerian forms (cf. S. Moore, Historical Outlines of English Sounds and Inflections, rev. by A. H. Marckwardt, 1951, pp. 57-58).
Mychel, mochel, mekel, mokel, line 7. Although these are italicized above as unique variants, they can offer little evidence as to the relationship of the MSS; all are essentially forms of the same word (cf. the treatment in the OED, s. v. Mickle). However, two of the variants, mekel and mokel, have textual significance of another kind: they are dialectically inappropriate for Chaucer (the k, from ON mikill, being characteristic of the north and north midlands; cf. the OED, ibid.; Robinson, one may remark, includes neither mekel nor mokel in his Glossary). As a Chaucerian form, mokel is especially suspect. The OED entry, a lengthy one, contains only one citation in which mokel occurs.
Ther, cher, line 8. The second variant, which occurs in the printed text S, may be only a compositor's error. However, the misreading of t as c is distinctly characteristic of MSS; cf. C. Johnson and H. Jenkinson, English Court Hand, A. D. 1066 to 1500, I, xxxviii: "c and t. These are constantly written one for the other." Below, cher is regarded as a MS. variant, since there is no positive evidence that it is not. The variation is substantive if cher is accepted at face value: "He who attempts too much will get little cheer [chere]."
The remaining variants do not appear to need separate comment.
In classifying the texts I make the following assumptions: that the texts are all ultimately descended from the same archetype; that readings found in only one text (unique readings) were not in the archetype; that shared errors indicate close relationship; that the simplest tree which will explain the distribution of the variants is to be preferred. This is not the place to elaborate upon these assumptions, which are usual operational assumptions of textual criticism.[8] When
1. The first assumption, that the texts are all from the same archetype, is borne out by the variants in that there is nothing to suggest a problem of states or versions.
2. The second assumption, that none of the unique readings were in the archetype, prevents any of the extant texts from being regarded as the archetype, as they all contain unique readings (see italicized variants). This assumption also says, in effect, that a text with a unique reading cannot be the direct ancestor of a text with a supported reading (i. e., it is unlikely that a supported reading is descended from a unique reading). Therefore, the following observations can be made:
- (a) No text can be derived from A because of A's unique readings in lines 3, 5, and 6.
- (b) No text can be derived from H because of H's first and third unique readings in line 7.
- (c) No text can be derived from S because of S's unique reading in line 8.
- (d) Neither A nor S can be derived from F because of F's unique reading in line 1. Note that this observation, which omits mention of H, implies the likelihood that
- (e) H is derived from F. In line 1 both F and H read uniquely; in line 7 the first and third unique readings of H contrast with supported readings in F. Thus F cannot be derived from H, but H may be derived from F.
3. The third assumption, that shared errors indicate close relationship, involves only F and H, as the other texts have no errors in common. In line 6, F and H agree on the reading, my armes. Chaucer's practice, however, is to use myn before vowels, my before consonants, and this is also the practice of his time.[9] My armes is therefore regardable as an error implying a close relationship between F and H.
4. The fourth assumption, that the simplest tree is to be preferred, requires the derivation of H from F, thus resolving the problem of 2.e and 3. One might assume, with Heath, that F and H are sister MSS, deriving from a lost MS. This supposition will account for the shared error and H's unique readings but must be rejected because it produces a more complex tree.
5. Paragraph 2.a has shown that neither F nor S can be derived from A; paragraph 2.c, that neither A nor F can be derived from S; paragraph 2.d,
The choice of a basic MS. is limited to F and S, A being discredited because of the number of its unique readings and H because of its derivative nature. The choice between F and S, however, depends upon a problem posed by the title. This problem is more conveniently handled in the next section.
II
The major reason for believing that Chaucer wrote the Proverbs is the ascription of them to him in the titles of two of the MSS, F and H.[10] What effect does the reclassification have on the testimony given by these titles?
One effect is clear: H's testimony has been shown to have no independent value, for H has been demonstrated to be a copy of F and it is reasonable to presume that the scribe of H simply copied the ascription (title) in F along with the text. Even so, the reclassification strengthens the argument for authenticity. The removal of H is more than balanced by the addition of S, for the inclusion of the Proverbs in Stowe's edition of Chaucer is tantamount to an ascription and S has been shown, unlike H, to derive independently from the archetype.[11] Accordingly, in one line of descent an actual ascription appears (F's title); in another line of descent occurs the quasi-ascription of S. This situation allows only the conclusion that the Proverbs were probably ascribed to Chaucer in the archetype itself.
The phrasing of the ascription can be tentatively reconstructed. The fact that the word proverb occurs in the titles of all three lines of descent (A, F, and S) implies that this word was in the title of the archetype, and in the singular form. It is plausible to assume that the ascription was made in the simplest way, by the phrase, of Chaucer. Combining these two elements yields, of course, the title of F: Proverbe of Chaucer. Since there are two proverbs, F's title is less appropriate than the plural title used in this paper, which follows popular custom. But the inappropriate singular form would seem to go back to the archetype.
The choice of a basic MS. can now be made. If F is chosen, only shul, line 1, and my, line 6, require correcting; if S is selected, mokel, line 7, and cher, line 8, must be changed, and the title also. The preference is thus in F's favor. With F as the basic MS., the following text results:
What shal these clothes thus manyfolde
Loo this hoote somers day
After grete hete cometh colde
No man caste his pilche away
Of all this worlde the large compas
It wil not in myn armes tweyne
Who so mochel wol embrace
Litel ther of he shal distreyne
Looked at objectively, with no presuppositions as to the kind of poem Chaucer might or might not write, what grounds remain for doubting the authenticity of the Proverbs? I can see none. But I would not argue that matters of authenticity can be determined wholly through objectives means. Before concluding, I should like to call attention to a striking difference between the text just given and the version of the Proverbs found in modern editions.[12] In the latter it has become customary, since the nineteenth century, to place a Roman numeral I between the title and the first line and a II between the fourth and fifth lines. The effect is attractive, giving an appearance of form to what, objectively speaking, is hardly a poem at all — merely two stanzas juxtaposed, unrelated except that each expresses a proverb.
And yitte . it makeþe / sharpe kerving toolis
If þow . wost ought / where þat I haue miswent
Eschuwe . þow þat / for suche thing to þee scolle is /
þus wyse men / beon offt / ware by foolis
If þowe do so / þy witte is wele bewared
By his contrarie . is every thing declared[13]
This paper has not set out to prove the authenticity of the Proverbs, which is probably unprovable. What it has done is to furnish a text based upon a classification of four authorities, not three, and to set the record straight, perhaps, on certain matters connected with authenticity.
Notes
F. N. Robinson, The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 2nd ed. (1957), pp. 865, 543; hereafter cited as Robinson. The printing of the Proverbs begins in the sixteenth century and continues, in complete editions of the poet's writings, unbroken up to the present day.
Carleton Brown and R. H. Robbins, The Index of Middle English Verse (1943), p. 746; Aage Brusendorff, The Chaucer Tradition (1925), p. 286; A. W. Pollard, H. F. Heath, et al., The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1904), p. 634 (here-after cited as Globe Chaucer); W. W. Skeat, The Chaucer Canon (1890), p. 145 and The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1894), I, 91 (the latter hereafter cited as Skeat). The Middle English Dictionary, ed. Hans Kurath and S. M. Kuhn ("Plan and Bibliography," 1954, p. 33), includes the Proverbs in its list of Chaucer's works but precedes the title with a question mark.
For an early printed text to possess "MS. authority" is of course nothing unusual; the names Caxton, Thynne, and even Stowe occur frequently in Robinson's textual notes. Skeat, who did not use the Stowe copy of the Proverbs, had, however, a good opinion of it: "There is a fair copy of them (but not well spelt) in the black-letter edition of 1561" (Skeat, I, 564).
The readings for S are from a copy in the British Museum, those for the MSS from my own transcriptions made from the MSS; the three MSS are also printed in the Chaucer Society's Parallel Texts of Chaucer's Minor Poems, Ser. 1, no. 58, p. 431.
The assumptions are, for instance, either stated or implied in the rationale of textual criticism by A. A. Hill, "Some Postulates of Distributional Study of Texts," SB, III (1950-51), 63-95.
The OED, s. v. Mine, states the normal practice: "Already in the 13th c., the rule in southern and midland Eng. was to use myn before vowels and h, and my before consonants, and this subsisted until the 18th c."; exceptions exist to this "rule," but the Tatlock-Kennedy Concordance to the Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1927) does not show a single instance of my before a vowel in Chaucer's writings.
There is also the following internal evidence: the Proverbs exhibit no positively non-Chaucerian features (cf. Robinson, p. 865); the second proverb occurs, with rather similar phrasing, in The Canterbury Tales (B2 2405; "For the proverbe seith, 'He that to muche embraceth, distreyneth litel'"). The recurrence of a proverb, in the sense of popular saying, might mean nothing; however, B. J. Whiting (Chaucer's Use of Proverbs, 1934, p. 43) says the Proverbs of Chaucer are not of a "popular" variety (the second proverb, even so, resembles M 1295, p. 484, in Tilley's A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 1950).
Since Stowe attributes to Chaucer poems which are now known definitely to be spurious, his word with regard to the Proverbs might seem to deserve little weight. My point is not that Stowe was right in his attribution but that he must have had a reason for it.
As for other differences, I shall limit myself to a collation with Robinson's text, which is also based on F (Robinson's readings are given first): Proverbs, Proverbe of Chaucer; shul, shal; thise, these; manyfold, manyfolde; Lo, loo; hote, hoote; greet, grete; cold, colder; world, worlde; Hit, it; wol, wil. Some of these differences, but not all, result from Robinson's decision to normalize spelling.
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