Pillagers, strippers; French, pilleurs. ↩
Lying side by side. ↩
Armour of the same fashion. ↩
Born of two sisters. ↩
He would take no ransom. ↩
For the rest of his life. ↩
Set free. ↩
Wot not, know not. ↩
Decked, dressed. ↩
Sunrise. ↩
Mingled. ↩
Subtle, well-arranged. ↩
The donjon was originally the central tower or “keep” of feudal castles; it was employed to detain prisoners of importance. Hence the modern meaning of the word dungeon. ↩
Adjoining. ↩
Saw. ↩
Chance. ↩
Stop, start aside. ↩
Imprisonment. ↩
Wicked; Saturn, in the old astrology, was a most unpropitious star to be born under. ↩
Ruin, destruction. ↩
Know not whether. ↩
Assuredly, truly. ↩
Began to look forth. ↩
Unless. ↩
Despitefully, angrily. ↩
By my faith; Spanish, fe; French, foi. ↩
I am in no humous for jesting. ↩
To die in the pain was a proverbial expression in the French, used as an alternative to enforce a resolution or a promise. Edward III, according to Froissart, declared that he would either succeed in the war against France or die in the pain—“Ou il mourroit en la peine.” It was the fashion in those times to swear oaths of friendship and brotherhood; and hence, though the fashion has long died out, we still speak of “sworn friends.” ↩
Loved, dear; German, lieber. ↩
Gainsay, deny. ↩
Die. ↩
Sooner. ↩
Even now thou knowest not. ↩
Suppose. ↩
Know’st. ↩
The saying of the old scholar—Boethius, in his treatise De Consolatione Philosophiae, which Chaucer translated, and from which he has freely borrowed in his poetry. The words are
“Quis legem det amantibus?
Major lex amor est sibi.”
Head. ↩
In spite of his head. ↩
Whether the woman he loves be. ↩
“Perithous” and “Theseus” must, for the metre, be pronounced as words of four and three syllables respectively—the vowels at the end not being diphthongated, but enunciated separately, as if the words were printed “Perithous,” “Theseus.” The same rule applies in such words as creature and conscience, which are trisyllables. ↩
That. ↩
Little. ↩
Covenant, promise. ↩
Moment, short space of time; from Anglo-Saxon, stund; akin to which is German, stunde, an hour. ↩
Counsel. ↩
In pledge, pawn. ↩
It is shaped, decreed, fixed for me. ↩
Chance. ↩
Die in despair; in want of hope. ↩
Pleasure. ↩
Why do men so often complain of God’s providence? ↩
Household; menials, or servants, etc., dwelling together in a house; from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning a crowd. Compare German, menge, multitude. ↩
Or slider, slippery. ↩
Especially I; I for instance. ↩
Thought. ↩
The very fetters. The Greeks used καθαρος, the Romans purus, in the same sense. ↩
Takest little heed. ↩
Manhood, courage. ↩
Perish, die. ↩
Seized so madly upon his heart. ↩
Eternal. ↩
Consultation. ↩
More by you esteemed. ↩
Lie huddled together, sleep. ↩
Par Dieu—by God. ↩
Restrain his desire. ↩
Pleasure. ↩
Pain, trouble; French, peine. ↩
Mad. ↩
Stint, pause. ↩
Little. ↩
Knew not. ↩
Condition. ↩
On peril of his head. ↩
In the medieval courts of Love, to which allusion is probably made forty lines before, in the word parlement, or parliament, questions like that here proposed were seriously discussed. ↩
Fainted, died. ↩
Bereft, taken away, from him. ↩
Became, waxed. ↩
Arrow. The phrase is equivalent to our “dry as a bone.” ↩
Yellow; old spelling falwe, French fauve, tawny-coloured. Some editions have “sallow.” ↩
Stinted, stopped. ↩
Behaviour, fashion, dress; but, by another reading, the word is gyre, and means fit, trance—from the Latin, gyro, I turn round. ↩
Mania, madness. ↩
In front of his head in his fantastic cell. “The division of the brain into cells, according to the different sensitive faculties,” says Mr. Wright, “is very ancient, and is found depicted in medieval manuscripts.” In a manuscript in the Harleian Library, it is stated, “Certum est in prora cerebri esse fantasiam, in medio rationem discretionis, in puppi memoriam”—a classification not materially differing from that of modern phrenologists. ↩
Dominus, Lord; Spanish, Don. ↩
Rod; the caduceus. ↩
