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THE INFLUENCE OF PLAUTUS AND

LATIN ELEGIAC COMEDY ON
CHAUCER’S FABLIAUX
by Kathleen A. Bishop

During the formative stages of Chaucerian study in the period spanning

the first half of this century, the fabliaux were largely ignored due to the
bawdy nature of this material. In more recent history, there has been a
growing interest in the genre, spurred on by the work of scholars of the
Old French fabliaux such as Nykrog, Muscatine, and Bloch. But, although
much focus has been placed on the relationship between Chaucer’s fabli-
aux and the vernacular analogues of his tales, scant attention has hith-
erto been paid to the important Classical and Medieval Latin influences
underpinning them.
The deep Classical and Medieval Latin elements of his fabliaux, in both
their theoretical and performative contexts, are just as necessary to a full
assessment of his comic invention as are the Old French variety. This is
especially clear since the Canterbury Tales in general are so saturated in
the written literary tradition on which Chaucer so avidly and learnedly
drew. Thus what is true of the whole is equally applicable to the part.
When considering the Old French and Chaucerian fabliaux in juxtapo-
sition, it becomes clear that while both sets of tales are influenced by the
underlying oral nature of their core source stories, the written Latin mate-
rial that Chaucer knew so well, both directly and indirectly, is vitally, inex-
tricably, and undeniably linked to his comic poems.
Although Edmond Faral remarked upon the relationship of Roman
and Medieval Latin Elegiac comedy to the Old French fabliaux, he met
with much resistance from his colleagues.1 Similarly, although these con-
nections are so much easier to delineate in the case of the English fabli-
aux, Chaucer’s tales have not often been viewed within the larger frame
of the Western comic tradition. Pearsall and Ruggiers have commented
upon the inherent interest in examining the comic theories of the
Antique commentators in relation to the Canterbury Tales, but no com-
plete study has been undertaken.2 Plautus’ work has almost never been

THE CHAUCER REVIEW, Vol. 35, No. 3, 2001.

Copyright © 2001 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA
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KATHLEEN A. BISHOP 295

viewed as pertinent, and the Latin Elegiac comedies of the Middle Ages
have been either ignored or dismissed. According to Peter Dronke,
fabliau comedy is one of the great constants in Western literature,3 and
the works of all these writers form clear links in the chain joining comic
writers of different ages. Robert Miola expresses a similar thesis in his
study of the effect of the plays of Plautus and Terence on those of
Shakespeare. These dramas, he says,
. . . function as . . . “deep sources,” as possessors of a comedic gene
pool that shapes in various mediated ways succeeding generations.
Exploration of these lineages can be rich and fruitful. The proof
of direct paternity is often less important and less interesting than
the establishment of ancestry, the tracing of complicated geneal-
ogy, the identification of inherited characteristics, the analysis of
family resemblance and diversity.4
These “inherited characteristics” and “family resemblances” which were
passed down and adapted by Chaucer will be traced in a number of areas
such as the numerous shared thematic features centering on lust, decep-
tion, and the triangular configuration prominent in so many of these sto-
ries. Similarities in characterization will also be acknowledged, especially
in the continuing presence of Roman comic stock figures like the block-
ing senex and wily slavuus in Medieval works by the authors of the comoe-
diae and Chaucer.
Every writer, in his lifetime, is the last in a long line of writers stretch-
ing back through history. In The Anxiety of Influence, Harold Bloom
describes the “strong writer” as struggling to find his own voice, thus free-
ing himself from his “fathers.”5 In Chaucer’s case, although he was surely
a “strong writer,” he seems to have been especially susceptible to outside
influences on his poetry. Chaucer’s corpus is witness to his ability to syn-
thesize the things he heard and read in his life, picking and choosing the
pieces which were useful or appealing. In this way, we see the traces of
earlier comic pieces, both Classical and Medieval, in Chaucer’s poetry.
One need only think of the earlier, brilliant simplicity of the Old French
fabliaux to see the extent of Chaucer’s hybridization of inherited mate-
rials combined with his own natural genius.
Plautus (254–184 B.C.E.) is a most interesting figure to consider in
relation to Chaucer because, although he was by far the most successful
comic Latin dramatist in the ancient world, he has long been the target
of critical attacks, probably due to his farcical and sometimes scurrilous
content. Horace found him vastly overrated (Ars Poetica 270). Gilbert
Norwood argues that “when the plays are strongly suffused by Plautus’
own personality and interests, they are mostly deplorable . . . , smothered
by barbarous clownery, intolerable verbosity, an almost complete indif-
ference to dramatic structure.”6 Referring to such comments, however,
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296 THE CHAUCER REVIEW

Erich Segal opens his book, Roman Laughter—The Comedy of Plautus, by

observing that “Of all the Greek and Roman playwrights Titus Maccius
Plautus is the least admired and the most imitated. ‘Serious’ scholars find
him insignificant, while serious writers find him indispensable.”7
Leaving aside for the moment the question of any direct indebtedness,
the work of this Latin writer, dealing as it does chiefly with love and decep-
tion, surely shares many common characteristics with the fabliau. Edmond
Faral sees the Old French fabliaux as the descendants of Roman comedy,8
and Paul Ruggiers, in fact, calls the fabliaux “Chaucer’s Roman comedies,”
remarkable for their “Plautine spirit,” the subject matter of both being
“the outwitting of convention and propriety by instinct and craft.”9
Although, according to Reynolds, “after 1086 . . . no library in Europe
would have had any difficulty in obtaining a copy of Terence,” there is
no denying the fact that Plautus was “far less familiar [than Terence in
the Middle Ages] and may not have been directly read,”10 but, according
to Keith Bate, there were several Plautine manuscripts extant in central
France in the later Middle Ages.11 Levine estimates that there were man-
uscripts of at least eight of his plays circulating at this time, and he
equates the wily slaves present in the plays of Plautus with Chaucer’s
Pandarus,12 a topic which I have discussed elsewhere.13
We know for sure that all twenty-one of the extant dramas of Plautus
existed in manuscript form on the continent from at least the tenth cen-
tury, and educated men from all parts of Europe could have come in con-
tact with these works of Plautus. Walter Map, who was attached to the
court of Henry II, visited Italy in 1179, and according to Bate, “It is obvi-
ous from the dialogued story De Sceva et Ollone, set in Ravenna and Pavia,
which he wrote on his return to England, that he had seen a perfor-
mance of a play based on Plautus’ Amphytruo.”14 Like Map, Chaucer also
visited Italy (and France) where he could have encountered these dra-
mas, and, additionally, we know that at least eight of Plautus’ plays were
known in England by the twelfth century because of the survival of B.L.
Royal MS 15.C.XI containing Amphitruo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Captivi,
Casina, Cistellaria, Curculio, and Epidicus.15
Although no one can establish that Chaucer knew Plautus directly, the
case seems stronger for the writers of the Latin Elegiac comedies. Vitalis
of Blois even refers to the Roman by name in Aulularia:
I am free from all blame; I’m only following Plautus, and the sub-
ject demands great things for itself. This comedy—mine or
Plautus’—gets its name from a pot, but that which was Plautus’ is
now mine (22–25).16
It is works such as the Latin comoediae, as I hope to establish, which trans-
mitted the influence of Plautus and in turn affected the Old French and
Chaucerian fabliaux. However, in this study I am not striving to establish
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KATHLEEN A. BISHOP 297

direct sources for the fabliaux. Rather I am attempting to trace a comic

tradition anterior to Chaucer. As such the comedies of Plautus share far
more of the characteristics of the typical fabliau than do Terence’s, espe-
cially in the sense that in the work of the earlier playwright intrigue is of
prime importance, whereas in Terence’s works deception and trickery
clearly take a backseat to the unraveling of the lover’s problems. It seems
to me that the comic methods of Plautus are extremely important in rela-
tion to Chaucer’s fabliaux in terms of plot, character, and social com-
mentary, all of which we will take up in turn when discussing Chaucer’s
tales. For now let us move on to the Latin Elegiac comedies, the con-
necting link in the chain.
The group of works composed during the twelfth century in France,
usually known as the Latin Elegiac comedies,17 are important to any study
of the fabliaux, most certainly to those contained in the Canterbury Tales.
Composed during the latter half of the twelfth century, most of them are
rendered in the Ovidian elegiac verse so familiar to their authors. Their
usual length runs approximately 400–600 lines, about the same as the
Old French fabliaux, and like the fabliaux they usually center on clever-
ness and deception, lust and sexual intrigue. The majority were the prod-
ucts of French authors such as Matthew of Vendôme and Vitalis and
William of Blois, but some were English in origin as in the comedies of
John of Garland and Geoffrey of Vinsauf.
In general, scholars have largely disregarded these works; the Oxford
Book of Medieval Latin Verse does not mention them at all; and among crit-
ics who do take note of them, there has been much disagreement as to
their genre. Cohen states that they are plays.18 Faral, on the other hand,
denies this assertion based on the fact that they do not meet the struc-
tural criteria of drama.19 Actually they are both correct depending on the
work in question because some of these “comedies” are far more dra-
matic in form than others.
But both Faral and Cohen, followed by Raby, and Dronke, have rec-
ognized their influence on the Old French fabliaux.20 According to Faral:
Entre le conte médiéval ainsi défini et le fabliau français du XIIIe
siècle, il y a la différence extérieure du style, en général très sim-
ple dans le fabliau, ici souvent très compliqué; mais il y a aussi
cette ressemblance profonde que contes latins et fabliaux procè-
dent exactement du même esprit. Mêmes types d’intrigue, mêmes
types de personnages, mêmes sources du comique.21
[Among the medieval stories thus defined and the French fabliau
of the thirteenth century there is the exterior difference of style,
in general very simple in the fabliau, here often very complicated;
but there is also this profound similarity that the Latin stories and
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the fabliaux proceed from exactly the same spirit. The same types
of plot, the same types of characters, the same sources of comedy.]
And it should be noted that the comoediae are the only parallel to the fabli-
aux in terms of sexual obscenity in the Middle Ages; however, most schol-
ars, including Per Nykrog, have either downplayed or totally denied their
relevance.22 The objection is usually made that the humor, although
rooted in bawdiness and deception, is too laden with philosophical/
rhetorical concerns to be associated with the Old French fabliaux, but it
seems to me this is not the case when discussing a possible influence on
Chaucer, whose works are far more sophisticated in every way than their
French counterparts.
The Latin Elegiac comedies form a bridge between the comedy of
Plautus and the fabliaux. The words of Charles M. Gayley regarding early
English dramatists are equally applicable to those who created our genre:
“it would be unreasonable to assume that the authors . . . did not derive
something of their technique from the elegiac comedies of their con-
temporary latinists in France and England, or indeed from the adapta-
tions of Plautus and Terence in previous centuries, or from the originals
themselves.”23 Malcolm Brennan recognizes the connection in his dis-
cussion of the machinations of the characters in Babio, “which remind us
of the exciting manipulations of situations by the quick-witted rogues of
Roman Comedy or of the later fabliaux,”24 and as Faral observes, “par le
sujet et par le ton, le Babio presénte tous les caractères du fabliau.”25
In terms of origins, it is certain that the authors of the comoediae were
conversant with Roman comedy; Terence is a strong influence, and the
Pamphilus and Babio are deeply indebted to Ovid, as is De Tribus Puellis,
which is an intentional parody of Amores 1.5. Vitalis of Blois mentions
Plautus in Aulularia 11, and William of Blois raises the name of Plautus’
inspiration, Menander, in Alda 14. Axton stresses that the Latin Elegiac
comedies clearly “inherited a Roman form,”26 but it was Edmond Faral
who first established their connection to Roman comedy based on
shared subject matter, thematics, and cast of characters, as in the case
of Vitalis’ Geta, which is a refashioning of the Amphitruo of Plautus. In
general he asserts that “L’origine de ce genre, a n’en pas douter, c’est
la comedie de la Rome antique”; Cohen calls them “Émanations directes
et résurrection de l’antiquité.”27 Brennan strongly agrees with this in his
edition of Babio:
It is very difficult not to make the connection and to declare flatly
that Babio and its fellows were direct imitations of Roman drama.
Reservations about asserting that Roman drama is a source for
Babio must completely disappear when one turns from the mere
fact of Babio’s dramatic nature to its themes, its realism, its dramatic
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KATHLEEN A. BISHOP 299

devices, its setting, and its characterizations, for in each of these

respects the resemblence [sic] between Babio and the plays of
Plautus and Terrence [sic] is too strong to be accounted for in any
way except by the conclusion that the twelfth-century author of
Babio was a conscious and rather close imitator of those authors of
Roman Comedy.28

There is little doubt that Chaucer would have had access to at least some
of this Latin material;29 the Pamphilus, the most important, and the most
popular of the elegiac comedies, is mentioned by name in the Franklin’s
Tale (F 1110) and in the Tale of Melibee (B2 2745).30 The Comoedia Lidiae
of Arnulf of Orléans is an analogue to Decameron VII.9 and to Chaucer’s
own Merchant’s Tale,31 and Babio, which includes the senex amans who is
cuckolded, beaten and content, probably originated in England, as
argued by Brennan and Keith Bate.32 According to Elliott, “Babio may
come from England, as four of the five manuscripts are English, and the
only authors to make reference to it, Robert Holkot and John Gower,
were also English.”33
Attesting to the popularity of this work and the probability that
Chaucer was familiar with it, Gower devotes over 50 lines in his Confessio
Amantis to paraphrasing the entire plot of Babio as a warning against
Avarice (V 4808–62). Many of the comoediae were extremely well received.
The Pamphilus “was so popular that it circulated in little manuscript ‘pam-
phlets,’ a word which is in fact derived from the title of the play,”34 and
there were at least 83 manuscripts of the Geta.35
And if we doubt that these works were widely known and disseminated,
we need only realize that they were regularly included as part of the lib-
eral arts curriculum of the later Middle Ages, viewed as highly pertinent,
in fact necessary, to a young person’s education according to Frank,36
and, as suggested by Chambers, “the more edifying of them may . . . have
been school pieces.”37
The writers of the Latin Elegiac comedies were considered auctores
minores, and their works were read routinely by students at about the age
of 14. Actually, various medieval “syllabi” survive such as that compiled by
Eberhard the German, a schoolmaster who in his Laborintus gathered a
list of nine works necessary to a basic grammar course. Two of the nine
pieces included on that list were the Pamphilus and the Geta.38 Emphasizing
the point of the regularity of such study, we see even Jerome allowing the
use of “comedies” in such circumstances, but denying that they are proper
reading matter for men of the cloth. “We see priests of God passing over
the gospels and the prophets and reading comedies, chanting the love-
words . . . and making what is a matter of necessity in the case of boys, a
sin of pleasure in their own” (Ad Damasum, Epist. XXI, 13).39
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Chaucer lived in a rapidly changing world wherein the kinds of liter-

ature we have been discussing were becoming increasingly available, and
one thing that is surely evident in Chaucer’s use of language is that his
fabliau comedy is very much the result of a written literary tradition
reaching back to Antiquity. Regarding the Old French fabliaux, Joseph
Bédier felt that they were primarily the products of an oral tradition;
Nykrog disagrees, seeing them as being transmitted through writing by
authors who jealously guarded their territory against mere reciters. 40 If
Nykrog is correct in his assertions that the Old French fabliaux are based
in a written tradition, and I think he is, how much more is this the case
for Chaucer’s tales, which are so much more obviously filled with liter-
ary traces of all varieties, written by a man with an undeniably avid inter-
est in the literary tradition preceding him.
In searching for connections linking Chaucer to his Latin forbears, it
is instructive to begin at the end. Standard definitions of the genre seem
to agree that comedy should have a joyful conclusion, but while this is
plainly true of As You Like It, for example, it is not so clearly the case for
a fabliau like the Miller’s Tale. Certainly it is not a felicitous ending for
John or Nicholas, and probably not even for Alison or Absolon, and the
conclusion of the Reeve’s Tale includes a trio of bruised brawlers. May one
therefore fairly conclude that the fabliau is not pure comedy? But then
what of January in the Merchant’s Tale? He is certainly happy at the con-
clusion, having recovered his vision and perhaps believing that he is a
father-to-be, as is the Merchant in the Shipman’s Tale, who is rich and sat-
isfied. Perhaps the happiness of these two cuckolds may be explained by
the maxim “Ignorance is bliss.” Clearly, determining whether the fabliau
has the prototypical comedic happy ending is problematic.
It is also clear that the connection of comedy with a joyous conclusion
was current in England in the later Middle Ages. Chaucer’s disciple,
Lydgate, observes that “A comedie hath in his gynnyng . . . a maner com-
pleynyng, and afterward endeth in gladnes” (Troy Book 2.847). And we
can deduce that Chaucer would have agreed with this statement based
on his definition of tragedy in the Prologue of The Monk’s Tale (B2 3163–67)
and from the Knight’s obvious reference to comedy in the Prologue of The
Nun’s Priest’s Tale:
And the contrarie [to tragedy] is joye and greet solas,
As whan a man hath been in povre estaat,
And clymbeth up and wexeth fortunat,
And there abideth in prosperitee.
Swich thyng is gladsom, as it thynketh me,
And of swich thyng were goodly for to telle.
(B2 3960–69)41
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KATHLEEN A. BISHOP 301

At the conclusion of Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer again joins tragedy

with its “contrarie.” “Go, litel bok, go, litel myn tragedye / Ther God thi
makere yet, er that he dye / So sende myght to make in som comedye!”
(V, 1786–88).
Historically, both Aristotle and the fourth-century grammarian Donatus
take the position that comedy requires a happy conclusion, and for Dante,
whose ideas on the subject appear in his Epistle to Can Grande della Scala,
comedy “begins with sundry adverse conditions, but ends happily.”
Perhaps we need to find a new label for the fabliaux, such as farce, or
maybe the idea of a happy ending has to do with the audience’s reaction—
which we would have to agree is laughter, whether we are considering the
Canterbury pilgrims’ response (A 3855–59) or that of twenty-first century
undergraduates.
The case does not appear to be any clearer for modern critics dealing
with the Latin Elegiac comedies. Thomson and Perraud define these
works as “light tales, usually with a happy ending, told in the simple style
appropriate to comoedia, as the word was usually understood in Medieval
Latin.”42 But then what of the conclusion of a work like Babio where the
title character is literally castrated by his wife and her lover and packed
off to a monastery? Can we term this a “happy ending” consistent with
poetic justice and calling to mind the fate of poor Abelard?
Eric Bentley offers a possible solution to this conundrum. He finds two
comic strains in the history of comedy: one, derived from Latin sources,
is scornful, and full of ridicule, moving toward unresolved discord; the
other, of non-Latin derivation, is sympathetic, moving toward concord
and marriage.43 He places Shakespeare in the second category; clearly, it
seems to me, the fabliaux fit in the first. Bentley’s theory seems to be the
best explanation, especially since his formulation would connect the fabli-
aux to Latin comedy.
Although medieval definitions of comedy often involve the concept of
a happy conclusion, the fact is that commentators in the Middle Ages
were not always clear about the parameters of the genre. This is especially
evident in distinctions between narrative and drama, which tended to
break down with the decline of the theater in late Antiquity. But Edmond
Faral correctly denies that discrepancies due to form or methods of con-
cluding a work impede making connections between Roman drama and
the fabliau because it is not according to the form of a piece, but accord-
ing to the quality of the inspiration (“non pas selon la forme de exposi-
tion, mais selon la qualite de l’inspiration”) that such affiliations may be
observed.44
It is the quality of this inspiration that so clearly joins the fabliau to the
Latin tradition. This type of comedy is destructive; it is an unraveling of
the status quo, whether it be a father and son competing for the same
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woman in a play by Plautus, or a young student cuckolding an old hus-

band in a Chaucerian fabliau. The comedies of Plautus are strikingly sim-
ilar to the fabliau in this area, having been created in a society so
staunchly supportive of duty and social convention. What is especially
interesting is that, although Greek New Comedy is his standard model
throughout his work, he seems to sharply break with Menander on this
point. According to William S. Anderson:
Menander always left his audiences with a good feeling about love,
an optimism about marriage and the commitments of mutual
affection. Plautus did not agree with Menander on this point . . .
he sabotaged the love plot and its amatory themes and upstaged
the comedy with an emphasis on humour derived from intrigue,
roguery, wit, and outright romantic parody. . . . [Plautus’ plots do]
not point towards responsible domestic love, but towards sexual
promiscuity.45
We see this tendency to undermine traditional order in such plays as the
Bacchides and Casina.
Likewise Chaucer may be viewed as subversive. He has been called the
Poet of Love, and, historically, comedy and love have been inextricably
linked, with the usual outcome of marriage after all the complications
have been sorted out. In general this serves to bolster society’s values.
However, the fabliau and its ancestors seem to work against this proto-
type of felicitous and harmonious resolution, countering it with another
comic universe in which lust, not love, is the norm, and the outcome of
the complications is not harmony, but chaos, ostensibly undermining the
status quo.
In fact Northrop Frye sees these two situations, that is, the typical plot
contained in a play by Plautus and the action in the Shipman’s Tale, for
example, as identical in derivation. The standard Classical comic plot
involves a boy and girl in love who meet an obstacle, usually a father,
which must be overcome. He explains the significance of this model
through literary archetypes and myth/ritual, the ancient variety pitting
father against son, often in competition for the same female. The son
triumphs, therein imbuing comedy with a slightly revolutionary air.
Later, he says, the father/son/woman triangle was transformed, for
example, into the old husband/young lover/young wife configuration
of the fabliau.46
Thus, if we apply this model, we see, in Plautus’ Asinaria, for example,
a father and his son vying for the same woman, but in the Latin Elegiac
Geta, derived from Plautus’ Amphitruo, the situation has evolved into the
prototypical fabliau triangle in which Jupiter deceitfully seduces Alcmena
by assuming her absent husband’s appearance. Therefore, in the
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KATHLEEN A. BISHOP 303

Canterbury Tales we have this latter type of trio reflected in the Miller’s Tale,
the Reeve’s Tale, the Shipman’s Tale, and the Merchant’s Tale. Two of the
tales—the Miller’s and Reeve’s—involve a pair of young men, parodying
Palamon and Arcite in the Knight’s Tale, and in terms of plot, doubling
the complications and fun.
Complications are very much to the point when discussing the fabliau-
type comedy employed by Plautus, by the authors of the Latin Elegiac
comedies, and by Chaucer himself because the plot depends upon a
clever trickster and the deception he masterminds. Chaucer’s fabliaux
all revolve about the duping of a victim. The duper achieves his goal (usu-
ally sex and/or money) in a comic flourish of success. Daun John in the
Shipman’s Tale illustrates this point when he tricks the merchant into lend-
ing him money, he says, “For certein beestes that I moste beye” (B2 1462),
and then returns it to the wife in payment for sex, failing to tell her, of
course, that he is also repaying her husband’s loan.
One thing the persons who inhabit Chaucer’s fabliaux have in com-
mon is that they are all people of means. As members of the robust mid-
dle strata of society, they are prosperous individuals, and money is often
a central concern for them. The Miller’s Tale contains sly comments about
money; John is “a riche gnof” (I 3188), and Absolon has a plan to woo
Alison with cash—”for she was of town” (A 3380). The Friar of the
Summoner’s Tale is driven by monetary concerns, typical of his avaricious
profession. Rather than directing his energies to preaching to save souls,
in the tale he hectors the wealthy Thomas in the hopes of wearing him
down to gain a bequest. Similarly, unlike the admirable Clerk in the General
Prologue, the clerks in the Reeve’s Tale are concerned not with books and
study, but with money and revenge. Both they and the miller engage in
a battle of wits underscored by financial motives. And, again, the key ele-
ment in the Shipman’s Tale is money. The merchant is wealthy and inter-
ested in staying that way. The monk, as outrider, is clearly in command
of abundant reserves, and the wife, like her counterpart from Bath, is
excessively interested in maintaining her luxurious wardrobe. And in the
case of this fabliau, the very plot itself revolves about money and decep-
tion. There is also a vivid realism that enhances the social commentary.
Like the fabliau, Plautine comedy almost always concerns either love
or money, usually both, a pairing that tells us a lot about these comic
worlds and the people who inhabit them. On the one hand, we have a
miser, like Euclio in the Roman or Latin Elegiac Aulularia (or Thomas
in the Summoner’s Tale) who, putting money above life itself, becomes the
classic blocking figure (a stock figure we will look at later in this paper),
or, on the other, we have in the Bacchides the crafty slave Chrysalus who
fleeces his young master’s father out of 200 gold coins for a courtesan,
while convincing the old man that the money is necessary to save the
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boy’s life, and in Persa Dordalus is cleaned out by the slave Toxilus, who
Dordalus believes is working on his behalf. In the Truculentus we have the
situation of a young man who visits his father’s country estate. While
there, a customer, to whom his businessman father had sold some sheep,
arrives and pays the sum owed to the young man, who of course keeps it
for his own use, like the Merchant’s wife in the Shipman’s Tale. Actually,
this particular Canterbury Tale reflects the most common situation in
Plautus’ plays, the young man who is in love and insolvent, amans et egens,
and who must somehow gain the money to attain his desires.
In order to achieve the lustful ends of these young men, Plautus often
makes use of confused or mistaken identity, a particularly cunning form
of deception; the Roman is well-known for his effective use of this device.
The braggart soldier is duped into believing that his mistress is actually
twins in Miles Gloriosus, and in Amphitruo, Jupiter transforms his and
Mercury’s forms into those of the title character and his slave Sosia in
order to seduce the wife of his double, Alcmena. (The Latin Elegiac com-
edy Geta also adapts this situation.) Although Casina is not one of Plautus’
more popular plays today, it was one of his better known comedies in the
Middle Ages, and it is probably his most bawdy and farcical work and thus
most fabliau-like. In this comedy there is an especially interesting
sequence that comprises the comic climax. Like the denouement of the
Miller’s Tale, it involves three participants and mistaken identity resulting
in a comically obscene encounter between two males made possible by
the pitch dark nighttime setting. The victim recognizes the truth of the
matter when he feels the other fellow’s beard! The common thread
in all these situations is a duper who is capable of pulling the wool over
his victim’s eyes, especially when the victim thinks it is he who is in con-
trol. The crowning achievement of Chaucer’s fabliaux in this area is his
ability to undercut the “victor’s” moment of triumph, a classic example
occurring in the Summoner’s Tale when the greedy friar finally receives his
long-awaited “gift” at the sickbed of Thomas after having subjected him
to an interminable, boring lecture:
“Now thanne, put in thyn hand doun by my bak,”
Seyde this man, “and grope wel bihynde.
Bynethe my buttok there shaltow fynde
A thyng that I have hyd in pryvetee.”
...............................
And whan this sike man felte this frere
Aboute his tuwel grope there and heere,
Amydde his hand he leet the frere a fart;
There nys no capul, drawynge in a cart,
That myghte have lete a fart of swich a soun.
(D 2140–43, 2147–51)
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KATHLEEN A. BISHOP 305

George Duckworth’s discussion of Plautus’ ability to depict deception

in his comedies is also illuminating when applied to the fabliaux con-
tained in the Canterbury Tales. He sees the central elements of love and
deception, about which the majority of these plots revolve, as their most
basic and important element. He divides the dupes who are tricked in
these plays into three types: (1) those who pride themselves on their
astuteness but fall into the trap [Simken, Alan and John, Nicholas, the
Friar, the Merchant’s Wife]: (2) those who are forewarned, but still duped
[Simken, Alan and John]: and (3) the duped character who thinks the
duper is working on his behalf [Carpenter John, and the Friar],47 a cat-
egory reminiscent of Per Nykrog’s description of the ideal fabliau cuck-
old who is beaten and content.
Deceit in all its guises is central to all works rooted in the fabliau. In
the Pamphilus, the young virgin Galathea sums up the behavior of men:
. . . many a man has tempted many a maid,
And guileful love has deceived so many girls.
You planned to turn my head by speech or by art,
and it was wrong of you to deceive me with such guile.
Go seek other girls more suited to your filthy ways
whom you can beguile with false promises, with tricks.
(lines 187–92)
Men and their deceitful ways are at the crux of fabliau-type literature,
and for Galathea, who is raped, it seems that her ordeal verges on real
abuse and suffering, or so it appears to a twenty-first century audience.
In dealing with the Old French fabliaux, R. Howard Bloch views them as
scandalous material, rooted in theft, bastardy, sodomy, deceit, and pros-
titution. For him, the body, dismemberment, and castration are at the
heart of the fabliaux, and they are inseparable from suffering and vio-
lence.48 Although Chaucer’s tales are, in general, less violent than the
French, his fabliaux contain a good deal of discomfitures of various types,
and it so happens that the very moments when these things occur are
most often the comic climax—Nicholas’ scalding, which in turn causes
John’s violent fall and broken arm in the Miller’s Tale, the blow to the
Miller’s skull in the Reeve’s Tale—this is the very stuff of slapstick and farce
which is fundamentally cruel. It flouts reason, taste, and fairness.49
Chaucer’s fabliaux follow the lead of earlier examples of this brand of
comedy. Plautus’ plays are absolutely full of references to all kinds of beat-
ings and punishments, as in Persa, where the comic climax involves the
beating of Dordalus. Masters routinely threaten their slaves with death.
For their part, the slaves seem to accept this as a fact of life, and engage
in frequent gallows humor. Although this reflects the harsh reality of
Roman civilization, in the comic world of Plautus’ plays, it is the clever
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306 THE CHAUCER REVIEW

slave who has the brain power to turn the social hierarchy and situation
on its head.
The Latin Elegiac comedies are similar in this regard. In Babio we have
the plotting and counterplotting of Babio and his servant Fodius, who is
having an affair with his wife. Babio plots the death of his wife and the
execution of his rival by hanging, but it is Fodius who succeeds in his plan
of castrating his master! Another classic example of violence occurring
in this context is in the Lidia. Here the young wife is so overcome by her
lust for Pyrrhus that she will do anything to persuade him to become her
lover. The knight agrees to do her bidding but only if she can pass three
tests, as he explains:
“The duke has a falcon which he loves very dearly,
and the concern of the illustrious duke is lavished
on a bird. I want her to kill it. If she refuses,
I won’t believe she can easily deceive her husband.
And if she also plucks five hairs from his beard,
she will the more swiftly entice the man she tries
to entice by prayers. Finally let her succeed
in extracting one of his teeth. If she does,
she will justly have earned my favors.”
(lines 263–71)
Lidia easily accomplishes all three with absolutely no compunction.
Boccaccio (in Decameron 7.9) and Chaucer (in such episodes as the con-
clusions of the Miller’s and Reeve’s Tales) may have found in this story an
example of comic violence which influenced him just as surely as any
comparable Old French fabliau.50
In characters such as the conniving wife Lidia we see one basic type
which is indispensable to fabliau comedy, and which Chaucer utilized in
his creations. Chaucer is perhaps most famous, at least in the mind of the
general reader, for the highly individuated characters he seems to cre-
ate.51 I say “seems” because I believe that, in general, rather too much
emphasis has been placed on Chaucer’s gift for creating unique charac-
ters. Jill Mann has demonstrated the extent to which Chaucer was draw-
ing on types contained in the pre-existing literature of estates satire in
his portraits of the Canterbury pilgrims in the General Prologue.52 Similarly,
it seems to me that although he skillfully individualizes his fabliau per-
sonages, at the same time he draws on traditional comic stock types orig-
inating in Antiquity to realize his own characters.
In Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Rhetoric, we find sketches of three
basic comic characters: the braggart or impostor (alazon), the ironical
person (eiron), and the buffoon (bomolochos). These types help to explain,
or clarify, the later development of the stock characters of New Comedy,
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KATHLEEN A. BISHOP 307

which I believe may be clearly discerned in Chaucer’s cast of characters

in the fabliaux. Like New Comedy, the Chaucerian fabliaux have a reper-
toire of stock characters—the foolish husband, the duplicitous woman,
the scheming young man—all of whom are variously dupe or duper.
These type characters are also exceedingly individualized, far more so
than in either Plautus or the Old French fabliaux, where they also appear.
And in this combination of the general and the particular lies the genius
of Chaucer’s comedy.
In order to discern the New Comic stock figures, sometimes one must
dig a bit beneath the surface, prompting some scholars to ask where are
the stock types, like the braggart soldier, the answer to this question being
that this figure has been transformed into characters like Nicholas in the
Miller’s Tale, who is the very picture of the swaggering, endlessly confi-
dent young man who overestimates his abilities. Additionally, one can see
traces of the flattering, using parasitus, immortalized as Gnatho in
Eunuchus, Terence’s most Plautine play (or in Peniculus in Plautus’ own
Menaechmi), in characters like the Monk in the Shipman’s Tale or the Friar
in the Summoner’s Tale.
Probably the most essential stock character in Roman comedy is the
senex; E. K. Chambers terms these men “churls who work while the whole
world plays.”53 This blocking figure frustrates the desires of other char-
acters and will not have fun. He is old, and also often angry and stingy.
Thus misers like Euclio in Aulularia or Thomas in the Summoner’s Tale
and the Merchant in the Shipman’s Tale form what can be seen as a sub-
category of the senex.
The senex is vital to the comic plot, standing in the way of the festivi-
ties, thwarting the desires of others, ostensibly including those of audi-
ence and author. The Prologue of Casina urges viewers to cast aside their
cares and take a holiday, just as surely as Chaucer urges his reader not to
confuse earnestness with game.
The Canterbury Tales includes many varieties of blocking figures who
spoil things for funseekers like Perkyn Revellour. The Reeve, for reasons
that become obvious, will not play along with his old rival, the Miller.
The fabliaux provide a wealth of examples. The Merchant in the
Shipman’s Tale, who must be coaxed out of his counting house, is seen
by many critics in these terms, and the priest in the Reeve’s Tale who ruins
the chances for the marriage of his illegitimate daughter because of elit-
ist concerns is another blocking figure, as is Malyne’s stepfather Symkyn.
Carpenter John is both a thwarting agent and a senex amans, the foolish
old lover of Roman comedy such as Megadorus in Aulularia, Lysidamus
in Casina, or Demipho in Mercator. At the close of the last play men-
tioned, a young male character proposes a statute to control these phi-
landering old men:
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308 THE CHAUCER REVIEW

We need a law applying to old men.

Social insecurity, so to speak.
Whenever a man is sixty or over,
Married or celibate, no matter,
And he takes up wenching again,
He will be subject to public ridicule
And expensive private shame.
(lines1530–36)54
Like many senexes, John in the Miller’s Tale (or January, or the Wife of
Bath’s unfortunate husbands) is also immoderately jealous, and because
of this, he keeps his mate “caged.” He worries about being cuckolded,
with just cause, and is duped by younger men.
Overall, Chaucer’s cuckolds cut a ridiculous figure. But what makes
these men special is that he humanizes them, to the point where we come
close to pitying them. In their own way, they love their wives, and they
are mercilessly hurt. In the Latin Elegiac Babio, the title character shares
a situation similar to John’s; both are aged lovers cuckolded by young
rivals who live under their own roofs (as January is betrayed by Damian,
“O famulier foo, that his servyce bedeth!” IV.1784), and both are physi-
cally harmed at the conclusion, with seemingly little or no sympathy from
their wedded wives.
One of the things all such women have in common is their deceitful
natures, a fact with which the Host is well acquainted:

Lo, whiche sleightes and subtilitees

In wommen been! For ay as bisy as bees
Been they, us sely men for to deceyve,
And from the soothe evere wol they weyve.
(E 2421–44)
These derogatory statements seem to be supported by many of Plautus’
female characters like the Roman matrons Artemona in Asinaria or
Cleostrata in Casina or the many deceptive and grasping courtesans rep-
resented by women such as Phronesium in Truculentus. Likewise the
women of Chaucer’s fabliaux are conniving and sneaky. Arnulf of
Orléans, author of the Lidia, puts it this way:
“A woman steals away fidelity with deceit and gravity with guile. By art,
deceit, study, she steals, she seduces, she ensnares; a woman becomes the
virus that destroys virility” (127).
And a fourteenth century Latin fable by Adolphus has this to say about
feminine wile: “As numerous as the sands of the seas and the stars of the
heavens/Are the deceits of a depraved woman.”55
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KATHLEEN A. BISHOP 309

Aside from their reputation as deceiving daughters of Eve, women in

the Middle Ages were characterized as nymphomaniacs whom no earthly
man could satisfy.56 Three instances, among many others, of unbridled
female lust are Lidia whom even ten men cannot satisfy; the title char-
acter of another Latin Elegiac comedy, Alda, an innocent girl who is
tricked into having sexual relations, but who is then insatiable, and the
comparably naive, albeit unstoppable, young girl of Decameron 3.10
(“Putting the Devil Back in Hell”). An older counterpart to these women
would of course be the Wife of Bath, who proves that advanced age has
no effect on insatiable feminine desire.
From the masculine point of view, women’s “true nature” covertly con-
firms the male agenda of its own innate superiority and consequent
license, supported by religious, philosophical, and literary authority.
Biblical backing of male dominance abounds everywhere from Genesis
to Paul, and to explain women’s very apparent sexual needs, Albertus
Magnus writes in his Quaestiones de animalibus:
Matter is said to seek form and woman man not because woman
should desire intercourse with man. Rather, this is the meaning:
that everything imperfect naturally desires to be perfected and
woman is an imperfect human in comparison to man; thus every
woman desires to exist under [the form of] manliness. For there
is no woman who would not naturally want to shed the definition
of femininity and put on masculinity.57
Once it is established that women ardently, and naturally, desire union
with men, it is but a short step to condoning male aggression because, as
the widely circulated pseudo-Galenic On Human Generation explains, “If
in the beginning the act displeases the women raped, yet in the end it
pleases [them] because of the weakness of the flesh.”58
These representative examples serve to explain the disturbing pres-
ence of rape in the comic literature of the Middle Ages based on Classical
precedent. In Amores 1.5, the Ovidian narrator cheerfully overcomes
Corinna, who is secretly happy about it, and Plautus’ plays are very cava-
lier about young gentlemen forcing themselves on women in the heat of
the moment.
This is clearly echoed in the most popular Latin comedy Pamphilus, which
Chaucer knew, in which the title character not only brutally rapes59
Galathea, but then, when the deed is done, blames the victim for his assault:
Still, it wasn’t my fault that I sinned. . . .
Your passionate eyes, your fair skin, your youthful face,
Embraces, sweet kisses, flirtations—
These were my incitements to crime!
These were the first cause of my sin.
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310 THE CHAUCER REVIEW

With such encouragement, love absolutely insisted;

My madness swelled; the heat of lust burned like a frenzy.
Your charms drove me to do this sinful deed.
That most vile error overthrew my reason,
Making pity deaf to your entreaties.
But for those crimes of which I stand accused,
It is rightly you who are guilty;
You were the inspiration, the first cause of this sin.
(lines 704–18)
One can easily see all of the rationales discussed above reflected in the
Wife of Bath’s Prologue, and in Nicholas’s forceful approach to Alison in
the Miller’s Tale because, as the narrator of the tale says, “For som folk wol
ben wonnen . . . for strokes” (I,3381–82). This attitude toward females is
also evident in the action of the Reeve’s Tale, where women are ambushed,
raped, and happily accept it. As far as the Reeve’s wife goes, “So myrie a
fit ne hadde she nat ful yoore” (A 4230), and the following morning, her
daughter fancies herself a courtly lady being reluctantly left by her knight
Alan. However, the obvious problem about all this joy is that the writer
is a male writing in a male-centered tradition.
Much has been written in recent years by critics on Chaucer’s attitude
towards women.60 Although he includes much that can be construed as
being offensive to women, it must be acknowledged that he is also extra-
ordinarily sensitive to women in the majority of his writings; perhaps it
could be said that he passed on some antifeminist lore, but was also a
champion of female power.
Jill Mann perceptively discussed this much-debated paradox in her
1990 inaugural lecture at Cambridge, Apologies To Women:
Comedy here [in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale] unmasks the ritual com-
bination of antifeminism and apology and demonstrates its fail-
ure to connect with the real dynamics of events; it is merely part
of a protective shield of rhetoric whose role is to save men from
the necessity to think seriously about their own lives—easier just
to blame it on God, on destiny, or on women. It is thus precisely
the ridicule with which he invests this apology to women that tes-
tifies, paradoxically, to the seriousness of Chaucer’s thinking about
them, and what literature does to them, and that convinces me
that he alone, of all the male writers I have instanced, has an idea
of what a real apology to a woman would look like.61
Although at the dawning of the new millennium we may question the
treatment of women in and out of literature, in the world of fabliau com-
edy there are no such questions. For the women in this comic sphere,
the enemy is not men but, rather, anything which gets in the way of achiev-
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KATHLEEN A. BISHOP 311

ing their goals, such as the blocking senex. Indeed their goal often is a
man, if he is young and attractive and not their husband. For their part,
these young men go out of their way to hold up their end of the trian-
gle, but what these deceiving young men and women have in common
is a mastery of language.
Language is key, and it seems to me one of the most important differ-
ences between the writers of the Old French fabliaux and writers like
Plautus and Chaucer is the degree to which the characters created by the
latter are distinguished by their dazzling verbal skills. Like Plautus’ trick-
ster-slaves, the heroes and heroines of Chaucer’s fabliaux embody elo-
quence of the self-serving variety. For example, in the Shipman’s Tale the
comedy unfolds especially through the virtuosity of the verbal tour-de-
force of the wife as when, her back against the wall at the conclusion of
the tale, she succeeds in extricating herself from a potentially nasty situ-
ation by manipulating language and husband at once. As Ovid says in the
Ars amatoria, “Every woman knows just how / To fleece her panting lover”
(I.420–21). The plot of Plautus’s Curculio is similar to the Shipman’s Tale
in some ways, wherein the money Phaedromus needs to purchase his
sweetheart is deceptively procured from a banker and then used to buy
the young woman, Planesium. Likewise, in the Miller’s Tale Nicholas suc-
ceeds because of his crafty plan, but his real strength proceeds from his
oratorical proficiency. He shines with the verbal dexterity of a Pseudolus.
It goes without saying that all these figures have the brain power to mas-
termind their ingenious schemes, but their especial strength resides in
their utter self-assurance that they can make their plans work because of
the deserved confidence they have in their silver tongues, and all we, the
audience, need do is sit back and hear them speak and deliver.
Chaucer’s fast-talking young men are worthy matches for the women.
No matter what their occupations, they have one lustful aim, and they
employ all of their considerable wits to satisfy their appetites, like the
extravagantly confident “hende” Nicholas, whose over-compensatory
scheme rivals that of Tom Sawyer. Much has been written on Chaucer’s
individualized characterizations of these men, but Nicholas, along with
Alan and John, and Symkyn, with his walking arsenal, share many char-
acteristics with the braggart soldiers of New Comedy, the classic example
being Pyrgopolynices, the Miles gloriosus. What makes all these swagger-
ing fellows so humorous is that they are duped just like their adversaries
to whom they feel so clearly superior. In the Miller’s Tale, Nicholas’ undo-
ing stems directly from the overconfidence he has in his abilities; simi-
larly, in the Reeve’s Tale, Alan and John overestimate the ease with which
they will dupe the miller. Northrop Frye has observed that comedy, even
over the course of 2,000 years, has been remarkably tenacious in main-
taining character types, the example he gives being Charlie Chaplin’s
film persona as a clearly recognizable miles gloriosus.62
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312 THE CHAUCER REVIEW

Along with the attributes of the miles gloriosus, the clerks may also be
associated with the stock “young man in love,” the adulescens, who appears
in nearly every one of Plautus’ plays. These young men of the fabliaux and
those of the Latin Elegiac comedies like Babio, or Querolus (the “com-
plainer”), parody the lovers of Classical and Medieval “complaint” liter-
ature like those in Ovid’s Heroides, or the comic Ars amatoria and Amores,
or in Chaucer’s own Troilus and Criseyde or the Book of the Duchess. In par-
ticular, the young duo of the Miller’s Tale parody the true young lovers of
the Knight’s Tale.
Lastly, as mentioned above, the three clerks embody the characteris-
tics of another stock type—the wily, self-confident slave (slavuus) whose
function it is in New Comedy to provide humor, and devise deceptions.
The conclusions of the Reeve’s and Miller’s Tales make both these attrib-
utes clear when we see the brilliance of the ruses dissolving into the comic
mayhem of misdirected blows and kisses!
Chaucer’s clerks are clearly in the tradition of deceptive, smart Roman
slaves like Phormio, Davus, or Pseudolus. And in terms of transmission
between Roman comedy and the fabliaux the Latin Elegiac comedies
supply the link; the remnants of the wily Plautine slave are evident in
comic stock figures like Fodius in Babio, Davus in Baucis et Thraso, Spurius
in Alda, and Birria and Geta in Amphitryon.63
The appeal of this character is universal and timeless, as is attested by
the Broadway hit revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,
starring Nathan Lane, who won the 1996 Tony award for his portrayal of
the role of Pseudolus (created by the great Zero Mostel).
In characters like Pseudolus we see Plautus turning societal norms on
their head, and, likewise, in general, Chaucer tends to break down class
distinctions in the Canterbury Tales, based on a mode of thought in which
birth is not necessarily the primary determining factor, but rather nobil-
ity of character, as in the Franklin’s and Wife of Bath’s Tales. Likewise, in
the fabliaux a new order reigns. In his discussion of the subject, Erich
Segal asserts that Plautus’ comedy “creates a new . . . aristocracy, in which
wit, not birth distinguishes the ruler from the ruled.” 64 Just so, in
Chaucer’s fabliaux, craftiness is king. Thus we have older, usually more
respected members of society, such as January or Carpenter John, taking
orders from juniors in scenes reminiscent of Plautine slaves directing
their masters’ activities, as when Argyrippus follows the lead of the slave
Leonida in Asinaria and even kisses his foot when so ordered.
Plautus had excused himself before any detractors on the basis of
truth. The playwright set many of his comedies in Greece, which to the
Roman way of thinking was the exact opposite of its own reality, especially
regarding morality. As they saw it, the Greeks lacked gravitas and pietas;
they were profligate, wanton, and known liars, as illustrated by the Trojan
Horse. So, if there are any improprieties present in Plautus’ plays, he
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KATHLEEN A. BISHOP 313

seems to imply that we should blame it on Hellenistic shortcomings.

Historically, Plautus has been the target of every kind of critical attack,
but the most prevalent and long-standing have been the charges that he
panders to low-brow tastes and that the content and language of his plays
are indecent. But William S. Anderson contends that these charges are
elitist and unfair:
The bias of early envy and later Augustan stylistic purity should
not be allowed to fix on Plautus the snobbish claim that he was
knowingly vulgar and appealed only to vulgar tastes with crude
comic routines, inconsequential plots, and low language. Plautus
was popular because he appealed across the board to Romans of
all classes and levels of culture. If we must talk about vulgarity, we
must recognize that Plautine vulgarity functions as a necessary
clash between the corrupt and arrogant representatives of family
authority and prosperity and, in contrast, the earthy (vulgar, if you
insist) roguish heroes with whom, by Plautus’ comic art, we are
solidly aligned.65
For his part, politically, Chaucer, the man, moved in a particularly dan-
gerous arena, but he appears to have had extremely good judgment
about both his career and his art. Nevertheless, one may venture to say
that Chaucer, and others like him throughout history, do subtly con-
tribute not to the overthrow of a system, but to its gradual reformation.
On the other hand, it is equally true that boisterous comedy like that
in the fabliau or in Plautus’ comedies is actually conservative, function-
ing to maintain the status quo by acting as a type of “holiday” relief.
Mikhail Bakhtin views comedy in this way, seeing it as allied with carni-
val license when the world is turned upsidedown for a time, allowing a
safe release of societal pressures.66 Indeed this type of comedy could be
viewed as undermining the stability of marriage and the values of soci-
ety, but both authors petition their audiences to approach their works as
an entertainment, and in the prologue to Casina Plautus urges:
Now let me earnest-nestly urge you pay us close attention.

Away with sorrowing, thoughts about your

borrowing, not to mention
work! It’s fun and games, so put your cares away,
Why even bankers get a holiday!
(21–24)

Like fourteenth-century England, Rome in the second century B.C.E. was

a highly controlled society, and, like Plautus, Chaucer warns us not to
make earnest of game. Only by considering the repressive nature of
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314 THE CHAUCER REVIEW

Chaucer’s society may we accurately gauge the extent of his artistic

license, the possible dangers to which he was willing to expose himself,
and the effect his work had on the individuals around him and on soci-
ety as a whole. Perhaps in the similarities of the societies of the ancient
Rome of Plautus and the Middle Ages we discover one of the keys to
explain the many affinities in the types of bawdy comedy which we have
explored.

1. Edmond Faral, “Le Fabliau latin au moyen âge,” Romania 50 (1924): 321–85.
2. Derek Pearsall, “Versions of Comedy in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales,” in Joerg O.
Fichte, ed., Chaucer’s Frame Tales—The Physical and the Metaphysical (Cambridge, Engl.,
1987), 35–49. Paul G. Ruggiers, “A Vocabulary for Chaucerian Comedy: A Preliminary
Sketch,” in Jess B. Bessinger and Robert R. Raymo, eds., Medieval Studies in Honor of Lillian
Herlands Hornstein (New York, 1976), 193–225.
3. Peter Dronke, “The Rise of the Medieval Fabliau: Latin and Vernacular Evidence,”
Romanische Forschungen 85 (1973): 275–97.
4. Robert S. Miola, Shakespeare and Classical Comedy—The Influence of Plautus and Terence
(Oxford, 1994), 16.
5. Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence (Oxford, 1973).
6. Gilbert Norwood, Plautus and Terence (London, 1932), 27–28.
7. Erich Segal, Roman Laughter—The Comedy of Plautus (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), 1.
8. Faral, 321–85.
9. Paul G. Ruggiers, The Art of the Canterbury Tales (Madison, 1965), 144.
10. L. D. Reynolds, Texts and Transmission (Oxford, 1983), 419.
11. Keith Bate, “Twelfth-Century Latin Comedies and the Theatre,” ARCA 3: Papers of
the Liverpool Latin Seminar 2 (1979): 249–62.
12. Robert Levine, “Pandarus As Davus,” Neuphilogische Mitteilungen 92:4 (1991): 463–68.
On the availability of manuscripts, see also Max Manitius, Geschichte der Lateinischen Literatur
des Mittelalters, vol. 3 (Munich, 1931), 17–18.
13. Kathleen A. Bishop, Classical and Medieval Influences on Chaucer’s Fabliau Comedy, diss.,
New York University, 1998 (Ann Arbor, 1998), 223–34.
14. Bate, 253.
15. Reynolds, 302–07.
16. All citations from the Latin Elegiac comedies are from Alison Goddard Elliott’s edi-
tion: Seven Medieval Latin Comedies (New York, 1984).
17. “Latin comedies” was preferred by Gustave Cohen, who published a complete col-
lection of the comedies, La “Comédie” Latine en France au XIIe Siècle, 2 vols. (Paris, 1931).
Faral had earlier designated them “Latin Fabliaux” (321); Ian Thompson calls them Latin
comic tales: “Latin ‘Elegiac Comedy’ of the Twelfth Century,” in Paul G. Ruggiers, Versions
of Medieval Comedy (Norman, 1977), 51–66. In the case of Le tribus puellis, Stefano Pittaluga
uses the term “Ovidian comedy” in “Le De tribus puellis,” Comedie Ovidenne,’” Vita Latina
61 (1976): 2–13.
18. Cohen, vol. I, viii–xv.
19. Faral, 327.
20. F. J. E. Raby, A History of Secular Latin Poetry in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1934), vol. II, 54.
21. Faral, 383. The following translation is mine.
22. Per Nykrog, Les Fabliaux (1956, Geneva), 1973), l.
23. Charles Mills Gayley, Representative English Comedies from the Beginnings to Shakespeare
(New York, 1903), xviii.
24. Malcolm M. Brennan, Babio: A Twelfth Century Profane Comedy, The Citadel
Monograph Series 7 (Charleston, 1968), 34.
25. Faral, 375; Cohen, vol. I, xlv.
26. Richard Axton, European Drama of the Early Middle Ages (London, 1974), 30. See also
P. O. Bronsted, “The Medieval Comedia: Choice of Form,” Classica et Mediaevalia 31 (1975):
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258–68, on the debt of the Latin Elegiac comedy to Roman elegy, and Pittaluga, “Le De
tribus puellis, ‘comedie Ovidienne’” on the connection to Ovid.
27. Faral, 380.
28. Brennan, 14.
29. On the availability of Latin material in the later Middle Ages, see Elliott’s
Introduction to Seven Medieval Latin Comedies; Peter Dronke and Jill Mann, “Chaucer and
the Medieval Latin Poets,” in D. S. Brewer, ed., Geoffrey Chaucer (London, 1974), 154–83;
Harry F. Williams, “In Quest of Fabliau Ancestry,” Romance Quarterly 33 (1986): 387–92; J.
Ch. Payen, “Goliardisme et Fabliaux,” in Jan Goossens and Timothy Sodman, eds., Third
International Beast Epic, Fable and Fabliau Colloquium Munster 1979 Proceedings (Köln Wien,
1981), 267–89; Charles S. Baldwin, Medieval Rhetoric and Poetic (Gloucester, 1959); Ernst
Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask (New
York, 1963); Cohen, La “comédie.”
30. Thomas J. Garbaty believes that Chaucer first became acquainted with the Pamphilus
in El Libro de Buen Amor, which he also knew (“The Pamphilus Tradition in Ruiz and
Chaucer,” PQ 46 (1967): 457–70). Also see Kathleen A. Bishop, “El Libro de Buen Amor and
the Canterbury Tales,” in Nancy M. Reale and Ruth E. Sternglantz, eds, Satura: Essays on
Medieval Religion and Education in Honor of Robert R. Raymo (Paul Watkins, forthcoming).
31. An early fourteenth-century Latin analogue to the Merchant’s Tale exists, a fable by
Adolphus, which concerns a woman who cuckolds her blind husband in a pear tree. When
he miraculously regains his sight, she claims she was instructed to do as she did by a dream.
See Larry Benson and Theodore M. Andersson, eds., The Literary Context of Chaucer’s
Fabliaux (New York, 1971), 234–37.
32. Brennan, 4. Keith Bate, ed. Three Latin Comedies, Toronto Medieval Latin Texts, 6
(Toronto, 1976), 7.
33. Elliott, xl. See also Edmond Faral, ed. and trans., De Babione: poeme comique du XIIe
Siecle (Paris, 1948).
34. Morawski in Elliott, 14, n. 1.
35. Roy Pearcy states that Chaucer’s fabliaux are more closely related to the Latin
Elegiac comedies (at least some of which he probably knew) than they are to the Old
French fabliaux, (“The Genre of Chaucer’s Fabliau-Tales,” in L. A. Arrathoon, ed. Chaucer
and the Craft of Fiction (Rochester, MI, 1986), 329–84). Dronke says that the Latin Elegiac
comedies clearly influenced the Old French fabliaux and that “fabliau is one of the great
constants in European literature” (“Rise of Medieval Fabliau: Latin and Vernacular
Evidence,” 279). Jane Frank Allinson conceives of the fabliaux as so diverse in all aspects
that she questions whether they constitute a genre at all (“The Fabliau in Medieval
England,” diss., University of Connecticut, 1981). H. Tiemann considers the fabliaux the
product of multiple influences, including medieval Latin comedy: (see Harry F. Williams,
“In Quest of Fabliau Ancestry,” Romance Quarterly 33 (1986): 388). Likewise, Jurgen Beyer
sees the coarse material known as schwank as very widespread and as affecting both the
Latin Elegiac comedies and the Old French fabliaux (“The Morality of the Amoral,” in
Thomas D. Cooke and Benjamin L. Honeycutt, eds., The Humor of the Fabliaux: A Collection
of Critical Essays (Columbia, 1974), 15–42).
36. Grace Frank, The Medieval French Drama (Oxford, 1954), 211.
37. E. K. Chambers, The Medieval Stage, vol. II (London, 1903), 213.
38. Ian Thomson and Louis Perraud, Ten Latin Schooltexts of the Later Middle Ages,
Mediaeval Studies, vol. 6 (Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter, 1990), 22–24.
39. Other than the Latin comedies, Peter Dronke also sees the Cambridge Songs as vir-
tually indistinguishable from the fabliaux, stating that if they were written in French, no
one would hesitate to label them fabliaux (“The Rise of the Medieval Fabliau: Latin and
Vernacular Evidence,” 279). Marc Wolterbeek discusses three genres related to both the
Latin Elegiac comedies and the fabliau in Comic Tales of the Middle Ages (New York, 1991).
He feels that the ridicula, nugae, and satyrae have all been neglected by scholars of
medieval comic literature. The ridicula appear to be most nearly allied to the fabliau—
”funny stories in rhythmic verse,” dealing with cleverness and deception, most often con-
taining comic inversion, i.e., the biter bit. He cites one neglected ridicula in particular, the
Unibos, which he sees as a “full length fabliaux.” All of these Latin works add to the case
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which may be made that Chaucer’s fabliaux were heir to a tradition much broader than
just the Old French tales usually cited.
40. Joseph Bédier, Les Fabliaux, 5th ed. (Paris, 1925). Nykrog, 30–37.
41. All citations from Chaucer are from L.D. Benson’s edition: The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd
ed. (Boston, 1987).
42. Thomson and Perraud, 193.
43. Eric Bentley, The Life of the Drama (New York, 1965), 311.
44. Faral, 327.
45. William S. Anderson, Barbarian Play—Plautus’ Roman Comedy (Toronto, 1993), 61.
46. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism—Four Essays (Princeton, 1957), 163–164.
47. George Duckworth, The Nature of Roman Comedy (Princeton, 1951), 169.
48. R. Howard Bloch, The Scandal of the Fabliau (Chicago, 1986).
49. Albert Bermel, Farce—A History From Aristophanes to Woody Allen (Carbondale,
1982), 21.
50. Why is it that the pain of others makes us laugh? Comic theory may provide an
answer. Aristotle thought that discomfiture and ugliness were sources of humor as long as
they did not involve real suffering to the subject (Poetics 1449b). Here we see the basis of
the Superiority Theory, the oldest explanation of comedy as defined in modern theoreti-
cal paradigms.
51. Just a few of the many pieces written on Chaucer’s genius for creating character:
George Lyman Kittredge, Chaucer and His Poetry (1915; Cambridge, Mass. 1946); John M.
Manly, Some New Light on Chaucer (New York, 1926); Marchette Chute, Geoffrey Chaucer of
England (New York, 1946); R. M. Lumiansky, Of Sondry Folk: Dramatic Principle in the
Canterbury Tales (Austin, 1955); J. A. W. Bennett, Chaucer at Oxford and at Cambridge
(Toronto, 1974); Donald R. Howard, The Idea of the Canterbury Tales (Berkeley, 1976);
Robert Burlin, Chaucerian Fiction (Princeton, 1977); Traugott Lawler, The One and The Many
in the Canterbury Tales (Hamden, CT, 1980); Helen Cooper, The Structure of the Canterbury
Tales (London, 1983); Erik Hertog, Chaucer’s Fabliaux As Analogues (Leuven, 1991).
52. Jill Mann, Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire (Cambridge, Eng., 1973).
53. E. K. Chambers, The Medieval Stage (London, 1903), 163.
54. All citations from Plautus are from David R. Slavitt and Palmer Bovie’s edition:
Plautus, The Comedies, 4 vols. (Baltimore, 1995).
55. Benson and Andersson, 235.
56. This is an interesting alternate to the popular late twentieth-century anti-feminist
notion of women as “frigid,” and modern male mysognists certainly do not denigrate
women by claiming that they are more clever than they!
57. Joan Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Engl., 1993), 160.
58. Cadden, 95.
59. However, Thomson and Perraud point out that Galathea’s cries during her deflo-
ration are “meant to be taken as the protest of innocence which convention demanded
rather than the anguished cry of the rape victim. Whatever our real-life, twentieth-century
sympathies may be, they should not cloud our interpretation of the medieval writer’s
intent. To understand a literary convention is not necessarily to condone the attitude it
implies” (160). See also L. Friedman, “Gradus Amoris,” Romance Philology 19 (1965):
167–77; Rochelle Semmel Albin, “Psychological Studies of Rape,” Signs 3 (1977): 423–35;
and L. C. Curran, “Rape and Rape Victims,” Arethusa 11 (1978): 213–41.
60. See, for example, Francis Alvin Knittel, “Women in Chaucer’s Fabliaux,” diss.,
University of Colorado at Boulder, 1961; Norris Lacy, Reading Fabliaux (Birmingham:
Summa Pub., 1999); Howard Bloch, Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic
Love (Chicago, 1991); Carolyn Dinshaw, Chaucer’s Sexual Politics (Madison, 1989); Mary
Carruthers, “The Wife of Bath and the Painting of Lions,” PMLA 94 (1979): 209–18;
Richard Firth Green, “Chaucer’s Victimized Women,” SAC 10 (1988): 3–21; and Jill Mann,
Geoffrey Chaucer (Atlantic Highlands, 1991). Perhaps we should also keep in mind the neb-
ulous charge of “raptus” made against Chaucer himself: see Donald Howard, Chaucer and
the Medieval World (London, 1987), 317.
61. Jill Mann, Apologies to Women (Cambridge, Engl. 1991), 30.
62. Frye, 163.
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63. Faral, 382.

64. Segal, 104.
65. Anderson, 140.
66. Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolski
(Cambridge, Mass. 1968). On Plautus, see also Anthony Corbeill, Controlling Laughter—
Political Humor In The Late Roman Republic (Princeton, 1996).