The Tale of Melibee and the Crisis at Westminster, November, 1387

Abstract

The Tale ofMelibee and the Crisis at Westminster, November, 1387 William Askins Community College ofPhiladelphia Te view that a tale widely regarded as lifeless has anything to do with anyone's life, let alone Chaucer's, might strike the reader as a dreary imposition. Distaste for The Tale ofMelibee was less firmly entrenched when, in an essay written during World War II, Gardiner Stillwell argued that the piece must have at least engaged Chaucer's immediate audience. 1 Though Stillwell's argument has to be revised in the light ofrecent histor­ ical scholarship, his critical stance still seems defensible if only because it allows Chaucer his genius and successfully undercuts such notions as the idea that the poet translated a French version ofAlbertano ofBrescia'sLiber consolationis et consilii only because it was popular or because he hoped that an extravagantdisplay ofdullness wouldprove amusing to those gifted with an equally extravagant sense of humor. If it is still possible to assume that Chaucer was an artist who consistently knew what he was about, it might prove worthwhile to examine the tale within the milieu into which it was introduced, a milieu in which, among other things, people's lives were at stake. It is no longer possible to subscribe to Stillwell's attempt to validate the Melibee in terms of its supposedly pacifistic content. J. J. N. Palmer has demolished the notion that pacifism was an issue atthe court ofRichard II.2 To be sure, Albertano ofBrescia was like Chaucer a soldier and prisoner of war who refers to his martial career and incarceration in his work, and the Liber consolationis et consilii itselfcontains a detailed chapter on the just warsummarized in Chaucer's translation, as well as a chapter on munitions 1 Gardiner Stillwell, "The Political Meaning of Chaucer's Tale ofMeiibee," Speculum 19 (1944): 433-44. 2 J. J. N. Palmer, "English Foreign Policy: 1388-99," in F. R. H. du Boulay and C. M. Barron, eds., The Reign of Richard II: Essays in Honor of May McKisack (University of London: Athlone Press, 1971), pp. 75-107. 103 FIFTH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS in which Albertano argues that for safety's sake the prudent might do well to stockpile weapons.3 This,needless to say, is an idea that has had a life of its own, and one that wouldhardly have surprised Chaucer. Were it not for the Anglo-French truce in effect during his tenure as clerk of the works, Chaucer, like those who held the office before him, would have been responsible not only for paying off gardeners and the carpenters who knocked offhammer-beam roofs but also for overseeing the movement of military supplies. Chaucer's immediate predecessors in that office outfitted the army Bishop Despenser took to Flanders in 1383 and until 1389 were involved in the transportation of cannon, gunpowder, and missiles to the English garrisons along the Finistere peninsula in Brittany, scene of The Franklin's Tale and scene too of what one historian has called an interna­ tional "arms race."4 Even while Chaucer toyed with the idea of The Canter­ bury Tales, his son, Thomas, sailed from Plymouth in the summer of 1386 with the army of the duke of Lancaster,offto the foreign wars like his father and grandfather before him.5 Rather than regard the Melibee against the internationalbackdrop of the Hundred Years' War,it seems more appropri­ ately read within the context of national politics, the English scene. Some sense of the poet's orientation here is suggested by the study of contemporaries who lived roughly parallel lives. One such person, deserv­ ing of more attention, isJohn Thorpe,a squire mentioned with Chaucer in the Wardrobe Rolls for 1368.6 After running afoul of the law for assaulting the countess of Norfolk, and after apparently getting for himself a reputa­ tion as a ladies' man, a weakness for which he was taken to task by no less a scold than Walter Hilton,John Thorpe bedded down with the civil service, 3 See the chapterheaded "Casus quibus licitepugnarepossumus" in Albertani Brixiensis, Liber consolationis et constlzi", ed. Thor Sundby (London: Chaucer Society, 1873), pp. 108-119, as well as the chapter "De...