In Shakespeare
the commonest matter-of-fact has a romantic grace about it; or seems
to float with the breath of imagination in a freer element. No one
could have more depth of feeling or observation than Chaucer, but he
wanted resources of invention to lay open the stores of nature or
the human heart with the same radiant light that Shakespeare has
done. However fine or profound the thought, we know what was coming,
whereas the effect of reading Shakespeare is 'like the eye of
vassalage encountering majesty'. Chaucer's mind was consecutive,
rather than discursive. He arrived at truth through a certain
process; Shakespeare saw everything by intuition, Chaucer had great
variety of power, but he could do only one thing at once. He set
himself to work on a particular subject. His ideas were kept
separate, labelled, ticketed and parcelled out in a set form, in
pews and compartments by themselves. They did not play into one
another's hands. They did not re-act upon one another, as the
blower's breath moulds the yielding glass. There is something hard
and dry in them. What is the most wonderful thing in Shakespeare's
faculties is their excessive sociability, and how they gossiped and
compared notes together.
We must conclude this criticism; and we will do it with a quotation
or two. One of the most beautiful passages in Chaucer's tale is the
description of Cresseide's first avowal of her love:
And as the new abashed nightingale,
That stinteth first when she beginneth sing,
When that she heareth any herde's tale,
Or in the hedges any wight stirring,
And, after, sicker doth her voice outring;
Right so Cresseide, when that her dread stent,
Opened her heart, and told him her intent.
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