But such a vessel ’tis that floats but for
The surge that next approaches. He much desires
To have some speech with you — lo, he appears. 85
Enter Theseus, Hippolyta, Emilia, and Arcite in a chair borne by attendants
Pal. O — miserable end of our alliance!
The gods are mighty. Arcite, if thy heart,
Thy worthy manly heart, be yet unbroken,
Give me thy last words. I am Palamon,
One that yet loves thee dying.
Arc. Take Emilia,
And with her all the world’s joy. Reach thy hand —
Farewell — I have told my last hour. I was false,
Yet never treacherous. Forgive me, cousin —
One kiss from fair Emilia — (they kiss) ’tis done.
Take her; I die. He dies
Pal. Thy brave soul seek Elysium. 95
Emi. (to Arcite’s body)
I’ll close thine eyes, Prince. Blessèd souls be with thee.
Thou art a right good man, and, while I live,
This day I give to tears.
Pal. And I to honour.
The. In this place first you fought, e’en very here
I sundered you. Acknowledge to the gods 100
Our thanks that you are living.
His part is played, and, though it were too short,
He did it well. Your day is lengthened and
The blissful dew of heaven does arrouse you.
The powerful Venus well hath graced her altar, 105
And given you your love; our master, Mars,
Hath vouched his oracle, and to Arcite gave
The grace of the contention. So the deities
Have showed due justice. — Bear this hence.
[Exeunt attendants with Arcite’s corpse]
Pal. O cousin,
That we should things desire which do cost us 110
Did play a subtler game — the conquered triumphs,
The victor has the loss. Yet in the passage
The gods have been most equal. Palamon, 115
Your kinsman hath confessed the right o’th’ lady
Did lie in you, for you first saw her and
Even then proclaimed your fancy. He restored her
As your stol’n jewel, and desired your spirit
To send him hence forgiven. The gods my justice 120
Take from my hand, and they themselves become
The executioners. Lead your lady off,
And call your lovers from the stage of death,
Whom I adopt my friends. A day or two
Let us look sadly and give grace unto 125
The funeral of Arcite, in whose end
The visages of bridegrooms we’ll put on
And smile with Palamon, for whom an hour,
But one hour since, I was as dearly sorry
As glad of Arcite, and am now as glad 130
As for him sorry. O you heavenly charmers,
What things you make of us! For what we lack
We laugh, for what we have, are sorry; still
Are children in some kind. Let us be thankful
For that which is, and with you leave dispute 135
That are above our question. Let’s go off
And bear us like the time. Flourish. Exeunt
Epilogue
Enter Epilogue
Epi.
I — would now ask ye how ye like the play,
But, as it is with schoolboys, cannot say.
I — am cruel fearful. Pray yet stay awhile,
And let me look upon ye. No man smile?
Then it goes hard, I see. He that has 5
Loved a young handsome wench, then, show his face —
’Tis strange if none be here — and, if he will,
Against his conscience let him hiss and kill
Our market.’ Tis in vain, I see, to stay ye. 10
Have at the worst can come, then! Now, what say ye?
And yet mistake me not — I am not bold —
We have no such cause. If the tale we have told —
For ’tis no other — any way content ye,
For to that honest purpose it was meant ye,
We have our end; and ye shall have ere long, 15
I — dare say, many a better to prolong
Your old loves to us. We and all our might
Rest at your service. Gentlemen, good night.
Flourish. Exit
Il Filostrato
Translated by Hubertis Cummings
The long poem Il Filostrato provided the inspiration for Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and, through Chaucer, the Shakespeare play Troilus and Cressida. Composed in ottava rima and divided into eight cantos, the poem has a mythological plot, telling of the love of Troilo, a younger son of Priam of Troy, for Criseida , daughter of Calcas. The title, made from a combination of Greek and Latin words, can be translated as “laid prostrate by love”.
Although its setting is Trojan, the story is not taken from Greek myth, but from the Roman de Troie, a twelfth century French medieval re-elaboration of the Trojan legend by Benoît de Sainte-Maure, known to Boccaccio in the Latin prose version by Guido delle Colonne, titled Historia destructionis Troiae.
The atmosphere of Il Filostrato is reminiscent of the court of Naples and the psychology of the characters is portrayed with subtle notes. The plot introduces Calcas, a Trojan prophet, who has foreseen the fall of the city and joined the Greeks. His daughter, Criseida, is protected from the worse consequences of her father’s defection by Hector alone. Eventually, Troilo falls in love with Criseida, who despite his efforts excelling in the battles before Troy, appears not to return his love.
A fourteenth century manuscript of the poem
CONTENTS
Il Filostrato (Cummings translation)
PREFACE
CANTO ONE
CANTO TWO
CANTO THREE
CANTO FOUR
CANTO FIVE
CANTO SIX
CANTO SEVEN
CANTO EIGHT
CANTO NINE
TROILUS AND CRISEYDE by Geoffrey Chaucer
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA by William Shakespeare
Il Filostrato (Cummings translation)
PREFACE
THIS TRANSLATION OF Boccaccio’s Filostrato has not been prepared with a purpose primarily of adding to the rich storehouse of English poetry. To add further ornament to English literature would at any time be most difficult; but to seek to add at a point where Chaucer has already made the supreme contribution in his Troilus and Criseyde would be the height of temerity. In that poem, more than five hundred years ago, appeared the best gift that the Filostrato, its chief source, could hope to make to lovers of story in English verse.
Yet my work upon the translation of the old Italian narrative poem on which Chaucer’s tale of the unhappy love of Troilus is founded, and upon a translation of it into English verse, has not been without purpose. Two of “the all Etruscan Three” of whom Byron, reviewing the history of the great men of Florence, sings in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,
Dante, and Petrarch, and, scarce less than they,
The Bard of Prose, creative spirit! he
Of the Hundred Tales of love.
are familiar figures in English Literature. He who lists may read Dante and Petrarch from their own lips speaking in English poetry. But it is not so with the “Bard of Prose.” He seldom speaks to us in the language of English verse. We have been introduced to him in poetry, to be sure, by Chaucer in The Clerk’s Tale, by Longfellow in his story of The Falcon of Ser Federigo in the Tales from a Wayside Inn, and by Tennyson in his little poetic drama, The Falcon; but there after all, however charming the English verses that have introduced Boccaccio, we have met him only as the “Bard of Prose,” the author of the Decamerone. And it may be believed that Chaucer thought, as he maintained, that he was introducing to us only the work of
Fraunce
ys Petrark, the lauréat poete when he wrote the Clerk’s tale of the patient Griselde. As a “Bard of Verse” — translated English verse for Italian verse — we have then met Boccaccio the poet only in a few modest and little known sonnet translations by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It has been largely the hope of this present translation that it might introduce him anew to English readers as a poet. For the fact that Boccaccio is best known, and should be best known in English as the airy and graceful narrator of the famous novelle should not debar him from the privilege of being known more largely to us in our own language in that capacity. The author of the Decamerone, the first great student and critic of Dante, the friend and intimate of Petrarch, the writer of an ardent defense of poetry in one of the books of his De Genealogiis Deorum — and so an ancestor in criticism of Sir Philip Sidney and Percy Bysshe Shelley, Boccaccio has, it seems to me, for his very achievements’ sake deserved a ranking among the poets. May it be the good fortune of this text of the Filostrato to bring him a little nearer to that place in the English language!
But my work has had, too, a more practical and less ambitious purpose. I have wished to make it possible for students of Chaucer more readily to compare Troilus and Criseyde with the story of Troilo, as Boccaccio told it, that they more properly may appraise the merits of both narratives, the English and the Italian. There has been a tendency toward belief that Chaucer’s is a preeminently superior work, more realistic in action and character portrayal, richer in humour, and more mature in wisdom. That such is not invincibly the case I hope may be revealed here. Boccaccio’s work is not sheer romance. The Filoslrato may deserve the name of metrical romance which is frequently given to it, and it may be written in ottava rima, but it is, for all those facts, a poem that is written with the clearest psychological truth to human character and one that exhibits many a sly touch of satire and worldly wisdom. At times, too, it has a piquancy that even Chaucer’s geniality does not entirely transcend. It is different in manner from ‘Troilus and Criseyde rather than distinctly inferior in quality.
Considered independently, II Filoslrato is a simple forthright narrative of a disappointment in love. It is without intricacy in plot and is devoid of affectation in style. Unlike La Teseide, in time of composition Boccaccio’s next poetic work, it makes no effort to be either epic or pseudo-epic. The beautiful Homeric similes with which the poet ornaments that latter poem are lacking in the story of Troilo. The magic, the supernaturalism, and the glamour of high adventure with which contemporary metrical romance was everywhere replete have no part in it. It is an unadorned story of love and pain. To produce genuine and poignant passion it relies only on simplicity; for although it is in poetry, its style possesses much of the naïveté of the prose of the Decamerone, and so is never unworthy of the master narrator of the “Hundred Tales of love.”
Of the four chief characters that appear in Il Filostrato much might be said. But a little mention, here, of Troilo, Griseida, Pandaro, and Diomede will suffice.
Troilo is but a genuine manifestation of youth — youth of Romeo’s cast. Ironic, arrogant, defiant in the presence of love in the beginning though he is, his impressionability leads him, as it has a habit of leading youth, to a very sudden fall. He succumbs to the charms of Griseida and to love, and he succumbs wholly. Thereafter he is alternately gay or despondent lover. His joy has all the exaltation of youth for a time, and the pain that follows has all the intensity of the first genuine bitterness that comes with the first complete disillusionment of youth. When presently he fears his Griseida has been taken from him, his bliss removed, he draws his dagger on himself; as, figuratively at least, youth is ever prone to wield its weapon when its first mental agony makes death appear its only possible relief. But, if he represents the weakness of youth, he represents, too, its valour and its constancy. After his mistress has been sent away from Troy to the Greeks, he loves loyally and he fights valiantly. When final conviction of Griseida’s infidelity comes upon him, his cup of bitterness is filled. There is nothing to do but like a man to seek revenge on Diomede and to court death bravely on the field of battle. And both these things he does with a will.
Griseida (changed in the text of the translation to Criseis) is but womanhood, fair and frail — or, as Boccaccio usually conceives it to be, frail whether it be fair or otherwise. She is a lovely creature, frightened at first by the ardent advances of Troilo, later delighted with his adoration, supremely happy in her hours of dalliance with him, prostrated with grief when she learns that they must part, confident that she can win her way back to her lover from the tents of the Greeks, and serene in her belief in her own impeccable constancy. But presently she fails Troilo and gives her love to Diomede. That is all her story as Boccaccio sees it.
Pandaro portrays at once the charms and the insufficiencies of boon companionship. He is a graceful figure, witty, fond of pleasure, possessed of an indulgent and unscrupulous eye for the follies and the vices of youth, full of raillery, and when all goes well, full of invention. He can turn every trick in a successful lover’s favour. But, when misery comes on, when Griseida must leave Troy, and when finally she abandons Troilo for the love of another, Pandaro, like every boon companion, is helpless. He can, it is true, wrest a knife away from a despairing lover and keep him from taking his own life; but he can offer him no true and efficacious comfort. He can only look on impotently and pathetically at Troilo’s suffering.
Diomede, of whom we see little and who is abruptly, if not crudely, introduced by Boccaccio, is a combination of charm and dare-deviltry. He might be painted very black, but the poet does not really deal with him in that colour. When first he sees Griseida and, with true and immediate insight, perceives that she is in love with Troilo, he sighs to think that so fair a woman should already be in love, and doubts regretfully his own ability to make a conquest of her with that disadvantage to overcome. But with Diomede a woman is a woman, and a game is a game: the more obstacles the better sport! With a zest he enters into the hazard of the venture, and with grace and clever speech he wins. For his robbing of Troilo justice and honour cannot commend him; but for his winning of the game the young Greek cannot be utterly despised.
About the translation itself a few words must be said.
It has been made stanza for stanza in English ottava rima, but with one notable variation. The last line of the stanza (which is usually made, like all the other seven, one of iambic pentameter) has here been regularly converted into an alexandrine, like the last verse of a Spenserian stanza. The assuming of this liberty has made somewhat easier the task of translating stanza for stanza, rhyme scheme for rhyme scheme; and it has not unpleasantly altered the iambic rhythm.
A few further liberties have been taken, too, in the language used. Archaism is sometimes resorted to in such terms as ruth, hent, pent, joyaunce, pleasaunce, and gentilesse. The Italian verb disse and similar indefinite verbs employed by Boccaccio to introduce direct discourse have been, as a rule, translated by more expressive verbs in the English. Such colloquial forms as I’d, I’ve, thou’ldst, and the like have also been often admitted. This liberty I have assumed was justifiable in view of the frequent colloquial character of Boccaccio’s own text and the perennial elision that one finds in it as in all Italian poetry. And in the translation of a poem that belongs to the genre of romance it has not seemed presumptuous to refer to the several male characters of II Filoslrato with the terms knight or prince.
Such as it is, then, the translation must be sent into the world, like its original and like Chaucer’s great Troilus and Criseyde, with a few pleas for indulgence. I cannot, like Chaucer, bid it go
And kis the steppes, where-as thou seest pace
Virgile, Ovyde, Omer, Lucan, and Stace;
I cannot commend it to a “moral Gower”; nor can I piously pray over it to the “oon, and two, and three.” Modern usage forbids me to send it either as a poetic form of reproach to a Fiammetta or as a prayer in token of love and adoration. But perhaps I may send it
to the student of Chaucer and Boccaccio with the supplication
.. che ti presti
Tanto di grazia ch’ascoltata sii.
HUBERTIS CUMMINGS
Assistant Professor of English
Literature in the University of Cincinnati Harrisburg,’Pennsylvania
August, 1922
CANTO ONE
1
SOME poets, Lady, still of Jove do crave
Fair favour for poetic enterprise;
Others invoke Apollo’s aid to save
Their fragile verse. E’en I, with frequent sighs,
Besought Parnassian Muses, all too grave,
My theme to lift through music to the skies;
But Love, who changed old use, doth now require
I seek thine aid alone my true song to inspire.
2
Thou, Lady, art that clear and lovely light
Which in the darkness still my life illumes;
And thou that only star serenely bright
Whose ray, across the mountains, sweet assumes
The guidance of my bark from storm and night
Till anchored there, where joyous comfort blooms, —
With thee, — who art my Phoebus, — art my Jove, —
My Muse, — and all the good I feel and know of Love!
3
Lady, thy absence now, to me a woe
Greater than death itself, constrains my will
To write the grievous life of Troilo
Whenafter Criseis, who caused his ill,
Was forced, yet all in love with him, to go
Outside the Trojan walls, ere either fill
Of amorous delights had known; so, wise,
Thy puissant aid I seek for this my enterprise!
4
Whence, Lady fair, — whose faithful servitor
I e’er have been, whose subject ever hence
Shall be, — and thy fair eyes’ refulgent store
Collected Works of Giovanni Boccaccio Page 402
