It is worthy of notice that Chaucer has drawn an unmistakable "lady" in his typical prioress. There is her delicate behaviour at meals:
At mete wel ytaught was she with-alle;
She leet no morsel from her lippes falle,
Ne wette hir fingres in hir sauce depe.
Wel coude she carie a morsel, and wel kepe,
That no drope ne fille upon hir brest.
In curteisye was set ful muche hir lest.
Hir over lippe wyped she so clene,
That in hir coppe was no ferthing sene
Of grece, whan she dronken hadde hir draughte.
Ful semely after hir mete she raughte[1].
This was the ne plus ultra of feudal table manners; Chaucer might have been writing one of those books of deportment for the guidance of aristocratic young women, which were so numerous in France. So the Clef d' Amors counsels ladies who would win them lovers[2], and even so Robert de Blois depicts the perfect diner. Robert de Blois' ideal, the chivalrous, frivolous, sensuous ideal of "courtesy," which underlay the whole aristocratic conception of life and the attainment of which was the criterion of polite society, is the ideal of the Prioress also:
"Gardez vous, Dames, bien acertes,"
"Qu'au mengier soiez bien apertes;
C'est une chose c'on moult prise
Que là soit dame bien aprise.
Tel chose torne à vilonie
Que toutes genz ne sevent mie;
Se puet cil tost avoir mespris
Qui n'est cortoisement apris[3]."
Later he warns against the greedy selection of the finest and largest titbit for oneself, on the ground that "n'est pas cortoisie."
- ↑ Canterbury Tales (ed. Skeat), Prologue, II, 127 ff. It is interesting to notice that the Roman de la Rose, of which Chaucer translated a fragment, contains some remarks upon this subject which are almost paraphrased in his description of Madame Eglentyne.
- ↑ La Clef d' Amors..., ed. Doutrepont (1890), V, 3227 ff.
- ↑ Le Chastiement des Dames (Barbazon and Méon, Fabliaux et Contes, II, p. 200).
atque cubant, prater dominam Margaretam Darcy, monialem prioratus antedicti, cui ob nobilitatem sui generis de camera sua quam tenet in privata, absque tamen alia liberata panis et ceruisie, extra casum infirmitatis manifeste, volumus ad tempus tollerare." Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Buckingham, f. 397d.
