Middleton's Debt to Chaucer in The Changeling

MIDDLETON'S DEBT TO CHAUCER IN THE CHANGELING T. J. Stafford T. /. Stafford (B.A., Wake Forest University; M.A., University of Texas at El Paso; Ph.D., Louisiana State University) has taught at the University of Texas at El Paso since 1964. He has published articles on modem fiction in Western Review and in Modern Fiction Studies and is the editor of an anthology entitled Shakespeare in the Southwest to be published this year. In 1902 Otto Ballmann published evidence that Middleton was familiar with Chaucer's work.1 He quoted passages that echoed Chaucer's poetry; he cited references to Chaucer, one of which affectionately referred to him as "that broad famous English poet"; and he noticed the names of some of Chaucer's characters in Middleton. But aside from these specific borrowings and citations, Ballmann suggested nothing eke. And no one has done anything since Ballmann to indicate the extent of Middleton's debt to Chaucer.2 But The Changeling, one of Middleton's most popular plays today, offers proof that the medieval poet was a significant influence on Middleton's thinking. The conventional way of observing the influence of one writer on another is to quote lines from each that are similar in phrasing; sometimes also character, plot, or situation resemblances may be offered as evidence of one writer's influence on another. But a different type of relationship seems to exist between Chaucer's Manciple's Tale and Middleton's The Changeling. Middleton appears to turn to the Manciple's Tale not as a literary model, but as a source for ideas.3 Appropriate to this relationship is the fact that less than twenty-five percent of the Manciple's Tale actually deals with plot, which is the story of Phoebus, his wife's infidelity, and his crow; the remaining seventy-five percent is composed of moralizdngs and commentary on human behavior. The bulk of this is contained in four long digressions, each of which develops a main theme. The characters and action in Chaucer's story are only sketches. Thus, the more important elements, the thoughts and psychology of the digressions, affected Middleton and appear in his play.4 1OHo Ballmann, "Chaucers Einfiuss auf das Englische Drama," AngUa, XXV ( 1902), 74-76. 2Caroline Spurgeon, in her Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion (New York, Oxford University Press, 1908), merely uses Ballmann's discoveries. 3The known plot sources for Middleton's play, John Reynold's The Triumph of God's Revenge against . . . Murther and Leonard EHgges's Gerardo the Unfortunate Spaniard, do not contain the ideas found in Ths Cliangeling which are also in the Manciph's Tale. 4Although Middleton collaborated with Rowley on this play, the contributions of each have been established. It is unanimously agreed that Rowley wrote the first and last acts and the subplot, Middleton the scenes dealing with the main plot in Acts II, III, and IV. Significantly, the passages expressing the ideas from the Manciph's Tale appear only in those scenes written by Middleton. Mtddleton's Debt to Chaucer209 Middleton seems to have been affected first of all by the long digression in the Manciple's Tale on friendship and gossiping, which is the subject of the concluding paragraph and the main point of the whole tale. The Manciple warns at the end that: He is his thral to whom that he hath sayd A tale of which he is now yvele apayd.5 (357-358) Middleton has transformed this advice into the idea that one should "choose/ that bosom well who of his thoughts partakes" (ILi.10-11)." But other passages in the play resemble more closely some of the thoughts in this digression . The digression takes its impulse from the action of Phoebus' crow, who has witnessed the wife's infidelity and informed his master of what he has seen. Phoebus, blinded by rage, kills his wife and then, lamenting what he has done, curses his pet bird. The Manciple sees a lesson in this and tells his listeners that the surest way to lose a friend is to tell him of his wife's activities with other men: Ne telleth nevere no man...