Chaucer summons Lady Philosophy to treat Troilus… well, sort of

I read this line in Chaucer the other day:

“For whoso list have helyng of his leche
To hym byhoveth first unwrye his wounde” (857-58)[1]

I could have sworn I’d heard it somewhere else before. I assumed it was attributed to Aristotle.

It appears in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde in the scene where Pandarus gets Troilus to reveal the name of the woman he loves. It all starts when Pandarus hears Troilus groaning and wailing all alone in his room. Troilus has all the symptoms of medieval lovesickness: pale complexion, weight loss, shedding uncontrollable tears when a single note of music is heard… you name it, he’s got it. To make matters worse, he’s mocked others for being in love. Now that he has finally been hit by cupid’s arrow, he’s paying dearly for his mockery of Love.

An illustration of Troilus seeing Criseyde for the first time at the temple from the Kelmscott Chaucer

Pandarus asks Troilus why he is so upset. Well, it’s Chaucer, so it’s more like, “HEY! What’s all this racket in here for?!? Why the sad face, huh? Has the war got you down?” The story takes place during the Trojan War, so there’s a joke about Troilus getting too thin from worrying so much about the war with the Greeks. Pandarus quickly realizes that Troilus has fallen in love for the first time and that he is suffering from lovesickness. Pandarus tries to get Troilus to reveal the name of the woman he loves. The last point Pandarus makes in attempt to get Troilus to reveal the name of his sweetheart is, “Whoever wants to have his doctor’s help must first uncover his wound.”

Well, while reading it again and wondering where I’d heard it before, I had an epiphany. Not just any epiphany, but the kind of epiphany you get when you’re reading Boethius. How could I have forgotten?

Sure enough, it’s in Boethius:

Pandarus giving Troilus philosophical “treatment” reminded me of Lady Philosophy consoling Boethius in The Consolation of Philosophy. It’s not a coincidence because Chaucer was not only familiar with Boethius, he was also familiar with that particular line. Here’s how the line appears In Boece, Chaucer’s translation (or version) of Consolation:

“If thou abidest after helpe of thy leche, the behoueth discouer thy wounde”[4]

It’s the very same line that Chaucer put in Troilus and Criseyde – it’s just in a different person.

Why did Chaucer use this line in Troilus and Criseyde? Chaucer wasn’t the first poet to tell the story of Troilus and Criseyde. Did he copy it from another version? Boccaccio’s version of the story (IL FILOSTRATO) is thought to be one of Chaucer’s sources. The language is similar and early in Boccaccio’s tale Troilus covers his “love wound” after seeing Criseyde for the first time at the temple:

“Imagining that neither travail nor sighing for such a lady could be ill spent and that his desire, were it ever known by any, would be greatly praised, and hence his suffering, if discovered, less blamed, the light-hearted youth debated with himself, all unaware of his coming woe. Wherefore, bent on pursuing his love, he took purpose to act discreetly, deciding first to hide the desire born in his amorous mind from every friend and servant, unless forced to reveal it.”[5]

Choosing not to reveal his desire for Criseyde to anyone turned out to later be the source of his woe and it would be the perfect thing to follow up later in the story with the need to “uncover the wound.”

The love consolation speech scene is set up for the line, but Pandarus doesn’t speak it in Boccacio’s version. It’s not in Benoît de Sainte-Maure’s French version either.[6] These two texts are thought to have been Chaucer’s sources for the tale. Since no evidence points to another borrowed source, this embellishment of adding a line from Boethius is one Chaucer made himself.

Now, Boethius’ source is said to be Homer’s Iliad[7]– which makes Chaucer’s use in Troilus and Criseyde a little more interesting because the story is set during the Trojan War. Adding elements of Homer helps the story emulate the Troy tales genre and gives it “classical authenticity.”

In Homer, it’s:
“What sorrow has come upon your heart? Speak out;
hide it not in your mind, that we both may know”[8]

It appears in The Iliad shortly after an assembly called to end Apollo’s plague is broken up by heated disagreement between Achilles and Agamemnon. Achilles is upset – to put it lightly – so after storming out in tears, he walks down to the ocean to sort out his feelings. While he’s there he asks his mother Thetis, a sea nymph, for help:

“[Achilles] sat down on the shore of the grey sea, looking forth over the wine-dark deep.
Earnestly he prayed to his dear mother with hands outstretched: “Mother, since you bore me,
though to so brief a span of life, honour surely ought the Olympian to have given into my hands, Zeus who thunders on high; but now he has honoured me not a bit. Truly the son of Atreus, wide-ruling Agamemnon has dishonoured me: for he has taken and keeps my prize through his own arrogant act.” So he spoke, weeping, and his lady mother heard him, as she sat in the depths of the sea beside the old man, her father. And speedily she came forth from the grey sea like a mist, and sat down before him, as he wept, and she stroked him with her hand, and spoke to him, and called him by name: “My child, why do you weep? What sorrow has come upon your heart? Speak out; hide it not in your mind, that we both may know.” [9]

Homer’s description of Thetis’ arrival has an ethereal quality to it. You can read the scene literally with Thetis materializing from the ocean mist and Achilles sitting there, but you could just as easily describe it as a dream vision.[10] Homer’s scene is interchangeable with Consolation. Achilles can be exchanged for Boethius as easily as Achilles’ predicament for Boethius’ prison, or Achilles’ mother Thetis as Lady Philosophy. Thetis’ first line, “Hide it not in your mind, that we both may know” appears in Consolation as “uncover the wound.”

Both Boccaccio and Chaucer parody the classical reference in their Troilus stories in a way that pokes fun at the dream vision cliché while providing the audience with a crash-course in classical wit and wisdom.

It is clear to the audience that the visitors are not celestial in both Chaucer’s and Boccaccio’s stories, but the visitors may very well seem that way to Troilus, who is in a tormented, almost delusional state of mind when his guests visit him. Boccaccio uses a boy as the “doctor” while Chaucer makes his character older to balance the humor he injects with sober wisdom.

Chaucer adds this classical reference from Boethius to make his medieval story seem like it’s actually set during the Trojan War. This subtle detail is meant to invoke the classical genre but it also gives Chaucer an opportunity to give a nod to and further develop the style of one of his favorite poets of all time – Boethius.

That’s enough about Chaucer for now. I’m off to finish reading Richard Hell’s I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp.