And with golde beaten full fetously
   His bodie was clad full richely. 
   Wrought was his robe in straunge gise
   And all slitttered for queintise
   In many a place, low and hie,
   And shode he was with great maistrie
   With shoone decoped and with lace,
   By drurie and by solace
   His leefe a rosen chapelet
   Had made, and on his head it set.”

He speaks in equally high terms of “Dame Gladnesse.”

We can appreciate Chaucer’s address to his empty purse—­

  “To you my purse, and to none other wight
   Complaine I, for ye be my lady dere,
   I am sorry now that ye be light,
   For certes ye now make me heauy chere
   Me were as lefe laid vpon a bere,
   For which vnto your mercy thus I crie
   Be heauy againe or els mote I die.

  “Now vouchsafe this day or it be night
   That I of you the blissful sowne may here,
   Or see your colour like the sunne bright
   That of yelowness had neuer pere;
   Ye be my life, ye be my hertes stere
   Queen of comfort, and good companie
   Be heauy againe, or els mote I die.

  “Now purse that art to me my liues delight
   And sauiour, as downe in this world here,
   Out of this towne helpe me by your might
   Sith that you woll not be my treasure,
   For I am shave as nere as any frere,
   But I pray vnto your curtesie
   Be heauy againe, or els mote I die.”

Chaucer was very fond of allegory.  This is especially visible not only in the “Romaunt of the Rose,” but in the “Court of Love,” “Flower and Leaf,” the “House of Fame,” and the “Cuckoo and Nightingale.”  In the “Assembly of Fowls” we have a fable.  Chaucer was attached to the service of John of Gaunt, which may have led to his attacking the clergy, but in his youth he was fined two shillings for beating a Franciscan friar in Fleet Street.  He favoured Wickliffe, and was for this reason eventually obliged to flee the country; but he returned and obtained remunerative appointments.  It is said that on his death-bed he lamented the encouragement which vice might receive from his writings, but their indelicacy was not really great for the age in which he lived.

Henry Heywood has been called the “Father of English Comedy,” and he was certainly one of the first that wrote original dramas, representing the ordinary social life of this country.  His pieces, which all appeared before 1550, were short and simple, and seem to us very deficient in delicacy and humour.  But in his day he was considered a great wit, and as a court-jester drew many a lusty laugh from old King Hal, and could even soothe the rugged brow of the fanatical Mary.  One of his best sayings was addressed to her.  When the Queen told Heywood that the priests must forego their wives, he answered.  “Then your Grace must allow them lemans, for the clergy cannot live without sauce.”  He was called the epigrammatist, but the greater part of his jests seem to have little point.  Some of them have been attributed to Sir Thomas More.