PAGE 12
Shakespeare; Or, The Poet
by
[Footnote 558: Caxton. William Caxton, the English author, more famous as the first English printer, was not born until after Chaucer’s death. The work from which Emerson supposes the poet to have borrowed Caxton’s translation of Recueil des Histoires de Troye, the first printed English book, appeared about 1474.]
[Footnote 559: Guido di Colonna. A Sicilian poet and historian of the thirteenth century. Chaucer in his House of Fame placed in his vision “on a pillar higher than the rest, Homer and Livy, Dares the Phrygian, Guido Colonna, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the other historians of the war of Troy.”]
[Footnote 560: Dares Phrygius. A Latin account of the fall of Troy, written about the fifth century, which pretends to be a translation of a lost work on the fall of Troy by Dares, a Trojan priest mentioned in Homer’s Iliad.]
[Footnote 561: Ovid. A Roman poet who lived about the time of Christ, whose best-known work is the Metamorphoses, founded on classical legends.]
[Footnote 562: Statius. A Roman poet of the first century after Christ.]
[Footnote 563: Petrarch. An Italian poet of the fourteenth century.]
[Footnote 564: Boccaccio. An Italian novelist and poet of the fourteenth century. See note on “Italian tales,” 539. It is supposed that the plan of the Decameron suggested the similar but far superior plan of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.]
[Footnote 565: Provencal poets. The poets of Provence, a province of the southeastern part of France. In the Middle Ages it was celebrated for its lyric poets, called troubadours.]
[Footnote 566: Romaunt of the Rose, etc. Chaucer’s Romaunt of the Rose, written during the period of French influence, is an incomplete and abbreviated translation of a French poem of the thirteenth century, Roman de la Rose, the first part of which was written by William of Loris and the latter by John of Meung, or Jean de Meung.]
[Footnote 567: Troilus and Creseide, etc. Chaucer ascribes the Italian poem which he followed in his Troilus and Creseide to an unknown “Lollius of Urbino”; the source of the poem, however, is Il Filostrato, by Boccaccio, the Italian poet already mentioned. Chaucer’s poem is far more than a translation; more than half is entirely original, and it is a powerful poem, showing profound knowledge of the Italian poets, whose influence with him superseded the French poets.]
[Footnote 568: The Cock and the Fox. The Nun’s Priest’s Tale in the Canterbury Tales was an original treatment of the Roman de Renart, of Marie of France, a French poet of the twelfth century.]
[Footnote 569: House of Fame, etc. The plan of the House of Fame, written during the period of Chaucer’s Italian influence, shows the influence of Dante; the general idea of the poem is from Ovid, the Roman poet.]
[Footnote 570: Gower. John Gower was an English poet, Chaucer’s contemporary and friend; the two poets went to the same sources for poetic materials, but Chaucer made no such use of Gower’s works as we would infer from this passage. Emerson relied on his memory for facts, and hence made mistakes, as here in the instances of Lydgate, Caxton, and Gower.]
[Footnote 571: Westminster, Washington. What legislative body assembles at Westminster Palace, London? What at Washington?]
[Footnote 572: Sir Robert Peel. An English statesman who died in 1850, not long after Representative Men was published.]
[Footnote 573: Webster. Daniel Webster, an American statesman and orator who was living when this essay was written.]
[Footnote 574: Locke. John Locke. (See note 18.)]
[Footnote 575: Rousseau. Jean Jacques Rousseau, a French philosopher of the eighteenth century.]
[Footnote 576: Homer. (See note 550.)]
[Footnote 577: Menn. Menn, or Mann, was in Sanscrit one of fourteen legendary beings; the one referred to by Emerson, Mann Vaivasvata was supposed to be the author of the laws of Mann, a collection made about the second century.]
[Footnote 578: Saadi or Sadi. (See note 552.)]
[Footnote 579: Milton. Of this great English poet and prose writer of the seventeenth century, Emerson says: “No man can be named whose mind still acts on the cultivated intellect of England and America with an energy comparable to that of Milton. As a poet Shakespeare undoubtedly transcends and far surpasses him in his popularity with foreign nations: but Shakespeare is a voice merely: who and what he was that sang, that sings, we know not.”]