- Criseyde's Absent Friends
I
The noise vp ros whan it was first aspiedThorugh al the town and generaly was spokenThat Calkas traitour fled was and alliedWith hem of Grece, and casten to be wrokenOn hym that falsly hadde his feith so broken,And seyden he and al his kyn atonesBen worthi for to brennen, felle and bones.
Now hadde Calkas left in this meschaunce,Al vnwist of this false and wikked dede,His doughter, which that was in gret penaunce,ffor of hire lif she was ful sore in drede,As she that nyste what was best to rede;ffor bothe a widewe was she and alloneOf any frend to whom she dorste hir mone.
(Troilus and Criseyde, I, 85–98)1
From her very first appearance in Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, Criseyde is a strikingly friendless figure. Her father Calchas's treacherous defection from Troy provokes the Trojans to declare that he "and al his kyn atones" deserve to be burned "felle and bones." However, what makes the situation so particularly upsetting for Criseyde, we are told, is that she has no friends to confide in. Chaucer's emphasis on Criseyde's isolation at this point in the narrative in fact constitutes a significant departure [End Page 227] from his source, Giovanni Boccaccio's Filostrato. Whereas both writers describe how Calchas left his widowed daughter in the lurch ("left in this meschaunce"/"lasciato in tanto male") and both emphasize that she was entirely innocent of any involvement in his treachery ("Al vnwist of this false and wikked dede"/"sanza nïente farlene sapere"), it is only Chaucer who then chooses to focus on Criseyde's friendlessness. Boccaccio insists instead on her beauty ("si bella e si angelica a vedere"). This innovation might be regarded simply as a natural development of the pathos implicit in Boccaccio's account of her predicament—a development of the suggestion that Criseyde could be viewed as a kind of damsel in distress.2 Yet who are these friends that Criseyde does not have? It seems difficult to believe that Calchas leaves her literally "allone/Of any frend," for Chaucer can hardly have expected his readers to believe that she possesses no friends of any kind, even at this juncture, or that she is so absolutely incapable of coping without them.
It soon becomes clear, as the narrative progresses, that Criseyde is neither unable to decide for herself on the best course of action ("what was best to rede") nor incapable of finding a powerful protector. She prudently appeals to the King's eldest son, the admirably fair-minded Hector, who readily guarantees her "al thonour that men may don ʒow haue/As ferforth as ʒoure fader dwelled here" (I, 120–21). Later on, she is even complacent enough to imagine that, with the war ended, she might be able to show her father "What frendes that ich haue on euery side/Toward the Court" (IV, 1391–92)—which perhaps implies that powerful friends "to whom she dorste hir mone" were never quite so difficult for her to find as is suggested at her first appearance in the narrative. It is particularly hard to believe, given what we learn later in the poem, that none of Troy's women were prepared to offer her friendship in the wake of Calchas's departure from the city. In Book II she is attended by "a grete route" of women (II, 818); and this feminine affinity is surely unlikely ever to have been wholly disrupted. After all, the crowd of ladies who come to visit her in Book IV, 680–730, show remarkably little animus towards Criseyde's father—they even congratulate her on the prospect of her reunion with him (IV, 687–88). This event is much later on in the poem, of course, but we are told explicitly that this group of friends included at least some "that hadde y-knowen hire of ʒore" (IV, 719). Moreover, Criseyde herself observes in Book IV that her father is the only member of her family not living in the city ("al my kynne is heere [in Troy...