Notes

• 3.1-38 The lines follow Filo. 3.74-79. In the first stanza, the narrator addresses the sun, whose beams adorn the third heaven, the sphere of Venus, Jove's (Jupiter's) daughter. In the Ptolemaic system, the physical universe is made up of nine concentric spheres surrounding the earth. If one counts outward, these are the spheres of the moon, mercury, venus, the sun, mars, jupiter, saturn, the fixed stars, and the primum mobile (first moved).

• 3.57-84 Boccaccio's poem has a much different first meeting of the lovers, culminating in the consummation scene, which takes place in Chaucer's poem at their second meeting. The opportunity awaited by them both arrives (Filo. 3.21); Troilo goes to Criseida's house with Pandaro (3.23), but Troilo enters the house alone by a secret passage (3.24) and awaits her in a dark and remote corner (3.25). She coughs to make him aware of her presence (3.26), and the consummation scene follows.

• 3.137 The line is missing in Cp, supplied from Cl and J, which are identical.

• 3.250-59 The lines follow and amplify Filo. 3.6. The intermediary as friend and messenger is a staple of the courtly love plot, so Pandarus' defensiveness in this passage, in both Chaucer and Boccaccio, reflects his sense either that his role in the affair exceeds the convention or that the conventional role is immoral. Chaucer's Pandarus focuses here on Criseyde's virtue, which in the Filostrato Pandaro mentions as a tactical obstacle (2.23).

• 3.330-36 The stanza follows Filo. 3.9-10.

• 3.344-427 The passage closely follows Filo. 3.11-20.

• 3.391 Manuscripts Cl, G, and R have knave; the word is corrected from sclave in Cl. Other manuscripts and all other modern editions have sclave. Lyric tradition in the 1580s would prefer slave, but not in the 1380s. It is difficult to see, as it often is, which reading the principle of durior lectio (the idea that the harder reading is authorial, because scribes tended to substitute easier and more familiar words) would prefer. . For sclave 2, "a slave," the MED gives only one citation earlier than this line ("as a sclave forth i-lad," Southern Legendary, Beckett, c. 1300). The second citation is this line in Troilus and Criseyde, and the next are from 1440, 1470, and 1500. The Tatlock-Kennedy Concordance to Chaucer cites only this line, so if the word is Chaucer's, the reading is certainly the harder one The present text has knave partly for these reasons and partly in order to call attention to the matter.

• 3.503 Here again (see 2.1595 and note), Chaucer plays games with the idea of auctoritee; the letters mentioned but not recorded by the narrator's Lollius are unmentioned by Boccaccio. Here too, the narrator suggests, and rejects, an interest in the "minute particularity" we associate with the novel.

• 3.542 The laurel is associated with Apollo. Like many of the stories from Ovid evoked in the poem, this one resonates with the issue of sexual coercion. In Metamorphoses, Book I, Daphne refuses to marry, but Apollo burns for her. He chases her, and as she flees, her hair becomes leaves, her fingers branches; she is transformed into the laurel, which at first still shrinks from Apollo's embrace. At last, he promises that her leaves will never wither, and she waves them in consent.

• 3.570 In the Filostrato, Troilus really is out of town on the business of war (3.21).

• 3.625 Saturn and Jupiter in Cancer: the conjunction occurred in 1385, at the likely time of the poem's composition.

• 3.659-72 Here Pandarus sets the scene, which plays out in his house. Criseyde will sleep in a small room possibly walled by movable screens, while he will be outside in the same large bedchamber. In Boccaccio, the meeting takes place not at his house but hers. (See note, 3.57-84).

• 3.722 Zeus's rape of Europa, in Metamorphoses, Book III is another Ovidian allusion resonating with the theme of coercion (see 3.542 and note).

• 3.787 This is Pandarus' invention to assure Criseyde that Troilus' visit is unplanned and undetected. His story seems to be that Troilus entered secretly by walking along a stone gutter to a window.

• 3.813-36 Criseyde retraces Dame Philosophy's argument, in Book Two, prose 4 of the Consolation of Philosophy, that worldly joy is a false reality. The general sentiment is conventional, but the passage echoes Boethius (and, of course, Boece, Chaucer's translation of the Consolation), and the familiarity of this and other Boethian formulas attests to his wide popularity in the period. There are more extant medieval manuscripts of the Consolation than of any other text except the Roman de la Rose.

• 3.1023-24 There is a gap in the Cp manuscript in the middle of these two lines. The first reads "To seyn right thi ----------- jalousie is love." The second reads, "And wolde a busshe------enyn al excusen." The gaps are filled here from Cl.

• 3.1046 By ordeal or oath: in other words, according to Frankish tribal jurisprudence, the usual legal territory of romance, regardless of the setting. Here, though, Criseyde seems to use the formula as a lover's hyperbole. In theory, the reintroduction of Justinian's codes brought Roman law (trial by evidence) to Europe in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. In practice, the absence of forensic science placed heavy emphasis on eyewitness testimony, and when that was lacking, a recourse was to obtain a confession by torture.

• 3.1079-1414 The scene corresponds to Filo. 3.30-41, but in Boccaccio's poem the two lovers kiss, burn with ardor, strip themselves and get into bed; she keeps on her last garment, saying the newly wed are bashful the first time they make love. Pandarus is missing from the scene.

• 3.1148 The difference between Chaucer's Criseyde and Boccaccio's is to some extent the difference in narrative perspective. For Boccaccio's narrator, both lovers are there unambivalently to make love and to play the game of love (Filostrato, 3.27-33). Although from this point on, Chaucer's account of the scene follows Boccaccio's fairly closely, the narrator's suggestiveness, combined wth Pandarus' presence, adds a lurid tone to the scene.

• 3.1190 See the note to line 665. From his place in the chamber, their closet is visible and audible, and his presence can be felt during the rest of the scene.

• 3.1228 The line is missing from Cp, supplied here from J., which is identical to Cl except for minor spelling differences.

• 3.1389 In Metamorphoses, Book XI, Midas is given the golden touch but scorns wealth and takes to the fields, worshipping Pan and the sensual music of his reed pipes and disparaging Apollo's lyre. For this he is stricken with shaggy grey ass's ears.

• 3.1415-92 The passage follows Filo. 3.42-48.

• 3.1575 There is nothing like this scene in the Filostrato. In the remainder of Boccaccio's Part III, Pandaro visits Troilo but not Criseida the next day; his job as intermediary is done.

• 3.1576-82 This stanza is missing from Cp; my reading follows Cl. Other modern editions combine Cl and J, which are closely similar.

• 3.1590-1624 The passage corresponds to Filo. 3.56-60.

• 3.1709-43 The passage corresponds to Filo. 3.71-73.

• 3.1744-71 The substance of this passage is from Boethius, Book IV, meter 3; the Boethian content is not in Boccaccio. The following passage, on Troilus as exemplary knight because of his love, is in Boccaccio (3.90-93). The linking of the two kinds of harmony, philosophic and romantic, is Chaucer's.

• 3.1820 In the Corpus Christi manuscript, the end of Book Three and the proem of Book Four are unlabelled; Book Four begins without a break.