In Chaucer's way of meeting this charge, which he emphasises by putting it in the mouth of the God of Love himself, it is, to be sure, difficult to recognise any very deeply penitent spirit. He mildly wards off the reproach, sheltering himself behind his defender, the "lady in green," who afterwards proves to be herself that type of womanly and wifely fidelity unto death, the true and brave Alcestis. And even in the body of the poem one is struck by a certain perfunctoriness, not to say flippancy, in the way in which its moral is reproduced. The wrathful invective against the various classical followers of Lamech, the maker of tents, wears no aspect of deep moral indignation; and it is not precisely the voice of a repentant sinner which concludes the pathetic story of the betrayal of Phillis with the adjuration to ladies in general:-- Beware ye women of your subtle foe, Since yet this day men may example see And as in love trust ye no man but me. (Lamech, Chaucer tells us in "Queen Annelida and the false Arcite," was the first father that began The love of two, and was in bigamy. This poem seems designed to illustrate much the same moral as that enforced by the "Legend of Good Women"--a moral which, by-the-bye, is already foreshadowed towards the close of "Troilus and Cressid," where Chaucer speaks of women that betrayed be Through false folk, (God give them sorrow, amen!) That with their greate wit and subtlety Betray you; and 'tis this that moveth me To speak; and, in effect, you all I pray: Beware of men, and hearken what I say.) At the same time the poet lends an attentive ear, as genius can always afford to do, to a criticism of his shortcomings, and readily accepts the sentence pronounced by Alcestis that he shall write a legend of GOOD women, both maidens and also wives, that were true in loving all their lives.