before relating the shame which a young wife brings upon her doting old husband. The Shipmann protests with brutal frankness that wives cost more than they are worth, and tells a tale to prove it. From all this we might imagine Chaucer a cross-grained misogynist, but a glance for one moment at the other side of the picture corrects this impression. He is as ready to say what will amuse his contemporaries as Shakespeare is to tickle the ears of the groundlings in his generation, but, like Shakespeare, he is too just to see anything from only one point of view. There certainly are women who abuse their husbands, and Chaucer's inferiority to Shakespeare is marked by the fact that he finds the situation amusing; and there are also shrews and termagants who make their husbands' lives a burden in other ways. But pecking is not confined to hens. Chaucer realises that for woman marriage is even more of a lottery than for man, since she is necessarily so much at her husband's mercy:-- Lo, how a woman doth amis, To love him that unknowen is! For, by Crist, lo! thus it fareth; "Hit is not al gold that glareth."[98] For, al-so brouke I wel myn heed,[99] Ther may be under goodliheed Kevered many a shrewd vyce; Therefore be no wight so nyce To take a love only for chere, For speche, or for frendly manere; For this shal every woman finde That som man, of his pure kinde,[100] Wol shewen outward the faireste, Til he have caught that what him leste; And thanne wol he causes finde, And swere how that she is unkinde, Or fals, or prevy, or double was. (_Hous of Fame_, Bk. I, ll. 269-85.) Husband-hunting is a sport which has roused the laughter of men from time immemorial; Chaucer is one of the few who has ever portrayed that fierce shrinking from the thought of matrimony which is no less common among women. Emily longing to be free to roam in the forest and "noght to been a wyf," and Constance trembling at the thought of the strange man into whose hands she is being committed, are as true to life as the Wife of Bath with her husbands five at the Church door. And this poet, who sees so clearly the dangers and evils of matrimony, has left us one of the most perfect pictures of married life at its best. Dorigen and Averagus understand how to remain lovers all their lives:-- Heer may men seen an humble wys accord; Thus hath she take hir servant and hir lord, Servant in love, and lord in mariage; Then was he bothe in lordship and servage; Servage? nay, but in lordshipe above Sith he hath bothe his lady and his love; His lady, certes, and his wyf also, The whiche that lawe of love acordeth to. (_Frankeleyns Tale_, ll. 63-70.) The passage immediately preceding this, with its beautiful picture of what love understands by freedom, is too long to quote in full, but it shows clearly enough Chaucer's conception of the relation of the sexes. To talk of mastery is absurd:--