The
character-drawing is far more subtle than the poet's; Chaucer leaves the
reader's sympathies equally divided, despite the fact that he says plainly
that Arcite was in the wrong, because he violated the compact of the two
kinsmen to assist each other in love.
We must now consider what justification there is for believing that the
main plot of _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_ was suggested by _The Knightes
Tale_. Firstly, as has already been pointed out, the nuptials of Theseus
form the beginning of both play and poem; though in the poem the actual
ceremony has been performed, and it is his triumphant return to the city of
Athens that is interrupted by the widows' appeal for justice; and in the
play the action passes in the three or four days before the marriage.
Secondly, the wedding-day is the first of May, and there are two references
to that "observance of May"[16] which is given by Chaucer as the reason
both for Emilia's walking in the garden and for Arcite's seeking of the
grove where Palamon lay hid.[17] Thirdly, it can hardly be doubted that
Shakespeare took the name of Philostrate from Chaucer; Egeus he would find
also in North's Plutarch as the name of the father of Theseus; and it is
possible that Chaucer's names for the champions, Ligurge and Emetreus, may
have suggested Lysander and Demetrius.
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