In Chaucer's poetry, guilt is represented as an "ethical ideal," whereas shame is often "portrayed as the psychological reality" that disrupts attempts to "realize the ideal." Throughout his poetry, but especially in CT, Chaucer articulates "the…
Williams, Deanne.
Literature Compass 8 (2011): 390-403.
Assesses the idea of Renaissance "medievalism," and reviews recent studies of the topic, focusing on Shakespeare and arguing that FranT is a "key source" of Cymbeline, which "resists the traditional borders and boundaries of periodization."
Bauer, Matthias, and Angelika Zirker.
Lukas Rösli and Stefanie Gropper, eds. In Search of the Culprit: Aspects of Medieval Authorship (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021), pp. 217–38.
Explores how in each of two Shakespearean plays "there is a co-authorship with a past author": Gower in "Pericles" and Chaucer in "The Two Noble Kinsmen." Argues that the presentation of Chaucer as a source in the prologue in "Kinsmen" engages…
Olson, Paul A.
Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 33 (2020): 89–117.
Examines views of monarchy and Catholic/Protestant conflicts in Shakespeare's "second tetralogy," plays set during and soon after Chaucer's lifetime. Includes discussion of Falstaff as a figure viewed "through the lens of Chaucer’s time"—a figure…
Staunton, Kay.
Kenneth Friedenreich, Roma Gill, and Constance B. Kuriyama, eds. "A Poet and a Filthy Play-maker": New Essays on Christopher Marlowe. AMS Studies in the Renaissance, no. 14 (New York: AMS, 1988), pp. 23-35.
Staunton describes Shakespeare's allusions to Marlowe in As You Like It. Touchstone's and Rosalind's references to Troilus as a lover engage TC.
Davis-Brown, Kris.
South Central Review 5.2 (1988): 15-34.
Shakespeare's play, though derived from Chaucer, differs from its source in many ways. Shakespeare's Pandarus is a less tender, more hardened figure; his Cressida is psychologically and socially more vulnerable; his Troilus is more openly sexual. …
Einersen, Dorrit.
Angles on the English-Speaking World 5 (2005): 45-55.
Einersen examines genre markers in versions of the story of Troilus and Criseyde (including Chaucer's claims for tragedy in TC) as background to a discussion of Shakespeare's play as a "historical-tragical-comical-satirical problem play."
This collection of critical essays by Cousins includes a discussion of Shakespeare's "Lucrece," part of which is entitled "Versions of the Lucretia Story by Ovid, Livy, Boccaccio, Chaucer and Gower" (pp. 48-58), a survey of the various accounts which…
Contrasts the characterizations of Theseus and Emily in "The Two Noble Kinsmen" and KnT, focusing on how the play challenges the principles of romance by manipulating Chaucerian material and perspective. Revised slightly as "(Mis)Appropriating the…
Coghill, Nevill.
Herbert Davies, and Helen Gardner, eds. Elizabethan and Jacobean Studies: Presented to Percy Wilson in Honour of His Seventieth Birthday (Oxford: Clarendon, 1959), pp. 86-99.
Tallies a number of images, expressions, and "notional similarities" that evince Chaucer's influence on Shakespeare, reviewing previous scholarship, adding several examples, and arguing that the influence is strongest when Shakespeare was about…
Miola, Robert S.
Oxford and New York : Oxford University Press. , 2000.
Describes the literature with which Shakespeare was familiar, as reflected in his works, their sources, their allusions, etc. Discusses the relationship of Two Noble Kinsmen to KnT and of Troilus and Cressida to TC.
A popular history of the George Inn, Southwark, located next to where the Tabard once stood. Includes various references to the Tabard Inn in history and in CT, and includes a chapter called "The Poet’s Tale, Or, How English Literature Was Born in…
Reid, Lindsay Ann.
Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2018.
Argues that Shakespeare's uses of Ovid in his plays and poems was largely mediated by medieval works, specifically ones by Chaucer and John Gower. Shows that the dream frame of BD influenced "The Taming of the Shrew" and "Cymbeline," that Chaucer’s…
Argues that the figure of Pandarus-as-magician from Chaucer's TC and Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida" lies behind John Keats's allusion to Merlin in his "Eve of St. Agnes."
Borges, Jorge Luis.
Andrew Hurley, trans. Collected Fictions: Jorge Luis Borges (New York: Viking, 1998), pp. 508-15.
Fantasy story about the transmission of Shakespeare's memory from one man to another; includes several references and allusions to Chaucer. The story was first published in Spanish in a limited edition. "La Memoria de Shakespeare" (Buenos Aires:…
Hughes, Jacob Alden.
Dissertation Abstracts International A75.11 (2015): n.p.
Identifies characters throughout Shakespeare's canon who "process and engage Chaucer's ideas on theater, authorship and performance," and demonstrate "how Chaucer's poetry is relevant to drama and theatricality."
Moisan, Thomas (E.)
Chaucerian Shakespeare (Ann Arbor: Michigan Consortium for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 1983), pp. 131-49.
Both in "Romeo and Juliet" and in PardT "the rhetoric through which death appears to be sought...is the means by which its reality and meaning are evaded."
Elizabethan and Jacobean writers found Chaucer a major poet. The poems most frequently used--TC, KnT, and ClT--show that they regarded Chaucer as a romantic not a comic writer. He is used for a brief reference or quotation, a subsidiary source, or…
Box, Terry.
College Language Association Journal 37 (1993): 42-54.
Chaucer's MilT and Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night' are analogues because each satirizes the conventions of courtly love. Absolon, John, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek are "genuine fools" because they can be so easily duped, while Orsino and Viola "manifest…
Gussenhoven, Sr. Francis, RSHM.
Chaucerian Shakespeare (Ann Arbor: Michigan Consortium for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 1983), pp. 69-79.
Both Petruchio and the Wife of Bath see their spouses as "shrewish." Like Chaucer, Shakespeare employs images of taming and teaching, clothes, hats, and kisses to "reinforce the theme of mastery in marriage."
Mulryne, J. R.
M[arie]-T[hérèse] Jones-Davies, ed. Le Roman de Chivalerie au Temps de la Renaissance (Paris: Jean Touzot Libraire-Editeur, 1987), pp. 75-106.
Reads Shakespeare and Fletcher's "Two Noble Kinsmen" as written in commemoration of the chivalric ideals and sudden death of Henry, Prince of Wales, and composed "under the creative discipline" of KnT. For the playwrights, Chaucer's poem provided…
Thompson, Ann.
Jerzy Limon, Malgorzata Grzegorzewska, and Jacek Fabiszak, eds. Shakesplorations: Essays in Honour of Professor Marta Gibinska (Gdansk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdanskiego, in cooperation with the Gdansk Shakespeare Theatre and the Theatrum Gedanense Foundation, 2012), pp. 24-37.
Surveys attention to Chaucer's influence upon Shakespeare, enumerating the references to Chaucer in all recent Arden Shakespeare editions and in various editions of "Troilus and Cressida" and of "The Two Noble Kinsmen." Shows that the attention is…
Hurst, Mary L.
Selected Papers from the West Virginia Shakespeare and Renaissance Association 8 : 1-8, 1983.
Hurst argues that Shakespeare's Cressida is an "embryonic feminist"; Cressida compares favorably with Chaucer's Criseyde, who was elsewhere demeaned in subsequent accounts.
Argues that Shakespeare and "his fellow dramatists . . . consciously revived . . . non-dramatic forms of medieval culture . . . in order to challenge the new constraints placed on public dissent by Tudor and Stuart absolutism" and affirm "the power…
