William Cartwright, Washington Irving, and the 'Truth': A Shadow Allusion to Chaucer's 'Canon's Yeoman's Tale'
- Author / Editor
- Beidler, Peter G.
William Cartwright, Washington Irving, and the 'Truth': A Shadow Allusion to Chaucer's 'Canon's Yeoman's Tale'
- Published
- Chaucer Review 29 (1995): 434-39.
- Description
- The "Rip Van Winkle" epigraph on keeping one's word until one dies (meaning that one will "not" keep one's word) is taken from a passage spoken by an old man to a widow in search of a husband in Cartwright's comedy, "The Ordinary."
- Cartwright, in turn, borrows from CYT, in which the dishonest canon swears his eternal fidelity to the gullible and greedy priest. Irving probably did not know that the allusion came from Chaucer.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Chaucer's Influence and Later Allusion.
- Canon's Yeoman and His Tale.