sympathy is first aroused for the heroine, whom, in the end, we cannot but
condemn. In Boccaccio, Cressid is fair and false--one of those fickle
creatures with whom Italian literature, and Boccaccio in particular, so
largely deal, and whose presentment merely repeats to us the old cynical
half-truth as to woman's weakness. The English poet, though he does not
pretend that his heroine was "religious" (i.e. a nun to whom earthly love
is a sin), endears her to us from the first; so much that "O the pity of
it" seems the hardest verdict we can ultimately pass upon her conduct.
How, then, is the catastrophe of the action, the falling away of Cressid
from her truth to Troilus, poetically explained? By an appeal--
pedantically put, perhaps, and as it were dragged in violently by means of
a truncated quotation from Boethius--to the fundamental difficulty
concerning the relations between poor human life and the government of the
world. This, it must be conceded, is a considerably deeper problem than
the nature of woman. Troilus and Cressid, the hero sinned against and the
sinning heroine, are the VICTIMS OF FATE. Who shall cast a stone against
those who are, but like the rest of us, predestined to their deeds and to
their doom; since the co-existence of free-will with predestination does
not admit of proof? This solution of the conflict may be morally as well
as theologically unsound; it certainly is aesthetically faulty; but it is
the reverse of frivolous or commonplace.

Or let us turn from Cressid, "matchless in beauty," and warm with sweet
life, but not ignoble even in the season of her weakness, to another
personage of the poem. In itself the character of Pandarus is one of the
most revolting which imagination can devise; so much so that the name has
become proverbial for the most despicable of human types. With Boccaccio
Pandarus is Cressid's cousin and Troilus' youthful friend, and there is no
intention of making him more offensive than are half the confidants of
amorous heroes. But Chaucer sees his dramatic opportunity; and without