Our prison, for there’s no choice;
Fortune has given us this adversity.
(lines 226-228)
Saturn (the planet that rules chaos), says Arcite, must have given them this misfortune. This is a rational attitude regarding fortune, but it quickly changes when Arcite sees Emelye and falls in love with her himself. Suddenly he is willing to forego his oldest bond of knighthood–his bond with Palamon–for the sake of a lady he has not even met. They start to quarrel, and Palamon accuses Arcite of breaking their sworn oath. Like a child, Palamon claims that Emelye is his because he saw her first.
Arcite notes that there’s a difference in each one’s love: Palamon loves her in “holinesse,” not even knowing whether she’s a woman; while Arcite loves her as a fellow “creature” (lines 300-301), that is, as a woman. It may be that Arcite is right, but he uses the argument to prove that “all’s fair in love,” which justifies breaking his vow. Does it? We’ll have to see which vow–love or blood–is the more lasting.
When Arcite’s fortune changes through the love of Perotheus and the mercy of Theseus, he’s unable to see that it’s really God’s “purveyaunce” (providence) (line 394) that’s setting him free. Instead, he can see only as far as the physical things of nature, and moans that not “erthe, water, fyr, ne air/Ne creature” (lines 388-389) can help him. (He also uses a classical image of man being “drunk,” meaning that his brain is muddled by seeing only lower things and not spiritual heights. But Arcite cannot see that he is doing exactly that.) Palamon’s prison, he complains, is really Paradise, and fortune has thrown him good dice (line 380).
Meanwhile Palamon is saying the same things about Arcite. While Arcite wonders why people can’t just accept God’s will and fortune (which he himself can’t), Palamon asks what “governaunce” (justice or reason) there is in God’s foreknowledge (line 455). Each knight refuses to accept his fate and is torn between what he wants and what he has, between passion and duty. One is in prison and can see his lady; one is exiled and cut off from his beloved. Which of them, the Knight asks us with a sly grin, is the worse off?
Arcite, pale and ill from love, has a dream in which Mercury, messenger of the gods, tells him,
To Attenes shaltou wende [go],
Ther is thee shapen of thy wo an ende
[there the end of your woe is arranged].
(lines 533-534)
Believing this means he will win Emelye, he risks death by returning to Athens. What he doesn’t know is that his “ende” means his death. (In Christian imagery, Mercury often stands for the Devil.)
Fortune takes over from the time that Arcite, “al alone,” returns to Athens in disguise.
NOTE: The idea of aloneness versus “company,” the ideal of the common good, appears throughout the tale. Theseus, the good ruler, consults his parliament and travels with others. Aloneness, some readers believe, means the way to death.
In a circular pattern, we are back in May, and “Were it by aventure or destinee (As, when a thing is shapen, it shal be)” (lines 607-608) Palamon escapes just in time to see Arcite reveal his identity in the grove. Palamon threatens to kill him for breaking their knight’s code and his promise to Theseus not to return. Again, we are meant to see which promises are the more important. As we see later, Palamon considers the knight’s honor (which is tied to Venus) to be more important than winning a battle. Arcite believes the battle the most important thing.
They agree to fight to the death the next day. Destiny is so strong that it determines what happens, in this instance and also in all situations–“All is this ruled by the sight above” (line 814), i.e., God’s knowledge. According to the divine plan, Theseus, Hippolyta, and Emelye arrive in the middle of the battle. Here is where Palamon shows honor by confessing the whole mess and asking for death.
Theseus is angry that they are fighting “withouten judge or other officer” (line 854), in other words, outside the order imposed by law and reason. He agrees to spare their lives when the women plead for mercy and he sees that the fight is over love. He is still angry in his heart, “Yet in his reason he them both excused” (line 908).
Theseus decides to settle the problem in an ordered game of battle where no one will be killed. This battle will determine whether love or might triumphs.
Part III opens with a lavish description of Theseus’ building of the joust arena and the altars prepared for the gods of the main characters: Venus for Palamon, Mars for Arcite, Diana for Emelye. Each god is depicted in the cruelest terms–Venus as the goddess of lovers’ “broken sleeps” and “cold sighs” (line 1062); Mars as the war god that brings death and destruction; Diana, goddess of chastity, as a cruel huntress.
Each knight prays for victory and gets a sign that he interprets as meaning that he’ll be victorious. At the same time, the gods argue it out in the heavens, with Saturn, the god and planet of death, promising Venus that her man Palamon will win eventually. But she and Mars must keep peace between them for awhile, since their opposition creates “swich divisioun” (line 1618).
Even though Saturn is a mean spirit, his main purpose here is to create harmony among the gods and the mortals below. Life can’t exist without harmony or without pain, Saturn is saying; the suggestion is that this is the reason behind fortune’s ups and down.
The final section takes us onto the battlefield where Arcite’s knights fight for Mars (and Emelye) and Palamon’s for Venus (and Emelye). The rhetorical description of the battle, which some say represents sexual struggle, embodies human conflict the way cowboy films do; knights fall off horses and the crowd cheers or boos. Finally Mars’ knight Arcite wins the contest.
When Arcite’s short-lived victory is literally overturned by his pitching horse, we’re told that the “expulsive,” “animal,” or “natural” virtues couldn’t help him.
NOTE: Three virtues, the vital, natural, and animal, were believed to control the body. In Arcite, the animal virtue, connected with the brain, can’t expel the poison from the natural virtue, connected with the liver. “Nature” loses her hold on his life.
He dies “Allone, withouten any company,” without having gained the desire of his dreams.
The only consolation for Arcite’s death comes from Theseus’ old father Egeus, who knows “the world’s transmutation” and has seen it change “both up and down” (lines 1981-1982). This reminds us of love as well as life, for we’ve been told before that lovers go “now up, now down, like a bucket in a well” (line 675). The world always changes according to fortune, Egeus says, and he reminds us of the wider context of the tale when he says
This world is just a thoroughfare of woe,
And we are pilgrims, passing to and fro.
(lines 1989-1990)
There is even some humor in the orderly telling of Arcite’s funeral, which the Knight describes by saying what he won’t describe. But after this ritual of death and honor, life begins again with Theseus explaining the point of the tale, that life’s order is a natural one, of fortune, love, life, and death. Everything is part of a perfect whole established by the First Mover (God), but lives its allotted time before the next generation succeeds.
Then it is wisdom, as it seems to me,
To make a virtue of necessity….
(lines 2183-2184)
In other words, Theseus makes the best of the nature we are given. Pain and death are inevitable, but let’s enjoy it all to get the most out of life. What Palamon and Arcite couldn’t settle between them–the problems of passion, duty, and fortune–are resolved by Theseus in this wise speech.
The marriage of Palamon and Emelye is the outcome of this philosophy, and also shows how, within the wheel of fortune, happiness can exist along with, even because of, sadness and suffering.
^^^^^^^^^^CANTERBURY TALES: SOURCE
Chaucer takes the tale of Palamon and Arcite from Boccaccio’s Teseide, which basically tells the same story but which is, believe it or not, five times longer than Chaucer’s version. He condenses the first book and a half of Boccaccio’s work into the first few lines of the Knight’s Tale, saying the story is long enough without the detail of Theseus’ battle with the Amazons.
The original has Egeus’ words of comfort in Theseus’ mouth; Chaucer changes it so he could give the grand ending speech to the duke. The speech itself–in fact, the whole idea of fortune’s wheel–comes from Boethius, an early Christian philosopher, whom Chaucer translated into English and whose philosophy infects many of the tales. Evidently Chaucer liked the idea of wheels within wheels; fortune causes rises and falls in the world, while above it all God’s providence remains stable.