Note 455 — from the Origins To the Renaissance (continued 5)
Reading edition
A passage in Chaucer's "Book of the Duchesse" (1369), lines 30 ff., leaves little doubt as to the reality of the unlucky passion he describes. The poet interrupts the train of his speech to answer a supposed question put to him as to the causes of his depression and "melancolye":
I holdë hit be a siknesse That I have suffred this eight yere, And yet my bote is never the nere; For ther is phisicien but oon, That may me hele.
Proem of the "Book." See, in connection with this, the "Compleynte unto Pite." Who was the loved one we do not know; could it be that the poet was playing upon her name in such lines as these:
For kindly by your heritage right Ye been annexed ever unto Bountee? (l. 71).
There were numerous families of Bonamy, Bonenfaut, Boncœur. A William de Boncuor is named in the "Excerpta e Rotulis Finium," of Roberts, vol. ii. pp. 309, 431, 432.