ABSTRACT
In the Complaint of Venus the lovers are presented as supremely happy in themselves, their mutual affection and moral admiration threatened externally by the figure of Jealousy. In the Complaint to Pity, Der junge Chaucer realized that a complexity which in some ways corresponds to plot sequence in narrative had to be invented. The examplar available to Shirley for his copying reflects a general, but by no means complete, fifteenth-century tendency to relate the complaints of Mars and Venus. Given this coupling of the two poems, the colophon naturally anticipates in its wording the Complaint of Venus. Chaucer brings the poem to an effective close by a series of outbursts which include a prayer, an emotional analysis and an affirmation of loyalty. The Chaucerian literary account of Mars and Venus can only come into being after the exclusively medieval creation of the concept of an idealized knighthood and chivalry.
