ABSTRACT
As a narrative poet Geoffrey Chaucer had before him at least three possible opportunities: the English alliterative verse, the courtly poetry of the French romances and the Roman de la Rose, and Boccaccio's new, ambitious narrative, which attempted under early Renaissance influence to elevate narrative into epic. For Chaucer, the victory over a new territory of the imagination left what was past still lively in its own colours, and desirable even if no longer to be achieved. Even Chaucer, with a more limited choice at hand, had avoided them, but Shakespeare had Italian stories in plenty, and Holinshed, and North's translation of Plutarch. Shakespeare's achievement renders meaningless in England the opposition of 'classical' and 'romantic' into completely opposing schools. Shakespeare, as interpreted in the nineteenth century, was the triumph of individual method and expression. Evil counsels can be gained by distortions out of the writings of good men, equally from Aristotle and from Shakespeare.
