stress. (39)

     E. T. Donaldson writing on “Chaucer the Pilgrim,” (40) says, 
regarding Chaucer the Pilgrim, Chaucer the Poet, and Chaucer 
the Man: “The fact that there are three separate entities does 
not naturally exclude the probability—or rather the certainty—
that they bore a closer resemblance to one another, and that, 
indeed, they frequently got together in the same body. But that 
does not excuse us from keeping them distinct from one 
another, difficult as their close resemblance makes our task.”

     There simply was no available exemplar for author or man 
of letters in the first age of print, and Aretino, Erasmus, and 
More were, like Nashe, Shakespeare, and Swift later on, led to 
adopt in varying degrees the only available soothsayer mask, 
that of the medieval clown. Looking for the “point of view” of