1415-21   But whan the cok … : this stanza has a cluster of learned references concerning dawn: to the cockerel as a ‘comune astrologer’, to ‘Lucyfer’ (here Venus as the light-bearer or morning star), and to ‘Fortuna Major [Great Fortune], probably a constellation – but how does the syntax of the stanza work with these allusions?

1422-42 ‘Myn hertes lif …’: Criseyde’s three-stanza speech here, and Troilus’s three-stanza speech (3.1450-70) beginning ‘O cruel day’, are rare examples in Middle English of the lyric genre of the dawn-song, lyrics uttered by lovers regretting the coming of dawn and with it their separation. Compare how Criseyde and Troilus develop their speeches.

1428 As long as whan Almena lay by Jove: when Jupiter slept with Alcmena and Hercules was conceived, the night was miraculously lengthened. What is the effect of the poem’s various allusions to the couplings of gods and mortals? For example, see also 3.715-35.

1495 That first shal Phebus fallen fro his spere: ‘the sun shall fall from its orbit … before Troilus leaves Criseyde’s heart’. How does such swearing by ‘impossibilities’ (an ancient rhetorical formula) play into the presentation of a character whose infidelity is foreknown to us?