The dainty Prioress, as becomes her, now tells, in stanzas, the legend of a miracle of Our Lady: how a little boy used to sing her praises through the Jewish quarter of a town; how the Jews slew him and cast him into a pit, and how he nevertheless continued to sing his hymn like "young Hugh of Lincoln, who cursed Jews," slain also in 1255, if ever the thing occurred: it was a common fable of the Middle Ages.
The poet himself is called in next, and recites "Sir Thopas"; a parody of the rhymed romances of chivalry. It bores the Host, "No more of this," he cries, "you do nothing but waste our time," so the poet tells "a litel thing in prose," the Story of Melibeus. It is not so very "litel," and is freely translated from the French of Jean de Meung. There are about twelve thousand words in Melibeus, which is full of quotations from all sorts of learned books and moral lessons: the Host, however, thought it would have been very edifying to his ill-tempered wife, a fierce woman.
The Monk now "tells sad stories of the deaths of Kings," and of the miseries of celebrated persons from Lucifer, Adam, and Hercules to Nero, and Croesus, and Julius Cæsar. Chaucer borrowed from the Bible, Boccaccio, Boëthius, the "Romance of the Rose": in fact he seems to have begun the collection while he was young, taken it up again after his visit to Italy, and finally wearied of the long series of miseries; so he makes even the courteous Knight rebel, and cry, "Good sir, no more of this". He wants more cheerful matter. The Host is of the same mind, and calls one of the three priests that ride with the Prioress. Since the Monk is described as a jolly hunting clergyman, it is not clear why Chaucer put old work about mortal tragedies into his mouth. The Priest tells a form of the tale of the Cock, his Hens, and the Fox, which includes a ghost story, a good deal of learning and morality, and a great deal of humour and of brilliant description. The tale is in ten syllabled verse; and in Chaucer's late manner, as is the Physician's Tale, the Roman story of Virginia, (as in Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient Rome"). Chaucer in part translates the version of Jean de Meung in the "Romance of the Rose". The tale is told with sweet pitifulness and delicacy.
The Pardoner, with his wallet
Bret-ful of pardoun come from Rome al hoot,
"pardons hot from Rome," and with a large collection of spurious relics of Saints, is an odious kind of sacred swindler, but his tale is pointed against avarice. It is derived from a very old story found in Asia as well as in Europe. The Pardoner begins by a satirical account of his profession and of his practices, his greed and lust, his spoiling of the poor, before he preaches his moral tale of the evils of greed.
For, though myself be a ful vicious man,
A moral tale yet I you telle can,
and a terrible tale of murder it is. The Host himself is sickened by the cynicism of the Pardoner, but the tolerant Knight makes peace between them: in the nature of things the Knight would have ridden forward out of his odious society. It has been said that the tales "display the literary and artistic side" of Chaucer's genius; and many of them were not made for their places in the Pilgrimage, while Chaucer's "observing and dramatic genius" appears in the prologues and places where the characters converse together. These passages are often, to us, the most curious and interesting, for they are dramatic and humorous pictures of actual life and manners. But the tolerance of the Pardoner by the Knight, is almost too great a stretch of gentleness.
The rich, business-like, proud, luxurious Wife of Bath who has had as many husbands as the Woman of Samaria, begins with a long Prologue about her own past life and her distaste for the mediaeval exaltation of virginity; she prefers the example of the much married King Solomon. She boasts herself to be a worshipper of Venus and Mars, love is not more her delight than domestic broils and domineering. Her prologue and tale are in Chaucer's best later style of verse: the tale is like that of courteous Sir Gawain, and his bride, the Loathly Lady, in a romance, and the Friar, or Frere, justly says that she deals too much "in school matter of great difficulty," and in learned authorities.
The Frere and the Summoner next tell tales gibing at each other's profession. They are of the coarser sort, and are relieved by the Clerk's tale in stanzas; it is a form of the famous legend of Patient Griselda, whose patience is like that of Enid in "The Idylls of the King". The Clerk says that he learned the story from Petrarch, the great Italian poet, in Padua. The story, like most of those which are serious, is given in stanzas: Boccaccio wrote it in Italian; Petrarch in Latin. The poet would not wish wives be as meek as Griselda; there is a happy mean between her invincible patience and the tyranny of the Wife of Bath.