I counsel that our Host here shall begin,
For he is most enveloped in sin!
... Come forth, sir Host, and offer first anon,
And thou shalt kiss my relics every one ...
Yea, for a groat! unbuckle anon thy purse.
‘Nay, nay,’ quoth he, ‘then have I Christë’s curse ...

The Host, as his opening words may suggest, answers to the purpose, easy words to understand, but not so easy to print here in the broad nakedness of their scorn for the Pardoner and all his works—

This Pardoner answerëd not a word;
So wroth he was, no wordë would he say.
‘Now,’ quoth our Host, ‘I will no longer play
With thee, nor with none other angry man.’
But right anon the worthy Knight began
(When that he saw that all the people lough)[laughed
‘No more of this, for it is right enough![quite
Sir Pardoner, be glad and merry of cheer;
And ye, sir Host, that be to me so dear,
I pray now that ye kiss the Pardoner;
And, Pardoner, I pray thee draw thee near,
And, as we diden, let us laugh and play.’
Anon they kist, and riden forth their way.
Upon an ambler easily she sat,
Y-wimpled well, and on her head an hat
As broad as is a buckler or a targe;
A foot-mantle about her hippës large,
And on her feet a pair of spurrës sharp.

THE WIFE OF BATH
(From the Ellesmere MS.)

The thread of the tales here breaks off; and then suddenly we find the Wife of Bath talking, talking, talking, almost without end as she was without beginning. Her prologue is half a dozen tales in itself, longer almost, and certainly wittier, than all the other prologues put together. The theme is marriage, and her mouth speaks from the abundance of her heart. Here, indeed, we have God’s plenty: fish, flesh, and fowl are set before us in one dish, not to speak of creeping things: it is in truth a strong mess, savoury to those that have the stomach for it, but reeking of garlic, crammed with oaths like the Shipman’s talk; a sample of the Eternal Feminine undisguised and unrefined, in its most glaring contrast with the only other two women of the party, the Prioress and her fellow-nun—

Men may divine, and glosen up and down,
But well I wot, express, withouten lie,
God bade us for to wax and multiply;
That gentle text can I well understand.
Eke, well I wot, he said that mine husband
Should leavë father and mother, and takë me;
But of no number mention madë he
Of bigamy or of octogamy,
Why shouldë men speak of it villainy?

The good wife tells how she has outlived five husbands, and proclaims her readiness for a sixth. The five martyrs are sketched with a master-touch, and are divided into categories according to their obedience or disobedience. But, with all their variety of disposition, time and matrimony had tamed even the most stubborn of them; even that clerk of Oxford whose earlier wont had been to read aloud nightly by the fire from a Book of Bad Women—

... And when I saw he wouldë never fine[finish
To readen on this cursed book all night,
All suddenly three leavës have I plight[plucked
Out of his book, right as he read; and eke
I with my fist so took him on the cheek
That in our fire he fell backward adown;
And up he start as doth a wood lioun[mad
And with his fist he smote me on the head,
That in the floor I lay as I were dead ...