§ 16. The other projected continuation of the Canterbury Tales is Lydgate's poem called the Storie of Thebes, first printed as an appendix to the Tales in Stowe's edition of 1561[[93]]. It is preceded by a Prologue in which Lydgate, with some humour, makes the Host remark that the poet's bridle has neither boss nor bell, and that the poet himself is pale, and 'all deuoide of blood', and wears upon his head 'a wonder thredbare hood', being moreover 'Well araied for to ride late'; which I take to mean that, if his late riding caused him to fall among thieves, there was not much spoil to be obtained from him.
Lydgate had, he tells us, just recovered from a sickness, and went on a pilgrimage to Canterbury on his own account. By good fortune, he went to the same inn as Chaucer's pilgrims, and found there the whole company. The Host invites him to supper, offering him a great pudding or a round haggis, and prescribing for him, after supper, some red fennel, anise, cummin, or coriander-seed. The pilgrims are to leave Canterbury next morning at daybreak, and Lydgate agrees to accompany them.
Accordingly, on the morrow, they make an early start, designing to reach Ospringe by dinner-time, i.e. by about ten o'clock in the forenoon. They had only just left the precincts of the town, when the Host calls upon Lydgate to tell the first Tale of the day; whereupon he commences the long 'Storie of Thebes', in three parts. He succeeded in finishing the first part just at nine o'clock, as they 'passed the thrope[[94]] of Broughton on the Blee'. Near the end of the third part there is an interesting allusion to the opening lines of the Knightes Tale, where the mourning ladies await the coming of Theseus—
'And, as my master Chaucer list to endite,
All clad in blacke with hir wimples white'—
take up their position 'in the temple of the goddesse Clemence.' When Theseus comes, they beseech him to redress their harms:—
'But if ye list to see the gentillesse
Of Theseus, and how he hath him borne,
If ye remember, ye[[95]] have heard to-forne
Well rehearsed, at Depeford in the vale,