31. Dwale: sleeping potion, narcotic. See note 19 to the Reeve’s Tale.
32. Environ: around; French, “a l’environ.”
33. Cast off thine heart: i.e. from confidence in her.
34. Nesh: soft, delicate; Anglo-Saxon, “nese.”
35. Perfection: Perfectly holy life, in the performance of vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and other modes of mortifying the flesh.
36. All the sin must on our friendes be: who made us take the vows before they knew our own dispositions, or ability, to keep them.
37. Cope: The large vestment worn in singing the service in the choir. In Chaucer’s time it seems to have been a distinctively clerical piece of dress; so, in the prologue to The Monk’s Tale, the Host, lamenting that so stalwart a man as the Monk should have gone into religion, exclaims, “Alas! why wearest thou so wide a cope?”
38. The three of fatal destiny: The three Fates.
39. Cythere: Cytherea — Venus, so called from the name of the island, Cythera, into which her worship was first introduced from Phoenicia.
40. Avaunter: Boaster; Philobone calls him out.