In woman vinolent is no defence,
which may have been suggested by the couplet in Romaunt de la Rose:—
Car puisque femme est enyvrée
Et n’a point en soy de deffence.
The Sompnour, or, in other words, the summoner (so called from delivering the summonses of the archdeacons), vows vengeance on the Frere (friar) for telling a tale so palpably levelled at his profession, and, giving him a Roland for his Oliver, thus describes the Frere of the period:—
Fie on hir pompe, and on hir glotonie,
And on hir lewednesse; I hem defie. 7510
Me thinketh they ben like Jovinian,
Fat as a whale, and walken as a swan
Al vinolent as botel in the spence;
Hir praier is of ful gret reverence;
Whan they for soules say the Psalm of Davit, 7515
Lo, buf they say, cor meum eructavit.
Tyrwhitt informs us that Jovinian was ‘perhaps the supposed emperour of that name in the Gesta Romanorum, c. lix., whose story was worked up into a Morality, under the title of “L’orgueil et présomption de l’Empereur Jovinien—à 19 Personages.”’
The following lines, still from the Sompnour’s Tale, are not Chaucer’s own, but a quotation or paraphrase from Seneca:—
A lord is lost if he be vicious 7630
And dronkennesse is eke a foule record
Of any man, and namely of a lord. 7632
* * * *
For goddes love drinke more attemprely. 7635
Win maketh man to lesen wretchedly
His mind, and eke his limmes everich on. 7637
The Marchante’s Tale abounds with allusions. Wine played no unimportant part at the marriage of January and May. It was not spared at the wedding. As we read in line 9596:
Bacchus the win hem skinketh al aboute.