“Thou sayst droppyng houses, and eke smoke,
And chidyng wyves maken men to flee
Out of her owne houses. Ah, benedicite!
What ayleth suche an olde man for to chide?”
But the Wife of Bath does not quote Solomon for the proverb, as we find him referred to on p. 20. Again, in a subsequent stanza, p. 21, we are strongly reminded of the lines where the Wife of Bath thus describes her conduct after she had married her fifth husband:—
“Therfore made I my visytations
To vigilles, and to processyons,
To preachyng eke, and to pilgrymages,
To playes of myracles, and to mariages,
And weared on my gay skarlet gytes.”
The main difference is that instead of saying, with Chaucer, that women frequent “playes of myracles,” the author of the ensuing tract tells us that they delight “on scaffoldes to sytte on high stages,” from whence they usually beheld such performances. Throughout, the writer seems to have had our great early poet more or less in his eye, and hence we may possibly conclude, that if the two other pieces on the same subject were translations, this was original. It, therefore, deserves the more attention.
The Payne and Sorowe
of
Evyll Maryage.
THE PAYNE AND SOROWE OF
EVYLL MARYAGE.
Take hede and lerne, thou lytell chylde, and se
That tyme passed wyl not agayne retourne,
And in thy youthe unto vertues use the:
Lette in thy brest no maner vyce sojourne,
That in thyne age thou have no cause to mourne
For tyme lost, nor for defaute of wytte:
Thynke on this lesson, and in thy mynde it shytte.
Glory unto god, lovynge and benyson
To Peter and Johan and also to Laurence,
Whiche have me take under proteccyon
From the deluge of mortall pestylence,
And from the tempest of deedly vyolence,
And me preserve that I fall not in the rage
Under the bonde and yocke of maryage.
I was in purpose to have taken a wyfe,
And for to have wedded without avysednes
A full fayre mayde, with her to lede my lyfe,
Whome that I loved of hasty wylfulnes,
With other fooles to have lyved in dystresse,
As some gave me counseyle, and began me to constrayn
To have be partable of theyr woofull payne.
They laye upon me, and hasted me full sore,
And gave me counseyle for to have be bounde,
And began to prayse eche daye more and more
The woofull lyfe in whiche they dyd habounde,
And were besy my gladnes to confounde,
Themselfe rejoysynge, bothe at even and morowe,
To have a felowe to lyve with them in sorowe.