Today we have a story from the Wife of Bath, things start to kick off between the Friar and the Summoner, AND, because it's a bank holiday and I'm feeling generous, I'm throwing in an extra multimedia bonus feature. Hold onto your seats. And before you proceed any further, please read the disclaimer here if you haven't already.
The Wife of Bath's Tale: What can I tell you about the Wife of Bath? You may have heard of her already, because she's one of the more famous characters from the Tales. She has been married five times, and likes to talk about herself quite a lot. Also, she reminds me a lot of a friend of a friend I once knew, which probably won't help you much, but if I explain that, as nice as she was, after about five minutes with this girl you already had a little more information about her sex life than you really needed to know, it might help you to build a picture. It might not. Either way, here is the Wife of Bath's Tale:
A knight of King Arthur’s court rapes a young maiden. He’s sentenced to death, but the queen and the ladies of the court all plead for his life. (Good to see the sisterhood was alive and well in the 14th century). The king decides to let his wife decide if the knight should live or die.
The queen instructs the knight to go off and discover what it is that women desire most in the world. If he can come back within a year and a day and tell her the correct answer, she'll let him go free.
So off he goes to try and find out, but everyone tells him different things and after a year is up he prepares to return to the queen none the wiser. On the way back he stumbles over 24 dancing women and an ugly old crone. Ignoring the dancing women, who seem to serve no purpose in this story whatsoever except to act as a stark contrast to the ugly old crone and remind us just how ugly and old she really is, the knight asks the UOC (I will be abbreviating from now on, just so you know) what women really want. The UOC says she'll tell him the answer as long as he will promise to do whatever she asks. He agrees (fool!) and she tells the answer to him, but, for dramatic effect, not us.
The Knight and his UOC go and see the Queen, and he tells her that he has the answer. Aren't you glad there was all of that dramatic tension building up to this moment? The answer, he tells her, is that all women......
....wait for it........
............. want to dominate their husbands and lovers. Everyone agrees he is right (of course he's right! Forget all of this other nonsense about quality of life, the chance to have a decent career AND babies, and a long weekend in Italy or Paris a couple of times a year, what we all really want is a husband we can push around.) Then the UOC names her price: she wants the knight to marry her.
The knight isn’t happy about this at all, and tries to wheedle his way out of it, but he made a deal, and I'm sure you know as well as I do, when it comes to knights, a deal is definitely a deal. So they get married, and when they go to bed that night he moans some more about how old and ugly she is (he’s not exactly a very charming knight) and how his lineage has been besmirched, which is a word I think should be used more often than it is. The UOC, who I should now technically refer to as his wife, but I think I'll stick with UOC to avoid confusion, gives him a long old lecture about how his lineage, coming as it does from old money, is worthless, and that true nobleness and valour are what life is really all about. Then she goes on at great length to explain exactly what these things are. It's not very interesting.
Finally the UOC gives her new husband a choice – he can have her like she is, and she will stay faithful forever, or he can have her young and beautiful but the house will be filled with love rivals, and she makes no bones about the fact that she will quite probably have it off with a few of them. Tough call.
The knight can’t decide so he asks her to choose; and because she is delighted to be given control (because, remember, that is what all women want), she says he can have both. She magically becomes young and pretty, and stays faithful to him for the rest of their lives.
By the time the story ends, the Friar and the Summoner, who I didn't mention were squabbling before it began, are properly shooting evils at each other. It's the Friar's turn to tell his story next, and guess what it's about? A dodgy summoner.
The Friar's Tale: Once there was a dodgy summoner. (See?) He was so corrupt he even used prostitutes, who, interestingly, no one is offended by this time around. This must have really annoyed the Cook ( if your memory is hazy, or if you have joined us late, I kindly refer you to part 3 of this bluffer's guide for more details) but as we have already established (re earlier parentheses: ditto), he would have been a fool to complain.
The summoner is out one day drumming up business when he runs into another summoner but he is so embarrassed about being a summoner, because, the Friar delights in telling us, summoners are SO EVIL AND BAD, he pretends to be a bailiff.
The summoner and the summoner pretending to be a bailiff team up and agree to share their profits. They start swapping tips, which is basically just an excuse for the Friar to tell us all about the evil and bad things that summoners do. Then they go and try and con some money out of an innocent old woman, and failing that they try to nick her brand new frying pan, which she is reluctant to lose (it was one of the really good ones, a Le Creuset, maybe, or perhaps even a Tefal) so she calls on the devil who carries the summoner pretending to be a bailiff away to HELL. We don't really find out what happened to that other guy.
You kind of get the impression the Friar is making this story up as he goes along. The summoner retaliates with his own Tale, but I'll save that one for next time.
Meanwhile, as promised here's your long awaited Bank Holiday Bonus, which is basically a rather spectacular alternative interpretation of the Wife of Bath's Tale. Using the obvious medium: Lego.
Three things I love about this clip:
1. The opening sequence, with its very literal interpretation of a virgin losing her maidenhead. Bless their innocent little hearts.
2. The supposedly unattractive UOC has doe eyes and big lips which suggest she is more beautiful maiden than UOC in the Lego makers' minds. Having said this, she pulls off the role remarkably well.
3 Trying to work out what the hell those fairies (in this version the redundant dancing maidens are redundant dancing fairies) are singing, and what it has to do with anything else in the story
The Midas story, incidentally, is in Peter Ackroyd's retelling too, but I didn't mention it because it seemed a bit random if you ask me. As I've said before, though: who am I to criticise?
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