After yet another heady excursion into the world of sport, I think it's time for me to return to more familiar ground. Like 14th Century Middle England, for instance.
If you've always been mildly curious about what's in the Canterbury Tales, this is the place for you. If you're doing some exams which require you to actually know some things about the Canterbury Tales, you may want to try this excellent re-telling by Peter Ackroyd instead.
The Franklin's Tale: The Franklin sounds like my kind of guy. He's a big red-wine drinker, for a start. His tale is about a couple called Arveragus (male) and Dorigen (female; those names make it hard to tell, yes?)
They live together in Brittany, but then Arveragus has to sail away to Britain for a couple of years (we don't really find out why) so theirs becomes a long distance relationship. Poor old Dorigen is pretty miserable, stuck at home by herself, so her friends all rally around, and try to keep her spirits up. It's good to have mates you can count on.
They all go to a party one night, and at the same party is Aurelius. Handsome, young, strong, virtuous, all-round-good-guy. (If you know a bit about how stories work, you might already be thinking that this guy has trouble written all over him. You'd be right; but let's not spoil it for everyone else.) Aurelius and Dorigen start chatting.
Finally, Aurelius the wonder-kid makes a confession: he's seen Dorigen around the place and has been secretly and madly in love with her for a while. She says she will have an affair with him if he can remove all of the rocks from Brittany's coast. Don't get her wrong, Dorigen isn't a slag or anything, she really is still madly in love with her husband. But she has already been worrying about those rocks, and is convinced his boat is going to get smashed on them one day, so it's sort of a win-win situation. Plus, she doesn't really think Aurelius will be able to do it.
Aurelius, though, is a guy not be under-estimated, and he prays to the gods for some help. Then he goes to bed in misery convinced that he will die if the gods don't step in and sort those rocks out for him. He might be young and handsome and clever and all those things, but tell you what, he isn't half a drama queen as well. Meanwhile, Arveragus returns.
Aurelius has an older brother who is starting to get a bit worried about him moping around in bed, and steps in to help. He decides that a spot of magic is what is needed, so drags Aurelius to Orleans, and they track down a magician. One of the brother's old uni mates, I think. They ask him for a quote, and like all good tradesmen he thinks for a while, says "ooh, that could be a bit tricky" and then charges them an extortionate rate which they have no choice but to accept. They agree to pay half up front, and the rest later.
The magician does his stuff (the Franklin takes great pains, at this stage, to remind us that magic is evil, and we shouldn't be trying this at home) and it works; the rocks all disappear. Aurelius goes to tell Dorigen, but also says he'll let her decide whether she wants to keep her end of the bargain.
She is a little shocked, to put in mildly, and after worrying for quite a long time, she confesses everything to her husband. Risky move, some might say; others would argue that there's not point having a relationship if you can't be completely honest with each other. I'm not Jeremy Kyle, so I'm going to refrain from judgement. She really does spend a very long time worrying first; mainly to give Chaucer a chance to throw in a whole lot of clever classical references.
Arveragus is surprisingly cool about the whole thing, although he's pretty upset, as anyone would be I suppose, about the idea of his wife getting off with someone else. But because he's such a decent guy, he tells her that he thinks she should keep her word, and send her off to see Aurelius.
Aurelius is initially delighted but quickly decides that he can't possibly make Dorigen go through with it, because her husband sounds like such a decent chap. So he absolves her from their agreement. Aurelius, as it turns out, is a pretty decent chap too.
Even though things didn't quite work out as planned for Aurelius, he still needs to pay the magician the rest of his fee. When he tells the magician what happened, and how he didn't have a wild affair with Dorigen after all, the magician decides that Aurelius seems like such a nice guy, that it would be a shame to rip him off. Being a pretty decent chap as well, he absolves him of the remaining debt.
So in the end, everyone gets a happy ending. Because they are thoroughly decent chaps who do the right thing, and that's exactly what people who do the right thing deserve.
I knew I liked the Franklin. He is definitely my kind of guy.
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