Unfinished Business: the Termination of Chaucer's "Cook's Tale" Author(S): Jim Casey Source: the Chaucer Review, Vol

Unfinished Business: The Termination of Chaucer's "Cook's Tale" Author(s): Jim Casey Source: The Chaucer Review, Vol. 41, No. 2 (2006), pp. 185-196 Published by: Penn State University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25094351 . Accessed: 23/07/2014 22:08

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This content downloaded from 130.132.173.18 on Wed, 23 Jul 2014 22:08:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions UNFINISHED BUSINESS: THE TERMINATION OF CHAUCER'S COOK'S TALE

byJim Casey

The "unscheduled termination" of Chaucer's Cook's Tale has long baffled critics and readers alike.1 At the end of Fragment I of the Canterbury the concludes after one of the most Tales, story suddenly provocative lines in all the tales, describing a woman who "heeld for contenance / A shoppe, and swyved for hir sustenance" (I 4422).2 Douglas Gray notes that the abrupt end of the Cook's Tale may have resulted from a variety of circumstances:

There are a number of ways in which the incompleteness of The Cook's Tale may be accounted for: that more of it existed, but has been lost (but the Hengwrt scribe seems to have decided that there was no that Chaucer was some or more);3 by circumstance other prevented from completing it,4 or that for some reason he decided not to do so.5

We might add to this list the possibility that the Cook's Tale, rather than an can be understood within a being "incomplete" story, larger frame in a manner work, concluding wholly appropriate within the thematic context of I.6 over Fragment Many critics, puzzling the sudden close, explore the ending by means of an imagined base-text, but without new evidence manuscript discussions of the textual provenance of the Cook's Tale remain and we must admit the of recon conjectural, impossibility on a structing the tale based text that no longer exists, and perhaps never even as a existed, copy. seems more to It useful look at the tale that does exist, examining the extant fragment of the Cook's Tale to find clues regarding its termination. Critics advocating thematic closure have done this, but their arguments, while theoretically appealing, seem somehow insufficient. As John Burrow the of "thematic does not notes, presence patterns" satisfactorily explain the tale's sudden end: "One business of criticism, certainly, is to see thematic patterns in carpets, but I doubt whether the completion of

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a such pattern can properly be held to justify the breaking off of a story?almost before it has begun, in the case of The Cook's Tale."7 The problem with the Cook's Tak is that it does not feel complete.8 Not only does the tale fail to resolve narratively; it also lacks the markers of conclusion so common to Chaucer's other tales. as Hines Thus, John of thematic "do not solve the suggests, arguments completeness problem that more is needed by the Cook's Tak as a narrative product: it conspicuously lacks the marked conclusion that all the preceding tales have had, either in a conclusion within the tale or in the form of an endlink."9 It is possible, of course, that the abrupt completion of the tale should be read as humorous, mocking either the Cook's lack of skill as a or his taciturn nature. The former seems storyteller unlikely because the fragmentary tale is itself compelling. As for the latter possibility, ifwe are meant to laugh at the Cook's brusque, inadequate finish, then why does Chaucer make him so the on gregarious earlier, clawing Reeve the back after that is no or to man's tale? Why there closure summation emphasize a potentially comic component? And why is there no reaction from the other pilgrims? Commenting on the Canterbury Taks, several critics quote Frank Kermode's statement that "We cannot, of course, be denied an end; it is one to of the great charms of books that they have end."10 Burrow questions the applicability of this statement to Chaucer, but Michaela a not Paasche Grudin suggests that such desire for closure may have been ahistorical:

By the time Chaucer, in Troilus and Criseyde (c. 1385), has Pandarus to "th'ende is tales say Criseyde, every strengthe" structure a (2.260), the relation between and closure is surely cliche. After all, do not readers, like lovers, hope for a satisfying consummation?l!

Despite this prevalent cliche, however, Chaucer consistently resists the a restrictive finality of closure, mimicking the reality of world that, sadly, has far too little consummation. Grudin demonstrates how throughout the Canterbury Taks, "The illusion of realism?the narrative appearing to it is Chaucer's be unfinished because interrupted?underscores innovative sense of closure,"12 that is to say, his anti-closure.13 Kolve asserts that medieval aesthetics had little room for such "modern" to suspicions of literary closure because medieval writers sought imitate sense the perfect, and thus perfected (in the of completed) work of the Divine Creator.14 But Rosemarie McGerr, in her book-length study of modern and closure in Chaucer, demonstrates that, despite postmodern the of earlier assumptions regarding development literary openness,

This content downloaded from 130.132.173.18 on Wed, 23 Jul 2014 22:08:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions JIM CASEY 187 models of open form existed within the literary tradition of the late she stresses that "resistance to closure Middle Ages. Furthermore, plays a role in Chaucer's narrative than in those of other larger poems any medieval the Cook's Tale be read as one of poet."15 Perhaps, then, might books." these "open note of For many critics, however, the famous scribal the Hengwrt Manuscript challenges the potential openness of the Cook's Tale.16 Fragment I ends with the Cook's Tale, and below line 4422 the scribe has na and N. F. written, "Of this cokes tale maked Chaucer moore." Gray note Blake, among others, have assumed that the scribe made this based on certain but M. C. who has examined knowledge,17 Seymour, the bibliographic information thoroughly, argues that if Fragment I as were circulating in booklet form before Hengwrt was transcribed, is likely, then the last leaves of the copy-text may quite easily have been lost:

Indeed, one of the motives behind the commissioning of MS Hengwrt may have been to preserve within one binding copies of the Canterbury Tales which were known to be already subject to hazard in booklet form. The claim that of this cokes tale maked namoore Chaucer may not therefore be true.18

Seymour believes that the tale continued, but that the final quire of the was "lost in the so that the copy-text very early manuscript tradition, Hengwrt scribe, writing in London or Westminster c. 1405, was unable to find or hear of it."19 Seymour proposes that, having looked unsuccess the scribe his note fully for the tale, added later. Possibly. The ink used for the note does not match the darkest brown ink of the Cook's Prologue and Tale but corresponds, instead, to the lightest brown ink of Section 2 (quires 9 through 12, including the Wife and the Friar's and and the of Bath's Prologue Tale, Prologue Tale, Summoner's and In of the five different Prologue Tale). fact, manuscript's shades of ink, the lightest brown ink appears only in Section 2 and the Cook's Tale note.20 It is quite clear, then, that the scribe added the note only after he had completed the Cook's Tale. He almost certainly did not note as as add the part of the "finishing touches to the manuscript,"21 Burrow has suggested. Were this the case, the note most likely would have been in the ink of yellowish shade (used sporadically throughout the work, notably for the opening title, two links in section 4, and for parts of Section 3). The presence of the lighter brown ink in only the note and Section 2 demonstrates quite clearly that the scribe wrote the note immediately before beginning Section 2, during his work on or the section, immediately following. Clearly, the scribe completed

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the tale with no explicit and returned later to add the note. A. I. Doyle and M. B. Parkes that the scribe wrote the imagine manuscript piece meal as he obtained of If this were the separate portions copy.22 case, then perhaps the scribe placed no note initially because he hoped to obtain the rest of the tale. Seymour argues that by the time the scribe began work on the Ellesmere Manuscript, he had established the existence of the tale's continuation but had been unable to obtain a copy of the complete story, as evidenced by the absence of a note and the blank space after the tale.23 Yet the note is not the only important difference between the two manuscripts. Seymour admits that Hengwrt and Ellesmere are not identical, despite the meticulous work of their scribe: "textually [MS Hengwrt] lacks thirteen groups of lines found in Ellesmere and elsewhere. The order of some of its tales differs from that of MS Ellesmere."24 If we agree with Charles Owen that Hengwrt and were a then we Ellesmere copied by "remarkably competent editor,"25 may assume that the differences in the manuscripts resulted from careful decisions rather than happenstance. More importantly, if Linne Mooney is correct in her identification of the scribe mentioned in "Chaucers Wordes unto Adam, His Owne Scriveyn" as Adam Pinckhurst, then these alterations would have been made by a scribe familiar with even under authorial Chaucer, perhaps working supervision.26 In the case of the Cook's Tale, assigning Pinckhurst to Hengwrt and rather than clarifies matters. as Ellesmere complicates If, Mooney suggests, the Adam Scriveyn poem's traditionally early date might be as a between Chaucer taken evidence of long working relationship and the scribe, then the claim "Of this cokes tale maked Chaucer na moore" may have been confirmed by the author himself. But if this were is there no note in Ellesmere? so, then why corresponding Why are there other important differences between the two texts? as evi Are we to read the variations found in the later manuscript dence of authorial correction or revision? If this is the case, then the note than under Chaucer's may have been removed, rather placed, direction.27 on If Mooney is right, and Pinckhurst was working Hengwrt and of transmis perhaps Ellesmere before 1400, then Seymour's scenario sion, with its lost quire, seems less plausible. It is unlikely, though possi ble, that Pinckhurst (or another scribe) working during Chaucer's as we lifetime would have copied the tale have it, looked unsuccessfully for an the erroneous later realized his and ending, placed note, mistake, or then been unable to obtain a complete copy of the tale from Chaucer his estate. Moreover, the apparently incorrect readings found in as make Hengwrt (perhaps even including the note, Seymour proposes) oversaw little sense if we imagine that Chaucer the transcription.28

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Moreover, even without considering the complicating factor of Adam Pinckhurst, we need not accept without question Seymour's position a note that a portion of the Cook's Tale has been lost. The lack of in Ellesmere does not prove that the scribe had discovered the existence of a completed Cook's Tale. On the contrary, Iwould suggest that the lack of a note scribe's as to the correct state of the proves only the uncertainty not there was more. In this we tale, his certainty that regard, might in such as when consider similar situations of uncertainty Hengwrt, seems to more for the Monk's or the the scribe have sought copy Tale, instance, described by Seymour, of the scribe's misreading of the conclusion of the Squire's Tale:

In the Squire's Tale too the scribe failed to recognise initially the dramatic interruption and originally left a blank page (f.l37v), which he later filled with the Franklin's Prologue hurriedly adapted to the Merchant whose tale he had already written on subsequent leaves.29

Our careful scribe does make mistakes. Perhaps he misunderstood the dramatic conclusion of the Cook's Tale in Hengwrt and furnished no simi lar note in Ellesmere because he suspected that the first note might be error. contains a note to that of in No other manuscript similar Hengwrt, and several other scribes have inserted the Tale of Gamelyn immediately following the unfinished tale. This indicates that from the very begin ning there was confusion as to what followed and that, like Chaucer's Tale of Sir Thopas, the first Cook's Tale was unacceptable to some. For I believe that Cook's was Chaucer, however, the Tale perfectly acceptable. In fact, evidence within the Canterbury Tales suggests that both the placement of the Cook's Tale and something of its present narrative were to since the tale to inform important Chaucer, appears later conversation and interaction between his In the pilgrims. Prologue to the Manciple's Tale, Harry Bailly bids his companions to wake the Cook so that the man tell a tale for the sleeping may company's enjoy ment. not The Host does say another tale, but rather tells them,

"Do hym come forth, he knoweth his penaunce; For he shal telle a tale, by my fey, Although it be nat worth a bo tel hey." (IX 12-14)

This passage has caused confusion because the Cook's Tale appears in Fragment I, which obviously occurs before the Manciple's Tale. Additionally, Bailly asks, "Is that a cook of Londoun, with meschaunce?"

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(IX 11), as if seeing the Cook for the very first time. These two passages have led Larry D. Benson and others to suggest that "Perhaps Chaucer intended to cancel the Cook's Prologue and the fragmentary Cook's It the Tale."30 may be, however, that Mancipk's Prologue suggests the opposite, and that Bailly's address to the Cook depends greatly on the earlier tale and prologue. In the Mancipk's Prologue, the Host is in high spirits, as is indicated when he begins "to jape and pleye" (IX 4). He awakens the napping Cook and harangues him:

"Hastow had fleen al nyght, or artow dronke? Or hastow with som quene al nyght yswonke, So that thow mayst nat holden up thyn heed?" (IX 17-19)

The Manciple joins in the "bourde" (IX 81) and calls the Cook a soure "dronken wight" (IX 35) whose "breeth ful stynketh" (IX 32).31 The Cook becomes angry but is so drunk that he falls off his horse and must be helped back on. Only when the Manciple gives him more alcohol is the Cook content again. Obviously, Bailly is mocking the Cook's drunkenness, perhaps even suggesting his sexual impotence with the punning observation that the Cook cannot hold up his own head. Notice, however, that the Host also suggests that the Cook might need he has the with a With this insinua sleep because spent night "quene." tion, the Host seems to refer back to the Cook's aborted tale, implying a correlation between the immoral Perkyn and the Cook, who would have his under an indenture similar to that of the reveler.32 spent youth young We might remember too that the husband of the quean in the Cook's Tak is described as a thief s accomplice. So when Bailly observes, "A theef are myghte hym ful lightly robbe and bynde" (IX 8), we reminded that man Perkyn has taken up residence with just the kind of who might prey on the drunken, sleeping Cook.33 The Host stresses, too, the fact that Hogge of Ware is a "cook of Londoun," the setting of Perkyn's drinking, dicing, and whoring adventure. Finally, the Host has already resigned himself to the fact that the Cook's narrative will be worthless: "nat worth of the a botel hey" (IX 14). Perhaps Bailly merely predicts the quality tale from the Cook's present state?Hogge's inebriation will prompt the Host's later assessment, "I trowe he lewedly wolde telle his tale" common (IX 59)34?or perhaps he knows that the Cook's tale will be because of his with the earlier tale. and vulgar experience Thus, to in although Bailly does not refer overtly the Cook's Tak the Mancipk's or Prologue, he does allude to the story three four times, suggesting that, to rather than cancelling the tale, Chaucer intended for it retain its place at the end of Fragment I.

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it seems clear that the scribe's As for the conclusion itself, Hengwrt note purporting knowledge of the completeness of the Cook's Tale can not be trusted without reservation. If the tale actually did continue, then Seymour offers the best explanation for the ending being lost, although he bases much of his argument on the assumption that the copy-text and manuscript would have been of similar size, and this may not have been the case. Of the hypothetical lost ending, we can know nothing. The loss has of scholars from Some not, course, prevented speculating. critics, the of have a noting "degenerative movement"35 Fragment I, predicted have a rich such as a fabliau, while others proposed morally conclusion, son or a tale.36 Yet the theories all prodigal story morality lost-portion seem to the fact as it the tale does have a ignore that, unsatisfactory is, kind of ending. It seems remarkably fortuitous that the extant fragment would end with what Benson describes as "an ideal couplet at which to rather than with an or a mundane sentence. stop"37 incomplete thought And to as a yet the tale fails satisfy narrative. are we So what to make of the Cook's Tale} How can it be complete and incomplete at the same time? The accumulation of sins within it and the startling vulgarity of the final line may cause one to suspect that Chaucer intended to interrupt the tale of Perkyn's misadventures, as he does the Tale of Sir Thopas, the Squire's Tale, and the Monk's Tale. Thus, the tale may be complete for Chaucer, although not completed by the Cook. Ultimately, we may never know what Chaucer had in mind for the Cook's Tale. Without new textual all evidence, speculation is suspect, must and the commentary remain, like many of Chaucer's stories, open.

University of Alabama Tuscaloosa, Alabama @ua. (james. casey edu)

1. V A. Kolve, Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative: The First Five Canterbury Tales (Stanford, 1984), 257. are 2. All quotes from The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson, 3rd edn. (Boston, 1987). 3. M. C. no Seymour argues that because "Chaucer left work uncompleted," CkT must have been finished ("Of This Cokes Tale," Chaucer Review 24 [1990]: 259-62, at 259). Based on the assumption that the copy-text and manuscript would have been of similar he that the size, suggests elsewhere placement of the tale in Hengwrt makes it possible that "a Cook's Tale had lost its final completed leaves in the scribe's copy-text" ("Hypothesis, and the Hyperbole, Hengwrt Manuscript of the Canterbury Tales," English Studies 68 [1987]: at He sees the 214-19, 216). bibliographical situation of C&jTas parallel to that of MerTin Hengwrt, where the primary copy-text of MerT seems to have lacked the last hundred lines. These lines existed but not in the scribe's copy-text. Furthermore, he suggests that "the a note absence of such [MS Hengwrt's explicit] in MS Ellesmere suggests that [the scribe]

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aware was then, a short time later, that Chaucer had completed the tale, though he was still unable to obtain the complete copy" ("Cokes Tale," 260). 4. J. M. Manly and Edith Rickert concede that the end of the tale may have been lost; was not if CkT completed, however, they maintain the unlikelihood of Chaucer ending it voluntarily at this point: "That Chaucer wrote thus far and stopped is difficult to believe. seems a He not only master of matchless technique but too thoroughly master of his story material to stop. Only sudden illness or some other insurmountable interference could have prevented him from going on" (The Text of the Canterbury Tales, 6 vols. [Chicago, 1940], 3:446). Nor would the incomplete nature of the original preclude later reproduction. As John Burrow has noted, "Such was indeed common practice in the Middle Ages: to publish texts left fragmentary at the time of an author's death, with or without continuations by other hands" ("Poems without Endings," Studies in the Age of Chaucer 13 [1991]: 17-37, at 17). a 5. Douglas Gray, "Explanatory Notes," in Riverside Chaucer, 853. There are number of theories as to why Chaucer might have chosen either to leave the tale uncompleted or to censor himself. William F. Woods suggests that Chaucer abandoned the tale because it too closely resembled the political controversy between Nicholas Brembre and John of Northampton that pitted the victuallers against other guilds ("Society and Nature in the on Cook's Tale," Papers Language and Literature 32 [1996]: 189-206, at 203). Donald R. a Howard proposes scenario similar to the lost-quire theory but with the ending removed so intentionally: "Possibly it was finished but too scurrilous to be transcribed, and went or someone an underground. Possibly Chaucer else suppressed it, ripped it out of early copy leaving only what was on the same folio with the ending of the Reeve's Tale," (The Idea of the Canterbury Tales [Berkeley, 1976], 244). This is an interesting idea certainly, but as John Scattergood notes, the scurrility of the two preceding tales and Chaucer's admonition to those offended to "Turne over the leef and chese another" (I 3177) makes the situation unlikely ("The Cook's Tale," in Sources and Analogues of the Canterbury Tales, ed. Robert M. Correale and Mary Hamel, 2 vols. [Cambridge, U.K., 2002-2006], 1:75-86, at as an 76). And if we imagine authorial intervention explanation for the seemingly incom never or plete tale, we might also wonder why Chaucer cancelled revised the portion of the tale that remains. Derek Pearsall suggests that closure of CT in general has been "pre-empted" by revision ("Pre-empting Closure in 'The Canterbury Tales': Old Endings, New Beginnings," in Essays in Ricardian Literature: In Honour ofJ. A. Burrow, ed. A.J. Minnis, Charlotte C. Morse, and Thorlac Turville-Petre [Oxford, 1997], 23-38). Richard Beadle, on a once to basing his reading references to lost manuscript belonging Sir John Selden as a which has no division between the prologue and the tale, describes the story feint designed to respond to Harry Bailly without fully answering him yet ("T wol nat telle it vit': John Selden and a Lost Version of the Cook's Tale," in Chaucer to Shakespeare: Essays inHonour of Shinsuke Ando, ed. Toshiuki Takamiya and Richard Beadle [Cambridge, U.K., 1992], uses and a 55-66). Scattergood calls this explanation unlikely, since Chaucer "whilom" to two of the description of place and characters (as in CkT) open several tales, including one he notes that all three that precede the tale and the that follows. Furthermore, nearly oure scribes began "A prentys whilom dwelled in citee" (I 4365) with "an emphatic too saw as a than a decorative capital," implying that they CkT story, rather "feint" (77). solution to 6. E. G. Stanley argues that the wife's shop is the Cook's reductive solved the the the "argument of herbergage" (I 4329) and that, having problem posed by more to "The last few lines of The dangers of hospitality, the Cook merely has nothing say: the be a no loss Cook's Tale give the recipe for carefree herbergage: though lodger thief, no if a thief in cahoots puts him up; though the lodger be a swiver, danger if the landlady This Cokes is a whore, and no honour to lose if the pimping landlord is her husband" ("Of Tale Maked Chaucer Na Moore," Poetica 5 [1976]: 36-59, at 59). E. D. Blodgett also

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an describes the tale as example of the Cook's essentializing nature; instead of herbergage, however, Blodgett understands the tale in terms of pryvetee, suggesting that the brevity of CkT results from "the feebleness of the Cook's memory" ("Chaucerian Pryvetee and the Opposition to Time," Speculum 51 [1976]: 477-93, at 491). Olga Burakov contends the tale or (complete not) is connected to biblical themes, specifically Adam's fall and the sin "of a at defying higher authority" ("Chaucer's The Cook's Tale," Explicator 61 [2002]: 2-5, 2). a Emily Jensen sees pattern of increasingly active and autonomous participation by women in Fragment I, suggesting that the threat of increased female agency might explain why as a Chaucer ends where he does ("Male Competition Unifying Motif in Fragment A of The Canterbury Tales" Chaucer Review 24 [1990]: 320-28, at 324). we 7. Burrow, "Poems without Endings," 32. Indeed, might note that the entire tale over is only fifty-eight lines long, just half the length of the later episode in MancPro that describes the Cook's drunkenness. 8. Piero Boitani complains in Chaucer and the Imaginary World of Fame (Totowa, N. J., 1984) that many of Chaucer's works provide "disturbing, unsatisfactory, ambiguous, problematic, incomplete conclusions" (208). For CAT specifically, several of Chaucer's a copyists, who, as Scattergood points out, "hate vacuum" ("The Cook's Tale," 77), have filled the lacunae in various ways. In twenty-five manuscripts, the spurious Tale of Gamelyn no has been inserted; eight manuscripts offer transition, but most scribes have added lines deferring the tale of Perkyn in favor of one more appropriate. Other manuscripts, rather than adding the Tale of Gamelyn, end CAT with a moral similar to the "sentence" (VI 224) of the Physician. For example, MS Bodley 686 concludes, "Remembre you what myschefe cometh of mysgovernaunce" (Kolve, Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative, 276). Daniel J. Pinti notes that alterations of the copy-text were common, revealing the fact that Chaucer's was sees authority not sacrosanct; in Bodley 686 Pinti the revisionary voice of the scribe, a who "creates vision of the Cook's Tale that not only pretends to completion, and even moralization, but also re-imagines the tale's themes in significant ways and functions as a on commentary the idea of Chaucerian authority in the fifteenth century" ("Governing the Cook's Tale in Bodley 686," Chaucer Review 30 [1996]: 378-88, at 380). For David Boyd, acts the revisionary Bodley 686 to vindicate the maintenance of power relations, providing an "opportunity for containing the transgressive and justifying the social order" ("Social Texts: Bodley 686 and the Politics of the Cook's Tale," Huntington Library Quarterly 58 [1995]: 81-97, at 95). Most manuscripts, however, seek to complete rather than revise. The conclusion of CkT in MS Rawlinson 141 offers a typical moral ending: "And thus with horedom and bryberye / Togeder thei used till thei honged hye; / For who so evel byeth shal make a sory sale. / And thus I make an ende of my tale" (Burrow, "Poems without Endings," 23). 9. John Hines, The Fabliau in English (New York, 1993), 158. an 10. Frank Kermode, The Sense of Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction (New York, 1967), 23. 11. Michaela Paasche Grudin, "Discourse and the Problem of Closure in The Canterbury Tales" PMLA 107 (1992): 1157-67, at 1159. 12. Grudin, "Discourse," 1161. 13. Phyllis Braxton, "Closure in the 'Canterbury Tales,'" PMLA 108 (1993): 1170-71, criticizes this discussion of closure, arguing that Grudin ignores the importance of Chaucer's gendered readership and the effect of this audience on CT. This seems to me to not be only incorrect, but ironic. Very aware of issues of gender issues in the tales, Grudin cites such critics as Caroline Dinshaw, who has commented on the way closure in Tr is connected to a "masculine reading" in which the dominant male-centered ideologies "achieve their vision of wholeness by unacknowledged exclusion, elimination, constraint" (Chaucer's Sexual Politics [Madison, Wise, 1989], 51). For me, the reading that Braxton

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attempts to force onto both the tale and Grudin's article engages in a restrictive and hegemonic containment analogous to the oppressive closure that she attributes to the patriarchy of Chaucer's time. 14. Kolve, Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative, 280-82. 15. Rosemarie P. McGerr, Chaucer's Open Books: Resistance to Closure inMedieval Discourse (Gainesville, Fla., 1998), 157. 16. Peter Robinson acknowledges the limitations of Hengwrt. In answer to the of or not we can trust a question whether the manuscript, he offers very qualified, 'Yes, in parts," concluding, "It has the best text, where it has a text, but itmay not have all the text which nor nor Chaucer wrote, have it all in the best order, spell the text as Chaucer spelt it" ("Can We Trust the Hengwrt Manuscript?," in Chaucer in Perspective: Middle English Essays in Honour ofNorman Blake, ed. Geoffrey Lester [Sheffield, 1999], 194-217, at 214). 17. Gray, "Explanatory Notes," 853; and N. F. Blake, "On Editing the Canterbury Tales," in Medieval Studies for J. A. W. Bennett: Aetatis Suae LXX, ed. P. L. Heyworth (Oxford, 1981), 101-9, and "The Relationship Between the Hengwrt and Ellesmere Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales," in Essays and Studies 32 (1979): 1-18. 18. Seymour, "Hypothesis," 217. 19. Seymour, "Of This Cokes Tale," 260. not to 20. Scholars need travel the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth, as I did, to confirm this information. Estelle Stubbs, The Hengwrt Chaucer Digital Facsimile (Leicester, scans 2000), reproduces high-quality of the manuscript and discusses the ink situation in detail.

21. Burrow, "Poems without Endings," 20. 22. A. I. Doyle and M. B. Parkes, "A Paleographical Introduction," in The Canterbury Tales: A Facsimile and Transcription of theHengwrt Manuscript with Variants from the Ellesmere Manuscript, ed. Paul G. Ruggiers (Norman, Okla., 1979), xix-1. 23. Seymour, "Of This Cokes Tale," 260. 24. Seymour, "Hypothesis," 214. 25. Charles Owen, "The Alternative Reading of The Canterbury Tales: Chaucer's Text and the Early Manuscripts," PMLA 97 (1982): 237-50, at 243. Manly and Rickert also see as Ellesmere "editorially sophisticated," but recent editors and critics have challenged this see notion; George Kane's chapter on Manly and Rickert in Editing Chaucer: The Great Tradition, ed. Paul G. Ruggiers (Norman, Okla., 1984), 207-29. 26. Linne R. Mooney, "Chaucer's Scribe," Speculum 81 (2006): 97-138. For a caution regarding the attribution, see Brendan O'Connell, "Adam Scriveyn and the Falsifiers of Dante's Inferno: A New Interpretation of Chaucer's Wordes," Chaucer Review 40 (2005): 39-57, at 39-40. see 27. On the dating of Hengwrt and Ellesmere, Mooney, "Chaucer's Scribe," 97-98, 115,119-20. 28. Certainly, Chaucer chides Adam in "Chaucers Wordes unto Adam, His Owne Scriveyn" for the scribe's "negligence and rape" (line 7). But the poem also indicates that a substantial effort has been made "to correcte and eke to rubbe and scrape" (line 6) both Trand Bo. It seems reasonable to imagine that similar care would have been taken with CT 29. Seymour, "Hypothesis," 217. We might note the blank page following the false are ending of SqT, perhaps this and the blank space following C&T analogous lacunae. If was so, then the space following CAT might signify the scribe's understanding that the tale over, not that more existed somewhere, as Seymour argues. 30. Larry D. Benson, "Explanatory Notes," in Riverside Chaucer, 952. seems 31. Although the tone of this Prologue playful, the Manciple's jesting may an contain edge. Constance Hieatt discusses the antagonistic professional relationship men Hem for the in between cookshop and manciples ("A Cook They Had With Nones,"

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Chaucer's Pilgrims, ed. Laura C. Lambdin and Robert T. Lambdin [Westport, Conn., 1999], we are 199-209, at 203) and might note just how many lines spent cataloguing the Cook's drunkenness. Hieatt points out that the Host's play might reflect professional conflict, one since tavern-keepers, cooks, and pie-men were all victuallers in competition with another. 32. Walter Curry notes that the Cook's mormal malum mortuum would have been viewed as resulting from "disgraceful association with diseased and filthy women" (Chaucer and the Mediaeval Sciences [New York, 1960], 51). Jill Mann objects that "the medical or authorities quoted by Curry attribute mormals to generally intemperate unclean habits . . . rather than to any specific behaviour" (Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire: The Literature of Social Classes and the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales [Cambridge, U.K., 1973], 285n), yet we can see how even nonspecific "unclean behaviour" with queans would be a one distasteful in cook, particularly who has already had his mormal disturbingly juxta posed to his "blankmanger" (I 387). 33. Of course, the Cook may be speaking metaphorically, and Perkyn and his friend may not be actual thieves, but they have been connected clearly enough to thievery for the a allusion to be remembered: "And for ther is no theef withoute lowke, / That helpeth hym to wasten and to sowke / Of that he brybe kan or borwe may, / Anon he sente his bed a and his array / Unto compeer of his owene sort, / That lovede dys, and revel, and disport" (14415-20). 34. Hieatt points out that Bailly's remarks about the Cook "assume a prior acquaintance between the two" ("A Cook," 203), and perhaps there was more than a were passing acquaintance. Pie-men and cookshops not allowed to sell ale or wine (205), yet Hogge is drunk all the time. We have been told that at Bailly's Tabard, "Strong was the wyn, and wel to drynke us leste" (I 750). Perhaps Bailly has witnessed the Cook's drunken ness before.

35. Howard, The Idea of the Canterbury Tales, 245. The Knight begins with a courtly romance; then the Miller tells of the carpenter John's cuckolding; then the Reeve tells of on the joyless and violent "jape" played Symkyn by Aleyn and John; then the Cook begins a his tale, telling of dice, drinking, riot and theft, eventually ending with woman swyving for sustenance. a 36. Kolve argues that CkT provides "'moral' voice [that] speaks in a language new to The Canterbury Tales so far" (Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative, 270), and Hieatt an suggests that, since apprentice like Perkyn would have impeded the Cook's professional we a endeavors, should expect the tale to end with moral: "Thus Hogge's attitude toward one his central character is not of approval, and presumably if we had a complete tale to examine, we would find that Perkyn got his comeuppance, one way or another" ("A Cook," an seems to 204). Such assumption ignore Chaucer's depiction of the Cook. Hogge of more to Ware certainly appears prone Perkyn-like debauchery than to prudish moralizing. In fact, the Cook's enthusiastic reaction to the Reeve's "jape of malice in the derk" (I 4338), his (at best) amoral understanding of the man's story, and his promise of a "litel of own seem to jape" (I 4343) his preclude any tale involving ethics or morality. On the other Haldeen examination hand, Braddy's of the Indenture of Apprenticeship in 1396 between John Hyndlee of Northhampton and Thomas Edward, son of Gilbert Edward of Wyndesore, might support the "moral voice" premise. Braddy notes that Perkyn breaks all three of the agreements in the Indenture: 1) the apprentice shall not absent himself the not illegally, 2) apprentice shall lend out goods and chattels of the master without permission, and 3) the apprentice shall not visit taverns, prostitutes, or dice-like games to the loss of time to the master ("Chaucerian Minutiae," Modern Language Notes 58 [1943]: at 18-23, 18). Interestingly, Braddy notes that under the agreement of the Indenture, the term of apprenticeship could be doubled if the apprentice violated any of the three

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strictures (19), yet Perkyn is released as a bad apple. As a side note, it strikes me that an indenture, which the OED describes as "A deed between two or more parties with mutual or covenants, executed in two or more copies, all having their tops edges correspondingly or indented serrated for identification and security," provides a condition somewhat we similar to the bibliographical situation envisioned by Seymour and others. If only could find a second section of CkT, matching the serrations of swyving for sustenance, then the mystery of the tale would be solved. 37. Benson, Riverside Chaucer, 9.

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