Geoffrey Chaucer The Canterbury Tales Volume III POETRY including The Friar’s Tale • The Seaman’s Tale • The Physician’s Tale Read by Tim Pigott-Smith • Timothy West THE Michael Maloney and others GREAT TALES UNABRIDGED NA330412D 1 The Friar’s Tale (Tim Pigott-Smith) 2:21 2 Here begins the Friar’s Tale 3:47 3 So it befell that on a certain day 2:46 4 Now by the truth, my brother dear 3:48 5 In various ways and figures we appear 2:47 6 So on their way they rode forth speedily 2:36 7 The summoner knocketh at the widow’s gate 2:34 8 And when the fiend heard how she cursed him so 3:10 9 The Summoner’s Tale (Stephen Tompkinson) 3:15 10 Here the Summoner begins his tale 3:12 11 Nay cried the friar 3:58 12 Dear Sir, with your permission 3:43 13 Lo, Moses fasted forty days and nights 2:40 14 For they, I think, are like Jovinian 3:42 15 And bear this word away now 3:20 16 Wrathful Cambyses loved both drink and revel 3:02 17 Nay, by St Simon, quickly answered he 3:03 18 Ha! Thought the friar. 3:19 19 The lady of the house sat listening 2:52 20 My lord, said Jankin 2:56 21 The Lawyer’s Tale (Charles Kay) 5:36 22 The Prologue of the Lawyer’s Tale 2:06 2 23 Here the Lawyer begins his tale 3:44 24 This sultan for his privy council sent 2:56 25 The day is come at last for their departing 3:48 26 The mother of the sultan 3:57 27 Part 2 3:43 28 A certain treasure that was with her sent 3:06 29 Into our English ocean thus she came 4:11 30 Satan, our ever-waiting arch-betrayer 3:19 31 Down on her knees she dropped 3:08 32 But who was wroth this wedding rite to see 3:33 33 Sad was the king, having this letter read 3:45 34 Now wept the young and old in all that place 3:29 35 Part 3 3:30 36 How could this feeble woman find the might 2:55 37 Aella, who caused his mother to be slain 3:15 38 Fair when they met did Aella give her greeting 3:23 39 Who can describe the piteous joy they know 3:25 40 The Seaman’s Tale (Timothy West) 2:12 41 Here being the Seaman’s Tale 4:23 42 Sir John had risen some little time ago 1:52 43 The monk began to stare upon this wife 3:46 44 This monk made answer as I tell you here 2:59 3 45 And afterwards, Sir John with gravity 2:46 46 On the first Sunday after he was gone 3:22 47 His wife was ready at the gate to greet him 3:43 48 The Prioress’s Tale (Rosalind Shanks) 1:41 49 The Prologue of the Prioress’s Tale 2:07 50 Here begins the Prioress’s Tale 3:10 51 This child passed through the Jewish colony 3:44 52 The Christians on the street, that came and went 2:52 53 Therefore I sing, and sing I must indeed 2:07 54 The Manciple’s Tale (Sean Barrett) 3:09 55 Then to the Manciple spoke up our Host 2:44 56 Here begins the Manciple’s Tale 3:00 57 But to the end for which I first began 5:06 58 After this wife sent for her paramour 3:49 59 And to the crow he cried again 2:39 60 Thy first of actions, son, and thy chief care 2:36 61 The Physician’s Tale (Michael Maloney) 2:57 62 If she was unexcelled in beauty thus 3:34 63 This maid of whom I tell did not require 3:32 64 On this, and he not here, 3:45 65 O mercy, O dear father 3:31 66 The words of the Host to the Physician and the Pardoner 2:12 Total time: 3:33:32 4 Geoffrey Chaucer The Canterbury Tales – Vol. III The Canterbury Tales, written near the of pilgrims, presents himself with mock end of Chaucer’s life and hence towards innocence as the admiring observer of his the close of the fourteenth century, is fellows, depicted in the General Prologue. perhaps the greatest English literary work Many of these are clearly rogues – the of the Middle Ages: yet it speaks to us coarse, cheating Miller, the repulsive yet today with almost undimmed clarity and compelling Pardoner – yet in each of them relevance. Chaucer finds something human, often a Chaucer imagines a group of twenty- sheer vitality or love of life which is nine pilgrims who meet in the Tabard Inn in irresistible: the Monk may prefer hunting to Southwark, intent on making the traditional prayer, but he is after all a manly man, to journey to the martyr’s shrine of St Thomas be an abbot able. Perhaps only the a Becket in Canterbury. Harry Bailly, landlord unassuming, devoted Parson and his of the Tabard, proposes that the company humbly labouring brother the Ploughman should entertain themselves on the road rise entirely above Chaucer’s teasing irony; with a storytelling competition. The teller of certainly the Parson’s fellow clergy and the best tale will be rewarded with a supper religious officers belong to a Church at the others’ expense when the travellers riddled with gross corruption. Everyone, it return to London. Chaucer never completed seems, is on the make, in a world still this elaborate scheme – each pilgrim was recovering from the ravages of the Black supposed to tell four tales, but in fact we Death. only have twenty-four altogether – yet, with The seventh tale (in Chaucer’s original the pieces of linking narrative and the order) is told by the Friar, a member of a prologues to each tale, the work as a whole mendicant order who uses his privileged constitutes a marvellously varied evocation position to exploit the young people of his of the medieval world which also goes district. Many of the tales in Chaucer’s beyond its period to penetrate (humorously, collection are told in order to score points gravely, tolerantly) human nature itself. off other pilgrims: the Friar uses his to Chaucer, as a member of this company make fun of the Summoner. In the story, a 5 summoner makes a pact with the devil to on the seas. The story is an allegory of share any ill-gotten gains they may make, Christian fortitude: years later, the wicked but does not reckon on the perverse mother-in-law long since executed, the sincerity of the devil who will only take that mother and son who have been which is ‘ex corde’ – from the heart – and miraculously preserved in their wanderings is thus able to bear the summoner to hell are reunited in Rome with the grieving and damnation when an old woman, with sultan. A similar tale is also found in the genuine feeling, wishes the duplicitous ‘Confessio Amantis’ of Gower, Chaucer’s summoner to ‘go to the devil’. great contemporary, but both writers Not surprisingly, the Summoner’s Tale borrowed from an earlier text (or texts). takes the form of a riposte. Summoners The Seaman (Chaucer calls him a were officers of the Church responsible for ‘shipman’ in the original) relates a story of summoning miscreants under canon law to cynical amorality well suited to his own the Church courts: Chaucer’s Summoner is ruthless character: we hear in the Prologue an especially repulsive specimen, both of his thieving and violence. A rich, morally and physically. Friars were equally workaholic merchant neglects his pretty known for their greed and corruption, so, wife who seeks solace in the arms of a in his tale, the Summoner has his Friar family friend, a well-off monk given free faced with the apparently impossible task rein by his abbot to travel outside his of sharing out a legacy. This legacy consists religious house. The husband pays his wife of a fart ‘donated’ by a bedridden a meagre allowance, both sexually and householder exasperated by the friar’s financially; she therefore borrows from the repeated requests for money. The tale monk to pay for finery and grants him suggests a symbolism whereby the friar’s sexual favours in return; she is not aware hypocritical preaching is aptly represented that the monk has himself borrowed the by the fart. money from the merchant. If the story has The Lawyer’s Tale is altogether more a moral, it can only be that he who thinks high-minded, befitting the dignity of its solely of money lays himself open to teller: Constance, a Christian princess, exploitation in other ways. marries a sultan on condition that he We know from the General Prologue converts to Christianity but then, victim of that the Prioress is a lady who cultivates the sultan’s mother’s plotting, is cast away an air of selfless sensitivity but who 6 nevertheless seems unduly interested in her happens, from the Physician himself who, it own appearance and the impression she is clear from the Prologue, is a charlatan. makes on others, men especially. Her tale is The story, derived from Livy but owing a simple exercise in religious pathos: a little much to a later version in Jean de Meun’s boy from an Asian city is murdered by ‘Romance of the Rose’, is stark and members of the Jewish community as he shocking: a beautiful girl of impeccable sings a hymn.