TALE OF A CANTERBURY TALE

Prologue of the Cook's Tale:

When the Reeve was talking, the cook - from London - tapped him on his shoulder. He tells him how a miller had experience in lodging for the night. He said Solomon's quote: "Bring not every man into your house." He also talks about being careful about whom to let in. He requests the Reeve that if he listens to him, then he will share a jest from his town. The host answered yes, referring him as Roger, and asks him to be gentle as one learns a lot from a jest. So, her should not be angry and remain calm. Roger replies by saying that the tale is about an inn-keeper and that he shouldn't be angry by his faith.

Here begins the Cook's Tale:

An apprentice joins a food-seller. He was known as Perkin the Reveller. He was a joyful individual, short, good-looking, brown with black locks (hair). He was a good dancer too, full of love. He used to sing and dance at every wedding. He went to see any procession at Cheapside and wouldn't return to the shop until he had seen all the singing and dancing there was to see. He would also take other men "of his own sort" and they would play dice. Perkin was a talented dice player, and so spent his money freely. With Perkin always playing dice and running after women, the master of the shop suffered.

The apprentice stayed with his master until he had to but he was reprimanded. When the master opened the apprentice's account, he remembered a proverb: "Better a rotten apple kept out of the batch than one that rots the rest." So the master decided to let him go - far less harm than keeping him. The master wished him bad luck and sorrow and he let him go. The apprentice now had nothing to play the dice with so he gave all his materials to someone like him, who had a wife running a show but just as a show - running the house as a prostitute.

This tale is left unfinished.

Questions:

1) The central character of the tale is the apprentice, Perkin the Revller. 1) "That fond his maister wel in his chaffare." 2) "For whan ther any ryding was in Chepe, Out of the shoppe thider wolde he lepe." 3) "And gadered him a meinee of his sort, To hoppe and singe, and maken swich disport." 4) "Wel bet is roten appel out of hord, Than that it rotie al the remenaunt." 5) "Un-to a compeer of his owne sort, That lovede dys and revel and disport,.." All these actions or metaphors used to describe the apprentice allows readers to analyze him as a "rebel" of the society who neither fits in the noble class nor the moral class.

2) Chaucer is satirizing society because if an apprentice wants to dance, sing, and have fun with his companions, he has a right to, and so the behavior by the master of treating him as a "rotten apple" and firing him seemed a little of an overreaction. Chaucer's satirical tone allows readers to understand the contrary relationship between theological and biological aspects of life.