Book Review Chaucer The Canterbury Tales The Friars Tale

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The drunken Friar has not been happy with the Wife Of Bath’s moralising against men and also against clergymen. He sees morality as for God to offer, not for mortals. He states from the outset that his story has no important moral but that it is instead, a whimsical dig at the expense of the profession of the Summoners. This is upsetting to the equally drunken Summoner, who states right away that he will retaliate with a story about foolish friars if the story is told. He will make good on that threat as the Friar now has his little joke. The Friar tells of an Archduke who ruthlessly punishes every offence from witchcraft to failure to pay tithes on time. He has particular loathing for anyone committing the sin of lechery though. The Archduke leaves much of this legal work to his Court Summoner, who is utterly corrupt. The Summoner has a chain of spies who serve him by watching for any sign of lechery, and he runs a protection racket, as he knows that he only has to accuse someone for the Archduke to find the accused guilty. The Summoner collects fines that mostly vanish into his own pockets. He uses prostitutes to entrap men, extorting money by pimping, and then getting more money by blackmailing the men ensnared into paying him even more money. One day, the Summoner meets man who declares he to be a bailiff. They become good friends. The Bailiff admits that he uses corrupt means and short cuts to get his work quota filled. The Summoner admits that he uses similar practices, and the pair offers to swap tricks of the trade. It soon becomes apparent that the Bailiff is not human. He admits to being a demon from Hell. His payment is not in money, but in human souls. He needs to bring in souls from our World to ease his own suffering in Hell, so he is not averse to using trickery to get his needs met. The Summoner, learning this, is not alarmed. He travels with the demon-Bailiff when the creature tries to take the soul of a carter, for cursing his horse for stumbling in a ditch, but the carter gets away just in time through a display of his faith in God. The Demon now invites the Summoner to show if he cans faire better, and accompanies him to the house of a virtuous but poor old lady. The Summoner demands that the lady has been guilty of seducing priests and friars, and demands that she pays a fine of twelve shillings to save herself from being taken to court. The woman protests her innocence, and that she has no more money. Her only luxury of late is the new frying pan she has acquired, and which she now holds in her hand. When the Summoner gets more unpleasant in his demands, she realizes that he is corrupt and curses that the devil will have to take him and her frying pan before she ever [pays such a fine. The Demon hears her call and promptly takes the Summoner and the frying pan away with him to Hell. The Summoner is infuriated by the tale and immediately prepares his own story in a sense of vengeance. Arthur Chappell