The lady, having thus definitely notified her choice between the rivals (on quite other grounds, as the next few lines show, than those of religion or morality), proceeds to tell her tale on the theme that nothing is so dear to the female heart as "sovereignty" or "mastery." Then the quarrel blazes up afresh, and the Friar (after an insulting prologue for which the Host calls him to order) tells a story which is, from first to last, a bitter satire on the whole tribe of Summoners. Then the Summoner, "quaking like an aspen leaf for ire," stands up in his stirrups and claims to be heard in turn. His prologue, which by itself might suffice to turn the tables on his enemy, is a broad parody of those revelations to devout Religious which announced how the blessed souls of their particular Order (for the Friars were not alone in this egotism) enjoyed for their exclusive use some choice and peculiar mansion in heaven--under the skirts of the Virgin's mantle, for instance, or even within the wound of their Saviour's side. Then begins the tale itself of a Franciscan Stiggins on his daily rounds, and of the "oldë churl, with lockës hoar," who at one stroke blasphemed the whole convent, and took ample change out of Friar John for many a good penny or fat meal given in the past, and for much friction in his conjugal relations. The whole is told with inimitable humour, and it is to be regretted that we hear nothing of the comments with which it was received. At this point comes another gap in Chaucer's plan.
His eyen twinkled in his head aright As do the starrës in a frosty night.
Then suddenly our Host calls upon the Clerk of Oxford--
Ye ride as still and coy as doth a maid, Were newly spousëd, sitting at the board; This day ne heard I of your tongue a word ... For Goddës sake, as be of better cheer! It is no timë for to study here.
The Clerk, thus rudely shaken from his meditations, tells the story of Patient Griselda, which he had "learned at Padua, of a worthy clerk ... Francis Petrarch, the laureate poet." The good Clerk softens down much of that which most shocks the modern mind in this truly medieval conception of wifely obedience; and, as a confirmed bachelor, he adds an ironical postscript which is as clever as anything Chaucer ever wrote.[163] We must revere the heroine, but despair of finding her peer--