(The Cook extends a dish in one hand and holds a meathook in the other.)
Wel koude he rooste, and sethe, and broille, and fry,
Maken mortreux, and wel bake a pye.
But greet harm was it, as it thought me,
That on his shin a mormal hadde he.
For blankmanger, that made he with the beste.
The Cook's Tale ends with the wife who swyved for
her sustenance, and the Hengwrt manuscript
has this notation at the end of the tale: "Of this Cokes tale
maked Chaucer na moore." The scribe had written nothing more on
the page where the Cook's Tale ends, leaving room for the
continuation of the tale should the rest of it be found.
Having made a search, he (or his director) was satisfied
that the tale was never finished and wrote that notation.
That is the received opinion on the unfinished state of the
Cook's Tale. (For further discussion see E. G. Stanley,
Poetica 5, 36-39.)
At least one scribe supplied a conclusion to the Cook's tale.
Some early scribes thought that the Tale of Gamelyn, a rousing
popular romance (and the ultimate source of Shakespeare's As
You Like It) should come next, and a spurious link was provided:
Fye therone, it is so foule! I wil nowe tell no forthere
(The last line above is the opening line of Gamelyn)
This is one of a number of spurious links composed by scribes
to provide connections between the tales as Chaucer left them
or as they came (often disordered) into their hands. For an
edition of such links (including the above) by John M. Bowers
see
Spurious Links.
Older critics assumed that the appearance of Gamelyn in
some of the manuscripts shows that Chaucer intended to cancel
the scurrilous Cook's Tale and give him instead this lively narrative.
There is no factual basis for this assumption.
But The Tale of Gamelyn is fun to read:
For a bibliography of critical and scholarly works on the
Cook's Tale
click here.
(Students reading this text for the first time may find an
interlinear translation helpful.)
[Perkyn Revelour, a dissolute
apprentice of London, is discharged by his master for theft. He moves
in with a fellow thief whose wife runs a shop as a front and
swyved for her
livelihood.]
For schame of the harlotrie that seweth after.
A velany it were thareof more to spell,
Bot of a knighte and his sonnes, my tale I wil forthe tell.
And therefore listeneth and herkeneth this tale ariht,
The Tale of Gamelyn.
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