The Cook's Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer

The Cook’s Tale in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales presents us with a major problem, in that it scarcely exists! All we have is 58 lines, which is hardly enough to set the scene, let alone get into the meat of the story.

On several occasions, Chaucer links two or more tales together, usually by one of the pilgrims reacting to a tale, sometimes violently, by telling a tale that counters the first one. The Miller has told a tale at the expense of a carpenter, and the Reeve, who has been a carpenter, takes offence and tells his tale about a dishonest miller. At this point, Roger the Cook claims the next turn with a story that appears to be going to follow the same scurrilous pattern as the two preceding ones.

In the prologue to his tale, Roger first congratulates the Reeve on his tale, which he has obviously enjoyed. He then offers to continue the theme, by saying that he can tell a story along the same lines.

The Host, Harry Bailey, then invites Roger to do precisely that, but makes a few pointed remarks about the dubious food hygiene practised by the Cook. Harry comments that pilgrims, presumably referring to pilgrims in general and not the current batch, have felt the worse for wear after eating his goose with parsley. Roger’s reputation as a London cook has clearly reached Harry down at the Tabard in Southwark, as he remarks that Roger’s shop is infested with flies and that he serves meat pies that have been re-heated twice.

We already know from the General Prologue that Roger has a weeping sore on his leg, followed immediately by the information that blancmange (a savoury white dish made from chicken and milk) is one of his specialities. This is not the sort of thing one would want to eat if prepared by a man whose leg is oozing with pus!

In other words, according to Harry, if you are going to offer us a tale about yet another “rogue trader”, you had better be on your guard! Roger takes all this in good heart. Whatever his faults, he is clearly a good-natured fellow who can take a joke at his expense, which is more than can be said for some of his fellow pilgrims. Keeping the banter going, he threatens to tell a tale about an inn-keeper, but then says he will keep it for later.

So then we hear his very short tale. It concerns an apprentice called Perkin, who has been given the name Reveller because of his behaviour. Roger devotes most of his lines to telling us about how Perkin spends his free time drinking, dancing and enjoying himself. Part of his revelling consists in playing dice with his friends, which is clearly an expensive pastime because he funds his gambling by taking money from the till of the grocer’s shop where he is an apprentice.

  

Eventually, his master reckons that having Perkin living in his house, with all the other apprentices, is not such a good idea. This rotten apple could easily infect all the others. So Perkin is dismissed and has to find new lodgings. This he does by going to a friend who is a fellow gambler and reveller. The friend’s wife keeps a shop and supplements her income by prostitution.

And that is all we get. The tale ends here, as does this particular fragment of the manuscript. Why? One possibility is that Chaucer did indeed finish the tale, but that pages have been lost from the manuscript. In support of this view is the fact that there is no material that refers to the sudden end of the tale. All the preceding tales are linked by text that makes them flow from one to the next, but the fragment comes to a sudden halt at this point.

However, whether or not Chaucer had finished the tale, some explanation is needed for what happens later. In a fragment that clearly covers a much later part of the pilgrimage (there are geographical clues to this), the Host calls attention to the Cook, who is lagging well behind the others and is clearly the worse for drink. His “penance” is to tell a tale, although the Manciple now steps in and offers his tale instead.

The interesting point is that the Host makes no reference to the Cook’s earlier effort, either as having been finished or unfinished. It has been suggested that this fragment was originally intended to describe events in the early part of the return journey. If so, it is not so surprising that the Host does not ask for “another tale”. However, had the first tale been left as we now have it, some comment to that effect would surely have been made by the Host. The implication is therefore that the tale was finished, but the text has not survived.

It has also been suggested that the Cook’s tale is indeed a finished piece as it stands. The basis for this view is that the tale is a snippet of autobiography, intended to explain the Cook’s own character as a “reveller”, and possibly to suggest the cause of the weeping sore on his leg. The thinking is that the sore is a symptom of a venereal disease and that, by mentioning that his new landlord’s wife is a prostitute, no more needs to be said.

In my view, there are two main problems with this theory. One is that there is still no concluding conversation or comment. Surely at least the Host would have said something, seeing that he had plenty to say before the tale started? Can we believe that the “missing pages” only contained this material and no more of the tale itself?

The second problem is that there is clearly a story to be told, but it is not. Chaucer is a master story-teller, and for him not to do so in this case, having started the build-up in typical style, makes no sense. No, I for one simply do not buy this idea! What we have is completely unbalanced and a failure as a piece of finished text. This is not what Chaucer would have wanted to leave us.

There are many mysteries in all branches of the Arts, from Schubert’s “Unfinished Symphony” to the identity of the “Mona Lisa”. The Cook’s Tale is another one to add to the list!

© John Welford